Away with this man!" They do not even deign to name him. "Away with him!" Let him no longer exist-let him perish any way by which we may be rid of him will be right-(What fury!-What madness!)—" and release unto us Barabbas;" that is, a robber, a rebel, a murderer. This is the person whom the people prefer to the holiest of the sons of men; to Him who came down to earth to go about doing good; whose wonderful miracles, and whose whole life, proclaimed aloud his Divinity!

These mad cries of the people present, however, the figure of a great mystery, but seldom thought of. It was necessary that Christ should die, in order that sinners, whom Barabbas here represents, should be released. The furious vociferations of these blind and impious men, therefore, only demanded that which the love and mercy of the Father and the Son had decreed before the foundation of the world. For if the spotless victim had been treated according to his innocence, and the sinner according to his deserts, all our sins would still have been upon our own heads, and must have continued there.

But if He who was without sin, takes upon himself our sin, we, through his death, are delivered and justified.

We are, with justice, horror-struck at the impious choice which the Jews made in preferring Barabbas to Jesus; but we do not consider that this horrible crime is one of the commonest which men commit. Every time that we forsake God for his creatures, do we not prefer not only Barabbas, but the devil himself, to the Lord God? The whole earth is filled with these frightful choices. We read the story of the passion of Jesus Christ, and few of us are not deeply touched with the injustice of the choice made by the Jews; and yet we can look with indifference upon the abominable choice which most men make, every day, of preferring the service of Satan to the service of God. By this it would appear, that we are not so much affected by the reality of things, as by the manner in which they are brought before us; and with whatever horror we may think we look upon certain acts of injustice, we allow ourselves to be drawn into them, when they disguise themselves under some seducing form.

XV.

JESUS EXPOSED TO FURTHER INSULT.

"Then Pilate therefore took Jesus, and scourged him. And the soldiers platted a crown of thorns, and put it on his head, and they put on him a purple robe, and said, Hail, King of the Jews! and they smote him with their hands," John xix. 1, 2. "And they smote him on the head with a reed, and did spit upon him, and bowing their knees, worshipped him," Mark xv. 19. It was by such means, that it pleased God to set up the kingdom of his Son, and save our wretched race. Yet it would appear to us, that

nothing could be more opposed to his kingdom, and to the faith we owe him, than such a contempt of his power. But what appear to us as obstacles, were the very means which it pleased

him to make use of, to establish it, and have it acknowledged.

It was the will of Christ, that after having, by his voluntary humiliations, atoned for our transgressions, all the shame and mocking he underwent, should be looked upon by us with the deepest veneration; and that it should be before him, scourged, and crowned with thorns, and mocked as an imaginary king, that all the kings of the earth should bow down. Thus giving to the ignominy which he suffered an efficacy, which his wisdom and power, that shine forth so admirably in the creation of the world, possessed not. It was his will, by what we should have considered as most abasing and humiliating, to bring into subjection to him all men in all ages. So that at his name every knee should bow, not only on earth, but also in heaven, after they had heaped upon him the most bitter derision and insult. It was his will, and it has been done; and this fact, which in itself is so great a prodigy, proves his sovereign power over the hearts and minds of all, in a more striking manner than any which our poor vain wisdom could have devised.

F

XVI.

PILATE AGAIN ATTEMPTS TO DELIVER JESUS.

Nor contented with the cruel outrages which Jesus Christ had just received, the Jews persevered in requiring Pilate to condemn him. In vain did he repeat, "I find no fault in him." "The Jews answered him, We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God. When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he was the more afraid," John xix. 6-8. What he had himself remarked, both in the silence of Christ and in his answers, when it had pleased him to speak ;— his patience and gentleness, evidently above human nature; together with the tranquil dignity which he preserved in the midst of the