THE words of the Sanhedrists brought peculiar thoughts to Pilate. He now called Jesus and asked him: "Thou art the king of the Jews?" There is that mixture of contempt, cynicism, and awe in this question which we mark throughout in the bearing and words of Pilate. It was, as if two powers were contending for the mastery in his heart.... Pilate was now in no doubt as to the nature of the kingdom.... [Jesus'] kingdom was not of this world, but of that other world which he had come to reveal, and to open to all believers....
It was not merely cynicism, but utter despair of all that is higher ... which appears in his question: "What is truth?" He had understood Christ [Jesus], but it was not in him to respond to his appeal. He, whose heart and life had so little kinship to "the truth," could not sympathize with, though he dimly perceived, the grand aim of Jesus' life and work. But even the question of Pilate seems an admission, an implied homage to Christ [Jesus]. Assuredly, he would not have so opened his inner being to one of the priestly accusers of Jesus.
That man was no rebel, no criminal! They who brought him were moved by the lowest passions. And so he told them, as he went out, that he found no fault in him. Then came from the assembled Sanhedrists a perfect hailstorm of accusations. As we picture it to ourselves, all this while Christ [Jesus] stood near, perhaps behind Pilate, just within the portals of the Pnetorium. And to all this clamour of charges he made no reply. It was as if the surging of the wild waves broke far beneath against the base of the rock, which, untouched, reared its head far aloft to the heavens. But as he stood in the calm silence of majesty, Pilate greatly wondered. Did this man not even fear death; was he so conscious of innocence, so infinitely superior to those around and against him; or had he so far conquered death, that he would not condescend to their words? And why then had he spoken to him of his kingdom and of that truth?
