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Controversy Ended
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priest’s palace, in the judgment hall of Pilate, before the cowardly
and cruel Herod, mocked, insulted, tortured, and condemned to
die,—all are vividly portrayed.
And now before the swaying multitude are revealed the final
scenes,—the patient Sufferer treading the path to Calvary; the Prince
of Heaven hanging upon the cross; the haughty priests and the jeering
rabble deriding his expiring agony; the supernatural darkness; the
heaving earth, the rent rocks, the open graves, marking the moment
when the world’s Redeemer yielded up his life.
The awful spectacle appears just as it was. Satan, his angels,
and his subjects have no power to turn from the picture of their
own work. Each actor recalls the part which he performed. Herod,
who slew the innocent children of Bethlehem that he might destroy
the King of Israel; the base Herodias, upon whose guilty soul rests
the blood of John the Baptist; the weak, time-serving Pilate; the
mocking soldiers; the priests and rulers and the maddened throng
who cried, “His blood be on us, and our children!”—all behold the
enormity of their guilt. They vainly seek to hide from the divine
majesty of His countenance, outshining the glory of the sun, while
the redeemed cast their crowns at the Saviour’s feet, exclaiming,
“He died for me!”
Amid the ransomed throng are the apostles of Christ, the heroic
Paul, the ardent Peter, the loved and loving John, and their true-
hearted brethren, and with them the vast host of martyrs; while
outside the walls, with every vile and abominable thing, are those by
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whom they were persecuted, imprisoned, and slain. There is Nero,
that monster of cruelty and vice, beholding the joy and exaltation
of those whom he once tortured, and in whose extremest anguish
he found Satanic delight. His mother is there to witness the result
of her own work; to see how the evil stamp of character transmitted
to her son, the passions encouraged and developed by her influence
and example, have borne fruit in crimes that caused the world to
shudder.
There are papist priests and prelates, who claimed to be Christ’s
ambassadors, yet employed the rack, the dungeon, and the stake to
control the consciences of his people. There are the proud pontiffs
who exalted themselves above God, and presumed to change the law
of the Most High. Those pretended fathers of the church have an