“A wise man of the East,” I found Pilate chuckling. “He is a thinker, this unlettered fisherman. I have sought more deeply into him. I have fresh report. He has no need of wonder-workings. He out-sophisticates the most sophistical of them. They have laid traps, and He has laughed at their traps. Look you. Listen to this.”
Whereupon he told me how Jesus had confounded his confounders when they brought to him for judgment a woman taken in adultery.
“And the tax,” Pilate exulted on. “‘To Cæsar what is Cæsar’s, to God what is God’s,’ was his answer to them. That was Hanan’s trick, and Hanan is confounded. At last has there appeared one Jew who understands our Roman conception of the State.”
Next I saw Pilate’s wife. Looking into her eyes I knew, on the instant, after having seen Miriam’s eyes, that this tense, distraught woman had likewise seen the fisherman.
“The Divine is within Him,” she murmured to me. “There is within Him a personal awareness of the indwelling of God.”
“Is he God?” I queried, gently, for say something I must.
She shook her head.
“I do not know. He has not said. But this I know: of such stuff gods are made.”