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360 PILATE'S QUERY, ‘WHAT IS TRUTH?'

sermon preached before the University of Dublin that the same fervent prelate recognizes his position in "an auditory of inquisitive persons, whose business is to study for truth,” that they may find it for themselves, and teach it to others: "I am in a school of prophets and prophets' sons, who will ask Pilate's question, 'What is truth?'" They look for it in their books, the great preacher tells them,—much as his Great Master told the Jews they searched the Scriptures; they tugged hard for it in their disputations, and they derived it from the cisterns of the fathers, and they inquired after the old ways, and sometimes were taken with new appearances, and they rejoiced in false lights, or were delighted with "little umbrages and peep of day." They had examined all ways but one, all but God's way: let them, having missed in all the other, try this. "Let us go to God for truth; for truth comes from God only. If you ask 'What is truth?' you must not do as Pilate did-ask the question, and then go away from Him that only can give you an answer; for as God is the author of truth, so is He the teacher of it." And if any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God

or no.

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There is something of the Strawberry-hill sneer in Horace Walpole's jaunty avowal to my Lady Ossory: "I have often been of opinion that it was not designed we should be able to distinguish certainly what is truth. Pilate asked the Person most likely to resolve him, and received no answer." In another epistle to the same fair correspondent, professing his ignorance of the verity as touching the king's recovery (in 1789), he adds: "I am still less qualified to answer, when you ask me where is Truth? I reply, how should I know it, even if I could tell where it is? When Pilate asked what it was, I do not find that he was informed. Dr. Beattie may know better, perhaps." This, of course, is a fling at Beattie's Essay on Truth.

Poets Young, of the Night Thoughts, and Cowper, of The Task, each has his fling at Pontius Pilate the governor. "The coward flies," says Young;

GALLIO AND PILATE.

"Thinks, but thinks slightly; asks, but fears to know;

Asks, 'What is truth?' with Pilate; and retires."

361

Cowper's text is, that as the only amaranthine flower on earth is virtue, so the only lasting treasure is truth.

"But what is truth? 'Twas Pilate's question put
To Truth itself, that deign'd him no reply.
And wherefore? will not God impart His light
To them that ask it? Freely-'tis His joy,
His glory, and His nature to impart.
But to the proud, uncandid, insincere,
Or negligent inquirer, not a spark."

It has been remarked, that while Gallio is put forward as the type of people who, on the whole, are sceptical about the advantage of entering upon the discussion of religious controversy, it is somewhat significant that this should form part of the burden of the indictment against Pilate, who "is thought to have displayed an improper incredulity* as to the possibility of arriving at abstract 'truth.'" Gallio and Pilate, observes an essay-writer on the typical character of the former, were both of them, as far as one can judge, sceptics in the metaphysical sense of the word, though Gallio seems to have been exempt from the criminal weakness which has rendered the latter an object of infamy to all time.

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Ask'd, and passed from the question at once with a smile at
Its utter futility."

66

"What is truth?" says the reverend and revered guide, philosopher, and friend of Tremaine, was once asked with fearful curiosity, on an awful occasion. We, at least, will not be so cruelly and criminally indifferent to it afterwards, as he who asked it proved to be ; and we will not, with him, wash our hands, and by that act think we may leave the world to its horrors."

*It often happens in a judicial investigation that a great many questions have to be asked in order to obtain a direct answer to a very simple inquiry. And a caustic commentator on this fact suggests, that it was probably Pilate's judicial experience which led him to ask so sarcastically, What is truth?

362

WAS PILATE 'JESTING'?

"But even Pilate," urges Tremaine, "was anxious

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"He cared not to inquire," interrupts Evelyn: "truth came not of its own accord; and finding it troublesome to pursue it, he plunged into sin and blood, from mere indolency and weakness of character." Very many, on the good rector's showing, are of the same complexion.-On the other hand, one of Mr. Disraeli's contemplative spokesmen, apparently speaking for his author, protests against Lord Bacon's "greatly misrepresenting" Pontius Pilate, in the celebrated passage which describes him as the "jesting" governor, who would not wait for an answer. "Let us be just to Pontius Pilate, who has sins enough surely to answer for. There is no authority for the jesting humour given by Lord Bacon." Pilate, it is contended, was evidently of a merciful and clement disposition, and was probably an Epicurean. His question is accordingly taken to have referred to the declaration immediately preceding it, that He who was before him came to bear witness to the truth. "Pilate asked, What truth ?"

When two of the Reforming doctors debated in Luther's company the question why Pilate asked, What is truth-Was ist Wahrheit?-the view taken by Luther was, that Pilate meant, Why wilt thou dispute concerning truth in these wicked times? Truth is here of no value. Thou must think of some other plan; adopt some lawyer's quiddity, and then, perchance, thou mayest be released.* Dr. Hanna takes the procurator's question to have been put, not sneeringly or scoffingly, but rather sadly and bitterly, so far as Pilate himself is concerned, having come to regard all truth as a phantom; and with a kindly, tolerant, half-pitying, half-envious feeling towards Jesus. Quite different is Currer Bell's impression of the manner of the man, in a poem called Pilate's Wife's Dream:

"I do not weep for Pilate--who could prove

Regret for him whose cold and crushing sway

*On the same occasion Luther maintained that Pilate scourged Christ out of sheer compassion, that he might still thereby the insatiable wrath and raging of the Jews.

PILATE IN MODERN VERSE.

No prayer can soften, no appeal can move;
Who tramples hearts as others trample clay,
Yet with a faltering, an uncertain tread,
That might stir up reprisal in the dead.

"Forced to sit by his side and see his deeds ;
Forced to behold that visage, hour by hour,
In whose gaunt lines the abhorrent gazer reads
A triple lust of gold, and blood, and power;
A soul whom motives fierce, yet abject, urge-
Rome's servile slave, and Judah's tyrant scourge."

363

Much more refined and subtle, as well as vigorous, are the lines in which another poetess,-happily living, and writing still, and, as some critics think, able to enforce a claim to the highest rank of the sisterhood, thus represents Pilate in his meditative speculations about the great Deliverer whom he has handed over to the Jews:

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But why waste thought

To beat out the philosophy or creed

He would have taught from the disfiguring husks
Rough rumour gives as grain? The man is dead:
Guilty or innocent, wise or possessed,

He sleeps the silent sleep which ends all hope,
And we may bawl our questions at his door.
He makes no answer. Dead philosophers
Are just as useful to the living world

As are dead lions, or dead rats—they help
To make good soil. As for the coins they leave

Of thought, for us to heir, why ninety-nine

Out of each hundred stamp their own image

On all their dies, and so the coins mean nought,
Save to disciples who will let them pass

As money 'twixt themselves, still bickering
The while about their values."*

If the popular reading of his character as a truth-seeker be correct, Pilate was no more a seeker after truth than the giant in Spenser was a favourer of right, in the colloquy with Sir Artegall, about right versus wrong :

*From Poems by Augusta Webster (1867).

364 PILATE JESTING, OR IN DEADLY EARNEST?

"But he the right from thence did thrust away;

For it was not the right which he did seeke."

Jesting Pilate, says Mr. Carlyle, had not the smallest chance to ascertain what was Truth: he could not have known it, had a god shown it to him. "Thick serene opacity, thicker than amaurosis, veiled those smiling eyes of his to Truth; the inner retina of them was gone paralytic, dead. He looked at Truth; and discerned her not, there where she stood." Mr. de Quincey, on the other hand, declares the falsest word that ever yet was uttered upon any part of the New Testament, to be that sneer of Lord Bacon's at "jesting Pilate." Pilate, he insists, was in deadly earnest from first to last, and retired from his frantic effort on behalf of Christ, only when his own safety began to be seriously compromised. Do the thoughtless accusers of Pilate, asks this eloquent apologist, fancy that he was a Christian? If not, why, or on what principle, was he to ruin himself at Rome, in order to favour one he could not save at Jerusalem ?

DEVOUT SOLDIER.

ACTS x. 2-7.

HE Roman centurions of the New Testament are mostly,

THE

if not all of them, markworthy and estimable men. But that centurion of the band called the Italian bandprobably a prætorian cohort of Italian soldiers, attendant on the Roman procurator-Cornelius, who dwelt in Cæsarea, stands forth as a representative man, the devout soldier. “A devout man," thus is he characterized, "and one that served God with all his house, which gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God alway." The prayers and the alms of this

*Faerie Queene, bk. v., canto ii.

For although Tacitus mentions the Legio prima Italica, it was not formed until the days of Nero. Arrian uses the same words as occur in Acts x. I, viz. σπείρης Ἰταλικῆς.

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