"Barabbas!"
"What shall I do with Jesus, which is called Christ?" and all cried,
"Let him be crucified!"
"Why, what evil hath he done?" asked Pilate, but the cry was so great he could bear it no longer, and calling a slave to bring water, he washed his hands before them as a sign that he took no blame for the act, and said,
"I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it," but they cried,
"His blood be upon us, and upon our children." And when Pilate had given the order to scourge and crucify Jesus, he went into his palace.
CHAPTER XLIII.
LOVE AND DEATH.
Jesus had been meeting and conquering evil all His life, and in the last hour of it the last enemy was overcome. There were no children at the cross when Jesus laid down His life for us all, and we will not lead you there to point out all the means used by evil men to increase the suffering of our Lord. It was greatest within the great Heart of Love which broke for the sins of the world, and when you have learned the nature of Spirit you will be able to understand that Jesus chose to pass through an earthly life of poverty and temptation, and die a painful and shameful death, that He might be the Brother of the poor, the tempted, the suffering and the dying. "He was taken from prison and from judgment:" "He poured out His soul unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors;" "He bore the sins of many, and made intercession for the transgressors." So Isaiah wrote of the coming Messiah seven hundred years before. But so blind were the Jews that they could not see that the Redeemer had come to Zion, "He came unto His own and His own received Him not."