"Not Barabbas — let him go free — but let the Christ be crucified." Look at our poor innocent Brother, as He stands there on that balcony before that immense throng — stands handcuffed to a highway robber, a red-handed murderer — stands there in mute appeal to the people for His life. Oh! His heart sickens, and His soul seems to die within Him, and a livid hue spreads over His already pale and ghastly countenance as He hears them cry: " Long live Barabbas; death to the Christ."
The solemn death-sentence has fallen from the judge's lips; the guilty judge washes his hands as though he would, thereby, remove the stain from his conscience— our poor Brother is hurried off to suffer unheard-of sufferings and to die a felon's death. He is hurried down into a cold, dismal dungeon in the midst of which stands a column three feet high with a ring at the top like a hitching-post, and, being stripped of His garments, He is bound thereto in a stooping position, and scourged. One by one each brawny savage grasps the leather thong, with its leaded ends, as it falls from the hand of his exhausted predecessor, and rains blows on the tender back and quivering sides and heaving breast of our poor Saviour. Oh! the horrible echo of those blows, and the panting of the executioner, and the shower of flesh and blood that strewed the ground, and the bones laid bare, and the convulsive writhing of that body, and the mute agony of those streaming eyes and that quivering countenance! Ah! Mary, the soldiers turned you roughly away when you tried to
