Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News AND UPPER THAMES ADVOCATE. THURSDAY, JANUATY 13, 1898. THE TRIAL OF JESUS CHRIST.

Te Aroha News, Volume XIV, Issue 2067, 13 January 1898, Page 2

Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News AND UPPER THAMES ADVOCATE.

THURSDAY, JANUATY 13, 1898. THE TRIAL OF JESUS CHRIST.

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What purports to be ii report written by Pontius Pilate to Terentius Clarus, /secretary concerning the trial and conviction of Jesus Christ, has’just been found in the Archives, of the Vatican, at Rom?, and, says ,the Roman -correspftndenlfc of ‘ Daily News.’- 'it is occasioning much discussion in ecclesiastical circles." As to the genuineness of the document .we cannot speak. If l itis a forgery it is a skilful one. We have read.and. re-read. it . and the impression it Creates in bur mifid, which re-perusalionly deepens, is a mingled one/of profound interest and distrust. Pilate opens his report by , expressing astonishment at the sensation ereated in Rome by tfie trial of Jesus . Christ. Rumours, in such case, of the signs and wonders which are said to have occurred at the time of the crucifixion ,must have reached .Rome, and filled with consternation the luxurious inhabitants of the Mistress of the world. Pilate, however, makes no mention of the strikiug phenomena 'described in •St. Matthew’s Gospel; of the resurrection of saints and the rending in twain of the veil of tho temple ; the earthquakes and splitting asunder of rocks, What Pilate does say later is tHife he does not think that any of tho followers of Jesus were then preaching his doctrine,' and that if they were it certainly atti’acted no attention. The hour at which he wrote would not be that immediately after the crucifixion, but some considerable time later. There Is internal evidence of this. We know, however, that the ascension took place at Jerusalem in the presence ‘of oyer five hundred people, before whose eyes Josus was lifted up in the body into the clouds. Such an event must have been the talk of all Jerusalem. We have recorded in the Gospel Jesus ; Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem amidst the acclamation of the multitude ; a few days afterwards by a sudden revulsion of popular feeling, he became the object of mob hatred; George Eliot in ‘ Romola *• has depicted a somewhat similar rapid change in public feeling,|in the-case of Girolamo Savonarola, the religious reformer of Florence in the Middle Ages. Jesus Christ wasjd!®mnjy tried, condemned -and; .executed : Ho was restored to life and visibly translated to 1 heaven in the presence of so many witnesses. It is incredible that such miracle did not cause ait immense sensation not only in Jerusalem, but in Rome also. Yet Pilate, in his comparatively exhaustive report, states emphatically that the new doctrine was attracting no attention and that His followers no longer attempted to teach it ! Then again Pilate speaks of a policy of non-intervention that he had marked out in the case of Christ. It is absurd to assume that a man of Pilate’s ability and experience would claim such a policy as his own. In an age in which universal tolerance to all forms of religion was practised ; in which, indeed, the religious concord of the world was supported principally by the implicit assent and reverence which the nations of antiquity expressed for their respective traditions and ceremonies, Pilate by adopting an attitude of intolerance ! towards a teacher whose theories | savoured rather of philosophy than ] politics, would have run a risk of recal from his duties as Proconsul of Judaea. The rights of toleration in the Roman Empire were'held by mutual indulgence : they were-justly forfeited .by a refusal of the tribute. Pilate’s reason for not seeing anything wrong in Christ’s teaching, was not that he was so much impressed by it as moved by the spirit; of tolerance bred by his Pagan training ; why the Roman Emperor treated the Jews with such seventy; although Roman resentment generally seems-- to . have expired in the. hour of victory ; - why the Jews were singled out for such severe punishment was by reason of their outspoken disdain of every form of worship, except their own, as impious.' The Jews were regarded as a race of fanatics whose, dire and credulous superstition, says Gibbon, seemed to render’them the implacable enemies not only of; the Roman; government, but of the human; kind. A Roman ] writer, of repute, recording the massacres perpetrated by the Jews, in which hundreds of thousands of the heathen were slain, states that many victims were sawn asunder, and many other nameless, j. ibarbarities v committed, simply because they declined to submit to a Jewish ceremony. So fierce was the fanaticism of the Jews, which can indeed only be likened

to that of the Arabs our troops are just I now preparing t<» face in the Egyptain desert, that Pilate, although convinced of the innocence of the Man; that. Tie was the victim of a judicial error; gave way before the fury of the storm and sacrificed the Divine Culprit tuthA religious principles of that terrible race. The aspect of Christ made a deep impression upon Pilate according to % the report. There was nothing dangerous about it. Ha had a. quiet and amiable appearance, lie writes, and a manner of that showed Him to he an orator. Tliereis a touch of Machiavelian cunuing about the proconsul’s summing up. Would it ? he asks. ‘ Would it be equitable to reyise the case? Yes. * Would it be wise? No.’ It was a case, in short, in which the doctrine of expediency must be allowed to apply. The document undoubtedly is of an interesting character, and we regret we have not space at our command to deal with it more fully, nor have we the authorities at hand necessary to verify or confute the statements contained in Pilate’s, alleged review of the political situation as he found it on entering his ) proconsulship of the province of Judaea. At the same time the longer we consider the document as I aCWhole the more convinced do we become of'its spurious origin. . , -.o '