Hand washing was a religious ceremony among the Jews. The Jewish Mishna gave particular directions how that the hands must be thrust three times up to the wrist in water, and the palm of the hand must then be rubbed with the closed fist of the other.
All that was well enough for a symbol, but here is a man in the case under consideration who proposes to wash away the guilt of a sin which he does not quit and of which he does not make any repentance. Pilate’s wash basin was a dead failure.
Ceremonies, however beautiful and appropriate, may be no more than this hypocritical ablution. In infancy we may be sprinkled from the baptismal font, and in manhood we may wade into deep immersion, and yet never come to moral purification. We may kneel without prayer and bow without reverence, and sing without any acceptance. All your creeds, liturgies, sacraments, genuflections and religious convocations amount to nothing unless your heart-life go into them.
When that bronzed slave took from the presence of Pilate that wash basin he carried away none of Pilate’s cruelty, wickedness or guilt.
Nothing against creeds; we all have them—either written or implied. Nothing against ceremonies; they are of infinite importance. Nothing against sacraments; they are divinely commanded. Nothing against rosary, if there be as many heartfelt prayers as beads counted. Nothing against incense floating up from censer amid Gothic arches, if the prayers be as genuine as the ceremony is sweet. Nothing against Epiphany, Lent, Ash Wednesday, Easter, Good Friday, Whitsuntide or Palm Sunday, if these symbols have behind them genuine repentance, holy reminiscence and Christian consecration.
But ceremony is only the sheath to the sword; it is only the shell to the kernel; it is only the lamp to the flame; it is only the body to the spirit. The outward must be symbolical of the inward. Wash the hands, by all means; but, more than all, wash the heart.
Behold, also, as you see Governor Pontius Pilate thrust his hands into his wash basin, the power of conscience. He had an idea there was blood on his hands—the blood of an innocent person, whom he might have acquitted if he only had the courage.
Poor Pilate! His conscience was after him, and he knew the stain would never be washed from the right hand or the left hand; that, until the day of his death, though he might wash in all the lavers of the Roman Empire, there would be still eight fingers and two thumbs red at the tips.
Alas for this Governor Pontius Pilate! That night, after the court had adjourned and the Sanhedrists had gone home and nothing was heard outside the room but the step of the sentinel, I see Pontius Pilate arise from his tapestried and sleepless couch and go to the laver and begin to wash his hands, crying: “Out! Out, crimson spot! Tellest thou to me and to God and to the night my crime? Is there no alkali to remove these dreadful stains? Is there no chemistry to dissolve this carnage? Must I to the day of my death carry the blood of this innocent man on my heart and hand? Out, thou crimson spot!”