The Prince of the House of David

by J. H. Ingraham

There it now hangs, visible from my window, but we are in some sort used to its dreadful presence and cease to fear; but we are lost in wonder. This morning when a high wind arose, blowing from the Great Sea eastward, every one expected and hoped to see the cloud sail away before it in the direction of the desert. But the only effect the wind produced was to agitate its whole surface in tumultuous billows, while the mass still retained its position above the city. The shadow it casts is supernatural and fearful, like the dread obscurity which marks an eclipse of the sun.

And this reminds me, my dear father, to mention what, in the multiplicity of subjects that rush to my pen for expression, I have omitted to state to you; and what is unaccountable unless men have, in truth, crucified in Jesus the very Son of God. At the time of his death the sun disappeared from the mid-heavens, and darkness, like that of night, followed over all the earth, so that the stars became visible, and the hills on which Jerusalem stands shook as if an earthquake had moved them, and many houses were thrown down; and where the dead are buried outside of the city, the earth and rocks were rent, tombs broken up, and many bodies of the dead were heaved to the surface and exposed to all eyes! These bodies have lain all to-day, for the Jews dare not touch them to re-bury them for fear of being defiled. All this is fearful and unaccountable. It is known, too, that as Jesus expired, the vail of the Temple was rent in twain and exposed the Holy of Holies to every common gaze! What will be the end of these things is known only to the God of Abraham. Never was so fearful a Passover before. Men's faces are pale and all look as though some dread calamity had befallen the nation.

My last letter, my dear father, closed with the termination of the examination of Jesus before Caiaphas.

Guarded by Æmilius, who was his true friend to the last, he was led to the house of Pilate.

The Pretorian gates were shut by the Roman guards as the tumultuous crowd advanced, for Pilate believed the Jews were in insurrection, and was prepared to defend his palace; for so few are the troops with him in the city that he has for some weeks held only the name of power rather than the reality. But when Æmilius explained to the captain of the guard that the Jews desired to accuse Jesus, the Nazarene, of sedition before the Procurator, he was admitted, with the chief men of the city, into the outer court of Antiochus, and at their call Pilate came forth to them. When he saw the vast concourse of people with Caiaphas and the chief priests, and many rich Sadducees, with the leading men of Jerusalem in the advance, and Jesus, bound and disfigured by the insults he had undergone, and Æmilius and his few soldiers enclosing him with their protecting spears, and heard the loud voices of the multitude, as of wolves baying for the blood of a defenceless lamb, he stood with amazement for a few moments surveying the scene.

"What means this, Æmilius?" he demanded of the young Prefect. "Who is this captive?"

"It is Jesus, called the Christ, my lord, the Prophet of Galilee. The Jews desire his death, accusing him of blaspheming their God, and—"

"But I have no concern with their religion or the worship of their God. Let them judge him after their own way," said Pilate, indifferently, and with an indolent air.

"But, most noble Roman," said Caiaphas, advancing to the portico on which the Procurator stood, "by our law he should suffer death, and thou knowest, though we can condemn, as we now have done this Galilean, we have no power to execute sentence of death."