A Layman's Life Of Jesus Part 3

Singularly enough Judas, the coming traitor, was also there, and complained of Mary's using some precious ointment to bathe the feet of the Master. Because he was treasurer for the apostles and a thief, he wanted the money value of the ointment put where he could steal it. He was now already preparing himself for the great betrayal.

Out of curiosity to see Lazarus, the resurrected one, many went to the village that night from Jerusalem; some of them also were converted.

The priests, hearing of this, decided it was best to put Lazarus also to death. The great wonder performed at the tomb had alarmed them. It had not converted them.

In a few hours, believing people, hearing that the great Galilean was entering the city again, went out to meet him, swinging palm leaves and shouting hosannas. Many even threw their mantles down for Him to ride over and hailed Him king of Israel. Some of the bystanders, looking on with contempt, even asked Jesus to silence and rebuke His zealous followers. "No, no," He answered, "were these to hold their peace, the very stones would cry out." Again all kinds of snares are set for Him, every word is watched. Though He is again permitted to talk at the porch of the temple every day, spies are there listening.

He is hated in the great city.

Pretty soon they will call Him a criminal for doing cures on the Sabbath, for with their laws one scarcely dared eat his dinner on a Sunday; not this only, they will persecute Him for saying He is a king when there is no king, save Tiberius at Rome. Sometimes the Galilean's own talk seems wilder, less comprehensible than it even was to His native villagers. He has himself become so wholly spiritual, so filled with a quick coming of the new kingdom, that He hardly realizes the material life about Him.

Occasionally He climbs up to the top of the Mount of Olives, overlooking the beautiful city, and sits there for hours, meditating on its spiritual destruction--a destruction He had come to prevent, and cannot. Even a material destruction is hanging over Jerusalem. In thirty-seven years it will be burned to the earth--and where the gorgeous temple stands, the mosque of Omar will one day lift its head, type and temple of Mahomet, whose creed would have broken the Master's heart. It seems the Master in His soul knew all that was about to happen. Could He not have prevented it? By a miracle could He not have destroyed all His enemies at a single blow? He did not do it. He only said, "It is the father's will, these awful things that are about to happen." He would not shirk them. He regarded Himself foreordained to suffer. To His mind the Old Scriptures foretold His awful sacrifice.

CHAPTER VIII

The last supper. Leonardo's great picture. Betrayal. With a rope around his neck, the Savior of mankind is dragged before a Roman Judge. The scene at Pilate's palace. Pilate's wife warns him. The awful murder and the End.

One evening He and His disciples sat together at their evening meal--it was to be their last on earth. It is doubtful if the disciples really believed all was to be finished so soon. Yet He had most earnestly told them of His coming death. It was now in the Pa.s.sover week--and the Master and His nearest ones proposed celebrating one of its festivals in private and alone. "But where?"

asked his disciples. "Well," He had said, "go into Jerusalem, and the first man you meet carrying a pitcher of water, follow him to the house where he goes; there tell the owner I am coming, and he will show you an upper room, all prepared for us." Two of them went as told, followed the man with the pitcher, and found all in readiness for the little supper. That evening the Master and His disciples took a walk together from little Bethany, over the Mount of Olives, to Jerusalem. It was their last walk together on earth. At this supper where they now are, the Galilean once more tells His disciples the fate awaiting Him. He even points out the betrayer; but they do not seem to know His meaning.

Quietly, and aside, He whispers to Judas to "Do that which you are going to do quickly." It seems that Judas at once slipped away from the eleven and went out to hunt up the enemies of one he called Master. For a trifling sum of silver he had sold his own soul.

This scene, like that of the Transfiguration, has been celebrated by one of the great pictures of the world. Leonardo da Vinci's picture of the "Last Supper," in an old church at Milan, Italy, is in itself a miracle of art. Perhaps no painting on earth has attracted so many believing pilgrims to see and to sigh over the sorrow of the Master.

That very night when the moon rose over the towers and walls of the city, Jesus and His disciples left the supper room and secretly went out across the little brook Cedron and entered an olive orchard, to-day known as the Garden of Gethsemane. It is close to the city walls. There in the moonlight the disciples, tired and afraid, and probably hiding from their enemies, lay down on the gra.s.s and slept.

The Master Himself stepped a little into the shade of the olive trees to pray. He knew the hour had come.

In a little while, it was the midnight hour now, he heard men coming, with stones and swords and lanterns. Fearlessly He stepped out into the light of the full moon and asked them whom they were looking for.

They answered, "Jesus, of Nazareth." He said quietly, "I am He." At the same moment Judas, the betrayer, walked up and kissed Him. This had been a sign agreed upon between Judas and the priests, as to which one to capture.

The little handful of friends with the Lord now tried to give battle, but He would not permit them. He was at once bound, and carried back into the city. It is past midnight. He is first conducted before Annas, the church tyrant, who sends Him to Caiaphas, the high priest.

There He is questioned and tortured. By the time it is daylight He is sent to the judgment hall of Pilate and accused. Pilate is a Roman.

Under the Roman law there still must be some pretense of a charge against a human being before he can be put to death--some charge of wrong.

It is now seven in the morning. Priests, scribes, Pharisees, all come before Pilate in a howling mob, leading the Savior of mankind with a rope around His neck. They had tortured Him half the night--they have decided He shall die; they only want permission to kill Him, or have Him killed by Pilate.

As it is the holy festival time, custom does not permit the mob to enter the heathen palace of Pilate. So they stand out in the street, on a place called the "pavement," and howl.

"What is the charge against Him? What has this man done?" demands the Roman governor, with a show of justice as he steps out to the front of his palace and looks at the mob. "He says he is Christ, the King,"

some of the accusers answer. Pilate goes back into the great hall, with the marble floor and the gilded ceilings. He himself has no love for the Jews. They have no love for Pilate. He knows the Jerusalemites to be a seditious lot of zealots, quarreling forever among themselves, and fanatical in their adherence to the laws of Moses. The Jews know Pilate to be a hater of their creeds and customs. They regard him, too, a brutal governor; but now they would use this brutality against one of whom they were a little afraid, for in the villages this Galilean, whom they were persecuting, had many friends. Would not the people rise, moved by His wonderful miracles, and at last put an end to all their religious pretenses? It was the temple-people, the Sanhedrins, and the Pharisaic priests who stood in front of this mob, gathered at Pilate's palace on that early morning. They had already decided their victim must die, and they were inciting all the ignorant to violence.

Because of the Roman occupation, Pilate's approval was a necessity before they could quite kill a man. They reckoned, however, that he would want to please them some, and so lessen his own unpopularity.

In a little time the governor called Jesus into the judgment hall.

Looking at the wronged, the suffering, the persecuted being who stood before him, the blood falling from His poor body to the floor Pilate asked Him plainly if He were the king of the Jews? "Do you ask that of yourself," said the persecuted but heroic prisoner, "or did others tell it of me?"

Pilate was in fact greatly impressed by the face, serene, even in suffering, and the mild words of one falsely accused. The Savior explained that if He was a king it was not of this world. His kingdom was of the spirit. Pilate did not quite understand that. He himself was not very spiritual. Jesus added, "I am a witness to the Truth."

"Then what is Truth?" said Pilate. We can only guess the answer given him. It may have greatly moved the Roman, for he at once went out to the mob a.s.sembled on the pavement and said, "I find no fault in this man." Some one in the crowd spoke up and accused Jesus of stirring up the peasants in Galilee.

"If he is a Galilean," said Pilate to himself, "he must be tried by Antipas, the Galilean governor." Reliable tradition says that they also shouted at him that this was the very Child Jesus, whom Herod tried to kill when he ma.s.sacred the children of Bethlehem. Pilate had never heard of the flight to Egypt nor of the return. He supposed the Child Christ dead. Now he is astounded, and alarmed, for where had Jesus been all these years? Had His origin, His ident.i.ty been kept a secret? Does not this tradition and Pilate's alarm add strength to the supposition that years of His life had pa.s.sed in the secret of the desert?

Pilate gladly sent him to Antipas, who that very day happened to be in Jerusalem at the festival. The Galilean ruler had heard of Christ a thousand times, and often had longed to see him and talk with him, but most he was curious to see a miracle performed. Again the Master is accused, but to the many questions of Antipater He makes no answer whatever. Neither does He perform some miracle for the curiosity and sport of the Galilean court. Offended at His silence, and greatly disappointed, the king mocks Him, and arraying Him in ridiculous garments sends Him back to Pilate. But he has found no fault in Him--no act against the laws of Galilee for which he dare punish Him.

Again He is before Pilate, the Roman, again full of pain, and bleeding, He answers mildly as before, or else is silent, submitting to outrageous injury. Three times Pilate goes out before the crowd and tells them that Christ has done nothing worthy of death. "Again I tell you I find no fault in Him. I sent Him over to Antipas, the king of Galilee. He also finds no fault worthy of death. Let me chastise Him and set Him free."

But the crowd yelled the louder for His blood. Once the wife of Pilate comes and whispers to him to "have nothing to do with that good man, I have been forewarned in a dream." Again Pilate earnestly strives to save Him. Again he addresses the mob, "You know it is our custom to release a prisoner at this festival. I have Barabbas, the robber, here and Jesus. Let me set Jesus free and hang the robber." "No, no," cry a hundred voices; "free Barabbas and crucify the heretic." The Roman, accomplished in killing men, practiced in cruelty as he is, shudders at the fearful injustice. He knows the Galilean has done no wrong. The bruised and bleeding body of the Master waits in silence and prayer there in the hall of the palace. The cries for His murder reach His ears--they grow louder and louder. Pilate, confused as to the law, as to his duty, and perhaps alarmed, weakened, in a contemptible moment of cowardice, yields.

But first he steps to the front, and in a loud voice exclaims, "Look you, I wash my hands of the blood of this good man." He could do nothing more.

In a moment the robber is set free, and the Christ, followed by a mult.i.tude, some deriding and some weeping for pity, starts for the awful place of execution. Once as He goes along the th.o.r.n.y way, He hears pitying women bewailing and weeping. Turning His face to them, He cries, "Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me; but weep for yourselves and your children."

That weeping, that sorrow, has continued two thousand years. Humanity will weep forever over the awfulness of what happened. It is hard to think that G.o.d ordained any of this suffering of Jesus. More likely the Master, in the extremity of His zeal for humanity, believed His very blood on the cross a needed sacrifice to awaken the world. He was human. His road from Pilate's palace to the cross has been followed in tears by millions of people. The awful picture of what happened there is too dreadful to describe. John, the Evangelist, himself was present--the only eye witness who has written of it, yet not even he has the courage to tell the story beyond a dozen verses in the Testament. The disciples had deserted the Lord, and were in hiding. They were in fear. They could not drink the cup the Master had to drink. A few women, including the mother of the Redeemer and her sister, were present to the very end. To make the anguish as disgraceful as possible, the Master was nailed to a cross between two thieves. It was the most agonizing kind of execution known to the cruel Roman law. Some Roman soldiers put Him to death, as ordered by their governor, but the blood of it all was on the hands of fanatics and priests.

Pilate, in mockery of the Jews, whom he despised for this murder, forced on him, put an inscription over the cross saying, "The King of the Jews." The mob of murderers wanted him to amend the phrase, and have it read, "He said He was King of the Jews." Pilate declined, for Jesus had never said that. Besides, Pilate had had enough of the horror that, like an earthquake, was to shock the world. He had washed his hands of it.

The deed done, the anguish over, Joseph, a secret Christian convert, though a rich member of the Sanhedrin, asked Pilate for the body of Jesus, and put it in a new tomb of his own, hewn in the solid rock, as was a custom of the land.

On what is now known as Easter morning, just as the dawn was breaking over the hills of Jerusalem, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb of the dead Master. It had been opened by angels, as she believed, for, on looking within, she saw two figures sitting there dressed in white.

Very quickly two of the disciples, whom Mary saw and told, came and looked into the cave also and saw nothing but the linen clothes of the Master, and went away. The body was not there. Mary waited a little yet by herself, when one of the angels asked her why she was weeping.

She answered, "They have taken away my Lord." At that moment she turned her face a little and saw a spirit standing by her. Thinking at first it was the gardener, she asked it where the body had been taken to. To her amazement the spirit spoke and sadly said, "Mary."

Instantly she knew it was the Lord. She would have thrown herself at His feet, but He bade her not to touch Him, but rather to hasten to the disciples and tell them He was about to ascend to Heaven.

That day, on a country road, outside Jerusalem, He overtook two of His disciples, and walked and talked with them all the way to Emmaus, telling them the great story of the Scriptures, while they walked and wondered, not knowing it was the spirit of the dead Master. That same evening, too, that same Spirit of Jesus appeared to the disciples in a closed room where they were hiding for fear of the Jews. In a little while the word went round among the followers that the Lord was risen. For forty days that Spirit, risen from the tomb, was to be seen by the faithful in Jerusalem and in Galilee.

To His apostles His appearance in the spirit could not have been surprising, for He had repeatedly told them that He would be crucified, and would rise again in three days. As to a possibility of life after death--there was little or no question among the Jews. The Sadducees only argued against it. The belief of that time and of ages before was in a resurrection. Even Daniel had told the people distinctly that the time would come "when many that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and contempt."

Indeed, Jews at this very moment were expecting Elias and other prophets to rise from their graves and rule the world from Palestine.

Whether Christ's physical body also appeared to Mary Magdalene that morning in the garden we may never know. Lyman Abbott has rightly said that it is "not even important that we should know." It is sufficient that the Spirit that never dies was there. His appearance was the perfect proof of an after life. Pilate and the murderers had killed only the body, not the soul.

Quite possibly spirits have been momentarily seen in our later times, but His, seen by thousands, walked about the earth for forty days.

That event was to establish a religion that would reform the world and live forever. The world now knew there was a second life to strive for--and the road to that life was in being good to one another.

Millions have walked it, and died in peace. They died, not to an eternal sleep but to waken with the light of Heaven bursting around them.

THE END