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Updated: May 20, 2025
Encouraged by this sacrilegious act, His myrmidons now laid hands on Jesus, grasping His sacred person as they might have done Barabbas, or some other member of his gang. They then proceeded to bind Him after the merciless Roman fashion. Peter could not bear to see this. He sprang forth from the covert of the shadow, drew his sword, and cut at the nearest assailant's head.
But such questions are not for the democracy alone. All classes, all parties, every generation and every country have, from time to time, to face them. And so has the individual. Perhaps all the great choices of life ultimately resolve themselves into this one Jesus or Barabbas? To Pilate the choice of Barabbas must have been not only a surprise, but a staggering blow.
'How, thou impious knave, said I, 'wouldst sell for a saint the skull of some dead thief, thy brother? He slunk away. But shallow she did crawl after the skull, and with apron reverently dust it for Barnabas, and it Barabbas; and so home with it. Said I, 'Non vult anser velli, sed populus vult decipi." Catherine. "Oh, the goodly Latin!" Eli. "What meaneth it?" Catherine.
The governor answered and said unto them, Whether of the twain will ye that I release unto you? They said, Barabbas. Pilate saith unto them, What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ? They all say unto him, Let him be crucified. And the governor said, Why, what evil hath he done? But they cried out the more, saying, Let him be crucified.
Or perhaps like Pilate, thinking they could prevail nothing, and fearing a tumult, they determined to release Barabbas and surrender the just man, the poor innocent slave to be stripped of his rights and scourged. In vain will such men try to wash their hands, and say, with the Roman governor, "I am innocent of the blood of this just person."
IV. While he was fighting against the impression of that message, the rulers were busy in the crowd, suggesting the choice of Barabbas. It was perhaps his wife's words that stung him to act at once, and have done with his inner conflict. So he calls for the decision of the alternative which he had already submitted. His dignity would suffer, if he had to wait longer for an answer.
Barabbas is released. Jesus is led away to be scourged by the soldiers. His clothing is removed, and He is bent over, with thongs on the wrists drawn down, leaving the bare back uppermost and tense. The scourging was with bunches of leather strips with jagged pieces of bone and lead fastened in the ends.
'I think that the two ways, if I can call them that, are just the two sides of a man's life: like day and night, summer and winter. They both spring from the fountainhead of Life, both are necessary; they only seem different, as Lao Tsu said. He understood the need to yield to Nature, and Hemingway the need to fight back. They make me think of Skither and Barabbas.
The main answer is that men make their heroes as the heathen make gods, after their own image. There is no doubt that Barabbas was more to the taste of this people, more according to their heart, than Christ; or at least they thought he was; not quite their ideal man, perhaps, but certainly nearer to their ideal than the Christ whom they rejected.
Honesty, hospitality, mercy in the hour of victory, generosity do we not find these virtues among some savages? Do we find them among all Christians? I am also told by these gentlemen that the time will come when the infidel will be silenced by society. Why that time came long ago. Society gave the hemlock to Socrates, society in Jerusalem cried out for Barabbas and crucified Jesus.
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