No judge ought to have asked the crowd what he should do. But every man has to do with Christ. He is ever standing before the bar of conscience, and each of us must accept or condemn, do homage or crucify. If we do not pronounce for him, we pronounce against him; and there is a moment when our verdict becomes irrevocable. “What I have written, I have written.” We are all writing our legend, and affixing it to the Cross for the universe to read, and a day comes when it is irreversible.

We may wash our hands after the deed of treachery is done, but water will not avail for Pilate, for Lady Macbeth, or for us. We need the blood of Christ, ere we can be cleansed from all sin, 1 John 5:6.

Matthew 27: 382-44, He will not drink what would dull his keen sense of the momentous issues of the Cross. Those taunts were true. None who save themselves can save others. The cry of forsakenness, the midday midnight, the yielded spirit, the rent veil, the opened tombs, the sympathy of nature—all these proved that this was no common death, and were in keeping with everything that Scripture had foretold, 1 Pet. 1:11.

Our Lord was wrapped in midnight, that he might be our “bright and morning star.” He became obedient to death, that he might give eternal life. His heel was sorely wounded, that he might break the head of him that had the power of death, and might wear forever at his girdle the keys of death and Hades. Make his soul an

offering for thy sin. Hide in the cleft which the soldier’s spear opened in his side. He has made peace by the blood of his Cross; we have but to accept and be at rest.