"'Nay, tempt me not, beloved!' he answered. 'My power is not for my deliverance, but for that of the world. For you I can do mighty works, but for myself I do nothing. I came not to save my life, but to lay it down. Mine hour is at hand!'
"'Let not a handful of Romans frighten you, men of Jerusalem!' cried Abner. 'There is not a legion in all the city. Here we are masters, if we will it! To the rescue! Let me hear the lion of Judah roar in his might, and the eagle of Rome will shriek and fly away! To the rescue!'
"'Hold, men and brethren!' cried Caiaphas, who had judgment enough to see that the first blow would be the beginning of a revolution that would bring down upon the city the Roman army quartered in Syria and end in the destruction of the nation. 'Hold, madmen!'
"But his voice was drowned amid the roar of the human tempest. Æmilius and his men were borne away on the crest of the surge and so pressed by the bodies of the Jews that they could not make use of their weapons. In the wild confusion Jesus was carried by fierce hands to the opposite end of the council chamber, while Caiaphas strove to appease the wrath of Æmilius, who insisted that the fate of Jesus should be left with Pilate the Procurator.
"When Æmilius, aided by the authority of Caiaphas, at length came where Jesus had been dragged, they found him standing blindfolded among a crowd of the basest fellows of Jerusalem, who were diverting themselves by slapping his cheeks, and asking him to tell, by his divine knowledge of all things, who did it. They would also hold money before his blinded eyes, and ask him to name its value or inscription, and when he still kept silence they struck him.
"'We will let thee go, Nazarene,' said one, 'if thou wilt tell how many hairs I have in my beard.'
"'Nay, let him divine,' cried another, 'what I gave for my Passover lamb in the market, and the name of the Samaritan of whom I bought it!'
"'Out with your lambs, Kish!' shouted a third fellow, thrusting himself forward; 'let me hear him prophesy! What, Galilean! silent and sullen! I will make thee speak!' and he let a blow of his staff fall upon the head of Jesus which would have struck him to the earth, but for the voice of Caiaphas, which had arrested in part its force.
"'Men of Israel!' he cried aloud, 'that this pestilent Nazarene is a blasphemer we have heard with our ears, and by our law he ought to die, because he hath made himself the Son of God. But Cæsar hath taken the power of life and death out of our hands! We Jews can put no man to death, but the Romans only. That he hath spoken against Cæsar, and is a seditionist, can be proved. Let us take him before Pilate with this accusation!'
"This speech pleased the people, and, having rebound Jesus more securely, they cried all with one voice, 'To Pilate! To the Pretorium!'"