When, nineteen hundred years ago, the Roman governor of Judea half cynically asked of one brought before him, Christ Jesus, "What is truth?" he little realized that he was asking the most momentous question of all time. At that moment Pontius Pilate may be regarded as having become the mouthpiece of all the bewildered millions of mortals who had asked in their hearts the same question. Indeed, mortal life itself is at bottom nothing more than a questioning, "What is truth?" And all the complex, constantly shifting forms of human belief are but pitiful attempts of mortal mind to frame a fit answer to its own question. As one phase of belief after another dies of its self-seen inadequacy, new generations of mortals take up the old cry and with eager impetuosity demand, "What is truth?"
What, then, could possibly be more important than the answer to Pilate's question given by him who came as the Saviour of mankind? Yet the Master said nothing. To be sure, he had through the three years of his ministry tirelessly labored to open men's eyes to the eternally present truth of being, proving his radiant words by a series of incomparable works. Even his disciples were still so held in bondage by the formal Judaic concept of the Messiah's mission that they had to the last expected their Master to "restore the kingdom to Israel"—to make himself the earthly ruler of an idealized human state. Was this not a crucial moment to declare to Pilate the absolute, final, scientific truth about God and man?
Jesus did not reply to Pilate's question, but from the magnitude of his compassionate ministry welled up the irrefutable, all-embracing, all-sufficing, all-compelling answer— the answer of demonstration. To those bogged in the belief of life in matter he had said all that the best of them, and far more than the worst of them, could bear. More words would be futile, but the glorious facts of the resurrection and ascension would stand for all time as the supreme demonstration of man's indestructible oneness with Spirit, his Father-Mother God. Here was an answer that defined Truth in terms that are living bread and wine to every heart hungering and thirsting for certainty.
