Tophet, where once the image of Moloch stood, was, at the same time, the piece of ground where the potters of Jerusalem procured the clay for their handicraft. When the prophet brake in pieces the earthen vessel in this very place, and thus changed it into its original material, he very significantly and affectingly pointed out the fate which would, in like manner, befall the holy city and the chosen race. This Tophet was the potter's field, which, as stated above, was bought by the elders for thirty pieces of silver. But when Matthew says, "Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet," the meaning of the Holy Spirit, who guided the evangelist's pen, is this-"Seeing that God so ordered it that the elders of Israel purchased with the wages of iniquity, the field on which the curse of Jeremiah rested, thus making it the property of the Jewish state, and by so doing, transferred, as it were, that curse to themselves and the people: thus testifying, and again symbolically, that the visitation, then threatened, would break in, a second time, upon Israel in so much the more dreadful form, the more grievous the murder of the Son of God himself was than the service of Moloch, and the abominations connected with it. It was not therefore the purchase of the field itself, but rather the symbolic appropriation, by it, of the divine curse upon Tophet, which received its final accomplishment in the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, that is here described as the fulfillment of Jeremiah's prophecy.

The passage from Zechariah serves only to enlarge the meaning of Jeremiah's prediction. The latter being, in the opinion of the evangelist, the more important of the two, he does not even mention the name of the former. Jeremiah points out the piece of ground purchased; Zechariah the price which the Jewish authorities paid for it. Let us look a little more closely at the words of the latter. The Lord is there speaking to his ungrateful people, and represents himself as their Shepherd, who had tended them at one time with the staff "Beauty" (gentleness), and at another, with the staff "Bands" (severity). But they had disregarded his pastoral care, and had continually strayed from his paths, and despised his under-shepherds, the prophets, and among them, Zechariah himself, who complains

that he, and in him the Lord who sent him, was no more valued by them than the meanest slave; thirty pieces of silver being the price at which they estimated him. Jehovah threatens them with his judgments in consequence of this impious conduct. "Cast it unto the potter"—that is, throw it, as the wages of sin, into the mire of that accursed field, where the potter carries on his work-the field of Tophet. And then the Lord adds, in sacred irony, "A goodly price, that I was prized at of them,” "and I," continues the prophet, now speaking in his own person, "took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter, in the house of the Lord." Thus the temple was treated, by divine command, as if it were the field of Tophet itself; a dreadful emblematical prediction of the fact that even the temple, in process of time, should crumble into dust under the curse of God.

The hour of the threatened judgment was at hand, when he, who was the perfection of God's pastoral faithfulness, was valued, on the part of Israel, at the trifling price of thirty pieces of silver. For this small sum, Judas, as representing his nation, disposed of his part in the Saviour, and the children of Israel, by their rulers, bargained for the Holy One to slay him. But by the fact of the traitor, in despair, hurling the murderer's reward from him, and casting it down in the temple, the bloodmoney (a bad omen) was returned to the congregation of Israel. This act, which was not without divine intervention, called fearfully and significantly to mind the thirty pieces of silver mentioned by Zechariah, and could only be explained to mean that the Almighty now renewed, more impressively than before, the threatening he had pronounced against Jerusalem and its sanctuary, in the symbolical act of his prophet. And the circumstance that the Jewish rulers hit upon the idea of purchasing the accursed spot, called Tophet, with the wages of iniquity, completely impresses the seal of truth on that explanation.

Hence it is evident that the spirit of prophecy both uttered and apprehended the words of Zechariah and Jeremiah with a conscious reference to the event which occurred in Jerusalem after the lapse of centuries; and that God permitted the trans

action between Judas and the rulers of Israel to assume, in so striking a manner, a form corresponding with those ancient prophetic sayings, only because he would give the ungrateful flock of his people, a new and tangible sign that the time of maturity for destruction, and the long announced and terrible judgments of his hand had now arrived. Matthew therefore says, with perfect justice, "Then was fulfilled, that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet." Actual predictions found their final accomplishment. Even as the Holy Spirit had distinctly pointed, in Zechariah, to the thirty pieces of silver-so in Jeremiah, he had pointed to the purchase of the potter's field by the priests and elders. The accusation of a merely arbitrary and allegorical application of Old Testament sayings and events to New Testament occurrences, nowhere applies to the evangelists and apostles.

Deeply affected, we take our leave of the most horrible passage in the whole history of the passion of our Lord. How near we may be to him, and yet become the prey of Satan, if we do not carefully watch over our hearts! How many gifts and favors we may have received from him, and yet may suffer the most dreadful loss of them by an unfaithful use of them! Let him who gives himself to Christ, do so without reserve; and whoever is desirous of holding communion with him, let him always walk before him without disguise. Let him who is overtaken by a fault seek the throne of grace without delay; and he that is conscious of being under the dominion of a single sin, let him not cease to watch and pray, until its power is broken by the mercy of him who bruised the serpent's head. The germ from which a Judas may spring, when fructified by hell, lies concealed in all of us. Let us therefore make room for the Holy Spirit in our hearts, that he may destroy it, and make all within us new!

XXVI.

CHRIST BEFORE PILATE.

THE day has just dawned-the most momentous, decisive, and eventful in the world. It greets our Lord with dreadful insignia. It approaches in a blood-stained robe, a crown of thorns to encircle his brow, in the one hand, and in the other, the scourge, the fatal cup, and the accursed tree; while it rises upon us with the olive-branch of peace, the divine acquittal, and the crown of life. O sacred Friday, day of divine compassion, birth-day of our eternal redemption, we bless thee, we greet thee on our knees!

We find the holy city in unwonted commotion. Masses of men move along the streets. A spectacle like that which now presents itself, had never before been witnessed. The whole Sanhedrim has risen up to conduct a delinquent, whom they have condemned to death, in solemn procession to the Roman authorities, in order to wrest from the latter the confirmation of their sentence. And who is it they are dragging thither? The very man who was recently received, in the same city, by the same crowd of people, with loud hosannas, and was exalted and celebrated as no one had been before. It is Jesus of Nazareth, respecting whom they cried exultingly, "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord!" and of whom, even his enemies could not refrain from testifying that a great prophet had arisen among them. He now meets us as the offscouring and refuse of the same people, who shortly before strewed palms and wreathed chaplets for him! Such is the world's favor, and so little truth is there in the saying, "The voice of the people is the voice of God."

The procession moves on to the palace of Herod. For it was there that the governor usually resided, when his duties called him to Jerusalem from Cæsarea, where he regularly abode. It is well known that the Roman emperors committed the several

provinces, of which their extensive dominions were composed, to the government of pro-consuls or viceroys. To these, procurators or governors were added for each province, whose office it was to collect the revenues, and to give the final decision in all judicial affairs. In the smaller districts, the latter not unfrequently exercised the sole power, as was the case in Judea, which, with Samaria, had been incorporated into the province of Syria. It was generally said of these individuals, that they were in the habit of making their influential position the means of promoting their avaricious views; and hence they were characterized as being unjust and severe. Wherever they appeared, they were received only with mistrust and secret bitterness by their subjects; and it was only by the application of military force that they succeeded in giving effect to their commands, and in restraining the people from revolt, with which they were continually menaced.

After the deposition and removal of the Tetrarch Archelaus, Pontius Pilate, six years after the birth of Christ, was made the sixth governor of Judea. From Luke, iii. 1, it appears that he was in office when John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness, and he therefore spent in Palestine the whole period of our Lord's ministry. For ten years together he was able to maintain his position under the Emperor Tiberius, a fact which does honor to his knowledge of the art of governing, since there was probably not a more difficult post of the kind in the whole Roman empire. For apart from his having to deal with the Jews, the most cunning and intriguing of all the nations around, there was no other people upon earth to whom the government of foreigners was a greater abomination than to them. However far the Jews might be from their former glory, they were still, in spite of their degradation, as much aware as ever of their nobility as the chosen people of God; and thought themselves called, under the sanction of divine promises, which however they grossly misunderstood, eventually to bear rule over the whole earth; and yet these free-born children of Abraham were now living under a foreign yoke, and that a heathen one! Where was the wonder, then, that they bore it with stifled rage, like a captive lion in its iron collar; and that he who exercised