Some Actors in Our Lord's Passion

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: VI Barobbos Ye have a custom that I should release unto you one at the passover; will ye, therefore, that I release unto you the King of the Jews ? Then cried they all again saying, not this man but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber.—John xviii: 39, 40. THE crisis of our Lord's Passion culminated when to the people was offered by Pilate the choice, " Whom will ye that I release unto you ? Barabbas or Jesus, which is called Christ ? " We can imagine the intense anxiety of the Roman governor as he put this question to the assembled multitude. We can believe that weak and vacillating as he was, he must have hoped the people would not hesitate to choose Jesus. Were they not Jews, waiting anxiously for the Messiah; did not these crowds only a few days before go into rapturous ecstasies over this same Jesus as He came from Bethany to Jerusalem ? It was only natural that the Roman governor should believe that they who a few days before had cut down palm-branches to spread them in the way of this Prophet of Galilee would be only too glad now to demand His release and freedom. We can imagine, too, the intense excitement of the chief priests and elders who had accused Jesus before Pontius Pilate; how anxious they would be that the multitudes should decide for Barabbas the robber, not Jesus the prophet. We can imagine, again, how anxious must have been the disciples of Jesus, if any mingled with the crowds before the governor's palace. Would the multitude choose Jesus their Master, or Barabbas the murderer ? What a tumult of anxiety must have heaved in the heart of John the beloved disciple, if he now stood in the crowd waiting for the mob to decide his Master's fate. How anxious must Peter have been, if he, too, was present in that raging rabble, and beheld his Lord whom...