XXV.

THE INSCRIPTION WRITTEN OVER THE CROSS OF JESUS.

Ir is a remarkable circumstance, that Pilate persists, from first to last, in giving the title of King to Jesus Christ, notwithstanding the clamour and threats of the Jews, and their vehement protestations that they would have no king but Cesar. The hand of God, which is distinctly to be traced in every event connected with the passion of his Son, is most clearly manifest in this. Pilate was entirely dependent upon the emperor, who himself was very jealous of his authority; he could expect nothing in this life from a man under condemnation of death; he knew that in calling Jesus their king, he mortally offended the Jews;

yet, notwithstanding all this, he continues to ascribe to him that title; he sets it up as the inscription above his cross, and goes so far as to have it written in the three most celebrated languages of the time.

"I think," says an author on this subject, who will not be suspected of finding mysteries where none were meant,* "that the inscription placed over our Saviour's cross, is a circumstance worthy of deep consideration, and one in which God's providence was strikingly visible. This inscription was written in the languages of three nations not yet subject to the dominion of our Saviour, but which were soon to be so through the medium of his cross, following, as it were, the custom of the emperors, who took the names of those people they had conquered. For He who was hanging upon the cross, was He to whom the religion of the Jews, the wisdom of the Greeks, and the power of the Romans, were about to be brought under subjection."

If only a few individuals had complained that this inscription gave Christ a title to which he

* Grotius.

had no right, and had not the chief priests themselves entreated Pilate to alter that title, it might have been thought that a mistake had been made in the wording of it. But a secret and over-ruling Providence permitted that the chief priests should feel of what immense importance it was to them, and to the whole nation, that Jesus Christ should not be recognised as a King by the public authorities, nor that they should be accused of having crucified the Messiah. They, therefore, go to the governor, who till then had granted all that they had asked him, and represent to him that there is an error in the inscription, and that it needed but a word to set it right; that this slight change was as necessary to the honour of the judge as to their own; since it could only be for his false pretensions to royalty, and not because his claims were true and legitimate, that he was considered as guilty, and condemned to the death of the cross.

It seems strange, that in such an apparent trifle, one indeed which must have been of such perfect indifference to the governor, and the yielding of which would have helped to conceal his own act of injustice, he should have stood

out with the most inflexible firmness; and that, contrary to his former ways of proceeding, he should at once have taken away all hope of being over-persuaded by solicitations; "What I have written I have written," John xix. 22. "I have said that he is King; I will not unsay it. It must henceforth be considered as a public declaration, too sacred for me to alter; any change would but weaken the testimony I have given."

Let us here adore the sovereign power of Him who presides over all the counsels of men, even of those who do not know him, or who are opposed to him, and makes use of their will to bring about the execution of his own, effecting this with the utmost ease, and the most admirable wisdom. Who may not recognise the Father's care to mix up, with all the shameful indignities heaped upon his Son, the most incontrovertible proofs of his royalty? And who can help beholding with admiration Pontius Pilate-who here represents the Gentiles-pursuing a mode of conduct which confounds the Jews, and seems to foretel the future faith of all people?

XXVI.

JESUS REVILED UPON THE CROSS.

LET us look, with the enlightened eye of faith, upon Jesus Christ, in the midst of the sinners who surrounded him, and who not only understood nothing of the mystery of his sufferings, or the depth of his surpassing love, but who despised his mercy; treated his heavenly patience as weakness; reproached him with his perseverance in the great work he had undertaken, as being without power to save himself; defied him to prove his own assertion, that he was the Son of God; strove in every way to wound him where they thought he would feel most acutely; and who, in proportion to the patience and meekness with which he bore all their cruel mockings, became bolder and more persevering in their insults.