As long as they conducted His trial with the usual insidious procedure, adducing falsities or asking Him about perfectly well-known truths, Jesus said no word; but even in the infamous mouth of the High Priest, the invocation to the living God was irresistible. Jesus could not deny Himself to the living God, to the God who will live eternally, and who lives in all of us, and who was present there even in that lair of demons. And yet He hesitated a moment before dazzling those bleared eyes with the splendor of His formidable secret.
“If I tell you, ye will not believe: And if I also ask you, ye will not answer me.”
Now Caiaphas was not alone in putting the question; all of them, excited, sprang to their feet and cried out, their clawing fingers stretched towards Him, “Art thou then the Son of God?”
Jesus could not, like Peter, deny the irrefutable certainty which was the reason for His life and for His death. He was responsible towards His own people and towards all men. But, as at Cæsarea, He wished others to be the ones to pronounce His real name, and when they had said it He did not refuse it, even though death were the penalty.
“Ye say that I am. I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.”
He had condemned Himself out of His own mouth. The snarling pack about Him was frothing at the mouth with delight and anger. In the presence of His assassins He had proclaimed what He had secretly admitted to His most loving friends. Although they might betray Him, He had not betrayed Himself or His father. Now He was ready for the last degradation. He had said what He had to say.
Caiaphas was triumphant. Pretending a shocked horror which he did not feel—because like all the Sadducees he had no faith whatever in the apocalyptic writers and cared about nothing but the fees and honors of the Temple—he rent his priestly garments, crying out, “He hath spoken blasphemy! What further need have we of witnesses? behold, now ye have heard his blasphemy. What think ye?”
And all the noisy kennel bayed out their answer, “He is guilty of death.”
And without any further examination, without a single protest, they all condemned Him to death as a blasphemer and false prophet.
The comedy of legal pretense was played to an end, and the cloaked ghosts felt themselves relieved of an immense weight. It had cost the High Priest a garment and he let the torn pieces hang like glorious symbols of victorious battle. He did not know that on that very day a garment more precious than any of his was to be torn, and he did not dream that his gesture was a symbolic recognition of another death-sentence. The priesthood of which he was the head was henceforth disqualified and abolished forever. His successors were to be mere semblances of priests, spurious and illegitimate, and in a few years the sumptuous garment of marble and masonry of the Jewish sanctuary was to be rent by the Roman rabble.