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XVII.

THE JEWS DECLARE THEY WILL HAVE NO KING BUT

CESAR.

NOTHING Could overcome the fury and blindness of the Jews. They continued to cry out, "Away with him! away with him! crucify him! Pilate saith unto them, Shall I crucify your King? The chief priests answered, We have no king but Cesar," John xix. 15. They renounce the promises made to Abraham, and to David, from whom the Messiah was to spring. They give up the most essential part of their religion, by yielding the chief point. A stranger, a heathen, a prince who was opposed to their form of worship, is their only king. They look to no other,— they will have no other. Such an act of impiety must meet with its just recompense. The Jews

shall have that which they have chosen. They shall no longer possess a king, either of the house of David, or of their own nation. They shall be subject to other masters, who will treat them as slaves. They shall be crushed under the weight of that yoke, which they have preferred to the gentle authority of the Messiah. And throughout the universe, they shall have neither place of safety, nor a fixed dwelling, nor a protector to defend them from the power of Cesar, that is, the dominion of strangers, under which they voluntarily placed themselves. "The children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice:" and this punishment they drew upon themselves, because they rejected the Messiah, their true King. But the time will come, when their heavy punishment will cease: for the prophet continues: "Afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek the Lord their God, and David their king;" that is, the real David, their legitimate King, whom in their blindness they rejected;" and shall fear the Lord and his goodness in the latter days," Hosea iii. 4, 5.

XVIII.

PILATE RENDERING A LAST AND MOST STRIKING TESTIMONY TO THE INNOCENCE OF JESUS CHRIST.

"WHEN Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it," Matt. xxvii. 24.

Nothing like this is to be met with in any history, and the astonishing fact is worthy of our deepest attention. The judge is not satisfied with declaring repeatedly, before all the people, that he finds no fault in Jesus Christ, and this without once weakening or varying his assertion, notwithstanding the persevering importunity of his calumniators: he is not satisfied to declare, in figurative language, that he washed his hands of

the guilt attending his condemnation, and that he does not consider valid any of the charges brought against him. He goes still further: while seated on his tribunal of judgment, exposed to the view of all those whom the festival of the Passover had assembled at Jerusalem, by performing a most expressive action in the face of all present, he makes the most solemn attestation to the innocence of Jesus Christ; and nothing in after ages could alter or weaken its effect. It remained an everlasting monument and proof, which future ages would never be able to controvert. It was a judgment which set aside beforehand the sentence which his own weakness, and the fury of the Jews, led him finally to pronounce. Nothing but the power and wisdom of God could have thrown together, in the execution of his Son, so many circumstances which would so entirely justify him, and yet fail to acquit him; which would bear testimony to his perfect righteousness, and yet not prevent the fulfilment of prophecy, which declares that he should be "numbered with the transgressors ;"that with his stripes we should be healed, and receive life by his death, Isa. liii. 5, 12.

XIX.

THE IMPRECATION OF THE JEWS UPON THEMSELVES.

"THEN answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children," Matt. xxvii. 25. Oh dreadful imprecation! alas! we see the consequences of it still: they are yet before our eyes, after the lapse of eighteen centuries! The blood of Christ, instead of speaking to God of mercy, according to the gracious end for which it was so freely poured out, called aloud for vengeance against his murderers. Those Jews who rejected the blessing, were thus, by their own demand, deprived of it. The curse which they so awfully and so deliberately preferred, has clung to them ever since, as the garment that covers them, and as the girdle wherewith they are girded, Psa. cix. 18.

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