©RJ1G6DY 
 
 
 
 
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 Book 
 
 CopyrigMN 
 
 COPYR[GHT DEPOSIT. 
 
THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 OP THE WORLD 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM f: ro BISON, S.J. 
 
 St. Louia University 
 
 B. HERDER BOOK CO. 
 17 South Broadway, St. Louis, Mo. 
 
 and 
 
 68 Great Russell St., London, W. C. 
 
 1919 
 
-i$\ b 
 
 IMPRIMI POTEST V s 
 
 Sti. Ludovici, die 6. Augusti, 1919 
 
 F. X. McMenamy, S. J., 
 Praepositu8 Provincialis 
 
 Prov. Missour. 
 
 NIHIL 0B8TAT 
 Sti. Ludovici, die 13. Augusti, 1919 
 
 F. O. Holweck, 
 Censor Librorum 
 
 IMPRIMATUR 
 Sti. Ludovioi, die Ik- Augusti, 1919 
 
 ^Joannes J. Glennon, 
 
 Archiepiscopus 
 
 Sti. Ludovici 
 
 Copyright, 1919 
 
 by 
 
 Joseph Gummersbach 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 Printed in U. S. A. 
 
 VAIL-BALLCU COMPANY 
 
 CI.A536978 
 
TO 
 
 THE LOVERS 
 
 OF THE CRUCIFIED 
 
FOKEWOKD 
 
 The following pages contain a series of 
 Lenten Lectures, delivered in St. Francis 
 Xavier (College) Church during the season 
 of 1919. In them an attempt has been made 
 to tell the story of the sorrows and suffer- 
 ings of Jesus Christ in a way as near to ac- 
 tual fact as possible. Of course, the gospel 
 narrative has been carefully pondered ; and 
 recourse has been had to standard works, 
 such as Ollivier's The Passion, Gallwey's 
 The Watches of the Passion, Knabenbauer's 
 Commentary in Gursus Sacrae Scripturae, 
 and the like. 
 
 The subject of the Passion is inexhaust- 
 ible. "Oh, Beauty, ever ancient, ever 
 new!" was Augustine's cry of wonder as he 
 looked up to the heights of God's excellence : 
 a similar exclamation must spring to the 
 lips of everyone who searches the depths of 
 the Savior's Heart, which was riven on the 
 cross. The Passion, from its soundless 
 abyss, is always appealing to each Christian 
 heart and calling forth the response of no- 
 
vi FOREWORD 
 
 bility and love. There is a strange, en- 
 thralling power in the memory of the sor- 
 rows of loved ones : the heart goes back most 
 frequently to the scenes of sadness where 
 dear ones have suffered, and holds fast to 
 the bitter-sweet myrrh of their affliction. 
 It is thus that the appreciative souls of the 
 best of the race have yearningly lingered 
 over the woes of the great Beloved of God 
 and man. 
 
 Besides being the story of His sacrifice 
 of redemption, the Passion of our Blessed 
 Lord is also a type of the conflict between 
 good and evil. The forces of wickedness 
 may be regarded as symbolized in the figures 
 of those who outraged Jesus Christ during 
 the hour of the power of darkness. These 
 forces have never ceased from their ruinous 
 work in opposition to the Savior and to His 
 Kingdom: and so, the tragedy of Calvary 
 is unendingly continued in the Undying 
 Tragedy of the World. 
 
 Now that men are facing a period of re- 
 organization and reconstruction after the 
 disasters of the stupendous world-war, it is, 
 in the opinion of the author, especially 
 timely to study well the adverse powers 
 
FOREWORD vii 
 
 which have part in the gigantic contest be- 
 tween good and evil. 
 
 The greatest effort of all good men must 
 ever be to stand for Christ and godliness. 
 To this end the knowledge of the purpose 
 and of the resources of the enemy is an aid 
 to victory; hence, this study of evil. The 
 motive power towards generosity in regard 
 to God is the enthusiasm of love ; hence, this 
 sympathetic review of that excess of love 
 accomplished in Jerusalem, when the God- 
 Man, "having loved his own who were in 
 the world, loved them unto the end." 1 
 
 It is in the hope that the old, old story of 
 Christ's supreme love may kindle the ardor 
 of Christian hearts to fight and conquer 
 their foes and His, that these pages are given 
 to the public. These humble efforts are laid 
 as a tribute at the feet of Him whose Heart 
 "has loved men so much that it has spared 
 nothing, even to emptying itself, to show 
 them its love." 
 
 William F. Robison, S.J. 
 
 St. Louis University, 
 
 Feast of the Sacred Heart, 
 
 June 27, 1919. 
 
 i John XIII, 1. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 FOEEWOED . . V 
 
 CHAPTEB 
 
 I Judas and Disloyalty ...... 1 
 
 II The Sanhedeim and Duplicity . . > . 36 
 
 III Pilate and Time-Seeying 71 
 
 IV Heeod and Lust 107 
 
 V The Soldiees and Ceuelty . . . ■. . 142 
 
 VI The People and Apostasy 175 
 
THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 JUDAS AND DISLOYALTY 
 
 "What will you give me, and I will deliver him 
 unto you?" Matt. XXVI, 15. 
 
 "And he that betrayed him, gave them a sign, say- 
 ing: Whomsoever I shall kiss, that is he." Matt. 
 XXVI, 48. 
 
 ' « Hail Rabbi. And he kissed him. ' ' Matt. XXVI, 
 49. 
 
 "It were better for him, if that man had not been 
 born." Matt. XXVI, 24. 
 
 The special attention which Mother 
 Church pays to the Passion of our Blessed 
 Lord is a well known fact. She begins her 
 religious functions with the sacred sign of 
 the cross marking her brow and signing the 
 foreheads of her children. She blesses the 
 objects that are set aside for holy purposes 
 by tracing above them the same hallowed 
 symbol. She crowns the spires of her 
 temples of worship with this august 
 
2 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 standard of her King and Spouse. And 
 the cross is the epitome of the Passion. 
 
 Yet,- whilst with its salutary warning 
 against evil and its heavenly call to good- 
 ness of life the Passion always lives in her 
 heart; whilst in her grateful memory it 
 throbs with the endless thrill of apprecia- 
 tive love ; during the holy season of Lent she 
 broods over it, as a beloved broods over the 
 memory of her battle-scarred lover. She 
 counts each wound, she lingers over each 
 bruise received in her behalf; for they are 
 the marks of her Bridegroom's heroism, the 
 tokens of His fidelity and unselfishness. 
 During this hallowed time of penance and 
 prayer the Church summons her children 
 to tread with her more frequently and more 
 lovingly than at other times the sad Way 
 of the Cross; she closes this period with 
 the veiling of statues and crucifixes; and 
 she relives the days of monstrous hate and 
 immeasurable love, as Holy Week's lamen- 
 tations precede the Easter alleluias. Until 
 lately it was her wont to celebrate during 
 Lent different feasts of the Passion and of 
 the instruments of her Spouse's sufferings; 
 and, even though some of these feasts have 
 
DISLOYALTY 3 
 
 been superseded in her liturgy, the spirit of 
 her loving remembrance remains, and she 
 wishes the whole of Lent to be an extended 
 Holy Week for all who love the Christ. 
 
 In a certain sense, she wishes the whole 
 year and one's whole life to be a prolonged 
 Lent, in so far as the memory of the Passion 
 should never fade from the heart's grateful 
 recollection. Her daily Mass is the unfail- 
 ing memorial of the sacrifice of Calvary; 
 her unflagging lesson is the sermon of the 
 cross. She knows and proclaims this truth : 
 " Surely if there had been anything better 
 and more useful to the salvation of man than 
 suffering, Christ would certainly have 
 shown it by word and example." 1 
 
 The record of the Passion of our Blessed 
 Lord is not only the story of His suffer- 
 ings of redeeming love ; it is also the symbol 
 of the Undying Tragedy of the World, the 
 type of the struggle of the forces of evil 
 against good and God. Christ fought all 
 the powers of sin and hell, and He con- 
 quered in His " triumph of failure." But 
 the evil that was killed on Calvary when He 
 won His stupendous victory has its unholy 
 
 i Imitation of Christ, Bk. II, c. 12. 
 
4 THE UNDYING TBAGEDY 
 
 resurrection in the heart of every man and 
 woman who treads the paths of this life. 
 Unto the crack of doom the struggle will go 
 on, with the power of wickedness weakened, 
 but never absolutely vanquished until the 
 day of God's supreme triumph in His Gen- 
 eral Judgment. Then God will conquer ir- 
 resistibly and the adverse forces will be 
 crushed unto everlasting. But meanwhile, 
 into the lives of each of us there rush the 
 fierce onsets of the struggle for our souls, 
 which are the prize, as they are the battle- 
 ground, of this terrible contest between 
 Satan and Christ; in our lives there is again 
 enacted upon a smaller stage the same 
 tragedy whose closing scene was the cloud- 
 wrapped, darkened, bloody plateau of 
 Golgotha. 
 
 Therefore, the purpose of the present 
 work is to consider the old, old story of 
 Christ's sacrifice of atoning love, and at the 
 same time to look at the types of evil which 
 played their part in the terrible events 
 whose culmination was Calvary and which 
 still battle on in the ever-renewed drama 
 of mankind. And the hope and the prayer 
 which should be in our hearts is this, that, 
 
DISLOYALTY 5 
 
 as Christ conquered in His gigantic 
 struggle, as God will definitely triumph at 
 the end of this earthly span, so too we, each 
 and all, may win in the fray that we face 
 as we go through life. 
 
 Down at the bottom of all true nobility 
 and solid greatness is fidelity: the tap-root 
 of uprightness and heroic endeavor is 
 loyalty, which cleaves to the norm of good- 
 ness and obeys the mandate of God. On the 
 other hand, down at the bottom of all wick- 
 edness is unfaithfulness: the poisoned and 
 poisonous source of even the most monstrous 
 moral defections is disloyalty. Hence, in 
 studying the forces of evil in the struggle 
 against good and God let us begin with the 
 consideration of this disloyalty. 
 
 Where is its type in the sorrow-flooded 
 Passion of the Master? Alas! the whole 
 Passion is the story of horrible disloyalty 
 ranged against Christ's magnificent loyalty. 
 Nowhere is loyalty to be found save in His 
 blessed Mother, who followed Him unto the 
 end and stood beneath the cross as He bowed 
 His head in death ; nowhere save in the love- 
 chastened, converted sinner of Magdala, 
 who was found worthy of a place beside 
 
6 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 Christ's stainless Mother; nowhere save in 
 the few like John and the devoted women 
 and those who from afar off saw what was 
 done on the dread hill of execution. All 
 others were blackened with the tainted vile- 
 ness of disloyalty. 
 
 The Apostles were disloyal: for, though 
 the Master had given them permission to 
 depart, leaving Him to tread the wine-press 
 of sorrow alone, still they were faithless 
 to their boast that they were " ready to go 
 to prison and to death" 1 with Him. Peter, 
 who was to be the foundation-stone of 
 Christ's everlasting Church, was faithless: 
 for, that same night which had blessed him 
 with the heaven-like joy of his First 
 Holy Communion and had hallowed him 
 with the elevation to a share in the 
 very priesthood of Christ, witnessed his 
 cowardly denial of his Master and his 
 cursing and swearing that he "knew not the 
 man," 2 whom he had once gloriously con- 
 fessed to be "the Christ, the Son of the liv- 
 ing God." 3 The tribunals of the Jews and 
 Gentiles were faithless to their bounden 
 
 iLuke XXII, 33; Matt. XXVI, 35. 
 
 2 Cf. Matt. XXVI, 72. 3 Matt. XVI, 16. 
 
DISLOYALTY 7 
 
 duty to render justice to men. The judges 
 were disloyal to the fundamental require- 
 ments of their high office. The rulers were 
 untrue to the very thing for which they held 
 the reins of government and' swayed the 
 sceptre of power. The people were rec- 
 reant to the trust of heaven and to the very 
 purpose that had made them the chosen race 
 of God. 
 
 Truly, disloyalty seems to be the very 
 atmosphere of the Passion. Yet within the 
 darkness that is almost without a gleam of 
 brightness, there is a deeper blackness; 
 amid the forms of evil that crawl and crouch 
 and spring upon the Christ to crush Him to 
 His doom, foremost and most hideous is 
 the figure of him who stands before the 
 world as the embodiment of unworthiness 
 and the personification of disloyalty — 
 Judas, the Apostle who betrayed his Master, 
 Judas the traitor. 
 
 Judas Iscariot was the son of Simon. 
 He was the only one of the Apostles who 
 was, like Christ Himself, a Judean; for 
 the rest were Galileans. The Iscariot, "the 
 man of Kerioth," must have had many noble 
 qualities and many splendid capabilities for 
 
8 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 true greatness; for the Master had chosen 
 him to be one of His Apostles. For Judas 
 there was to be the glory of preparing the 
 people for the fuller teaching of the Christ ; 
 nay, he must have made preliminary mis- 
 sionary tours, when the envoys of the 
 Master preached the coming of the King- 
 dom of God and returned exulting that even 
 the demons were subject to them in the 
 name of Jesus. His was the wondrous 
 privilege to enjoy close intimacy with the 
 God-Man during the days of the public 
 ministry, to hear His teachings and to be- 
 hold His miracles. His was to be the 
 destiny of the others of the Twelve; and 
 that was to spread the glad tidings of sal- 
 vation, to "preach the gospel to every 
 creature/' * to witness to Jesus "in Jerusa- 
 lem and in all Judea and Samaria and even 
 to the uttermost part of the earth," 2 to give 
 testimony unto the heroism of blood to Him 
 who died for men, and in the regeneration, 
 when the Son of man would come in great 
 power and majesty, "to sit on twelve 
 thrones judging the twelve tribes of 
 Israel." 3 
 
 i Mark XVI, 15. 2 Acta I, 8. 3 Matt. XIX, 28. 
 
DISLOYALTY 9 
 
 G-lorious was the destiny; propitious, the 
 beginning. But gradually Judas fell away 
 from what was worthy and noble. Little by 
 little his devotedness gave place to disloyal 
 perfidy, which ran its course from pilfer- 
 ing to criticism of the God-Man, to murmur- 
 ings against his Master, and finally to the 
 unspeakable treason which has branded the 
 one-time Apostle with the mark of shame 
 and infamy. How had the mighty fallen! 
 
 When Judas sold his Master to hating 
 foes, had he lost faith in the Christ, or had 
 he deceived himself with the illusive hope 
 that Christ might, when taken, pass through 
 the hands of His enemies as on a former 
 occasion ? Who shall say 1 But, it is hard 
 to see how his faith was firm : a significant 
 passage in the gospel according to St. John 
 gives us reason at least to question that. A 
 year before the cataclysm of blood the 
 Master had promised to men, that, for the 
 life of the world, He would give His flesh 
 to eat and His blood to drink. Some, even 
 of the disciples, had drawn Christ's re- 
 proach upon themselves because of the un- 
 belief in their hard hearts: "There are 
 some of you who believe not"; "for," says 
 
10 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 St. John, "Jesus knew from the beginning 
 who were they that did not believe, and who 
 he was that would betray him." 1 And 
 when, after the departure of those disciples 
 who "went back and walked no more with 
 him," Jesus had asked the Apostles whether 
 they too would go the way of the faithless 
 ones, and when Peter had answered, "Lord, 
 to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words 
 of eternal life; and we have believed and 
 have known that thou art the Christ, the 
 Son of God"; then "Jesus answered them: 
 Have I not chosen you twelve: and one of 
 you is a devil?" A devil! "Judas Is- 
 cariot, the son of Simon : for this same was 
 about to betray him, whereas he was one of 
 the twelve." 2 
 
 From that day the cancer of evil was eat- 
 ing more deeply into Judas' soul. Shortly 
 before the end of the ministry of mercy he 
 murmured at Mary's wasteful extrava- 
 gance, as she anointed the Master's feet with 
 precious ointment: "Why was not this 
 ointment sold for three hundred pence and 
 given to the poor?" 3 "Now this he said," 
 
 i John VI, 65. a John XII, 5. 
 
 2 John VI, 67-72. 
 
DISLOYALTY 11 
 
 comments St. John, "not because he cared 
 for the poor, but because he was a thief, and 
 having the purse carried the things that 
 were put therein. ' ' * And Satan put it into 
 his heart to sell his Master. 2 Untempted 
 by the priests, but urged on by the great 
 adversary, of his own accord "he went and 
 discoursed with the chief priests and the 
 magistrates, how he might betray him to 
 them. And they were glad and covenanted 
 to give him money. And he promised. 
 And he sought opportunity to betray him." 3 
 Thirty pieces of silver, the price of a 
 slave, was the gain which he preferred to 
 his rejected Lord ! Possibly the money was 
 only a partial inducement to his treason ; for 
 the sum was wretchedly paltry. But he 
 may have visioned other golden streams, 
 which would flow to him in compensation 
 for his zeal in the cause of the priests; he 
 may have hoped to stand well with the 
 triumphant popular party; he may have 
 looked for further emolument in the days 
 of his own growing importance. Thirty 
 
 Uohn XII, 6. 
 
 2 Cf . John XIII, 2. 
 
 s Luke XXII, 3-6. 
 
12 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 pieces of silver ! For him the die was cast. 
 
 After this nothing could stop him in his 
 mad, unchecked rush to destruction. In the 
 Supper Room Christ had bowed before him 
 in humble love and loving lowliness and had 
 washed his feet: the Lord had not driven 
 him with burning scorn from the Pasch 
 which He had desired to eat with His own. 
 Near to that Master Judas had reclined dur- 
 ing the ceremonial supper; and then, when 
 he had received the morsel of bread which 
 pointed out the traitor to "the disciple 
 whom Jesus loved," 1 "Satan entered into 
 him . . . and he went out immediately. 
 And it was night." 2 Yes, it was the night 
 of black disloyalty to the best of friends, the 
 most loving of benefactors, the most 
 gracious Master, the most long-suffering 
 God. Disloyalty was hurrying on to the 
 climax of its perfidy. 
 
 Now, from darkness let us turn to light. 
 As Judas symbolizes disloyalty, so Christ is 
 the type of fidelity. His whole life up to 
 the hour in the Cenacle has been one un- 
 broken chain of acts of loyalty to His work, 
 
 i John XIII, 23; cf. XXI, 7. 2 John XIII, 27, 30. 
 
DISLOYALTY 13 
 
 to His brethren, and to His heavenly- 
 Father. All this, however, we may pass by, 
 to gaze in wondering awe at His loyalty as 
 it gleams forth from now to the ending of 
 His agony in the garden. 
 
 The few moments of peace and love in the 
 midst of His own are past. There in the 
 Supper Eoom He has made good His 
 promise, spoken a year before at Caphar- 
 naum, whereby He pledged Himself to give 
 His flesh for the life of the world. The 
 first Holy Mass has been said ; the first Holy 
 Communion has been given to men; and 
 close to the hearts of the chosen Apostles 
 beats the great Sacred Heart of Jesus, 
 throbbing with the love that will redeem the 
 world. A hymn of thanksgiving is said; 
 and then He turns His back on love and joy, 
 and goes forth to hatred and sorrow. 
 
 Out into the cool March night the Master 
 passes with the eleven — out into the dark- 
 ness, where all the powers of sin and hell 
 are waiting in ambush for the conflict 
 against God's anointed. From the eleva- 
 tion of Mount Sion down towards the valley 
 He takes His way. And as He walks along, 
 He begins to be faint of heart. The moon 
 
14 THE UNDYING TEAGEDY 
 
 shines down from the depths of the blue 
 Judean sky; but it seems so cold: the stars 
 twinkle in the fathomless stretches; but 
 they seem so far away and so chill. A 
 heavy weight is pressing down upon His 
 heart, is shattering His strength and crush- 
 ing His courage; for, He begins to be 
 afraid. 1 
 
 Afraid! It is very strange, this fear of 
 Christ's. He had always been the strong 
 one. He had always spoken words of en- 
 couragement to His followers. He had 
 commanded nature in its wildest moods, 
 and His word had calmed the storm. He 
 had so often withstood, all alone, the ruthless 
 opponents of His cause and had challenged 
 them with fearless intrepidity. He had 
 passed through the midst of His foes and 
 left them helpless in their fury, which would 
 have stoned Him to death or cast Him down 
 from the height of a precipice. He had 
 uttered a word, and the demons had fled in 
 terror from the bodies of the possessed. 
 Why, but a few short moments ago He had 
 uttered words that sounded like a call to 
 battle: "Have confidence: I have over- 
 
 iCf. Mark XIV, 33. 
 
DISLOYALTY 15 
 
 come the world." 1 Yet now, as He goes 
 forth to meet the foe, He begins to lose 
 courage and to be afraid ! 
 
 We must never forget that the Blessed 
 Christ is man as well as God. Yes, God He 
 is, and we adore with hearts bowed down; 
 He is "God of God, Light of Light, true God 
 of true God, consubstantial with the 
 Father. ' ' 2 But true man too He is, with a 
 human body and a human soul, with a 
 human heart and human feelings, with 
 human longings and human sympathies. 
 And in His growing terror He will allow 
 His divinity to influence His humanity only 
 in such wise as to support it to bear more 
 than a mere man could endure. His love 
 for us has urged Him to become "tempted 
 in all things such as we are without sin"; 3 
 and now He drinks of the chalice of our 
 weakness. 
 
 Oh, the pathos of that fear of Christ! 
 Have we ever stood near one who was 
 drawing near to the gates of the beyond and 
 heard the weak, faltering voice tremble 
 
 iJohn XVI, 33. 
 2 Nicene Creed. 
 a Heb. IV, 15. 
 
16 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 forth the acknowledgment of the fear which 
 sometimes comes even to the good, "I am 
 afraid"? Christ's fear is deeper and 
 sharper than such dread, and is more 
 pathetic in its appeal. But back of the 
 pathos there burns the steady flame of His 
 undying loyalty to His mission and to His 
 Father, there gleams the splendor of His 
 more than martyr heroism. What though 
 He is afraid ? What though terror is rend- 
 ing His very heart-strings? What though 
 His strength dissolves like water before the 
 fierce anguish of His apprehension? Still, 
 He does not falter : He goes on to where His 
 Father calls Him to His work of atonement. 
 
 Unhesitating, though afraid, He goes out 
 through the eastern gate of the city, down 
 the slope that drops away to the brook 
 Cedron with the heights frowning above. 
 And back there in Jerusalem Judas is busy 
 with the enemies of the Christ ; he is gather- 
 ing the cohorts of evil ; he is hurrying to the 
 consummation of his perfidy, hot with the 
 frenzied haste that whips him on, disloyal 
 to the Master who is faithful unto death. 
 
 Across the Cedron the sorrowful Master 
 
DISLOYALTY 17i 
 
 marches on (it is like the charge of a for- 
 lorn hope against overwhelming odds) — on 
 until He comes to the little garden of Geth- 
 seinani, where He has often gone to pray. 
 He leaves eight of the Apostles near the 
 entrance; and taking with Him Peter and 
 James and John, the three always so close 
 to Him in other days, He advances about a 
 stone's throw into the garden. Here (so a 
 tradition has it) He stands before a low 
 grotto about thirty feet square and from 
 twelve to fourteen feet high. "My soul is 
 sorrowful even unto death: stay you here 
 and watch with me," * are the words which 
 tell of a suffering that would have killed 
 Him but for the support of His divinity. 
 "Stay you here and watch with me"; for, 
 in this overpowering hour of His distress, 
 help He must have, even the help of men — 
 of those chosen three who have looked 
 upon the unveiled splendor of the Only Be- 
 gotten of God in the transcendent glory of 
 the Transfiguration. They will be able to 
 gaze upon His trembling weakness and to 
 bear the shock. His growing fear is writing 
 
 i Matt. XXVI, 38. 
 
18 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 its story on the drawn features of His wan 
 face, which as the pale moonbeams fall upon 
 it looks like the face of the dead. 
 
 The door of the grotto looms black against 
 the starry skies, and the olive trees about it 
 look like grim sentinels of disaster. Black- 
 ness and dread! But with unfaltering 
 loyalty to what is willed in heaven He sends 
 to the three Apostles a last look, giving and 
 begging love, and He enters the opening of 
 the grotto. From the murky depths of the 
 cave demon forms seem to mock Him; 
 demon hands, to stretch forth to grasp Him ; 
 demon hate, to hurl undying enmity against 
 His quivering heart. His fear increases; 
 His anguish deepens; and in utter misery 
 He throws Himself full length upon the 
 rocky floor of the cave, wrestling with the 
 sorrow that is all but killing Him. Relief 
 He must have. So, He turns His fear- 
 haunted eyes heavenward and raises His 
 trembling hands aloft to His Father. 
 
 "My Father," He pleads, "My Father, if 
 it be possible, let this chalice pass from 
 me. ' ' 1 He had longed for this chalice, filled 
 full with the blood-red sorrow of His atone- 
 
 iMatt. XXVI, 39. 
 
DISLOYALTY 19 
 
 ment; He had yearned for it with a desire 
 that was like an unquenchable thirst, so that 
 He was straitened and in pain until He 
 should hold it fast to His lips and drain it to 
 its last bitter drops. Yet now? "Let it 
 pass from me." And if He had stopped 
 there in His prayer, it would have passed; 
 but His tremendous loyalty would have been 
 less complete, His martyr example would 
 have been less compelling, His victory would 
 have been less entire. But He does not stop 
 there; He goes on: "Nevertheless not as I 
 will; but as thou wilt"; 1 ". . . not my will, 
 but thine be done." 2 
 
 Yet the Father's face is turned away. 
 Christ sees only anger in His Father's heart ; 
 and the Son of God grovels on the ground in 
 agony, whilst the horrible tidal wave of sin 
 rushes in upon Him. Sin encompasses the 
 Holy One of God — the sins of all mankind ! 
 The vileness that rose heavenward and pro- 
 voked God's just wrath to let loose the 
 waters of the deluge, the nameless horrors 
 of Sodom and Gomorrha, the unspeakable 
 outrages of pagan Greece and Eome, of the 
 
 i Matt. XXVT, 39. 
 2 Luke XXII, 42. 
 
20 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 Babylons of the past and of the days to 
 come — sin upon sin, wave after wave of 
 loathsomeness wrap Him round and enfold 
 Him. And— God help us!— we are not 
 guiltless of all this. We stood over Him 
 and heaped our transgressions upon the 
 seething waters of defilement: we pushed 
 Him down deeper into the black flood, as His 
 sinless soul groaned forth the words, "I 
 have come into the depth of the sea, and a 
 tempest hath overwhelmed me." * 
 
 The sins of all mankind are upon Him; 
 for, "the Lord hath laid down upon him the 
 iniquities of us all. ' ' 2 They are upon Him- — 
 oh, ineffable horror! — as if He had been 
 guilty of them all ; as if His trembling hands 
 were red with all the murders from the kill- 
 ing of Abel to the last deed of violence done 
 before the end of days ; as if His quivering 
 lips, which are straining forth His cry of 
 loyal acceptance of His chalice of pain, were 
 defiled with all the blasphemies and obsceni- 
 ties and revilings that have broken the har- 
 mony of creation ; as if His all but bursting 
 heart were buried beneath all the injustice 
 
 i Ps. LXVIII, 3. 
 2 Isaias LIII, 6. 
 
DISLOYALTY 21 
 
 and impiety and pride and impurity that 
 have made a charnel house of God's fair 
 world. No wonder He grovels there in 
 agony, stricken by God as if He were the 
 personification of evil and the incarnation of 
 sin. No wonder the drawn lines about His 
 temples and haggard lips deepen and quiver. 
 No wonder the first pink blushing of blood 
 mantles his brow and tinges His cheeks and 
 darkens His palsied hands. 
 
 With a sigh of anguish He rises and goes 
 out to His Apostles, only to find them sleep- 
 ing. But across the torrent of Cedron, back 
 there in the city of David, sleep is not master 
 of His oncoming enemies. Judas does not 
 sleep ; the priests do not sleep ; the hangers- 
 on of the palace do not sleep. They are 
 marshalling their forces; they are ordering 
 their plans ; they are ready to take the road 
 out from the darkened city, when the hour 
 shall have come that shall sound the first 
 note of their hating triumph. 
 
 "Could you not watch one hour with 
 me?" 1 This tenderly pathetic appeal is 
 Christ's only reproof for the fickle weakness 
 of the Apostles. But His next words sound 
 
 iMatt. XXVI, 40. 
 
22 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 the trumpet call of victorious loyalty for 
 all men as they face the ways of life: 
 " Watch ye and pray, that ye enter not into 
 temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, 
 but the flesh is weak." 1 By the heroic 
 loyalty of the weakened Christ, may we 
 learn the lesson! May we make honest ef- 
 forts to avoid wrong-doing, and may we 
 send up unceasing appeals to God for His 
 help, so as to stand true to Him in all the at- 
 tacks of foes from without and of weakness 
 from within ! 
 
 Back again the Savior goes to the grotto, 
 tottering toward the second martyrdom of 
 His gigantic fidelity. Once more He prays, 
 " saying the same words." 2 And the ap- 
 prehension of all that lies before Him ere 
 tomorrow's sun shall have sunk behind the 
 western hills rushes upon Him with its com- 
 bined horror of infamy and pain. Must He 
 be betrayed by one of His own % And must 
 He be dragged in disgraceful bonds through 
 the streets of the city which but five days 
 before had rung with the glad hosannas that 
 welcomed the Son of David to the city of 
 
 i Matt. XXVI, 41. 
 2 Mark XIV, 39. 
 
DISLOYALTY 23 
 
 David? And must He be condemned of 
 blasphemy by the highest religious authority 
 in the land? And must He be put even 
 lower than a brigand murderer ? And must 
 He be scourged and crowned with thorns 
 and rejected by His people ? And must He 
 be sentenced to death and bear His cross and 
 be nailed to the gibbet and die upon the tree 
 of shame? Oh, Father, must this be? 
 "My Father, if this chalice may not pass 
 away, but I must drink it, thy will be 
 done." * 
 
 And down Sion's slope there move the 
 dark forms of many marchers. The muf- 
 fled murmur of many voices is breaking 
 upon the still air. The flashing of lanterns 
 and the gleam of swords in the flare of 
 torches slash the darkness of night. And 
 in the midst of the leaders is Judas, coming 
 on to the accomplishment of his fell purpose. 
 
 For the third time, after another visit to 
 His sleeping Apostles, back to the grotto the 
 weary Master drags His fainting steps, to 
 pray again to the Father whose face is 
 turned away. The unbearable load of sin, 
 which nevertheless He must carry, the craz- 
 
 i Matt. XXVI, 42. 
 
24 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY. 
 
 ing thought of the uncounted woes before 
 Htm— all this must have made His sad 
 thoughts turn to those for whom He suffers. 
 Men! What have so many of them ever 
 done from the day when they were placed 
 upon this earth, but outrage the divine love 
 that yearned over them? Is it worth while 
 to endure a very orgy of torture for such as 
 these? How many of them in the days to 
 come will but damn themselves the deeper 
 into hell because He died for them! Is it 
 worth while? And His great heart an- 
 swers, Yes, it is worth while: it is worth 
 while to do the will of the Father; it is 
 worth while to save the least of the children 
 of men ; it is worth while to be loyal to the 
 end. 
 
 So fierce is the effort of His strong resist- 
 ance to feeble, faltering nature, that the 
 blood is forced from the pores of His body, 
 soaks the garments that He wears, and red- 
 dens the rocky floor of the grotto where He 
 prays. "And being in an agony he prayed 
 the longer, and his sweat became as drops 
 of blood trickling down upon the ground. ' ' * 
 
 In the midst of His sorrow He is consoled 
 
 i Luke XXII, 43, 44. 
 
DISLOYALTY 25 
 
 by the ministration of one of the angelic 
 spirits; and being comforted, He rises up. 
 Past is His hour of almighty weakness, en- 
 dured for us that His weakness by touching 
 our weakness may make us stronger than 
 ourselves. Henceforth He will meet with- 
 out flinching all that lies ahead before the 
 angry sunset of tomorrow. "Rise," He 
 says to His Apostles, as He wakes them 
 from their shaming slumber, "Rise, let us 
 go: behold he is at hand who will betray 
 me." 1 
 
 And nearer and nearer up the incline of 
 Mount Olivet there comes the roar of an 
 approaching mob; lights flash amidst the 
 trees that clothe the hillside; soldiers and 
 servants and priests and officers stop at the 
 entrance of the garden to put some order 
 into the confusion of their ranks. The 
 words of command are rehearsed ; for there 
 must be no mistake as the decisive moment 
 draws near. The sign which will make as- 
 surance doubly sure is whispered into the 
 ears of the leaders of the mob by him who 
 skulks in their midst — by the "thief," the 
 "devil," Judas Iscariot. The Christ moves 
 
 iMatt. XXVI, 46. 
 
26 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 onward with His followers, as Judas steps 
 forward to complete his deed of evil ; and the 
 Master and the recreant Apostle stand face 
 to face. 
 
 Does the memory of all that Christ has 
 done for him rush into Judas' soul and 
 paralyze his limbs ? He halts confused and 
 silent. "Whom seek ye?" says Christ to 
 the mob. Still silent, Judas ? Where is the 
 sign? The crowd, looking uneasily at 
 Judas, says: " Jesus of Nazareth." "I 
 am he," declares the Savior; and at the 
 words of majesty of this forsaken Man they 
 (at least the front ranks) are stricken pros- 
 trate to the earth. Again He asks: 
 "Whom seek ye?" Oh, they know Him 
 now, even if they did not know Him before ; 
 but like frightened children again they 
 stammer: "Jesus of Nazareth." 1 The 
 sign, Judas ! Where is the sign? And the 
 wretched traitor, with a sudden stiffening 
 of his resolution to do quickly what he has 
 come to do, steps forward. He advances to 
 the Christ; he places his hands upon the 
 Master's shoulders; he dares to lay his 
 
 i Cf . John XVIII, 4-7. 
 
DISLOYALTY 27 
 
 traitor lips upon the Master's cheek. 
 "Hail Rabbi" * — and he kisses Him! 
 
 He kisses Him! Disloyalty prostitutes 
 the sacred sign of love, that loyalty may be 
 delivered into the hands of hating foes. 
 And Christ allowing His enemies to work 
 their will, because He chooses to drink the 
 chalice which the Father has given Him to 
 drink, His foes rush forward; and, in a 
 fury that would make amends to themselves 
 for their discomfiture in presence of this 
 abandoned Victim, they bind Him securely 
 and take their way back to the city. Not 
 with shouts of triumph do they go, but 
 silently, as if slinking away from a deed of 
 blood (for they fear the people still) ; and 
 Christ takes the first steps towards the con- 
 summation of the morrow that will live unto 
 the endless ages of eternity. 
 
 There is the compelling contrast: Christ 
 and Judas, loyalty and disloyalty. 
 Through loyalty one is true to self, true to 
 the neighbor, true most of all to God. 
 Judas in his disloyalty was false to all of 
 these. False he was to the God-given lean- 
 
 i Matt. XXVI, 49. 
 
28 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 ings to what is noble and worthy; false to 
 his neighbor, especially to Him who had 
 been to him the most considerate Master, 
 the most faithful friend, the most lavish 
 benefactor; false to God, the firm founda- 
 tion of all loyalty. 
 
 After the betrayal and capture of Christ, 
 back to the city went Judas, mingling with 
 the crowd. Was his head held high in the 
 consciousness of laudable accomplishment? 
 Surely the worm of remorse must have al- 
 ready begun its gnawing at his tortured 
 soul: surely the spectre of his monstrous 
 perfidy must have been stalking before him 
 with the taunt that would not be silenced. 
 Later he saw the Christ rough-handled by 
 the cruelty of unfeeling brutes; he heard 
 the sentence of death pronounced by Israel's 
 highest authority; he rushed to the priests, 
 groaning the soul-racked cry that he had 
 sinned in betraying innocent blood. And 
 then he outraged the Master more foully 
 than he had done when he sold Him to His 
 foes ; for he gave free rein to the wild orgy 
 of despair. Before, he had attacked the 
 liberty of Christ: in his final defection he 
 spurned the attribute which is the crown of 
 
DISLOYALTY 29 
 
 Christ's humanity and the centre of Christ's 
 divinity — His loving mercy. Whosoever 
 denies the mercy of God toward the re- 
 pentant sinner, denies the Godhead itself. 
 That was Judas' last crime, the climax of 
 his disloyalty. In the utter abandon of 
 despair he "went and hanged himself with 
 a halter"; 1 and his wretched, sin-stained 
 soul was called in judgment before the 
 Christ, to whom "the Father hath given 
 power to do judgment because he is the Son 
 of man." 2 
 
 Then was disloyalty judged by loyalty it- 
 self; for Christ is loyalty itself. He was 
 ever true to Himself, to the peerless man- 
 hood in which He is the paragon of human- 
 ity. He was true to His neighbor, even to 
 the traitor, whom in the hour of the accom- 
 plishment of treason he called friend, 
 "Friend, whereto art thou come?" 3 
 "Judas, dost thou betray the Son of man 
 with a kiss?" 4 He was true to the 
 heavenly Father, to whose will He clung 
 unto the bloody agony of torture on the 
 floor of Gethsemani's grotto. 
 
 i Matt. XXVII, 5. s Matt. XXVI, 50. 
 
 2 John V, 27. 4 Luke XXII, 48. 
 
30 THE UNDYING TKAGEDY 
 
 'As we look on these two figures, as op- 
 posed as life and death; as we shrink back 
 in horror from the hideous disloyalty of 
 Judas and glow with love for the tender and 
 pathetic, yet strong and heroic, fidelity of 
 Christ; let us give thought to our own 
 loyalty in its three main aspects. 
 
 First of all, we must be true to ourselves ; 
 for this is the beginning of uprightness. 
 The poet was right when he said : 
 
 "To thine own self be true, 
 And it must follow, as the night the day, 
 Thou canst not then be false to any man. ' ' ■ 
 
 At the basis of morality lies the fact, that 
 we are acting well when we do such things 
 as are in accordance with our God-given na- 
 ture, not in its unworthy longings, not in 
 its disorderly instincts to place the animal 
 above the rational, not in the perversion 
 which would call human the leanings that 
 are common to man with the brute ; but with 
 that nature of ours which is rational, in 
 which the higher powers should rule the 
 lower, which is essentially equal with the 
 nature of our fellow humans, and which, by 
 
 i Hamlet, Act. I, Scene III. 
 
DISLOYALTY 31 
 
 reason of its very essence, should forever 
 and irrevocably be subject to the sover- 
 eignty of God. To be true to ourselves in 
 this sense, is to work out the plan of God 
 in our regard and to bring ourselves to the 
 summit of earthly well-being, which shall 
 merge into the endless perfection of eternal 
 happiness in heaven. To be false to our- 
 selves is to disturb the order of God's crea- 
 tion, to brand ourselves with the mark of 
 sin's perfidy, to disgrace the manhood that 
 was meant for things high and noble, to 
 blast the dignity of our human nature. 
 Of a truth, we ourselves are the standard 
 of what is good in our regard ; but the bind- 
 ing force which holds us to fidelity to this 
 norm is above and beyond us ; it is the will 
 of our almighty Lord and Master. 
 
 True to ourselves, we must and shall be 
 true to others, "Thou canst not then be false 
 to any man" ; for the same norm directs and 
 the same will prescribes loyalty to our 
 neighbor. Loyalty to the neighbor de- 
 mands that we be faithful to promises, just 
 in giving to every man what is rightfully his, 
 charitable and considerate beyond the re- 
 quirements of justice. If all men were 
 
32 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 conspicious for this loyalty to their fel- 
 lows, this world of ours would be rejuv- 
 enated. Then a war, like the stupendous 
 world-struggle of the past four years and a 
 half, would never have ravaged the beauty 
 of earth and crushed mankind with the red 
 savagery of battle ; and peace, based on jus- 
 tice and liberty, would forever gladden the 
 nations. 
 
 But, finally, the firm ground on which 
 loyalty to ourselves and to our neighbor 
 must rest is unshaken loyalty to God. He 
 .s the Beginning and the End ; He is the Lord 
 and Master ; He is, as His loving revelation 
 has shown Him to us, the Father of His 
 children. To be true to His sublime excel- 
 lence, faithful to His supreme lordship, 
 loyal to His fatherly affection — this is the 
 ideal which should thrill our souls and urge 
 us on to heroism of effort. 
 
 Neglect God and our religious duties 
 which profess our subjection to Him? 
 That were disloyalty. Scorn His revela- 
 tion and pass it by in indifference or, per- 
 haps, in positive contempt? That were 
 perfidy. Stand out against Him as He 
 thunders His mandates in the power of His 
 
DISLOYALTY 33 
 
 omnipotence or whispers His commands in 
 the tender pleadings of love unutterable? 
 That were treason. Yes, all grievous sin is 
 not only the perversion of our greatness and 
 the disgrace of our human nature ; it is not 
 only the pestilential hot-house of dissension 
 with one's fellows, of injustice toward one's 
 neighbors, of unfaithfulness to one's com- 
 rades : it is also the turning away from God 
 and the blasting of the soul with the base- 
 ness which appalls the world in the arch- 
 traitor Judas, the fallen Apostle. 
 
 Need I voice the call to unalterable 
 loyalty ? Need I urge you, and myself with 
 you, to fly the foul shame of disloyalty % In 
 words that ring down the ages the call and 
 the urging have been spoken by the events 
 which we have been considering. Their 
 compelling force is incomparable. Let us 
 keep before our souls' vision two pictures, 
 and they are these : 
 
 The first? There on the floor of the 
 blood-stained grotto lies the Son of God, 
 writhing in killing agony, battling the might 
 of sin and hell. His face is drawn with 
 the lines which suffering has engraved upon 
 the features of Him who was the fairest of 
 
34 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 the sons of men: His eyes are gaunt with 
 the shadows that have been left there by the 
 dark vision of evil : His members are quiver- 
 ing with the weakness of unbearable appre- 
 hension and fear : His garments are soaked 
 with the blood of the heart-tearing struggle. 
 But He rises and goes forth to meet His 
 doom with a smile upon His haggard lips 
 and a thrill in His all but breaking heart. 
 He has faced the issue; He has fought the 
 fight; He has conquered the faintness of 
 shrinking nature. And His battle cry has 
 already been flung to the air of heaven, as 
 He has whispered: " Father, thy will be 
 done!" 
 
 And the other picture? There in the 
 shadows of the valley a lonely tree stands 
 out in grim desolation. It bears upon its 
 bough a ghastly fruit — the fruit of treason 
 and disloyalty. Oh, the distorted face; the 
 staring eyes, fixed on the horror that will 
 never die ; the protruding entrails ; the rigid 
 body at the end of the halter, swaying, sway- 
 ing in the fitful breeze ; and, like the mock- 
 ing cry of taunting demons, the echo of the 
 words, "Hail, Rabbi! I kissed Him!" 
 
 Which do we wish to symbolize our lives ? 
 
DISLOYALTY 35 
 
 Which do we wish to tell the story of our 
 days ? Is it to be disloyalty or fidelity for 
 us? Please God! the question is an- 
 swered in the asking. True to ourselves, 
 faithful to our fellows, loyal to our God — 
 the watchword of our lives, "Thy will be 
 done!" 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE SANHEDRIM AND DUPLICITY 
 
 "For envy they had delivered him." Matt. 
 XXVII, 18. 
 
 "It is expedient . . . that one man should die for 
 the people." John XI, 50. 
 
 " He hath blasphemed. . . . He is worthy of death." 
 Matt. XXVI, 65, 66. 
 
 "We have found this man perverting our nation, 
 and forbidding to give tribute to Cajsar, and saying 
 that he is Christ the King." Luke XXIII, 2. 
 
 "He ought to die because he made himself the Son 
 of God." John XIX, 7. 
 
 We are looking at the forces of evil 
 which were ranged against our Blessed 
 Lord in His terrible Passion, and which are 
 drawn up in opposition to good and God in 
 the tragedy that will last until time shall be 
 no more. We have already considered dis- 
 loyalty with its perversion of all that is 
 noble. Its monstrous embodiment we found 
 in the traitor Apostle, Judas, of whom the 
 God-Man said: "It were better for him, if 
 that man had not been born." * And as a 
 
 i Matt. XXVI, 24. 
 
 36 
 
DUPLICITY 37 
 
 splendid contrast to this vision of wicked- 
 ness we have studied Christ's unswerving 
 fidelity to His appointed mission, His abso- 
 lute loyalty to the will of His heavenly 
 Father. 
 
 Let us proceed to treat of another power 
 for evil, which often leads to the wretched- 
 ness of disloyalty, and which numbers its 
 victims by uncounted millions. This is 
 insincerity, double-dealing, crookedness, 
 craftiness — in a word, duplicity. This du- 
 plicity is appalling in its ruinous effective- 
 ness; for it thwarts God's hallowed designs 
 in many souls, whether it be rampant in its 
 most loathsome form of hypocrisy, or dis- 
 guised in its more subtle manifestations 
 of half-conscious or almost unconscious 
 double-dealing. 
 
 The baseness of duplicity is thrown into 
 more despicable prominence by the ap- 
 pealing nobility of straightforwardness. 
 We admire and extol simplicity and candid 
 truth, which are the shining heritage of un- 
 spoiled human nature; nor do we hesitate 
 to echo the words of the homely verse which 
 says that 
 
38 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 "An honest man, though e'er so poor, 
 Is king of men, for a' that!" 1 
 
 Would that our emulation of the glory of 
 the sincere and simple and straightforward 
 were as strenuous as our admiration is un- 
 feigned ! 
 
 Our dear Lord voiced His approbation 
 of our judgment about duplicity and sim- 
 plicity, when He said: "If thy eye be sin- 
 gle, thy whole body shall be lightsome ; but if 
 thy eye be evil, thy whole body shall be dark- 
 some"; 2 "Let your speech be yea, yea; no, 
 no. " 3 It was as if He had said : "Let your 
 soul look straight to duty, right up to God; 
 let your tongue declare your thoughts with- 
 out guile or deceit ; let your actions aim full 
 at the mark of obligation, and drive to the 
 bull's-eye of truth and honest uprightness.' ' 
 Thus Christ commends our native apprecia- 
 tion of simple sincerity; thus He seconds 
 our contempt for the mean littleness of du- 
 plicity. And the unparalleled heroism of 
 the example of His whole life echoes the 
 lesson of His words. 
 
 i Robert Burns. 
 2 Matt. VI, 22. 
 s Matt. V, 37. 
 
DUPLICITY 39 
 
 Where in Christ's Passion shall we find a 
 type or embodiment of duplicity? In the 
 " chief priests and the ancients," the 
 " scribes and Pharisees, " the members of 
 the Sanhedrim and those who were its mas- 
 ters. Hypocrites they were; and the 
 Christ had boldly called them by their 
 name. 1 Blind they were and the leaders of 
 the blind; and the gentle Master had 
 branded them with the infamy which was 
 theirs by reason of their wilful exclusion 
 of the light. 2 Tricky they were and de- 
 ceitful, cloaking under the show of zeal for 
 the Law their mad resolve to crush their 
 victim, prostituting justice under the forms 
 of judicial trial, making a farce of official 
 investigation. Without a doubt, in their 
 war against the single-minded Christ they 
 symbolized duplicity in its most hideous 
 aspect. As Judas stands for disloyalty, the 
 Sanhedrim stands for duplicity. 
 
 Their crafty double-dealing is evident in 
 their persecution of the Master. Their 
 hatred of Him had waxed stronger, as the 
 years of the public ministry ran on; the 
 
 iCf. Matt. XV, 7. 
 2 Cf. Matt. XV, 14. 
 
40 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 clouds of the storm of malice had grown 
 thicker and blacker, as glad hosannas tri- 
 umphantly welcomed His entry into Jeru- 
 salem and the news of the raising of Lazarus 
 from the tomb glorified Him. They feared 
 that their power was slipping away from 
 them. 
 
 "What do we, for this man doth many 
 miracles? If we leave him alone so, all 
 will believe in him; and the Romans will 
 come and take away our place and nation. ' ' 1 
 "And they consulted together that by sub- 
 tilty" (by fraud and craft, dolo) "they 
 might apprehend Jesus and put him to 
 death." 2 "But . . . Caiaphas . . . said to 
 them : ... It is expedient for you that one 
 man should die for the people, and that the 
 whole nation perish not. ' ' 3 
 
 Their venomous envy was the reason why 
 they hated Him ; yet the charge under which 
 they condemned Him was that of blasphemy, 
 and the charges which they urged against 
 Him before Pilate were those of sedition 
 and treason to Rome. It was all dissem- 
 
 Uohn XI, 47, 48. 
 
 2 Matt. XXVI, 4. 
 
 3 John XI, 49, 50. 
 
DUPLICITY 41 
 
 bling, hypocrisy, double-dealing, craftiness. 
 But the inmost heart of their duplicity was 
 shown in the injustice of the trials in which 
 they tried to cover up the traces of their 
 blinded envious hate. Let us look at these 
 trials, in which justice became a mockery; 
 examination, a farce; the most venerated 
 judicial body of the Jews, the tool of bloody 
 handed murderers to crush their prey. 
 
 Down the slope of Olivet and up the hill 
 that led to Jerusalem Christ was dragged, 
 as a bound prisoner, to face — not yet the 
 Sanhedrim, but him who was the master of 
 the master of the Sanhedrim. "And they 
 led him away to Annas first ; for he was the 
 father-in-law to Caiaphas who was the high 
 priest of that year." x Here was the begin- 
 ning of injustice ; for Annas, not being the 
 official high priest, had no legal authority 
 in the case. But he was the hand behind the 
 puppet, the power behind the throne; he 
 was the very head and front of the opposi- 
 tion against Christ Jesus. 
 
 Annas was of the priestly line, and some 
 of the Jews looked upon him alone as pos- 
 sessing the real right to the high-priesthood. 
 
 i John XVIII, 13. 
 
42 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY. 
 
 High priest he had been; but when he was 
 deposed by the Romans, he made no open 
 opposition. He only smiled and smiled, 
 and was the oily villain still. He had been 
 preceded in the office by his son; he was 
 succeeded by creatures of his own ; and now 
 his son-in-law, Caiaphas, occupied the im- 
 portant post and had done so for ten years. 
 But the wily old strategist was still in power, 
 and even Caiaphas would not dare to say 
 him nay. So, Christ was led before Annas, 
 that the crafty old plotter might gloat over 
 his victim and warm the cold springs of his 
 heart by gazing upon his prey. Yes, all 
 had gone well thus far! But a little more 
 cunning managing — and this Man would be 
 disgraced before the world; the people 
 would no more go after Him; and thus the 
 Romans, with no cause for complaint, would 
 be satisfied with honeyed words and golden 
 tribute ; and Annas would be ruler of Jeru- 
 salem, a king in all but name. 
 
 Christ, then, stood before Annas, and An- 
 nas " asked Jesus of his disciples and his 
 doctrine. ' ' * Was it to learn the truth 1 
 Far from it. It was duplicity pursuing its 
 
 i John XVI IT, 19. 
 
DUPLICITY 43 
 
 tortuous way of deceit. It was to gain time 
 for the hurried gathering of the Sanhe- 
 drim; and meanwhile it was to glow at the 
 prospect of assured victory, and, if might 
 be, to extort some word from the prisoner 
 which devilish craft might turn against 
 Him. Out against the blackness of Annas' 
 double-dealing Christ's sincerity and 
 straightforward simplicity shine like a star 
 against the murky night. 
 
 He had been asked about His disciples 
 and His doctrine. About His disciples He 
 could not just then say much that was good. 
 One of them had betrayed Him, after selling 
 Him to His enemies; that very night an- 
 other, the chief one of the Twelve, would 
 deny that he knew his Lord and Master ; and 
 all the rest, in spite of their brave protes- 
 tation that they would abide with Him to 
 the end, had fled away and left Him alone in 
 the power of His foes. No, He could not 
 say much that was good about His disci- 
 ples; and so, the dear Lord said nothing. 
 An example for a gossiping and scandal- 
 mongering world ! 
 
 But about the second part of the question, 
 as to His doctrine, there was no need for 
 
44 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 silence. Straight from the heart of truth 
 He spoke; straight to the heart of truth 
 He went: "Why askest thou me? Ask 
 them who have heard what I have spoken to 
 them/' 1 Thus He laid bare the duplicity 
 of His questioner, by reminding him that it 
 was the part of a judge, not to ask ensnar- 
 ing questions, but to see that proof was ad- 
 duced. At these words of single, simple 
 honesty, a servant standing by, to curry 
 favor with his discomfited master, acted out 
 some more hypocritical pretence; and, in 
 feigned respect for outraged authority, gave 
 Christ a blow in the face, saying: "An- 
 swerest thou the high priest so ?" 2 " Jesus 
 answered him : If I have spoken evil, give 
 testimony of the evil"; accuse me; prove 
 your charge against me; "but if well, why 
 strikest thou me?" 3 
 
 Hardened as Annas was, he had to feel 
 this rebuke to his own misuse of his posi- 
 tion and to the uncorrected brutality of his 
 minion. If the brow of man could still 
 
 Uohn XVIII, 21. 
 
 2 John XVIII, 22. 
 
 3 John XVIII, 23. 
 
DUPLICITY 45 
 
 crimson to the blush of honest shame, he had 
 to be covered with confusion. To extricate 
 himself from the annoyance, there remained 
 but one thing to do — and that one thing he 
 did. He sent Christ away to Caiaphas, the 
 high priest, 1 to face His prearranged con- 
 demnation. 
 
 And so Christ passed from before 
 Annas. Never again did the Master stand 
 alone before the cruel plotter. It was the 
 passing of Christ, the passing away of the 
 last call to grace, which Annas in his mad- 
 ness rejected. May we never allow double- 
 dealing with God to harden our hearts 
 against the call of grace! If we do, the 
 angel of mercy may pass us by, to return 
 with the sword of God's vengeance in his 
 hand. Alas for Annas! when Christ was 
 led from before his presence to another part 
 of the palace, where Caiaphas and the has- 
 tily summoned members of the Sanhedrim 
 were waiting to continue the farce of jus- 
 tice and the work of duplicity. 
 
 Christ before the Sanhedrim on trial for 
 His life! In cases of a capital nature, it 
 
 i Cf. John XVIII, 24. 
 
46 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 must be noted, the Jewish and rabbinical 
 laws required that investigation should first 
 be made into the things which might prove 
 the accused free from the guilt of crime. 
 For this purpose witnesses had first to be 
 sought who might testify in his favor. 
 Only after this were the witnesses against 
 him to be heard. Moreover, these witnesses 
 were to be warned of the seriousness of 
 the matter in hand; their uprightness was 
 to be established before they were admitted 
 to speak; they were to be impressed with 
 the gravity of saying anything false, nay, 
 of saying anything which they knew only by 
 hearsay, even though their informant were 
 a man of the highest integrity. After all 
 this, they were to be brought into the judg- 
 ment-chamber one by one to give their 
 testimony before the judges, in such a way 
 that the second witness might not hear what 
 the first had said. Meanwhile, scribes 
 carefully took down every word, and if the 
 witnesses did not agree in their deposi- 
 tions, their testimony was thrown out. 
 Finally, after the witnesses had been heard 
 and examined the votes of the judges were 
 gathered, and if the sentence on the accused 
 
DUPLICITY 47 
 
 was one of condemnation, it might not be 
 pronounced until the following day. 1 
 
 These requirements of the rabbinical law 
 may not all have held good in the days of 
 our Blessed Lord, though most of them must 
 have been extant, since they are demanded 
 by natural justice. But in Christ's case 
 they were violated, one and all; and His 
 trial was the riotous anarchy of injustice 
 masquerading under the garb of right. 
 
 So, Jesus was arraigned before the grand 
 council, the Sanhedrim. This tribunal was 
 gloried in by the Jews and admired by the 
 nations; but from this day forth it would 
 be disgraced forever. There was the presi- 
 dent of the council, Caiaphas the high 
 priest; there was Annas with the others 
 who were his creatures, as was the chief of 
 the court; there were the scribes and the 
 ancients. They wore the mask of disinter- 
 ested judges and pious guardians of the 
 Law of Jahve. But, with a few exceptions, 
 they were a pack of ravening wolves, thirst- 
 ing for the blood of the Innocent One before 
 them, chafing within themselves because 
 they had to hide their panting hate beneath 
 
 i Cf . Cursus SS., Knabenbauer, In Matt., II, p. 468. 
 
48 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 the guise of unselfishness and gloss over a 
 deed of blood with the appearance of jus- 
 tice. 
 
 The Sadducees (and most of the priests 
 were of these sensualists) would have none 
 of Christ, because they were satisfied with 
 the temporal advantages which accrued to 
 them from compromises with Rome. The 
 Pharisees were fanatics, clinging to the 
 perverted ideal of an earthly political King- 
 dom of God, which should raise Israel to 
 the peak of material grandeur, with the 
 kings of the world cowering in cringing 
 dread beneath their feet. But this Man 
 menaced the realization of the dreams of 
 both Sadducees and Pharisees. So, "Away 
 with him!" But the people were thronging 
 after Him. Then, must He be put to death. 
 Thus they had determined before they be- 
 gan His present trial : yet, though His sen- 
 tence was fixed, they tried Him. Duplicity 
 gone mad ; double-dealing rushing on to hor- 
 rible sacrilege; hypocrisy enthroned and 
 worshiped as the master of their souls! 
 
 As has been said, the law required that, 
 first of all, witnesses should be called in who 
 might testify in favor of the accused. 
 
DUPLICITY 49 
 
 Where were they? Where were those who 
 had been healed of their diseases by Christ's 
 miraculous power % Where were those who 
 had followed Him out into the desert, for- 
 getful of the wants of nature % Where were 
 those who, but five days before, had strewn 
 palm branches in His path and welcomed the 
 Son of David to the city of David with the 
 loud hosannas of exulting triumph? Were 
 all these grown basely and utterly craven, 
 even before the stigma of public condemna- 
 tion had blasted Christ's fair name in the 
 minds of the fickle ? No such favoring wit- 
 nesses were sought out: none such would 
 have been admitted to this chamber of pre- 
 determined death. For, these judges (!) 
 held counsel "that they might put Jesus to 
 death." 1 
 
 Passing by any who might have testified 
 in behalf of the Christ, the Sanhedrists 
 brought in witnesses against Him. In the 
 depths of their dissembling souls the mem- 
 bers of the council knew that they could 
 obtain no true testimony of a real crime 
 against Jesus of Nazareth ; for, long before 
 this, He had triumphantly challenged them 
 
 iMatt. XXVI, 4. 
 
50 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 to find aught of evil in His doctrine or His 
 life, and had said: " Which of you shall 
 convince me of sin?" 1 And these pledged 
 supporters of justice, these plighted guar- 
 dians of right, these official shepherds of the 
 people of God suborned false witnesses, 
 that the web of death might be woven around 
 the prisoner who was condemned before He 
 was brought to trial. 
 
 But, in spite of all, nothing could be 
 brought forward which would give any- 
 color of justice to a sentence of death. In 
 face of this failure Caiaphas raged within 
 himself. Was Christ to escape, unless the 
 mask were dropped and hypocrisy stood 
 forth in its naked horror? And the high 
 priest's eyes stealthily glanced at the hard, 
 cruel face of Annas. If witnesses had 
 failed, Christ Himself must furnish the 
 grounds of condemnation. So, turning to 
 the prisoner, the false-hearted judge ad- 
 dressed Him: "Answereth thou nothing 
 to the things which these witness against 
 thee? But Jesus held his peace." 2 He 
 would not answer these men who had 
 
 i John VIII, 46. 
 2 Matt. XXVI, 62. 
 
DUPLICITY 51 
 
 blinded their souls to the light of truth; 
 nor was there any rhyme or reason in an- 
 swering "the things which these witnessed 
 against" Him. The cheeks of Caiaphas, 
 flushed hot with the fierce hatred within 
 his heart, burned redder yet, as the watch- 
 ful eyes of Annas, his crafty master, 
 pierced his servile soul. No answer from 
 the accused? Then, must He be forced to 
 speak and to voice His own destruction. 
 
 Was it the cunning of Annas which had 
 suggested the means to be resorted to in the 
 last extremity? Perhaps. Caiaphas rose 
 from his seat at the head of the assembly; 
 and, with all the authority that could be 
 crowded into his words, he said : "I adjure 
 thee by the living God that thou tell us if 
 thou be the Christ, the Son of God." 1 
 The adjuration was framed with devilish 
 skill. If, after this solemn adjuration in 
 the name of the living God, Christ refused 
 to answer, He could be crushed as one who 
 disregarded the majesty of Jahve. Yes, 
 He must answer ; and His reply would have 
 the force of an oath-bound declaration. 
 
 What would the answer be % Should He 
 
 i Matt. XXVI, 63. 
 
52 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 say that He was not the Christ, they would 
 condemn Him as a seducer of the people 
 who had claimed to be the Son of God; 
 should He declare that He was the Son of 
 the living God, they would cry out against 
 Him for His blasphemy. What would the 
 answer be? In view of Christ's absolute 
 sincerity and candor, there could be no 
 question of a refusal to answer and no 
 doubt as to the answer itself. His mis- 
 sion and His Sonship to the Father He 
 had proclaimed with growing clearness, 
 as the souls of men were prepared for 
 the full disclosure of His dignity. Now 
 He rejoiced that the hour had come, 
 when in the hearing of the supreme religious 
 tribunal of the people of God He could make 
 His solemn profession of His divine Son- 
 ship. 
 
 As Caiaphas' question rang out through 
 the marble hall and was succeeded by a 
 silence vibrant with emotion, the quick, 
 angry, gasping breathing of the questioner 
 might almost be heard. Christ raised His 
 eyes to the face of the high priest and cast 
 a glance at His judges' set countenances, 
 hard with hypocrisy and hate— and He read 
 
DUPLICITY 53 
 
 His doom of death. But what was condem- 
 nation to the solemn declaration of all that 
 He was? What was death to fidelity? 
 There was no shifting of attitude, no shirk- 
 ing of responsibility, no attempt at evasion, 
 no trace of duplicity in the brave, simple, 
 straightforward Master. "Art thou the 
 Christ, the Son of the blessed God?" 1 
 "Thou hast said it: 2 I am. 3 Nevertheless 
 I say to you, hereafter you shall see the Son 
 of man sitting on the right hand of the 
 power of God, and coming in the clouds of 
 heaven." 4 
 
 A gleam of satisfaction lighted up the 
 face of Caiaphas: he almost heaved a sigh 
 of relief. At last ! at long last ! he had tri- 
 umphed! But still duplicity must rule: 
 still hypocrisy must hold sway. His breast 
 was heaving high with the joy of victory ; yet 
 he must dissemble his gladness under the 
 veil of horrified indignation at the insult 
 offered to God's supreme majesty. "Then 
 the high priest rent his garments, saying: 
 He hath blasphemed; what further need 
 
 iMark XIV, 61. 
 2 Matt. XXVI, 64. 
 a Mark XIV, 62. 
 4 Matt. XXVI, 64. 
 
54 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 have we of witnesses?" 1 He hath blas- 
 phemed! And in the law of Jahve it was 
 written: "He that blasphemeth the name 
 of the Lord, dying let him die." 2 He hath 
 blasphemed! "Behold, now you have 
 heard the blasphemy: what think you? 
 But they answering said: He is guilty of 
 death." 3 And by the Sanhedrim, the 
 highest religious authority of the Jewish 
 people, Christ was condemned to death for 
 blasphemy. 
 
 Hypocrisy and duplicity had conquered. 
 The Sanhedrists, as has been seen, sought 
 Christ's death because of their envy towards 
 Him and because they feared that His posi- 
 tion might diminish their own worldly 
 prominence; but they glossed over their 
 foul perjury of heart with the semblance of 
 zeal for God's honor. Truly, as David said, 
 "iniquity hath lied to itself," 4 and it con- 
 tinued to lie. 
 
 Their iniquity lied to itself in act, when 
 it outraged every civilized nation's sense 
 of justice, which shows consideration, if not 
 
 i Matt. XXVI, 65. 
 2Levit. XXIV, 16. 
 3 Matt. XXVI, 65, 66. 
 4Ps. XXVI, 12. 
 
DUPLICITY 55 
 
 pity, to the condemned criminal and leaves 
 him in peace until he faces the black hour 
 of his fate. But they showed neither pity 
 nor consideration. On the contrary, they 
 gave Christ into the hands of the hangers- 
 on of the palace, and may themselves have 
 mingled with the riotous revelers, who dur- 
 ing the weary watches of the rest of the 
 night vented their diabolical vileness upon 
 Him. " And some began to spit on him and 
 to cover his face and to buffet him and to say 
 unto him: Prophesy: and the servants 
 struck him with the palms of their hands. ' ' 1 
 Their iniquity lied to itself in words. 
 For, when they haled Christ before the pa- 
 gan governor, they did not accuse Him of 
 blasphemy against God, the charge under 
 which they had condemned Him; but per- 
 fidiously accused Him of sedition and trea- 
 son to Rome. Later, in face of His man- 
 ifest innocence, repeatedly declared by 
 Pilate, they were forced back to their charge 
 of blasphemy; and from that they shifted 
 to the threat of Caesar's wrath against the 
 Procurator, if he should dare to thwart their 
 revengeful desires. 
 
 i Mark XIV, 65. 
 
56 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 The sight of the deep debasement and 
 utter defilement to which they sank might 
 lead one to despair of the possibility of hu- 
 man nature ever rising from the abyss, were 
 it not for the vision of the sublime, majestic 
 nobility of the Christ, sincere and simple 
 and single in purpose and act — the glory of 
 our fallen race and our Salvation. 
 
 Does the vileness of the duplicity of the 
 Sanhedrim fill us with loathing? Does the 
 splendor of the straightforwardness of the 
 Master arouse our enthusiasm? God grant 
 it! We do hate hypocrisy; we do detest 
 double-dealing; we do abhor duplicity: and 
 God be praised that we do ! Let us hate it 
 all yet more and keep it from our lives. 
 The number of those who are exact copies 
 of the faithless, hypocritical Sanhedrists 
 may be comparatively small, and there 
 may be but little danger that we shall de- 
 scend to such depths of infamy as theirs. 
 But the degrees of half-conscious or almost 
 unconscious dishonesty and devious con- 
 duct are not at all outside the lives of count- 
 less multitudes. In fact, it may be said 
 with truth, that probably the only com- 
 pletely honest and straightforward souls in 
 
DUPLICITY 57 
 
 the whole wide world are the saints of God, 
 canonized and uncanonized. Nearly every- 
 body else is affected by some touch of du- 
 plicity, by some milder form of self-decep- 
 tion, which leads to what is unworthy. 
 
 The saints look full to duty — and follow 
 it : they go straight to God, no matter what 
 obstacle bars the path. Their "eye is 
 single"; and it is largely due to this single- 
 ness of mind and heart that they are saints 
 and that their "whole body is lightsome." 
 They are not injured in their spiritual sight 
 from the endeavor to keep two diverging 
 objects within the range of their souls' 
 vision. Still less are they blind in the midst 
 of the brightness of the shining sun. They 
 see, and they see straight: they are honest 
 with God, with their fellow men, and with 
 themselves; and in this simplicity they 
 march on in sunshine or in storm without 
 swerving from the path of uprightness. 
 They have learned the secret of the courage 
 of the outraged Christ. They have found 
 the source of the strength that has made 
 them stronger than themselves, stronger 
 than the assaults of hell, stronger than the 
 seductions of a world that knows not God. 
 
58 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 For our souls' sake and for the sake of the 
 Blessed Master we must emulate them in 
 their sincerity. In view of this a little self- 
 examination will not be at all amiss. Are 
 we without any taint of duplicity? It 
 should be borne in mind that there is no ref- 
 erence just now to out-and-out hypocrisy 
 and to conscious double-dealing, but to lack 
 of complete candor as to self, the neighbor, 
 and God Himself. Are we quite free from 
 this latter stain? 
 
 If we are, one need not have the slightest 
 hesitation in saying that we are either 
 worthy of execration, as being like the 
 demons, or worthy of the reverence that ac- 
 crues to the chosen ones of God. Now, of 
 course, it is clear that we are not devils. 
 So, if we are altogether exempt from the 
 touch of almost unconscious duplicity, we 
 must be advancing along the way of sanctity 
 like giants running a race. But, are we? 
 True is the adage that " people like to be 
 duped" ("like to be fooled," the saying has 
 it) ; and truer still is the assertion that un- 
 numbered multitudes of men and women are 
 dupes of their own making. 
 
 Self-deception is lamentably wide-spread ; 
 
DUPLICITY 59 
 
 and poor human nature would rather hide 
 its unworthy impulses under hypocritical 
 pretence than face the naked vileness of its 
 own meanness. Some there are, who, whilst 
 they give free rein to the lowest panderings 
 to passion, will prate about the necessity of 
 satisfying the tendencies of nature, and will 
 argue that God would not have given the 
 yearning, if He did not mean the yearning 
 to be satisfied. But, without further pur- 
 suing the consideration of this sordid 
 fallacy, which is almost too vile to touch; 
 how many there are, who will be swept along 
 unresisting by the flood of blinded anger, and 
 salve their souls with the assurance that 
 it is only zeal for truth and uprightness! 
 The bitterness of mean resentment will 
 poison the sweetness of association with 
 others; and it is called justice. Pride will 
 wrap its cold folds about a man; and he 
 soothes himself with the comforting thought 
 that it is only self-respect. Looseness of 
 speech and manner will hurry him into the 
 ways of pagan thought and action; and he 
 tells himself that he is only avoiding nar- 
 rowness and the squeamishness of a scrupu- 
 lous weakling. A cringing fear will make 
 
60 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 him an arrant coward in the face of a false 
 human-respect ; and he dignifies his craven 
 feebleness with the name of considerateness. 
 
 It is thus that Judas may have duped his 
 blinded soul, until the horror of his crime 
 tore the bandage from his startled eyes: it 
 is thus that the Sanhedrists may have de- 
 ceived themselves, until they brought on 
 themselves the sacrilege of the shedding of 
 the blood of the Incarnate God. 
 
 Besides this cheating of oneself, duplicity 
 goes on to the attempt to deceive in one's 
 relations with others. It tries to cloak a 
 fell purpose under the show of uprightness, 
 to mask injustice under the appearance of 
 justice, to disguise dishonor under the seem- 
 ing of honor. Of a truth, the sad example 
 of the Sanhedrim is followed today by many, 
 albeit the craftiness is not, perhaps, so con- 
 scious. Look at the anti-religious agitators 
 of the world, and behold a duplicity like that 
 of the faithless ones who outraged the 
 Christ. Under the watchword of freedom 
 they raised aloft the banner of attack 
 against religion and morality. In France 
 and Mexico they assaulted what they called 
 clericalism; but the object of their insidious 
 
DUPLICITY 61 
 
 onset was religion itself. "Secularize the 
 schools" was the shibboleth of others; and 
 that cry translated meant : "Do away with 
 faith and worship ; tear down the standards 
 of morality" (which can be upheld only by 
 the strong will of Almighty God) ; "exalt 
 man to absurd heights, to cast him down into 
 unsoundable depths ; and let loose upon the 
 world a horde of godless men and women, 
 who will riot in their lusts and sink into un- 
 speakable degradation. ' ' 
 
 Duplicity? Even during the conduct of 
 the war that was trying men's souls, double- 
 dealing miscreants were abroad under the 
 disguise of patriotism, driving the poisoned 
 dart of religious dissension into a nation's 
 heart. With the motto of liberty and jus- 
 tice upon their lips they hypocritically de- 
 clared that Catholics could not be loyal be- 
 cause of their faith. And when the magnifi- 
 cent fidelity of the sons of the Church had 
 forced that lie down their throats, duplicity 
 essayed to read into the whole-souled re- 
 sponse to the call of country an attempt to 
 seize upon the military power of the land in 
 favor of a foreign potentate! 
 
 Duplicity? Look at the Bolshevist 
 
62 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 hordes across the sea — workmen who would 
 not work, soldiers who would not fight, ex- 
 cept against the helpless and defenceless, as 
 they did in Russia. There and elsewhere — 
 yes, here in our own fair land, where the 
 anarchistic elements are simmering before 
 a great explosion, they prattle of liberty, 
 when they mean license; of equality, when 
 they yearn for the subjugation and exploita- 
 tion of others; of fraternity, when they 
 aspire to the oppression of the forces of 
 order; of " living one's own life," when they 
 look to the orgies of free-love. 
 
 Duplicity? Look at the arrogant and 
 pampered parasites of luxury, who are lay- 
 ing the train for the Bolshevists to light. 
 They flatter themselves that they are the 
 conservative element of the country and 
 boast that they stand for the principles of 
 law and order. Yet their barbaric extrava- 
 gance before the very eyes of the agonizing 
 struggles of pauperism is fanning the fires 
 of discontent. Their defiant assumption of 
 right, because they have the might of money, 
 is embittering the hearts of the subjugated 
 proletariat. (This assumption of theirs, it 
 must be borne in mind, is only another form 
 
DUPLICITY 63 
 
 of the godless axiom which brought the na- 
 tions to the throes of death in the gigantic 
 world- war.) They calmly extort unjustifi- 
 able profits from the necessities of their 
 country or from the needs of their fellow 
 men. They grind men down to the degrada- 
 tion of mere machines. They coin the life 
 blood of the poor into the wealth which is 
 the support of their luxuriousness and the 
 staff of their pride. And, with these crimes 
 to their account, they pose as philan- 
 thropists, whilst their own excesses are in 
 large measure the cause or the occasion of 
 the miseries which they condescend to re- 
 lieve. What is all this but duplicity gone 
 mad? Are such persons honest in their 
 convictions ? If they are, they afford a hor- 
 rible example of the extent to which half- 
 conscious or almost unconscious deception 
 can blind its victims. But, consciously, or 
 unconsciously, " iniquity hath lied to itself." 
 So much for men's attitude of mind in re- 
 gard to themselves; so much for their rela- 
 tions to their fellows. If from these we 
 turn to the consideration of men's dealings 
 with God, again we see the evil triumphs 
 of duplicity. So few are thoroughly honest 
 
64 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 with God; so many are deplorably double- 
 minded and double-handed in their conduct 
 towards their Maker! 
 
 Doesn't it often happen, that, perhaps al- 
 most unconsciously, we reserve some hidden 
 corner of our souls as an uncharted domain 
 where neither we nor God may enter? 
 Doesn't it sometimes come to pass, that we 
 make compromises with God, and think that 
 we are doing a great deal for Him, whilst 
 at the same time we close our eyes to the 
 real necessity, which calls for an unre- 
 stricted surrender to Him? Doesn't it 
 sometimes occur, that we endeavor to make 
 of the affair of salvation a business proposi- 
 tion, not unmarred by equivocation and 
 subterfuge and "trading" 1 ? 
 
 All this, no doubt, is not nattering to our 
 self -appreciation ; but isn't it too sadly true ? 
 We may know that unflinching straightfor- 
 wardness requires us to lay the axe to the 
 root of uncharitableness or gossiping de- 
 traction or slander — and we make the reso- 
 lution in God's sight to be very careful in 
 our prayers and very faithful in the fulfill- 
 ment of our religious obligations. This last 
 is good; but we are dodging the issue. 
 
DUPLICITY 65 
 
 Again, we may know that we are failing 
 through a false sense of freedom in speech 
 or action, that we are tarnishing, if not de- 
 stroying, the lustre of pure cleanness of 
 mind and tongue — and we offer to God the 
 determination to come to the assistance of 
 the needy poor and to soften the hard lot 
 of the poverty-stricken. Once more, a 
 blessed resolve; but we refuse to face the 
 basic reality. And so it goes on. 
 
 This condition of soul is fraught with 
 fearful danger; for it lulls into a false se- 
 curity and deceives with the unfounded as- 
 surance of standing well with God. It is 
 only less perilous than is the state of those, 
 who, blinking the truth that the account 
 with God may be called for at any moment, 
 put off their return to Him until such time 
 as their sweet good-pleasure shall determine 
 upon. 
 
 This is self-blinding and a species of 
 double-dealing with God. May no man put 
 off his return to God, because he tells him- 
 self that he has no time, or because such a 
 return means the severing of the loved, 
 though loathsome, bonds of evil habit! If 
 he does, he may come upon a day, when he 
 
66 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 will curse the greed that kept him from his 
 Maker and the pride that lifted him up to 
 crush him by his fall and the lust which 
 forged for itself chains which eternity itself 
 cannot wear away ; when grace will pass him 
 by, not because God will not speak to him, 
 but because he has so accustomed himself 
 to close his ears to the voice of God, that he 
 will not hear his Father's gentle whisper of 
 love, and will be roused to endless remorse 
 by the thunderbolt of divine anger. 
 
 This same fate may come to us too, if we 
 indulge in another form of duplicity to- 
 wards God, which wrecks the lives of many 
 in this world — if we do not avoid the occa- 
 sions of sinful evil. To place ourselves in 
 the way of sin, to court its occasions, to dally 
 along the paths where bitter experience has 
 shown us, or should have shown us, that the 
 death of the soul lurks, and then, in the 
 midst of a whirlwind of temptation which 
 we ourselves have raised, to send up a half- 
 hearted cry to God for help, is worse than 
 folly. To tell our offended Lord and Master 
 that we are sorry for our transgressions — 
 and not to make up our minds, honestly and 
 bravely, to keep away from the persons or 
 
DUPLICITY 67 
 
 places or things that have been the reason 
 of our fall, is to mock Him and to try to 
 make a fool of Him, as we have already 
 made fools of ourselves. 
 
 If one knows that, as often as he has been 
 with certain persons, he has fallen into sin ; 
 and then, whilst saying that he does not in- 
 tend to sin again, seeks out the company of 
 those who have been very devils in his re- 
 gard — what is this but to act a living lie? 
 If we wince and writhe and repine and 
 openly rebel against God's loving care in 
 guarding us, through the Church's ministra- 
 tion, from the poison of infidelity or im- 
 morality; if, whilst we plume ourselves on 
 our ability to meet the onsets of the enemies 
 of religion and purity, we close our eyes 
 to the danger, or perhaps the already accom- 
 plished fatality, of the loss of our faith or of 
 cleanness of mind and body — what is it all 
 but self-deception which courts disaster and 
 duplicity that runs to mockery of God? 
 Again, though amusements are good and 
 must have their place in the scheme of every 
 life, if we know, that as often as we have 
 indulged in certain forms of amusement or 
 have gone to certain places of amusement, 
 
68 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 we have come away with our souls hef ouled 
 with the mire of sin, we can no more sanely 
 repeat the experiment, than we can thrust 
 our hands into the hissing flames of a rag- 
 ing fire and say that we do not wish to be 
 burned. 
 
 To attempt to trifle with God is folly ; and 
 all this is trifling with Him. To try to make 
 of the reception of God's sacraments a sort 
 of " white-wash" proposition is but half -dis- 
 guised sacrilege; and many of those who 
 thus deceive themselves by flirting with the 
 occasions of sin are making this attempt. 
 To play the half-hypocrite in the sight of 
 God, who reads the secrets of the heart and 
 is not mocked with impunity, is tragedy it- 
 self; and the self -cozened dishonest ones 
 are playing the tragedy of which they will 
 be the victims. 
 
 Oh, for the singleness of vision and sim- 
 plicity of purpose of the abandoned Christ 
 as He stood before the Sanhedrim! Oh, 
 for His straightforwardness in face of tor- 
 tuous duplicity! Oh, for His strength as 
 He gazed undaunted at His doom ! Oh, that 
 the realization of what even our remote par- 
 ticipation in the spirit of the Sanhedrists 
 
DUPLICITY 69 
 
 and their servants has done against us and 
 against our God would nerve us to better 
 and nobler efforts ! 
 
 Let the bitter memory of the wretched 
 past be a clarion call to higher things: let 
 the thought of the evil that we have done 
 help us to abstain from transgression in the 
 future. God knows, we have done harm 
 enough already. God knows, we have been 
 ungrateful enough already. God knows, we 
 have stretched even infinite mercy to the 
 breaking point already. For, our lack of 
 honesty with God and our half-conscious 
 self-deception ranged us by the side of the 
 Sanhedrists, who mocked sincerity and 
 justice; just as our defections from duty 
 made us play the part of the savage servants, 
 who tortured the condemned Christ during 
 the long hours of that night of black deceit, 
 when He was waiting in the chains of dur- 
 ance vile — waiting for the morning to come 
 that Borne might put the seal of her sentence 
 upon His doom. 
 
 Yes, enough of making common cause 
 with the forces of evil unto our everlasting 
 loss! Enough of duplicity in its many 
 forms ! But to stand by the side of Christ, 
 
70 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 looking straight up to God, facing right on- 
 ward in the way of duty, though the path 
 lead on to Calvary itself — this is a glory 
 worthy of a true man or woman, worthy of a 
 child of God, worthy of a brother or sister 
 of the God-Man, who is majestic in His 
 splendid sincerity and magnificent in His 
 unswerving candor. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 PILATE AM) TIME-SERVING 
 
 "For lie knew that for envy they had delivered 
 him." Matt. XXVII, 18. 
 
 "Whom will you that I release to you: Barabbas 
 or Jesus that is called Christ?" Matt. XXVII, 17. 
 
 1 ' I . . . find no cause in this man. ... I will chas- 
 tise him therefore and release him." Luke XXIII, 
 16. 
 
 "But they were instant with loud voices requiring 
 that he might be crucified : and their voices prevailed. ' ' 
 Luke XXIII, 23. 
 
 "If thou release this man, thou art not Cassar's 
 friend: for whosoever maketh himself a king, speak- 
 eth against Csesar." John XIX, 12. 
 
 "And so Pilate being willing to satisfy the people 
 . . . delivered up Jesus, when he had scourged him 
 to be crucified." Mark XV, 15. 
 
 During the sad progress of the Passion of 
 Christ disloyalty was rampant in its evil 
 might against Him. Down through the 
 ages it has been active against what is good 
 and godlike : it is unceasing in its machina- 
 tions today, as it will be unto the end. 
 
 71 
 
72 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 Duplicity too stained the honor of humanity, 
 as it schemed against the Savior during 
 those hours of the triumph of the powers of 
 darkness: it has poisoned the springs of 
 noble endeavor, as the years have been 
 marked off on the calendar of time : it twists 
 the strivings of humankind in our own day ; 
 and it will try to do so until the day of wrath. 
 These forces of evil, playing their unhal- 
 lowed roles in the Undying Tragedy of the 
 World, we have looked at, that we may hate 
 and avoid them: in appreciative wonder- 
 ment we have gazed upon the suffering Mas- 
 ter 's magnificent example of loyalty and 
 straightforwardness, that we may love and 
 imitate Him. 
 
 But there is still another force for evil 
 which binds many a slave with the chains of 
 degradation and drags many a victim down 
 to his undoing. It is the spirit of time-serv- 
 ing. This is the spirit of those who look 
 only to the main chance of temporal advan- 
 tage ; who will do right, so long as no sacri- 
 fice is entailed ; who are so wrapped up with 
 the littleness of self that even patriotism be- 
 comes egotism; who will abandon every- 
 thing and everyone — friends, family, repu- 
 
TIME-SEKVING 73 
 
 tation, justice, and right — that their own 
 personal ends may be subserved. 
 
 Often this time-serving goes hand in hand 
 with hypocrisy and duplicity, and tries to 
 cloak its vileness under a fair exterior. But 
 sometimes it disdains even this mask of 
 decency, and brazenly follows the lead of 
 concentrated selfishness. It will cling to 
 duty — unless this is too hard. It will stand 
 for right — unless this brings the sting of 
 pain. It will place itself on the side of up- 
 rightness — unless this costs something or 
 demands the foregoing of some selfish ad- 
 vantage. 
 
 Against this veritable bane of honest and 
 brave striving towards noble achievement 
 our Blessed Lord gave His example of utter 
 unselfishness, and over and over again 
 preached His doctrine of complete self-for- 
 getfulness. When He was but a boy He left 
 Mary and Joseph without a word, and 
 stayed in the temple whilst His parents 
 sought Him sorrowing. And when they 
 had found Him and had lovingly remon- 
 strated with Him upon what He had done, 
 He spoke those words which give the key- 
 note to the conduct of His entire mortal life : 
 
74 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 "Did you not know that I must be about my 
 Father's business?" 1 To do His Father's 
 will, to be about His Father's business — 
 that was His life during the retirement of 
 Nazareth; it was His life during the years 
 of the public ministry, when He preached 
 "the Kingdom of God" and prepared the 
 means for the continuance of His mission 
 of love; it was His life during the pain- 
 crowded hours of His awful Passion. 
 Nothing could be farther from the great soul 
 of the Master than the mean, selfish seek- 
 ing of individual temporal profit. The 
 spirit of time-serving He spurned and 
 crushed beneath the heroism of His absolute 
 devotedness to the interests of God and man. 
 And the type of the spirit of time- 
 serving — where shall we find it in the record 
 of the sufferings of the God-Man % In Pon- 
 tius Pilate. As Judas embodies disloyalty; 
 as the Sanhedrim symbolizes duplicity; so 
 Pilate personifies time-serving ; and his con- 
 flict with the Jews is the foreshadowing of 
 the losing fight against unrighteousness by 
 fickle, faithless conscience. 
 
 i Luke II, 49. 
 
TIME-SERVING 75 
 
 What sort of a man was this Pontius 
 Pilate? Was he a coward? Not so; 
 though in the handling of the trial of Jesus 
 Christ he was an arrant coward. Haughty 
 he was, and not a man to balk at ordinary- 
 difficulties, when his own personal advan- 
 tage demanded strength of purpose or ac- 
 tion. He had not managed the Jews with 
 any delicate consideration; he had not 
 feared them; and the streets of Jerusalem 
 had run red with human blood, when with 
 uncompromising decision he had crushed 
 their opposition to himself. Was he lack- 
 ing in experience of men or things? Not 
 at all. He was a plain, blunt man, honest 
 in the main, strong as a rule, brave, im- 
 petuous and headlong. He was a soldier, 
 and sprung from a race of soldiers. But he 
 was a politician, in the depraved meaning 
 of the word ; he was a time-server, who for 
 fear of Caesar and to please the people was 
 ready to forget honor and right and justice. 
 A time-server face to face in conflict with 
 the fanatical, crafty members of the San- 
 hedrim and with the infuriated populace! 
 These were the antagonists in the fight of 
 which Jesus Christ was the object and the 
 
,76 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 prize. And the contest which figured forth 
 the battle that is ever renewed as the ages 
 go by? Let us witness it. 
 
 The condemnation against Christ had 
 been spoken by the supreme council of the 
 Jews. The remaining hours of the night 
 had passed with the jailers of the Master 
 venting their scorn for Him in vile and 
 brutal sport. Morning dawned; and the 
 members of the Sanhedrim held another 
 hurried council, either in the hall of 
 Caiaphas' palace on Mount Sion or within 
 the precincts of the temple on the heights 
 of Mount Moriah. They ratified the sen- 
 tence of the preceding night ; they arranged 
 details for the furtherance of their murder- 
 ous scheme. 
 
 For, all was not yet safe. There to the 
 northeast of the temple rose the frowning 
 massiveness of the citadel erected by the 
 first Herod. The Antonia it was called — 
 the fortress-palace which the Roman gov- 
 ernor occupied at times of greater solemni- 
 ties, that he might keep watchful guard over 
 a conquered, but untrusted people. It was, 
 in fact, more of a menace than a protection ; 
 and the flash of the morning light from the 
 
TIME-SERVING 77 
 
 spears of the Koman legionaries, sentinels 
 over a subject race, brought home to the 
 hating hearts of the Jewish priests the bitter 
 thought that the power of life and death 
 had passed from the judges of Israel. 
 "The sceptre shall not be taken away from 
 Juda . . . till he come that is to be sent": * 
 so ran the prophecy. That sceptre had 
 passed forever : He that was to be sent had 
 "come unto his own and his own received 
 him not. ' ' 2 And in the shadow of the tower 
 of Antony that spoke of Him they 
 were recalled to the realization of the 
 humiliating fact that Eome must seal 
 His doom. Pilate must be forced to 
 ratify their sentence. Though truth would 
 not prevail, craft must have its way; and 
 then the Roman gibbet of the cross for Him 
 who said : "I am the Christ, the Son of the 
 living God " ! 3 On, then, to Pilate ! 
 
 "Then they led Jesus from Caiaphas to 
 the governor's hall . . . and they went not 
 into the hall that they might not be de- 
 filed." 4 The soldiers of Rome must have 
 
 i Genesis XLIX, 10. 
 2 John I, 11. 
 8 Cf. Matt. XXVI, 64. 
 4 John XVIII, 28. 
 
78 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 observed the excitement and must have 
 given notice, so that Pilate was not unpre- 
 pared for the appearance of the priest- 
 headed mob, as they brought their prisoner 
 to the fortress. And Pilate went out to 
 them. 
 
 As he walked along the marble corridors 
 of his palace with his eyes resting upon the 
 immovable ranks of the guards and upon 
 the flashing uniforms of centurions and tri- 
 bunes, his face must have brightened with 
 the consciousness of power and his heart 
 must have beat high with the thrilling 
 thought that he was a Roman — nay, that 
 here he was Rome. Yes, he was master 
 here; and his eyes would have flashed with 
 indignant fire, had anyone dared to tell him 
 that he would play the craven's part. 
 Proud and cold was the glance with which 
 he swept the restless throng, until his gaze 
 was held by the sight of the Man bound with 
 chains, but calm and dignified and breathing 
 forth an air of sorrowful majesty. Did 
 those chains speak a silent threat to him, the 
 judge? 
 
 "What accusation bring you against this 
 
TIME-SERVING 79 
 
 man?" 1 were the sharp words with which 
 he greeted them. Accusation! They had 
 not come to accuse. They had come for the 
 ratification of the sentence which they had 
 already passed. Accusation? They had 
 no charge which would bear the scrutiny of 
 Rome : their own charge of blasphemy would 
 be passed by in silent contempt. So, with 
 a superciliousness and a boldness and an air 
 of injured innocence, that evil knows so well 
 how to assume, they said: "If he were not 
 a malefactor we would not have delivered 
 him up to thee." 2 Quick as thought and 
 sharp as a sword came Pilate 's sneering an- 
 swer: "Take him you and judge him ac- 
 cording to your law" : 3 "if you will make no 
 accusation, I will conduct no trial. Rome 
 will not be the blind dupe in the perpetration 
 of crime." There was firmness! If Pilate 
 had held to that course, he would never have 
 been guilty of the blood of the God-Man. 
 For, guilty he was. Judas was guilty; the 
 Sanhedrim was guilty; but so too was 
 Pontius Pilate : and the crime is laid at his 
 
 i John XVIII, 29. s John XVIII, 31. 
 
 2 John XVIII, 30. 
 
80 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 door by the undying declaration of the 
 Church's children through the passing cen- 
 turies, as they say in the words of the Creed, 
 "He suffered under Pontius Pilate." 
 
 Stung to madness by Pilate's insistence 
 upon an accusation and whipped on by their 
 fear of losing their victim, yet clinging to 
 their crafty deceit, the Jews charged Christ 
 with three crimes — and as they made the 
 charges they lied, and they knew that they 
 lied. "We have found this man pervert- 
 ing our nation, and forbidding to give 
 tribute to Caesar, and saying that he is Christ 
 the King. ' ' * He perverteth the nation ? 
 A lie! His entire life had been one of 
 beneficence to the people: His doctrine was 
 holy and uplifting. The scribes and Phari- 
 sees, the Sadducees and Herodians had 
 tried to lay hold of some word or deed of 
 His to turn against Him, and had desisted 
 in the forced acknowledgment of defeat. 
 He f orbiddeth to give tribute to Caesar ? A 
 lie! They knew that, in order to entrap 
 Him, they had asked, "Is it lawful to give 
 tribute to Caesar?" and He had said, 
 "Render to Caesar the things that are 
 
 iLuke XXIII, 2. 
 
TIME-SERVING 81 
 
 Caesar % and to God the things that are 
 God's." 1 
 
 At these two charges Pilate must have 
 smiled in contempt. He knew what was go- 
 ing on in his province, He knew who were 
 causing disturbance. He knew who were 
 ill-affected to the sway of Rome. And to as- 
 sert that here was a man, who, unknown 
 to the Procurator, was sowing the seeds of 
 rebellion, was to offer an insult to the 
 thoroughness of that officer's administra- 
 tion. 
 
 Their third charge, however, was a 
 masterpiece of their double-dealing crafti- 
 ness: "He says that he is Christ the 
 King." Christ did claim to be the Messiah, 
 the King of Israel ; and though Pilate would 
 not listen to the charge of blasphemy, under 
 which they had condemned Christ, he must 
 heed an accusation of a claim to kingship. 
 Yet, in the sense in which they made the 
 charge, it was another lie. Why, when they 
 would have taken Him by force and made 
 Him king, He had fled away into the 
 mountain alone. 2 But they were right in 
 
 iMatt. XXII, 17-21. 
 2 Cf . John VI, 15. 
 
82 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 thinking that Pilate must notice this accusa- 
 tion. He would not discuss the matter 
 with them ; but the prisoner he would inter- 
 rogate. " Pilate therefore went into the 
 hall and called Jesus.'' 1 Into that hall 
 Christ went — and the judge and the pris- 
 oner stood face to face alone ! 
 
 That scene was like an anticipation of the 
 judgment at the end of time. The accused 
 and the judge seemed to have changed 
 places. For, as Pilate looked into the face 
 of the Christ, as he felt the calm, deep gaze 
 of the prisoner bore its way into his very 
 soul, a feeling of awe came over him; the 
 figures of his guards seemed to vanish; the 
 trappings of his all but royal pomp seemed 
 to fall away; and he stood in the nakedness 
 of his soul before a mightier spirit. The 
 great one of this world seemed so small in 
 the presence of that pale, majestic Man who 
 stood before him and gazed into his heart's 
 depths. 
 
 "Art thou the King of the Jews?" said 
 Pilate. "Sayest thou this of thyself, or 
 have others told it thee of me?" replied the 
 Master. "Am I a Jew?" curtly the Gov- 
 
 i John XVIII, 33. 
 
TIME-SERVING 83 
 
 ernor spoke; "What hast thou done?" A 
 King? Yes, Christ was a king; but His 
 kingdom was not of this world. "My king- 
 dom is not of this world." "Art thou a 
 king then?" "Thou sayest it. For this 
 was I born, and for this came I into the 
 world that I might give testimony to the 
 truth." The king of truth, of holiness, of 
 love! "A king of truth?" mused Pilate: 
 "What is truth?" 1 Though he did not 
 wait for the answer, he made up his mind 
 that he must save this Man of men. And, 
 as he went out to the Jews, a silence fell 
 upon the boisterous throng ; and Pilate said 
 in a clear, cold voice: "I find no cause in 
 him." 2 
 
 Did he release the prisoner? That was 
 the next step to take after the declaration 
 of His innocence. Release Him! Ah! the 
 time-server was beginning the series of 
 compromises that would bring him to dis- 
 aster. 
 
 The crowd heard in silence the words of 
 the Procurator. Then, after a moment of 
 stupefied wonder, their angry hatred broke 
 
 1 John XVIII, 33-38. 
 
 2 John XVIII, 38. 
 
84 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 forth in fresh cries and complaints and half- 
 veiled threats. "He stirreth up the people 
 teaching throughout all Judea, beginning 
 from Galilee to this place/ ' * 
 
 Now, time-server! Galilee? Here at 
 last was light in the darkness : here was an 
 easy way for Pilate to shift all responsibil- 
 ity from himself in this matter. Galilee! 
 That was the portion of the country where 
 Rome allowed Herod to play the king. 
 Pilate would send Christ to Herod; and, 
 whilst freeing himself from the necessity of 
 an unpopular verdict in favor of the ac- 
 cused, or from the crime of participating 
 in the perversion of justice against Him, he 
 would appeal to the vanity of the Idumean 
 by this mark of honor. So, "he sent him 
 away to Herod, who was also himself at 
 Jerusalem in those days." 2 And Pilate 
 watched with relief the departure of the 
 cortege, as it started out on its way to 
 Herod's palace, and he returned to his own 
 quarters with a sigh of gratification. 
 
 But the Governor 's peace was short-lived. 
 After mocking the prisoner, Herod sent 
 
 iLuke XXIII, 5. 
 s Luke XXIII, 7. 
 
TIME-SEKVING 85 
 
 Him back to Pilate. The latter, notified 
 by his soldiers of the return of the mob that 
 clamored at his gates, went out again to 
 them and to the judgment which he was 
 forced to face. Why did he hesitate? 
 Why, with the might of Eome at his back, 
 did he not dare to do justice in the case of 
 one unjustly accused? Why did not his 
 honest vision of right, as he had looked upon 
 the nameless majesty of the prisoner, nerve 
 him to act up to the conviction which had 
 been forced into his very soul ? The answer 
 is — time-serving. 
 
 Pilate greeted the priests and people with 
 the words: "I find no cause in this man. 
 . . . No, nor Herod neither. For I sent you 
 to him, and behold nothing worthy of death 
 is done to him. ' ' * Once more, a bold state- 
 ment of the truth; but then the vacillation 
 of the time-server again came to the front, 
 as he temporized with an angry and insist- 
 ent foe. "But you have a custom that I 
 should release one unto you at the pasch": 2 
 "Whom will you that I release to you, 
 Barabbas, or Jesus that is called Christ ?" 3 
 
 iLuke XXIII, 14, 15. s Matt. XXVII, 17. 
 
 2 John XVIII, 39. 
 
86 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 Now, Barabbas was a robber and a 
 murderer. 1 
 
 That was Pilate's game — by limiting their 
 choice, to force them to choose Christ for 
 freedom. The spirit of time-serving was 
 leading him where it always leads its vic- 
 tims, to compromises, which in turn pave 
 the way for complete dereliction of duty. 
 He was losing ground before the violence of 
 the priests and people, whilst they were 
 gaining more strength and more confident 
 power as the conflict proceeded. The night 
 before, the Sanhedrists had been practically 
 alone against the Christ; they were so no 
 longer. Before it had been only the priests ; 
 now it was priests and people. Before, the 
 mob had been respectful, if not actually sub- 
 servient and cringing; now they were 
 haughty and defiant. A strong, decisive 
 course of action on Pilate 's part would have 
 crushed their uprising at the outset; his 
 legionaries would have scattered the rioters, 
 as the wind scatters the chaff: now that 
 Pilate had temporized, he could no more 
 stop the stream of their hate-swollen wrath 
 than a barrier of straw could stem the 
 
 iCf. John XVIII, 40; Mark XV, 7. 
 
TIME-SERVING 87 
 
 mountain torrent. Crush evil at the begin- 
 ning or it will crush you ! That is the lesson 
 which Pilate's time-serving policy teaches 
 all of us. God grant that we may learn the 
 lesson and never forget it! 
 
 "Whom will you that I release to you, 
 Barabbas, or Jesus that is called Christ V 1 1 
 Which would they choose? The innocent 
 or the guilty? The upright or the repro- 
 bate ? the great Son of God and the humble 
 Son of man or the condemned outlaw and 
 sentenced murderer? There was no room 
 for choice ; and Pilate meant it so. Yet, at 
 the instigation of the false-hearted leaders, 
 the whole people cried out: " Release unto 
 us Barabbas! Away with this man! 2 
 Crucify Him!" 3 Crucify Him! Three 
 times Pilate spoke to them, desiring to re- 
 lease Christ; three times he urged that he 
 found no cause in Him : but their victorious 
 hate would not reason, and it hurled at him 
 the shrieking demand, "Let him be cruci- 
 fied!" 4 The time-server had been forced 
 
 iMatt. XXVII, 17. 
 
 2 Luke XXIII, 18. 
 
 3 Luke XXIII, 21. 
 
 4 Matt. XXVII, 22, 23. 
 
88 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 back another step ; he had lost another fight 
 in the contest unto death. 
 
 This sad scene has been reenacted many 
 a time as the years have gone by. Over and 
 over again Christ has "come unto his own 
 and his own received him not." Over and 
 over again the same struggle has been 
 fought in the human heart. In the souls of 
 men conscience, 1 like another Pilate, has sat 
 upon the throne, the representative, not of 
 the highest earthly power, but of the great 
 God Himself. Before that throne the surg- 
 ing mob of evil passions has gathered in a 
 fury as unchecked as that of the Jews. 
 Fickle conscience has asked them which they 
 would have, Barabbas or Christ — a vile 
 pleasure, a sinful gain, a degrading honor 
 or God's law and God's love. With insane 
 insistence these passions have shrilled, 
 "Not this man, but Barabbas! Away with 
 this man ! Crucify him ! ' ' and faithless con- 
 science has given way before their wild at- 
 
 i Obviously "conscience" is used in its wider and more gen- 
 eral sense, as in the expressions, "purity of conscience," "de- 
 filement of conscience." It thus refers not only to the intel- 
 lect, with its practical dictate about right and wrong, but 
 also, and especially, to the will, with its power of choosing 
 or rejecting good and evil. 
 
TIME-SERVING 89 
 
 tack. But had that same beaten, defiled 
 conscience shown strength and decision in 
 the beginning of the struggle, those passions 
 would not have gained the impetuous force 
 that was all but resistless ; had it at the out- 
 set crushed those passions with a firm, un- 
 merciful hand, the story of the repetition of 
 Christ's rejection would not have had to be 
 recorded in the annals of God's book of 
 judgment. 
 
 After the failure of his artifice for 
 Christ's liberation Pilate called for water, 
 and going up to the judgment-seat he 
 washed his hands in the sight of all, saying : 
 "I am innocent of the blood of this just man. 
 Look you to it." * Water might wash his 
 hands ; self-deception might soothe his heart 
 into the counterfeit peace of having hon- 
 estly done his duty: but water could not 
 cleanse the guilt of blood from his black- 
 ened soul, nor could the false peace forever 
 keep the nightmare of crime from the depths 
 of outraged sincerity. Pilate's time-serv- 
 ing had led him to the point where Christ, 
 though innocent, was doomed. For, though 
 not yet condemned, doomed He was, when 
 
 i Matt. XXVII, 24. 
 
90 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 the hoarse shout rang through the arches of 
 the palace hall : ' ' His blood be upon us and 
 upon our children." * 
 
 But stay! another expedient might yet 
 win the day. "I find no cause of death in 
 him: I will chastise him therefore, and let 
 him go." 2 Here was another horror of in- 
 justice brought forth from the Governor's 
 shifting policy. "I find no cause in him: 
 therefore I will chastise him." It was an- 
 other concession to the mob, a tempting 
 morsel thrown before a maddened, blood- 
 thirsty beast. Besides, Pilate would hu- 
 miliate Christ by this most abasing punish- 
 ment, thus (so he hoped) satisfying the 
 scorn and hatred of the Jews; and at the 
 same time he would reduce the Victim to 
 such a state of forlorn misery that the people 
 would be appeased and let Him go. 
 
 So, he gave Christ to the soldiers to be 
 scourged. And they scourged Him and 
 crowned Him with thorns; and then at 
 Pilate's order they brought the bleeding and 
 broken wreck of humanity before him. 
 Tottering and fainting the tortured, out- 
 
 i Matt. XXVII, 25. 
 2 Luke XXIII, 22. 
 
TIME-SERVING 91 
 
 raged Master came again before the Gov- 
 ernor. Pilate was not the man to be easily 
 disturbed by the sight of blood or wounds. 
 He was a soldier, and time and time again 
 he must have gazed upon the carnage of the 
 battle-field: he had seen the games and the 
 fights of the arena where men were butch- 
 ered "to make a Roman holiday.' 7 But he 
 could not gaze unmoved upon the mangled 
 Christ. To the honor of his manhood he 
 thought that no one could look upon this 
 lacerated Man and ask for more revenge. 
 Accordingly he advanced to the portico that 
 gave out upon the sea of faces, and Christ 
 stumbled on after him, supported by the 
 soldiers. The outcries of the people ceased ; 
 for they saw that Pilate would speak with 
 them. * 'Behold I bring him forth unto you, 
 that you may know that I find no cause in 
 him. " x Then he stood aside, brought 
 Christ to the front of the platform and 
 pointed Him out to them with the words, 
 "Behold the Man!" 2 
 
 Yet, even as he spoke, their roar of hate 
 broke forth like the deep-toned bellow of 
 
 iJohn XIX, 4. 
 2 John XIX, 5. 
 
92 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 the tempest : ' ' Crucify him, crucify him l" 1 
 And Pilate saw what a fool he had been. 
 He had sunk to the folly of attempting to 
 conciliate fiends: he had stretched justice 
 beyond the snapping point : he had lowered 
 his manhood to plead with unreasoning 
 obstinacy. And the result of his weakness 
 and vacillation and time-serving — what 
 was it? The mad cry, " Crucify him!" 
 Stung to red-hot wrath, he said to them: 
 ' ' Take him you and crucify him ; for I find 
 no cause in him": 2 "do you who have the 
 hate of devils and who declare that he is 
 guilty take him and crucify him, if you have 
 the power. But you have not the power; 
 and you would force me, who have the 
 power, to bow to your will and to violate 
 justice by crucifying a man who is innocent : 
 I find no cause in him." In anger, sharp 
 and hot as the Governor's, they shrieked 
 back: "We have a law, and according to 
 the law he ought to die, because he made 
 himself the Son of God." 3 
 
 The Son of God! The words came to 
 
 i John XIX, 6. 
 
 2 Id. ib. 
 
 3 Id. ib., v. 7. 
 
TIME-SERVING 93 
 
 Pilate like "a bolt from the blue." The 
 Son of God! "When Pilate therefore had 
 heard this saying, he feared the more." 1 
 He had feared to condemn an innocent man : 
 now he feared that he might be condemning 
 one who was more than man. The Son of 
 God? Pilate must ask the question which 
 was trembling on his lips. So, from the 
 tribune on which they stood he again led 
 Jesus within the hall and said to Him: 
 "Whence art thou 1 ?" 2 It was no longer 
 "What hast thou done?" but "Whence art 
 thou?" The Governor leaned forward, his 
 heart throbbing with excitement, his eyes 
 staring in the intensity of the gaze riveted 
 upon the prisoner. "But Jesus gave him 
 no answer. ' ' 3 Terror and irritation turned 
 Pilate's anxiety into threats. "Speakest 
 thou not to me? Knowest thou not that I 
 have power to crucify thee, and I have 
 power to release thee ? " 4 But threats could 
 not break the strong spirit of the Christ. 
 He looked Pilate full in the face and said: 
 "Thou shouldst have no power against me 
 
 iJohn XIX, v. 8. 
 
 2 Id. ib., v. 9. 
 
 3 Id. ib., v. 9. 
 *Id. ib., v. 10. 
 
94 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 unless it were given thee from above." 1 
 No; Christ did not flinch; He did not fall 
 back before the might of Rome's representa- 
 tive. He gave Pilate clearly to understand, 
 that, should he prove recreant to his duty, he 
 would be answerable for his abuse of power 
 to the God of all. And, shrinking from the 
 consequences which would come upon him, 
 Pilate finally made up his mind to release 
 this prisoner who might be more than man. 
 
 With his secret written on his face he 
 went out to the people. They read that 
 secret ere his lips had uttered it, and they 
 launched the last bolt of their hate and 
 craft. People as well as priests thundered 
 at him : "If thou release this man, thou art 
 not Caesar's friend. For whosoever maketh 
 himself a king, speaketh against Caesar." 2 
 
 That ended the struggle. Before the be- 
 wildered mind of Pilate rose the form of the 
 master of Rome, the ambitious, pitiless 
 Tiberius. Pilate could see these devilish 
 Jews bending the servile knee before the 
 august majesty of the Emperor and hissing 
 into his ear the information that his trusted 
 
 Uohn XIX, v. 11. 
 2 Id. ib., v. 12. 
 
TIME-SERVING 95 
 
 governor of Judea allowed an upstart to 
 play the king with impunity. He saw the 
 frown on the Emperor's brow; he heard the 
 sharp words that spoke of deposition and 
 death for the faithless minister; and, as 
 imagination hurried on upon fearful wings, 
 he could feel the stroke of the sword — and 
 after that, the darkness. No; not that! 
 For fear of Caesar and to please the people 
 he would sacrifice the Christ. Pilate's per- 
 sonal interests must not be jeopardized for 
 a Utopian ideal. The time-server had lost 
 the fight: naught remained but the official 
 pronouncement of sentence. 
 
 There is the story of time-serving: there 
 is the abyss to which it led, and to which it 
 leads. The tiger shout of the Jews, "Away 
 with him! Crucify him!" was the cry of 
 sin, demanding the death of Jesus ; and ever 
 since then that cry has rung down the cen- 
 turies. Heaven help us ! the clamor of our 
 own evil deeds swelled the roar of hate 
 against the Savior. In our lives and in the 
 lives of others the spirit of time-serving has 
 repeatedly brought about the triumph of 
 wrong against the Christ. 
 
 As we see what it has directly caused or 
 
96 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 indirectly led to, let us fortify our souls 
 against its fell influence; let us keep our- 
 selves, and others whom we can affect, free 
 from its baneful blight. On all sides we find 
 the spirit of time-serving, either rampant 
 in unblushing shamelessness or concealed 
 under fair-seeming forms. 
 
 The influence of this evil genius in the 
 realm of politics need hardly be referred to. 
 So often have men witnessed the desire of 
 personal profit or of party gain triumph 
 over public good or national interests; so 
 often have they beheld welfare of country 
 crowded out of the place of first considera- 
 tion, that they have become almost callous 
 and look for such things almost as a matter 
 of course. If, in public life and in commer- 
 cial relations, a man is big enough to put 
 time-serving behind him, he is considered 
 not only an honest man, but almost a hero. 
 God be praised! in the struggle for liberty, 
 which was so lately crowned with a victori- 
 ous peace, there were many who measured 
 up to the standards of honest greatness and 
 looked at things in their true perspective. 
 But, even then alas ! there were not wanting 
 those who thought so much of self and so 
 
TIME-SERVING 97 
 
 little of country and of God, that they could 
 batten like vultures on the carnage of war 
 and pile their treasure heaps high with 
 profits, wrung from the need of the nation 
 and the distress of mankind. With such, it 
 was not only duplicity; it was self-centred 
 time-serving. 
 
 But, without dwelling on this horrible 
 perversion of decency and patriotism, we 
 may profitably refer in passing to another 
 phase of this same wretched spirit — I mean, 
 the placing of the State on the throne of 
 the Deity. Pilate did that. The Master's 
 motto was: " Render therefore to Caesar 
 the things that are Caesar's, and to God the 
 things that are God's." But Pilate, in his 
 love of self, would give unto Caesar even the 
 things that belonged to God. 
 
 And there are many Pilates today. How 
 many so exalt the State that they make it 
 the source of all rights and the fountain- 
 head of all justice! Property rights'? 
 They come from the State. Marriage 1 It 
 is a civic institution and subject to the com- 
 plete control of civic authority. Life it- 
 self? Not only the forfeited life of the 
 criminal homicide and the traitor, but the 
 
98 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 life of little innocents, who may be unable 
 to advance the community's material inter- 
 ests, and the life of the helpless and useless 
 aged or of incurable sufferers — all these are 
 considered to be within the province of State 
 authority, to be snuffed out by murder, 
 masked under the fair-sounding term of 
 "euthanasia," Such things may appear 
 profitable, if one looks through the short- 
 sighted glasses of temporal prosperity ; and 
 the material advantages may be a motive for 
 the time-server. But the same standard 
 would justify Pilate's perversion of justice; 
 for he too, whilst giving to Csesar the things 
 that were God's, derived temporal and ma- 
 terial advantage from the murder of the 
 God-Man. 
 
 We do owe much to the State — call it our 
 country, if you will. We owe it obedience 
 to its just laws. We owe it loyalty in its de- 
 mands upon our service, whether in labor or 
 money or life itself. Yes, we owe it the 
 deepest and sincerest patriotism. And we 
 owe all this, because we must give to God the 
 things that are His. It is God's right that 
 we give all this to our loved land. 
 
 How well Catholics have measured up to 
 
TIME-SERVING 99 
 
 these calls upon their patriotism is recorded 
 on the pages of unbiased history from the 
 birth of the republic to the present time. 
 During the days of the revolutionary strug- 
 gle, our first war, Catholics deserved the 
 praise which was given them by the Father 
 of his Country. And in the war just ended, 
 whilst we numbered hardly one-fifth of the 
 population of the country, nearly one-half 
 of America's fighting men on land and sea 
 were Catholics ; nearly one-half of the little 
 white crosses over the graves beyond the 
 ocean keep guard over the mortal, and may- 
 be mangled, remains of the sons of Mother 
 Church. 
 
 Without a doubt, we know what we owe 
 our country — and thank God! we give it. 
 But we also know what we do not owe to 
 any State ; and in very love for our land let 
 us see to it, that we do not render such things 
 as would cripple us and ruin it. We do not 
 owe subservience to ruthless violation of 
 rights guaranteed by the Constitution. We 
 do not owe servile subjection to measures 
 which, without warrant, try to curb the 
 inalienable liberty of free-born men. We 
 do not owe supine acquiescence to the effort 
 
100 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 to foist upon an unthinking multitude an 
 autocracy of education, which, to the gradual 
 extinction of liberty and justice, would ar- 
 rogate to itself the iron-clad regulation of 
 all education according to the whims of an 
 endowed bureaucracy. To hug the phan- 
 tom of security, when attempts are being 
 made to outlaw the Catholic school-system, 
 which has been built upon the foundation 
 of abnegation and cemented with the tears 
 and blood of sacrifice; to refuse to defend 
 this bulwark of Catholic life; nay, to lift 
 the eyebrow of scornful condemnation to- 
 wards those who are alive to the real needs 
 of the day, and to class them with disturbers 
 of the calm peace of ignoble inactivity — 
 what is it all, but the cowardice of the time- 
 server and the weakness of another Pilate % 
 And in this connection, a merited tribute 
 of condemnation may well be paid to another 
 class of educational time-servers. There 
 are those who expose the growing youth of 
 the country (not merely the infants, but 
 those in secondary and higher courses) to 
 the danger of the poisonous atmosphere of 
 irreligious or infidel Colleges and Universi- 
 ties, in the smug assurance that all will be 
 
TIME-SERVING 101 
 
 well and that their sons and daughters will 
 profit by the social advantages which they 
 will find as they rub elbows with the scions 
 of millionaires and potentates. The fallacy 
 of their hopes need not detain us ; the prick- 
 ing of the empty bubble of sordid ambitions 
 need not distress us. But, even if the hopes 
 were realized by the grasping of social 
 emoluments not otherwise to be obtained; 
 even if the vaulting schemes were crowned 
 with golden fruition — what of the cost? 
 Indifference with regard to the faith, if not 
 its entire extinction; loss of the stainless 
 delicacy of untainted virtue ; the lowering of 
 the standards for the conduct of life — what 
 of these? If these resulted but once in a 
 thousand times, who but the veriest fool or 
 the most hardened time-server would dare 
 to take the risk, if he visioned the Passion 
 of Jesus Christ % And if the proportion of 
 utter ruin and complete failure is so high 
 as to stagger the thoughtful-minded (and it 
 is), how will they dare to face an angry 
 Judge and render an account of the souls 
 of those whom they themselves, with a smile 
 on their lips, have sent to their death? 
 Without doubt, it is a sorry subject, this 
 
102 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 following out of the ravages of the spirit 
 of time-serving; but at least it may put us 
 on our guard and arouse us to stand fast 
 for God and good. If we trace this same 
 spirit of time-serving in the more ordinary 
 details of daily life and in the minutiae of 
 common happenings, again we see its devas- 
 tating work in the effects of weak human re- 
 spect. 
 
 For instance, the time for Mass may sum- 
 mon us to the temple of God to take part 
 in the offering of the tremendous sacrifice 
 of the Body and Blood of the Victim of the 
 world upon the unbloody Calvary of the al- 
 tar — and some friends drop in with an in- 
 vitation to an outing. In such a case, have 
 we ever through fear of appearing narrow- 
 minded or unappreciative repressed any 
 mention of where our duty called — and 
 turned our backs on God? Had the sum- 
 mons of the church bell called us to a busi- 
 ness engagement which would have brought 
 us golden profit, we would have given no 
 second thought to any claim of courtesy, 
 but would promptly have told our friends 
 that we could not go with them; but — 
 it is only God who calls, and God does 
 
TIME-SERVING 103 
 
 ask such hard things! Again, have we 
 ever on a Friday sat down to table with 
 non-Catholic friends, who knew quite 
 well that we were Catholics and knew 
 just as well what our Church demanded 
 of us? If then meat was served to us, 
 have we said to ourselves, that we could 
 not bear to embarrass our hosts — and have 
 we therefore quietly spurned the command 
 of God's Church, prescribing that we offer 
 the little penance of abstinence in memory 
 of Him who died for us? If the viands 
 were poisoned and we knew it, we need not, 
 of course, raise an outcry, especially if the 
 poison were ignorantly or innocently put 
 before us ; but would we hesitate about leav- 
 ing untouched what would mean death to 
 us? But — it is only a command of the 
 Church, and therefore only a command of 
 God ! Why, the mean weakness goes to the 
 extent of countenancing, at least by obse- 
 quious following, styles of dress and forms 
 of amusement which would be more in place 
 in the gaiety of pagan unrestraint and 
 heathen luxury, than in the lives of those 
 whose standard is the cross and whose Savior 
 is the Crucified: and it does it, not unfre- 
 
104 THE UNDYING TEAGEDY 
 
 quently, because not to do so would mean 
 to be left behind in the procession of fashion 
 and to be labeled as hopelessly out-of-date ! 
 
 It is the selfish meanness, the arrogant 
 self-centredness, the miserable shifting, the 
 execrable time-serving of Pontius Pilate, 
 that is thus lived again in human lives and 
 brings to naught the splendid atonement of 
 the Christ. 
 
 Is greatness of soul dead? Is the fire of 
 heart which can flame up into burning hero- 
 ism a thing forgotten or unknown? Shall 
 we stand by the side of Jesus Christ? or 
 by the side of the recreant Procurator of 
 Rome? On one side or the other we must 
 be; for the Master spoke the necessity long 
 ago, when He said: ''He that is not with 
 me is against me." * Oh, to be by the side 
 of the Blessed Lord, though His portion is 
 pain and sorrow, rather than by the side of 
 His foes, though their lot be earthly joy and 
 comfort! "Better one day in thy courts 
 above thousands. I have chosen to be an ab- 
 ject in the house of my God, rather than to 
 dwell in the tabernacles of sinners." 2 
 
 iMatt. XII, 30. 
 2Ps. LXXXIII, 11. 
 
TIME-SERVING 105 
 
 Yes, it is better far; for, even amidst the 
 black clouds of injustice and meanness, the 
 Christ is resplendent with the glory of true 
 manhood, as He is sublime with the majesty 
 of divinity. And as by His sanctifying 
 grace we are sharers of His Godhead, so by 
 the uplifting of His actual grace we can be 
 brave enough to partake of the courage of 
 His superb manhood and to forget little tem- 
 poral emoluments, as we fulfill the demands 
 of duty and hold fast to God's eternal in- 
 terests. 
 
 After all, "no man can serve two mas- 
 ters. . . . You cannot serve God and Mam- 
 mon." 1 Those are the words of Christ. 
 And Paul was in full accord with this holy, 
 though hard, doctrine, when he said: "If 
 I yet pleased men, I should not be the ser- 
 vant of Christ." 2 We cannot serve riches, 
 and be the subjects of God: we cannot be 
 the slaves of lust, and remain the children 
 of our Father in heaven: we cannot cringe 
 before the opinion of our fellow mortals, 
 and hold our heads erect in the sight of the 
 Most High : we cannot be led by the detest- 
 
 i Matt. VI, 24. 
 zGalat. I. 10. 
 
106 THE UNDYING TEAGEDY 
 
 able spirit of time-serving, which places our 
 personal, material advantage ahead of the 
 claims of duty and the rights of God, and 
 still deserve a place by the Christ in His 
 heroic resistance to evil. 
 
 God grant that our part may not be with 
 Pontius Pilate, beaten and disgraced by the 
 enemies of the Master, but with Jesus 
 Christ our Lord, majestic in misfortune, 
 glorious in trial, resplendent in adversity, 
 triumphant in the depths of ignominy! 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 HEROD AND LUST 
 
 "It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother's 
 wife." Mark VI, 18. 
 
 "And Herod seeing Jesus was very glad; for . . . 
 he hoped to see some sign wrought by him. And he 
 questioned him in many words. But he answered him 
 nothing." Luke XXIII, 8, 9. 
 
 "And Herod with his army set him at naught and 
 mocked him, putting on him a white garment. ' ' Luke 
 XXIII, 11. 
 
 In the light of the Passion of our Blessed 
 Lord we are studying the forces of evil 
 which are assailing the souls of men and 
 drawing them away from goodness unto 
 their destruction. Disloyalty, duplicity, 
 time-serving — all these we have considered. 
 They are terrible engines of destruction and 
 they play their hateful part in the unend- 
 ing drama of the world, just as Judas and 
 the Sanhedrim and Pilate contributed to the 
 crushing of the God-Man. 
 
 But there is another fatal agency whose 
 
 107 
 
108 THE UNDYING TKAGEDY 
 
 track down the ages is marked with deso- 
 lation and death. It is probably but too 
 sadly true, that its slaves outnumber the 
 victims of any other enemy of righteous- 
 ness. The dungeons of eternal hell are 
 filled with the broken dupes that it has 
 "cast out into exterior darkness," where 
 there are "weeping and gnashing of 
 teeth"; * and the pathways of this life are 
 strewn with the wrecks that it has made. 
 For, it has degraded the human nature of 
 countless men and women and has dragged 
 them down to a debasement below that of 
 brute beasts. It has crushed manhood and 
 defiled womanhood; it has crowded mad- 
 houses with gibbering fools ; it has disrupted 
 families: it has eaten into the vitals of na- 
 tions and has left them decayed skeletons 
 along the highway of history. And the 
 name of this enemy of God and man is lust. 
 Sometimes it goes its way in secret, and 
 for very shame hides its hideous face from 
 the sight of men, as it casts down to unut- 
 terable depths those who were meant to be 
 the sons and daughters of God — and even 
 then it is deplorable and despicable. Some- 
 
 iMatt. XXV, 30. 
 
' LUST 109 
 
 times it flaunts itself in the light of day, 
 adorned with sensuous splendor ; sometimes 
 it folds the robes of pride about its loath- 
 some form, scoffs at virtuous conduct, tries 
 to justify itself by dragging down to its 
 own level the clean living children of God; 
 nay, sometimes it goes so far as to glory in 
 its own degradation — and then it is almost 
 beyond the reach of God's mercy. 
 
 Truly, a terrible scourge ; but, oh, so wide- 
 spread ! Some of the saints, like St. Jerome 
 and St. Alphonsus Liguori, have said — and 
 heart-breaking experience seems to bear 
 out the truth of their words — that ninety- 
 nine out of every hundred who are damned 
 bring their doom upon themselves by their 
 surrender to this monstrous curse. We 
 have good reason, then, to study this enemy 
 of all that is holy, as it makes its undying 
 attacks upon mankind ; we have solid cause 
 to look at it in its aggression against Christ 
 in His sorrowful Passion. 
 
 Christ stands for ineffable purity, just as 
 He is the embodiment of all perfection. 
 Even His bitterest foes did not dare to be- 
 smirch His fair name by the slightest 
 slander in this matter. They called Him a 
 
110 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 glutton and a wine-bibber ; * they called 
 Him a friend of publicans and sinners, 2 and 
 hinted that He was a worthy comrade of 
 those whom He loved; they called Him a 
 charlatan possessed by the devil ; 3 they 
 called Him a seditious man, 4 a disturber of 
 the peace, 5 a traitor ; 6 they called Him 
 a blasphemer against God. 7 But in the 
 wildest fury of their hatred they never 
 dreamed of assailing His spotless purity; 
 for even their blinded souls could see that 
 such an accusation would defeat itself by 
 its glaring falseness. 
 
 Purity was the apple of His eye ; and His 
 special affection was always for the pure. 
 Born of a Virgin Mother, Christ ever kept 
 His tenderest love for the innocence of 
 childhood, because it was pure, and for 
 virgins, because they were most like His 
 own beloved spotless Mother. He extolled 
 the excellence of those who would give their 
 whole hearts and the complete sacrifice of 
 
 i Matt. XI, 19. 
 
 2 Id. ib. 
 
 3 Matt. XII, 24; John VIII, 48. 
 
 4 Luke XXIII, 2. 
 
 5 Luke XXIII, 5. 
 e John XIX, 12. 
 
 7 Matt. XXVI, 65. 
 
LUST 111 
 
 body and soul to God, as comparable with 
 the sacredness of the angels. In His mor- 
 tal life the splendor of purity was His ; and 
 through the endless ages of eternity, His 
 closest associates are those who follow the 
 Lamb whithersoever He goeth and sing a 
 new canticle that none others can sing — for 
 they are virgins. 1 
 
 Over against this all-pure God-Man, as 
 He walks the blood-stained way of His Pas- 
 sion, our eyes are turned to the symbol of 
 lustful impurity — to Herod and his court. 
 Years before, Herod, surnamed the Great, 
 had passed away ; but he left behind him an 
 evil brood worthy of their sire. These were 
 Archelaus and Herod Antipas and Philip. 
 It was the second of these, Herod Antipas, 
 who was the Herod of Christ's Passion. He 
 had married the daughter of Aretas, king 
 of the Nabathseans; but notwithstanding 
 this marriage, when on a visit to Rome he 
 had wantoned with his niece Herodias, who 
 was wedded to his own half-brother Philip. 
 So, he married her and took her back to 
 Galilee. The cowed Sanhedrim feared to 
 launch the excommunication, which he 
 
 i Cf. Apoc. XIV, 4. 
 
112 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 would have greeted with a sneer; and 
 Herod and Herodias flaunted their inces- 
 tuous adultery in the eyes of men and held 
 their heads high in pride. 
 
 But there was one who was not crushed 
 by fear of them. John the Baptist dared 
 to reproach Herod openly for his evil deeds 
 and to declare: "It is not lawful for thee 
 to have thy brother's wife." 1 John's 
 brave candor was the beginning of the end 
 for him. Fascinated passion for the shame- 
 less Herodias, whose hatred for John was 
 as sharp and venomous as the tooth of an 
 asp, joined perhaps with the groundless 
 fear that the Baptist would arouse the peo- 
 ple against the ruler's wild ways, rushed 
 Herod into laying hands on the Precursor 
 of the Master; and the fortress of Machse- 
 rus became the prison of him who was 
 "more than a prophet," 2 as it later became 
 the scene of his sacrilegious murder. In 
 very truth, Herod the Great, the monster 
 who massacred the little innocents, had a fit 
 successor in Herod Antipas, who murdered 
 
 iMark VI, 18. 
 2 Luke VII, 26. 
 
LUST 113 
 
 John the Baptist, and who was the typical 
 figure of lustful impurity. 
 
 It was before this Herod Antipas that 
 Jesus Christ was dragged. In the earlier 
 stages of Christ's trial before Pilate, the 
 Procurator had declared, after serious ex- 
 amination of the prisoner, that he found no 
 cause in the accused. The angry shouts of 
 the people had protested against this deci- 
 sion. They shrieked: "He stirreth up the 
 people . . . beginning from Galilee to this 
 place." 1 Then and there, through a rift in 
 the clouds of hate, Pilate glimpsed what 
 looked like a ray of peace and hope. Galilee 
 was in Herod's jurisdiction; and the Gov- 
 ernor trustfully looked to diplomacy to 
 spare him from an uncomfortable necessity, 
 which bristled with difficulties on whatever 
 side he approached it. So, to shift the re- 
 sponsibility to another in this thorny con- 
 troversy, "he sent Jesus away to Herod, 
 who was also himself at Jerusalem in those 
 days." 2 
 
 Away through the city the tumultuous 
 
 iLuke XXIII, 5. 
 2 Luke XXIII, 7. 
 
114 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 procession took its march, until it reached 
 the palace where Herod was staying. Into 
 the hall crowded the leaders and as many of 
 the people as could force an entrance, drag- 
 ging their weary prisoner. 
 
 The gorgeous splendor of Oriental luxury 
 was there. Perhaps the severity of a court 
 room was lacking, since Herod intended to 
 seek his amusement much more than to hold 
 a trial. The light of the sun and the thou- 
 sand-fold glitter of artificial illumination 
 flashed back from polished spear and shin- 
 ing breastplate of the soldiers and officers 
 grouped about. The shimmer and sheen of 
 silks and satins and heavy damask, the 
 gleam of gold and the sparkle of jewels were 
 all around. Reclining on a couch was 
 Herod Antipas, and around him were 
 gathered beauty and wit and power. The 
 strains of sensuous barbaric music died 
 away, as Herod turned his head to look at 
 the stately Man who stood bound before 
 him. 
 
 Was Herodias, "the detestable," 1 there? 
 and the siren Salome 1 It would have been 
 a fitting climax, if they were, as they had 
 
 i So styled by St. Augustine. 
 
LUST 115 
 
 been present on that other occasion when 
 Herod's court was gathered in revelry to 
 celebrate the birthday of the Idumean king. 
 On that day, within the hall in Machse- 
 rus, mirth and jest ran high and minstrel 
 songs echoed throughout the marble ban- 
 quet-room. Loud laughter and soft whis- 
 per mingled in pleasure's quest; melting 
 eyes and flushed faces gleamed beneath the 
 twinkling candles. And amid the throb- 
 bing of drums and the blare of horns and the 
 clashing of cymbals the dancing girl had 
 woven her dance of death. During the 
 drunken orgy, which the feast had become, 
 Herod, again taken by his lustful senses, 
 had sworn to the panting beauty that she 
 should have whatever she asked, though it 
 were the half of his kingdom. A moment of 
 consultation with her tiger-hearted mother — 
 and then: "I will that forthwith thou give 
 me in a dish the head of John the Bap- 
 tist." * A word of command : a short delay, 
 filled with questioning apprehension and 
 unnamed dread: and into the banquet-hall 
 was brought a dish holding the bleed- 
 ing head of Christ's Precursor — and the 
 
 iMark VI, 25. 
 
116 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 ghastly gift was presented to the damsel, 
 who bore it to her mother. 
 
 Did this scene of blood come back to 
 Herod on this day, as he reclined in soft 
 sensuonsness in his palace in Jerusalem? 
 He had heard before of the marvelous works 
 of Christ; and, as in undying memory his 
 thoughts reverted to the murdered Baptist, 
 he had imagined that Christ must be John 
 come back to life. Was the vision of his 
 crime before him now? Unless indeed lust 
 had killed even remorse within him, as it 
 can and does when it goes to the length of 
 proud self -justification, perhaps back of the 
 majestic form of the Christ may have 
 loomed the figure of him who was but a 
 voice crying in the wilderness to prepare 
 the way for a greater than himself. 
 
 Christ before Herod ! It was a gorgeous 
 sight, that hall with its adornment and its 
 gathering ; but it was not true splendor. It 
 was a glorious spectacle of beauty; but it 
 was not real. It was the glittering cover- 
 ing of filth. That palace court was the 
 shrine of proud lust, and Herod the king 
 was the wretched personification of self- 
 satisfied impurity. 
 
LUST 117 
 
 Christ before Herod! "Herod seeing 
 Jesus was very glad; for he was desirous 
 of a long time to see him, because he had 
 heard many things of him, and hoped to see 
 some sign wrought by him. ' ' 1 His desire 
 was not founded upon reverence or longing 
 for truth or yearning for enlightenment. 
 He greeted Christ as he would have wel- 
 comed some performer, who might while 
 away the tedium of a long hour ; he received 
 Jesus as if the Son of God had been a sen- 
 sational wonder worker, who might amuse 
 a sated, jaded, profligate court by some 
 startling feat of magic or some marvel of 
 jugglery. Was not this world given for the 
 enjoyment of each fleeting moment? Was 
 not the most serious occupation of humans 
 to invent new ways of " having a good time" 
 and cheating tedium of its victory? 
 
 Christ before Herod ! The corrupted and 
 corrupting spirit of the ruler and his court 
 was like a stench in the nostrils to the all- 
 pure Master. He looked beneath the smil- 
 ing welcome of Herod's lust-marked face, 
 back of the extravagant splendor of the prof- 
 ligate 's sensuous companions and luxurious 
 
 i Luke XXIII, 8. 
 
118 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 surroundings; and He read the horrible 
 desolation of souls that were gladly feeding 
 upon "the husks of swine." Christ was 
 face to face with proud lust — and He de- 
 spised it. 
 
 And He showed His scorn by His con- 
 temptuous silence; for, though Herod ques- 
 tioned Him in many words, "he answered 
 him nothing." 1 Oh, that awful silence of 
 the scornful Christ! The Master who had 
 stood over the woman taken in adultery, 
 who had read her sorrow as she crouched 
 in heart-broken penitence at His feet, who 
 had washed away her guilt and had spoken 
 the words of comfort, "Go, and now sin no 
 more"; 2 the Master who had lifted up the 
 fallen sinner of Magdala to the intimacy of 
 companionship and the honor of a place 
 beside His stainless Mother at the foot of 
 His blood-drenched cross; the Master who 
 had spoken to the crafty Annas and the 
 hypocritical Caiaphas and the shifting 
 Pilate — would not speak one word be- 
 fore the proud lust of that gathering 
 in Herod's court. Oh, the blistering scorn, 
 
 i Luke XXIII, 9. 
 2 John VIII, 11. 
 
LUST 119 
 
 the withering contempt of Christ, as 
 His silence told more piercingly than thun- 
 dering words how much He despised it all ! 
 That is the worst punishment of a sinful 
 soul, steeped in lust — that its conscience 
 should be dead, aye, and buried in a defile- 
 ment worse than the corruption of the 
 grave. 
 
 Before the scorn of Christ's silent con- 
 tempt Herod's heart was hot with furious 
 anger ; yet he and his soldiers and courtiers 
 would not admit that they felt the sting of 
 the Nazarene's reproach. So, whilst "the 
 chief priests and scribes stood by earnestly 
 accusing" Jesus, " Herod and his army set 
 him at naught and mocked him." 1 This 
 man a prophet*? This man a criminal? 
 "Why, He had not nobility enough to be a 
 prophet, nor sense enough to be a criminal. 
 He was a fool! He was a simpleton, who 
 had not wit enough to recognize the splendor 
 that was there before His eyes, nor discre- 
 tion enough to grasp the fulness of the honor 
 conferred upon Him in being allowed to 
 amuse the great ones of Galilee and Judea ! 
 So, they clothed the Son of God in the garb 
 
 iLuke XXIII, 10, 11. 
 
120 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 of a fool, and with a mocking sneer turned 
 away to entertainment more congenial : they 
 "put a white garment upon him and sent 
 him back to Pilate." x 
 
 How that mockery hurts! To be hated 
 pains; to be persecuted stings: but some- 
 times the mockery which looks upon one as a 
 fool bites deeper than all else into the heart 
 of a man. All mortal sin does that, even to 
 the Sovereign Lord! It mocks God and 
 makes a fool of Christ. The lives of those 
 who in the hurly-burly of their days have no 
 time for God, who play fast and loose with 
 God's mercy, who dare to prescribe to the 
 Eternal the time and the circumstances and 
 the conditions of their return to Him, mock 
 God as Herod mocked the Christ. And in 
 their heart of hearts such men can have no 
 more peace than Herod had; and he had 
 none. For, as that silent, awful Man was 
 led away, the heart of Herod must have 
 been gripped with the consciousness that 
 the hand of the Almighty was upon him. 
 
 Whilst all sin mocks Christ, the sins of 
 those who give themselves to unrestricted 
 pleasure, even unto the vileness of impure 
 
 iLuke XXIII, 11. 
 
LUST 121 
 
 excesses, are an especially hateful mockery 
 of the Son of God. To look to a crucified 
 Savior as the Eedeemer from evil; to 
 hearken to His words, "If any man will 
 come after me, let him deny himself and take 
 up his cross daily and follow me"; 1 and then 
 to place the be-all and end-all of life in the 
 pursuit of sensual gratification, even unto 
 the disregard of the solemn mandates of the 
 law of nature itself — this surely is a mon- 
 strous mockery of Jesus Christ. 
 
 If the sensualists are right and if pleasure 
 is the god before whom every child of man 
 should worship, then indeed Christ was a 
 fool ; and fools too are His noblest followers ; 
 for, as St. Paul said, "If in this life only we 
 have hope in Christ, we are of all men the 
 most miserable. " 2 If the course of man's 
 existence were to be measured as is that 
 of the brutes, and if during this short span 
 man, like a starving wretch, ought to snatch 
 with greedy hands each morsel of pleasure ; 
 then surely He who faced the awful depths 
 of dishonor and suffering, which the Pas- 
 sion held, was king of fools and monarch of 
 
 iLuke IX, 23. 
 2 I Cor. XV, 19. 
 
122 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 madmen. But if He is God, and if His 
 words and His judgments shall not pass 
 away ; then the reducing of man to the level 
 of the beast, by the horrible preversion of 
 the supreme handiwork of God, is an un- 
 speakable mockery of the Savior. 
 
 Now, the dear Christ is the Wisdom of 
 God and His judgment stands; and that 
 judgment, pealing forth from His condem- 
 nation of the lust of Herod, is that the most 
 delicate works of God amongst mortals are 
 a pure woman and a clean man. The sanc- 
 tifying grace of God with its marvelous ef- 
 fects is the most magnificent achievement 
 of divine omnipotence and love in the human 
 soul; and therefore, purity is not the 
 greatest of the boons sent down from heaven 
 to earth. Yet, whilst purity is not the 
 highest gift of God, in its glorious strength 
 it is at once the most delicate and the sweet- 
 est guerdon from the heavenly mansions of 
 Paradise. 
 
 A pure woman, whether virgin maiden or 
 chaste wife and mother, what a wonderful 
 work of human heroism and divine giving! 
 In the elevation of the Little Maid of Naz- 
 
LUST 123 
 
 areth woman has been lifted up to an emi- 
 nence which calls for the respect and venera- 
 tion of men. She is sacred, whether as the 
 consecrated handmaiden of God in religious 
 life or as the queen of the fireside and the 
 heart of the home. This purity is the crown 
 of her womanhood ; and if she lose it, it is 
 so tragically piteous ! There is a peculiarly 
 fragrant delicacy in the purity of woman; 
 and the attitude of the world towards one 
 who has cast it away is not altogether the 
 spirit of the Pharisee. It is the voice of 
 nature and of nature's God, hating impurity 
 in all, but loathing it in a woman. The very 
 elevation of her dignity makes her fall the 
 more disastrous, if it comes. May she guard 
 that elevated dignity! May she work out 
 her destiny! And it is a blessed destiny; 
 for by her sacred sweetness she is meant in 
 the designs of God to lift the world and to 
 make it a holier, as well as a happier, place 
 to live in. 
 
 Yet, for all that, a strong, pure, clean- 
 living man is an object of deserved rever- 
 ence, even for those who are not brave 
 enough to follow his example in curbing the 
 
124 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 longings of animal nature. And — let it be 
 well noted — for the man there is identically 
 the same standard of personal purity as for 
 the woman, unspotted in her hallowed holi- 
 ness. For, much as a pagan world may 
 prate about liberty and unshackled free- 
 dom, there are not in the sight of God two 
 different standards of purity for man and 
 woman. The man may not with impunity 
 break the law of God which demands clean 
 living any more than may the tender vir- 
 gin. The " sowing one's wild oats" is a 
 sowing which but too often reaps the whirl- 
 wind here in this life and the undying hur- 
 ricane of destruction in the eternity of God's 
 anger. 
 
 All this is the verdict of Christ before 
 Herod. Of a truth, Herod the lustful, who 
 mocked the Christ, was the consummate 
 fool: Christ the all-pure, whose contempt 
 despised and condemned him, was the Lord 
 of wisdom and of unalloyed truth. 
 
 In some later reflections we shall see what 
 the direct expiation of the lust of the world 
 cost our Blessed Savior; but, even without 
 the thought of that, His scorn and hatred for 
 impurity should nerve individual and family 
 
LUST 125 
 
 and nation to preserve unspotted the sacred 
 lily of purity. 
 
 As for our individual selves, we should 
 always remember the sacredness and the 
 dignity of a pure man or woman. God has 
 endowed us with intelligence and will to 
 know and embrace what is in accord with 
 our human nature, as rational and as above 
 the animal composite of the beast. In- 
 dulgence in passion always increases the 
 fierce yearnings of unworthy instincts, and, 
 in the same proportion, cripples our godlike 
 power of self-determination. Besides, to 
 give way to the cravings of lust is to allow 
 the animal to make an abject slave of the 
 man or woman. This is a disgrace to the 
 nature that God has given us. And the deg- 
 radation grows to positive horror, when we 
 recall with St. Paul that we are the temples 
 of the Holy Ghost, 1 whom we should rever- 
 ence in our very flesh ; that we are the mem- 
 bers of Jesus Christ, whom we dishonor by 
 our defections from the straight standard of 
 purity. "Know you not that your bodies 
 are the members of Christ? Shall I then 
 take the members of Christ and make them 
 
 i Cf. I Cor. Ill, 16. 
 
126 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 the members of a harlot? God forbid!" 1 
 Yes, God forbid! 
 
 But we must be on our guard. We should 
 know that here, if anywhere, the wisest 
 courage is the bravery of flight. If all occa- 
 sions of any sin are to be shunned as the 
 approach of the fiend, in this matter of pur- 
 ity our vigilance must be redoubled; the 
 more so, since there are unceasing allure- 
 ments from without to throw fuel upon the 
 white-hot embers that smoulder within us. 
 We live in a world, where but too often 
 purity is measured only by the canons of ex- 
 terior respectability, and is not weighed in 
 the balance of God 's truth. We are walking 
 along the brink of a precipice, where a fool- 
 hardy step may hurl us into abysmal depths. 
 We are guarding a citadel, where there is a 
 hidden traitor waiting to deliver us, bound 
 hand and foot, into the power of the foe 
 lurking without. With no looking for evil 
 we find it. What if we seek it? Without 
 our choice the danger is there. What if we 
 love and court it? If we disregard the 
 prudence of wise caution, the day will come 
 when we shall feel the hot flames of passion 
 
 1 1 Cor. VI, 15. 
 
LUST 127 
 
 leap and surge about us like fiery blasts from 
 the open mouth of hell. And if that day 
 comes, God help us, if we have not learned to 
 value our purity more than our lives! 
 
 But unfortunately, caution is called 
 squeamishness ; regard for decency is 
 sneered at as prudery; self-control is mis- 
 named narrow-mindedness. In the eyes of 
 a sensual world Herod was the paragon of 
 broad-minded tolerance; Jesus Christ, the 
 exemplar of inconsiderate self -repression ! 
 And so, " wisdom" (the false wisdom of a 
 godless world) "is justified by her chil- 
 dren." 1 
 
 There is no getting away from the fact, 
 that occasions we must avoid — or we shall 
 perish. One of the most common occa- 
 sions of personal impurity is excess in drink ; 
 and the man or woman who would safe- 
 guard the fair lily of purity must shield it 
 from the hot breath of liquor-incited pas- 
 sion. Yet intemperance has spread like a 
 devastating plague. Not only in disrepu- 
 table dives and noisome saloons of the sub- 
 merged portion of civilized peoples has the 
 net of death been set, but in the dazzling 
 
 iMatt. XI, 19. 
 
128 THE UNDYING TKAGEDY 
 
 halls of fashion and refinement. Not only 
 amongst men are intemperance's victims 
 numbered, but amongst women too. And 
 with women, it is not only the foolish girl, 
 boisterously flinging away the delicacy of 
 sweet maidenhood by her promiscuous 
 meeting and unrestrained drinking with 
 half-criminals in low dance-halls, who has 
 found her way to the bottomless pit; her 
 fastidiously nurtured sister has discovered, 
 that, without the fiery stimulant of alcohol, 
 she cannot sparkle in eye and tongue as her 
 fancy urges her to do. 
 
 Yes, excess in drink is the gruesome sis- 
 ter of impurity ; and the sad sight of blasted 
 hopes and ruined modesty and desecrated 
 purity is enough to wring the heart of any 
 true lover of his kind. The present wave of 
 prohibition reform by federal enactment, 
 which, as being an unwarranted violation 
 of individual liberty, many keen-visioned 
 thinkers do not favor, though they unques- 
 tionably do favor temperance for all, and 
 total abstinence for those who either need 
 it for temperance in themselves or who are 
 big-hearted enough to make this sacrifice as 
 an encouragement for the stumbling weak- 
 
LUST 129 
 
 ling — this, be it said, might almost be wel- 
 comed, if it gave promise of lessening the 
 danger of excess in drink and if it thus 
 diminished the peril of the loss of purity. 
 
 Another ambushed foe, ranged against 
 purity, is the senseless following of a pagan 
 fashion. Men will invent and women will 
 adopt forms of dress which make a direct 
 appeal to fleshly instincts. The depraved 
 know this tendency: those who are still 
 clean may follow, without realizing the nat- 
 ural effort of such indecencies. Many a 
 pure woman shows herself in attire — or the 
 lack of it — which almost inevitably arouses 
 in those who have wallowed in the mire un- 
 worthy thoughts and unbecoming desires. 
 Were such thoughts and desires spoken to 
 her, she would blush for shame and cry out 
 in angry indignation. Why, then, should 
 she not cry shame to herself for being the 
 occasion of such thoughts and desires? 
 
 The Apostle's words, "All things are 
 clean to the clean, " * are pregnant with in- 
 spired truth; but the axiom, "To the pure 
 all things are pure," as understood by 
 sensualists, is only a half-truth, and in its 
 
 iTit. I, 15. 
 
130 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 name almost as many crimes have been 
 committed as in the name of liberty. Keep 
 the mind clean? Yes, please God! but, for 
 that very reason, keep away from things 
 which would defile the mind. This last re- 
 mark bears especially on such kinds of read- 
 ing and such forms of amusement, as con- 
 naturally give rise to thoughts which be- 
 smirch. Beware the asp! Unless one 
 keeps the mind clean and the imagination 
 undefiled, it will not be long before sensual- 
 ism goes on even to bodily degradation. 
 
 The impurity which makes a revolting 
 caricature of the " image and likeness of 
 God, "Ms truly worthy of the condemna- 
 tion meted out to it by the silent Christ, as 
 He stood before Herod. But, pernicious as 
 is personal impurity, still more disastrous, 
 if possible, is the lust which sinks its viper 
 fangs into the heart of the family. This 
 domestic impurity has left its slimy trail 
 across the history of a lustful race; it is 
 alive and active for evil today. The Sov- 
 ereign Pontiff, Benedict XV, says: " Every 
 effort is being made to weaken the 
 firmness and indissolubility of the marriage 
 
 i Genesis I, 26. 
 
LUST 131 
 
 bonds and to prevent our youth from com- 
 ing under religious influence. Wickedness 
 goes so far as to endanger the very propaga- 
 tion of the human race, and with infamous 
 vices, to defile the sanctity of matrimonial 
 life by praising shameful practices for the 
 gratification of lust which frustrate the 
 rights of the laws of nature." 1 These 
 words of the Vicar of that Christ who 
 branded with infamy the ltfstf ul Herod, con- 
 demn the passion which would enjoy the 
 privileges of the wedded state, whilst shirk- 
 ing its sacred obligations; they also un- 
 equivocally condemn the passion which has 
 foisted upon the world the monstrous evil of 
 divorce. 
 
 Divorce is a monstrous evil. By the law 
 of nature marriage cannot be dissolved by 
 the mutual consent of the contracting 
 parties — or the relation between man and 
 woman would be reduced to the unspeak- 
 able vileness of promiscuous cohabitation. 
 By the same law of nature the breaking 
 of the bond so as to leave the parties free 
 to enter into new unions is above and beyond 
 
 i Letter of Benedict XV to Padre Matheo Crawley-Boevey, 
 April 27, 1915. 
 
132 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 the power of the civil authority — or na- 
 ture itself, and nature's God, would have 
 opened the door to the frightful abuses 
 which stun all thoughtful and sincere lovers 
 of mankind. Give but the smallest open- 
 ing to passion, and the trickling stream 
 will become the mighty torrent, will sweep 
 away all barriers of restraint, and will rush 
 along resistless and overwhelming. 1 
 
 Our own loved land (God help us !) proves 
 the tragic truth of this sad statement, just 
 as it possesses the unholy distinction of hav- 
 ing the highest proportional divorce rate in 
 the whole wide world. Very recently the 
 latest official Bulletin of the Census Bureau 
 was made public. 2 Its revelations are 
 simply appalling. In less than a quarter of 
 a century, in twenty years, from 1896 to 
 1916, the number of divorces in proportion 
 to the number of marriages was more than 
 doubled! So far did the iniquitous jug- 
 gling with the law of God proceed, that in 
 1916 there was one divorce for every nine 
 marriages. And we call ourselves a God- 
 fearing, religious-minded, Christian people ! 
 
 i Cf. Oath. Encyc. s. v. "Divorce," p. 68. 
 2 March, 1919. 
 
LUST 133 
 
 The truth cannot be blinked. Divorce 
 with subsequent remarriage is legalized 
 impurity. Although there may be many 
 causes which demand separation from an 
 unworthy partner, in the majority of cases 
 the plea for a union with another consort 
 comes from the insatiate longing of the 
 flesh. Passion may cloak its claim under 
 the sanctimonious plea that "marriage with- 
 out the love which should be its soul is a 
 base hypocrisy and an earthly hell"; it may 
 clamor about "the right to live one's life to 
 the full," "the right to personal happiness 
 in truth and sincerity of heart," "the right 
 to escape from unbearable misery and to try 
 again after a ghastly failure." These are 
 but the fallacious sophisms of lust. For, 
 even though love be dead, conscience need 
 not perish; the right to happiness is not 
 without the limits circumscribed by God and 
 His all-holy law; the right to escape from 
 misery does not include the adoption of un- 
 hallowed means. 
 
 Is polygamy wrong? It is to such an 
 extent, that it cannot be allowed except by 
 God alone — and by Him, because His provi- 
 dence could forestall pernicious conse- 
 
134 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 quences, should His wisdom tolerate it. 
 Then, the successive polygamy, which is the 
 result of divorce, is not less against the law 
 of nature. Nay, in a manner, it is worse 
 than the simultaneous polygamy which the 
 refined ( !) abhor, in as much as the lot of 
 the children in the latter case is much better 
 than in the case of the legalized polygamy of 
 divorce. 
 
 The law of nature and the original inten- 
 tion of God as to the union of man and wife 
 were emphasized by our dear Lord, when He 
 brought marriage back to its primitive unity 
 and indissolubility. "Whosoever shall put 
 away his wife and marry another com- 
 mitteth adultery against her. And if the 
 wife shall put away her husband and be 
 married to another she committeth adult- 
 ery": * "What therefore God hath joined 
 together let no man put asunder." 2 
 
 Nay, Christ elevated the natural matri- 
 monial contract between Christians to the 
 dignity of a sacrament which shadows forth 
 His own one and indissoluble union with 
 His Spouse the Church; and as a conse- 
 
 iMark X, 11, 12. 
 2 Matt. XIX, 6. 
 
LUST 135 
 
 quence, during the life of the two parties, 
 consummated Christian marriage can no 
 more be dissolved for the beginning of an- 
 other binding, than Christ's everlasting 
 union with His Beloved Bride can be 
 broken. As Christ and His Spouse are one 
 unto the endless end, so a Christian man 
 and his Christian wife are one until death 
 do them part. 
 
 And if the law of nature and the positive 
 divine law, which stand as ramparts against 
 the encroachments of lustful excesses, bring 
 pain and sorrow to some, what wonder? 
 Law, which looks to the general good, often 
 works hardship to the individual. But 
 there was a deep truth in the words of the 
 hypocrite Caiaphas, who said: "It is 
 expedient . . . that one man should die for 
 the people and that the whole nation perish 
 not." 1 So too, it is right that some in- 
 dividuals should play the martyr's part, in 
 order that the race of men may not wallow 
 in the mire and go down to degradation. 
 
 Besides, in the face of difficulty the help 
 of God is at hand for those who will have it. 
 Prayer and the sacraments are the heaven- 
 
 i John XL 50, 
 
136 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 granted means for fortifying the weakness 
 of nature, especially against the onsets of 
 lust. In the Holy Eucharist "the corn of 
 the elect and the wine springing forth 
 virgins " x are ready for the Church's chil- 
 dren to make them stronger than themselves. 
 And for those who are deprived of this 
 "holy of holies" there is the grace which 
 comes through the channels reserved for 
 such as, through no fault of their own, are 
 not possessed of the fulness of God's sacra- 
 mental assistance. 
 
 But, it may still be urged, in spite of these 
 aids it is hard to abide by the law of the 
 unity and indissolubility of marriage. 
 Hard? Perhaps it is; nay, surely it is at 
 times. But, look at the other side of the 
 picture. If it is not this, it will be the moral 
 degradation of man to the baseness of an 
 instinct-driven brute : it will be the debase- 
 ment of woman to the deplorable state which 
 is hers when paganism, ancient or modern, 
 has worked its will upon her — cast down 
 from the heights of sacredness to the infamy 
 of a toy of lust or a plaything of passion: 
 it will be the crushing of the sweetness of 
 
 iZach. IX, 17. 
 
LUST 137 
 
 childhood to the wretchedness of abandon- 
 ment or the misery of an orphanhood that is 
 not sent from heaven, but is engendered by 
 the archenemy of God and man. 
 
 Moreover, a polluted family means an en- 
 dangered State ; for the fireside of the home 
 is the palladium of the nation. When the 
 women of Rome counted the years, not by 
 the consuls, but by the number of their hus- 
 bands, the mistress of the world entered 
 upon the way that led to the extinction of 
 her greatness. God grant, that our own 
 loved land may read the handwriting on the 
 wall and safeguard her existence before it 
 is too late! In the bottom of my heart I 
 cherish the hope that she will; I cling to 
 the assurance that she will awake before 
 she sleeps in death. We should all hold fast 
 to this confidence ; but meanwhile, our very 
 love for our country should urge us to do 
 whatever we can to stop the ravages of 
 divorce, which is a national plague-spot. 
 
 America owes more to the dear old Church 
 than the thoughtless realize. It is the 
 Church that has stood in the breach against 
 the assaults of divorce, the devilish enemy 
 of the nations, and has held in check the 
 
138 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 fierceness of its advance. Her own children 
 she has guarded from the infernal pest 
 under threat of eternal damnation; and 
 beyond her pale the influence of her battle 
 for the purity of home and country has 
 found its saving way. May our country 
 come to see and acknowledge the immense 
 debt which she owes to Mother Church! 
 
 I trust that this prayer will be answered. 
 And, under the providence of God, which 
 will (I pray) do great things for the world 
 through America, my hope is based upon 
 the gleam of brightness that shines across 
 the blackness of the late world-war. Then 
 our country made the splendid concerted 
 governmental effort to keep her fighting 
 men pure. Religion had always stood be- 
 tween the soldier and his unworthy instincts. 
 But, in present-day indifference, it was a 
 new thing for a nation to do its utmost to 
 second the command of God and to further 
 the longing of every true man and every 
 pure woman of the land, that the boys 
 might come back clean. Some of the men, 
 it is true, did not heed the mandate of God, 
 the desire of loved ones, or the effort of 
 their country : some of them fed themselves 
 
LUST 139 
 
 with "the husks of swine": some of them 
 followed after the profligate Herod and 
 feared not the silent contempt of the angry 
 Christ. But many others were manly men. 
 And all the while, before faithful and un- 
 faithful, the ideal was there, seconded by 
 America. And the ideal was for each of 
 the boys to come back, to press his lips to 
 his mother's lips, to clasp a sister to his 
 manly breast, to hold wife or sweetheart in 
 the embrace of love ; and to know in his in- 
 most soul that he was not less worthy, than 
 he was when he marched away, of the 
 tender affection and the throbbing love of 
 that sweetest masterpiece of God, a good and 
 pure woman. 
 
 Let us conclude. The fight against lust, 
 either covert or proudly scornful, calls for 
 the strength of heroes and heroines; for, 
 the weakling goes under in the fight and 
 grows in feebleness as well as in defilement. 
 The godlike power of free self-determina- 
 tion must be made stronger day by day 
 through the exercise of self-restraint even 
 in lawful things, so that we may show to 
 passion that we are masters in the domain 
 of our own souls. Christian asceticism is 
 
140 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 not the bugaboo of blinded superstition, as 
 the fools of the world have called it; it is 
 the natural means of making safe the glory 
 of our human nature. 
 
 Moreover, besides thus strengthening our 
 wills, we must fly from the occasions of evil 
 as from death itself, and, in the spirit of 
 Christian charity towards God and man, we 
 must put the ban of our disapproval on 
 every attempt to drag down the blessedness 
 of virtue. Let no prurient literature 
 prosper through our spread of it; let no 
 questionable theatrical performance thrive 
 on our patronage; let no fleshly fashion 
 flourish by our adoption of it. And beyond 
 all this, whilst keeping before our souls the 
 ideal of unstained womanhood and clean 
 manhood, let us draw near to God to clasp 
 Him with the arms of loving prayer and to 
 be linked to Him by the hallowed chains of 
 the sacraments. 
 
 Yes, let our lives be pure in our individual 
 selves, in family relations, in civic endeavors 
 and national aspirations. May we stand 
 with the Christ, His friends and com- 
 panions, even though the cost be scorn ; for, 
 His beaming eyes will bless us with a love 
 
LUST 141 
 
 whose value is beyond price ! May we never 
 have part with Herod, the incestuous 
 adulterer, the proud profligate, the lustful 
 libertine ! May we never be stricken by the 
 thunder of the scornful silence of the Christ 
 in the presence of the fool who dared to 
 make a fool of the Savior of mankind! 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE SOLDIERS AND CRUELTY 
 
 "Then therefore Pilate took Jesus and scourged 
 him." John XIX, 1. 
 
 "Then the soldiers of the governor taking Jesus 
 into the hall, gathered together unto him the whole 
 band ; and stripping him, they put a scarlet cloak 
 about him, and platting a crown of thorns, they put 
 it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand. And 
 bowing the knee before him, they mocked him, saying: 
 Hail, king of the Jews. And spitting upon him, they 
 took the reed, and struck his head." Matt. XXVII, 
 27-30. 
 
 "Jesus therefore came forth bearing the crown of 
 thorns and the purple garment. And he saith to 
 them: Behold the Man." John XIX, 5. 
 
 One of the most eloquent speeches ever 
 penned by Shakespeare, the wizard of the 
 human soul, is placed on the lips of Mark 
 Antony. As this zealous partisan of Csesar 
 was standing over the mortal remains of his 
 murdered friend, he told his hearers, whom 
 he was stirring up to the fever heat of re- 
 venge : 
 
 "I only speak right on; 
 I tell you that which you yourselves do know ; 
 142 
 
CRUELTY 143 
 
 Show you sweet Cassar's wounds, poor, poor dumb 
 
 mouths, 
 And bid them speak for me. ' ' x 
 
 Such too has been my part, though not 
 for the purpose of stirring up revenge. It 
 has been my portion to tell the bitterest story 
 ever told; to rehearse the sad, sad scenes 
 of Christ's sorrows ; to show you the wounds 
 of His Sacred Heart, and bid them speak 
 for me and plead for the solace of atoning 
 love to Him. We have looked upon the 
 God-Man writhing in anguish beneath the 
 foul weight of the sins of the world ; we have 
 followed Him before the hypocritical tri- 
 bunal of the Jews and the time-serving judg- 
 ment-seat of the representative of Rome; 
 we have beheld the Wisdom of the Father 
 mocked as a fool by the incestuous adulterer 
 Herod. 
 
 The tortures of the agony in the garden, 
 though reaching to our Lord's body, came 
 from no pains inflicted by His enemies upon 
 His sacred flesh ; and, though the hatred of 
 His foes degenerated into violence in the 
 other scenes that have passed before us, the 
 outrages were chiefly those that struck the 
 
 i Julius Ccesar, Act III, Scene II. 
 
144 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 spirit of the Savior. Now, however, we 
 have reached a point where the pains which 
 afflicted Christ's tender flesh were not only 
 those that flowed over from a desolate soul, 
 not merely those that came from the rude 
 and ruthless dragging from one tribunal to 
 another, but were the direct onslaught of 
 fiendish cruelty against His sacred body. 
 We are to gaze on Christ in the hands of the 
 savagely cruel soldiers. 
 
 With saddened hearts we have also viewed 
 the undying attacks, which down through 
 the ages the forces of evil have been making 
 against God and against His Christ. We 
 have studied the fell, disastrous effects in 
 the lives of men of disloyalty and duplicity 
 and time-serving and lust. But we have 
 not reached the end of the catalogue of evil. 
 There is another force of wickedness, typi- 
 fied by the soldiers in their relentless barbar- 
 ity ; and it is cruelty. 
 
 This cruelty often comes from lust. 
 History proves this. Rome, which has 
 stood not only as an example of human 
 greatness, but as a shining beacon for the 
 nations to warn them from the rocks of de- 
 
CRUELTY 145 
 
 struction — Rome proves it. When lust had 
 broken down the sturdier virtue of earlier 
 days; when it had torn asunder the home 
 by the noisome prevalence of divorce ; when 
 it had enslaved the valor of Roman man- 
 hood to minister to sensuous luxury; then, 
 and not till then, did her children cry out 
 for the struggles of the arena and for the 
 death fights of men, who bled to quench 
 the tiger-thirst for blood in lust-hardened 
 hearts. 
 
 Besides, cruelty may also come from 
 pride, with its insane exaltation of self: it 
 may come from avarice, with its insatiate 
 longing for the material things of a perish- 
 ing earth. In a word, it comes from that 
 undisciplined, unrestrained humanity that 
 sinks down to brutality. 
 
 Whatever its source, cruelty is a veritable 
 beast of prey, hard, relentless, ruthless. 
 What it has done to the world, we shall see 
 presently ; what it did to the suffering Jesus, 
 let us behold as we look on the Christ in His 
 scourging and His crowning with thorns at 
 the hands of the brutal soldiers. 
 
 Were it not for the fact that I have under- 
 
146 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 taken to place before you the various scenes 
 of Christ's Passion and to study with you 
 the deathless attacks of evil against God and 
 good, I should much prefer to pass by the 
 awful incidents of the Scourging and 
 Crowning. For, as the poet says, there are 
 " thoughts that too often lie too deep for 
 tears"; * and if they lie too deep for tears, 
 they surely lie too deep for human words. 
 These scenes were best realized in sad, silent 
 meditation. Yet, in the hope that my words 
 may at least bring you to this prayerful, 
 sorrowful reflection, I shall put the incidents 
 before you. 
 
 Earlier in our considerations we looked on 
 Pilate as he ineffectually struggled to stem 
 the flood of the Jews' hatred and malice 
 against the Christ. We saw the Governor 
 give way step by step before the relentless 
 attack of Sanhedrists and people upon the 
 Man whom he knew to be innocent and whom 
 he had resolved to free from their power. 
 His words spoken in the discomfiture of 
 coming defeat suggested another way to 
 compass his end. "I find no cause in this 
 man in those things wherein you accuse 
 
 l Wordsworth, Intimations of Immortality. 
 
CKUELTY 147 
 
 him . . ." lie had said: "I will chastise 
 him therefore and release him. " * 
 
 He would submit Christ to the igno- 
 minious torture of the scourging, and would, 
 he hoped, satisfy the scorn and hate of the 
 priests and people by this cruel humiliation 
 and by reducing the Victim to so pitiable 
 a state as to glut the fierce anger of the mob 
 by the sight of the prisoner's frightful suf- 
 ferings. St. Augustine 2 is our guarantee 
 for thus reading the intentions of Pilate, 
 and his explanation has found favor with 
 the best commentators of the Sacred Text. 
 It is well to bear this in mind — that Pilate 
 wished this scourging to be so severe, that 
 he might call on anyone who deemed him- 
 self a man to be content and to let the 
 prisoner go. And if the sufferer should die 
 under the torment? Well, Pilate must 
 chance it : he must snatch at this last straw 
 to save himself from the torrent that was 
 bearing him away. 
 
 What was the torture of the scourging? 
 This much is sure, it was one of the most 
 frightful ordeals of suffering ever invented 
 
 iLuke XXIII, 14, 16. 
 2 In Pa. 63 ad vers. 2. 
 
148 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 by man. The whipping and lashing of a 
 human being has always been looked upon, 
 not only as a disgrace, but as a form of most 
 intense pain; and it has gradually been 
 dropped from the punishments of civilized 
 nations, except, perhaps, in the case of those 
 who are considered as little better than 
 brutes. Where it is retained, we shudder at 
 the bare recital of the minute details given 
 as instructions. For instance, The Manual 
 for the Director of the Prisons of one of the 
 nations of modern times that prided itself 
 upon its culture (Kultur) says: " Where 
 the lash is applied the skin should burst at 
 the fifth blow; the following blows enlarge 
 the wound, and at the end of the punishment 
 the whole back is open. Each blow should 
 make a cut a half a centimetre long. ' ' 1 
 
 Among the Cherokee Indians the lash was 
 applied as a punishment; but the number 
 of strokes was limited to one hundred — and 
 this often meant death. The Russian knout 
 (at least the old form) was a whole arsenal 
 of instruments of torture. It could kill 
 with one blow ; but the painful ordeal could 
 be so prolonged as to keep death at arm's 
 
 i Cited by Ollivier, The Passion, p. 282. 
 
CRUELTY 149 
 
 length. The knout was one long thong, 
 which could wrap its hissing, biting length 
 about the victim's body in such fierce em- 
 brace, that it seemed to be drinking savagely 
 of his blood, whilst it tore the skin and cut 
 to the very bone. Long years before, the 
 punishment of scourging had been estab- 
 lished among the Jews, but with a limit. 
 Thirteen strokes on the right shoulder, 
 thirteen strokes on the left shoulder, and 
 thirteen strokes on the breast with the 
 vicious four-thonged lash was the maxi- 
 mum allowed by custom ; since it was neces- 
 sary to keep within the limit prescribed by 
 the law, which said that the number of 
 stripes must " exceed not the number of 
 forty, lest thy brother depart shamefully 
 torn before thy eyes." 1 
 
 But among the Romans scourging was still 
 more terrible. Cicero harangues eloquently 
 on its dreadful pain, when he paints the 
 picture of Sestius beaten with the lictors' 
 rods in the forum of Lilybseum, until he 
 was left for dead on the blood-spattered 
 ground. But, when the lictors' fasces gave 
 place to the scourge of slaves, the suffering 
 
 iDeut. XXV, 3. 
 
150 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 grew to such indescribable intensity, as to 
 draw expressions of pity from those hard 
 old Romans, who looked upon their slaves 
 as mere chattels, less worthy of considera- 
 tion than favorite hounds. 
 
 One form of the Roman scourge was made 
 of cords armed with bits of bone, or of 
 chains with buttons of metal at the ends of 
 the lashes. Another form, the flagellum, 
 was less formidable to the sight ; but its long, 
 sinuous, bare thongs — a multiplied Russian 
 knout — made it worthy of the name given 
 it by the poet Horace, who called it horribile 
 flagellum, the horrible scourge. 
 
 These were the instruments of the Roman 
 scourging. The number of stripes was not 
 fixed by law. The agony of its infliction was 
 so poignantly crazing that the imagination 
 recoils in horror. And it was to the Roman 
 scourging that Pilate condemned the God- 
 Man, as he uttered the words of sentence, 
 which a tradition has preserved : " Go . . . 
 bind his hands; cover his head; and strike 
 carefully and vigorously.' ' 
 
 So, Christ was led to the corner of the 
 Pretorium of the fortress-palace, the 
 Antonia. His garments were torn from 
 
CRUELTY 151 
 
 His body, and He stood there in His naked- 
 ness, a jibe for the cursing on-lookers. 
 There was a low marble column, about a 
 foot and a half high, with a ring in the top. 
 To this He was bound and forced to bend, 
 that the scourge might bite with fiercer 
 sting. A deep breath : a look to heaven : a 
 movement of the lips that may have whis- 
 pered an offering prayer to His Father : and 
 He was ready for the frightful ordeal. 
 
 Pilate seems to have been absent from 
 the scene of torture, though he may have re- 
 mained until the infliction of punishment 
 was begun. His absence gave the Jews ad- 
 ditional opportunity to have messengers 
 urge the strong-armed executioners to do 
 bloody work. As some of the Fathers of the 
 Church have said, the Jews in their cruel 
 hate seemed to be possessed by the devil: 
 and they may have feared that Pilate would 
 prove intractable in the end and would free 
 the prisoner, as he had said. Better that 
 Christ should die under the lash than escape 
 their fury. 
 
 In the midst of a silence full of dread fore- 
 boding, like the calm before the bursting of 
 the tempest, the signal was given, and the 
 
152 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 work of torture began. There was the 
 hiss of the scourges as they swung through 
 the air, the thud as they struck the flesh of 
 Christ and clung there. Blow after blow 
 rained down, insistent, merciless, endless. 
 Quivering shudders passed over the frame 
 of the Victim. There was a voiceless groan 
 from the close-pressed lips, a tightening of 
 the muscles, an unconscious straining at the 
 cords that bound Him. And as the flail-like 
 motion of the horrible scourges kept on un- 
 ceasingly and savagely, large red welts arose 
 on the white skin : they burst : blood flowed 
 in streams, and pieces of the sacred flesh 
 were torn away and jerked amidst the crowd 
 around. 
 
 Poor, suffering Christ! Did the execu- 
 tioners strike, not only His back, but His 
 breast and even His face"? God knows! 
 How long did the torment last? God 
 knows ! Were some of the saints right when 
 they said that our dear Lord received 
 thousands of stripes'? God knows! But 
 this we know : it was excruciatingly severe. 
 Pilate's purpose shows that. The hatred of 
 the soldiers of Rome, goaded on by the 
 fiercer hatred of the Jews, shows that. The 
 
CRUELTY 153 
 
 number and the malice of the sins for which 
 Christ was atoning shows that. 
 
 The Savior was atoning for sin — for all 
 sin, but most of all for vile, fleshly sin. It 
 is not without reason, that pious souls have 
 always looked on the scourging as the Re- 
 deemer's special expiation of the sins of lust. 
 For, the lash was prescribed in the Old Law 
 as the penalty for some of the sins of the 
 flesh ; * and all lust is the placing in the 
 ascendant of the animal in our nature — the 
 animal which must be whipped into submis- 
 sion. 
 
 Before Herod we saw Christ despising 
 lust ; now we behold Him expiating it. And 
 the vileness and the number of these sins 
 of impurity, which have defiled the in- 
 dividual, the family, and society, show the 
 Rightfulness of the torture beneath which 
 Jesus Christ groaned. No wonder, then, 
 that the lashes swung on and on : no wonder 
 that the blood flowed in ruddy rivulets : no 
 wonder that the Son of God shuddered in 
 voiceless agony : no wonder that His quiver- 
 ing, lacerated body crumpled down to the 
 earth, helpless and bleeding, and hung by the 
 
 iCf. Levit. XIX, 20. 
 
154 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 cords that bound His wrists to the pillar. 
 
 There hung the Christ, weltering in the 
 crimson tide that gushed from His torn 
 veins, with the blows still flaying Him 
 alive — until, as a tradition has it, a Roman 
 officer, passing through the court, pushed 
 his way to the side of the prostrate Victim 
 and turned in anger to the crowd. "What! 
 Would you kill a man who is not yet con- 
 demned?" he said, and cut the cords that 
 bound our Savior. 
 
 There lay the Christ, cut, not with the 
 knife, but with the swinging lash; burned, 
 not with fire, but with the stinging flame of 
 whips. There He lay, the sad sight which 
 had come before the vision of Isaias when he 
 mourned : ' ' There is no beauty in him. . . . 
 We have thought him as it were a leper and 
 as one struck by God and afflicted. But he 
 was wounded for our iniquities, he was 
 bruised for our sins and the chastisement 
 of our peace was upon him, and by his 
 bruises we are healed." * 
 
 What a sight He was! That soldier, 
 whose heart was hardened to war, could not 
 look on it unmoved. But the Lust of the 
 
 i Isaias LIII, 2, 4, 5. 
 
CRUELTY 155 
 
 World, with its unbounded barbarity, could 
 do so. Then and ever since it has stood over 
 Christ's flayed body, gloating over His suf- 
 ferings in unfeeling savagery, glorying in 
 His sorrows in fiendish cruelty. It has 
 taunted Him, asking Him if this was all 
 that He could do to end the reign of lust. 
 Nay, it has snatched the bloody scourge from 
 the hands of the wearied executioners and 
 with a laugh that rang with the hate of hell 
 it has again lashed the torn flesh of the Sa- 
 vior. 
 
 God knows, lust was cruel to Jesus Christ ! 
 And so too, it has been cruel to mankind. 
 It has made man surrender the patent of 
 his nobility and grovel in the defilement of 
 degradation. It has crushed the soul down 
 into depths of filth. It has darkened the 
 intellect, so that the mind, that was made 
 to rise even to the heights of God, has been 
 debauched, until it has wallowed bespat- 
 tered in thoughts that know not the radi- 
 ance of God's light and purity. It has un- 
 dermined the power of the will and has made 
 the spirits of millions the abject slaves of 
 depraved senses. It has besmirched the 
 body, until in certain vile excesses the flesh 
 
156 THE UNDYING TKAGEDY 
 
 has entered prematurely upon the dissolu- 
 tion of the grave, corrupted and disgraced. 
 
 Oh, if only men and women would realize 
 what lustful impurity has done to the tor- 
 tured Savior and to themselves, then this 
 world, instead of being, as it is for so many, 
 the antechamber of hell, would become the 
 vestibule of heaven itself, and would bloom 
 with the fragrance of a purity that would 
 rejoice the eyes of God and man. And they 
 would realize it, if only in sorrow and love 
 they stood over the mangled Savior, lying 
 there in His blood; if, when the storm of 
 temptation raged, they would fly to the 
 wounds that have dug His sacred flesh, and 
 would be strengthened by the crimson flood 
 which throbs from His gashed veins. Then 
 they would not barter away their everlast- 
 ing inheritance for a mere nothing, and a 
 less than nothing ; they would not renew the 
 devilish cruelty, exercised against the loving 
 Christ in His frightful scourging. 
 
 Cruelty, like the tiger-thirst for blood, is 
 insatiable. The cruelty of the soldiers, 
 vented in the scourging, went wild and sug- 
 gested another means to insult and torment 
 the prisoner. They had heard that Christ 
 
CEUELTY 157 
 
 claimed to be the king of the Jews, and they 
 may have thought that Pilate wished to 
 crush Him for His pretensions. A king? 
 Then must He be garbed in royal fashion 
 and honored with regal court! Throwing 
 His garments about Him, they dragged Him 
 to the centre of the fortress, into the open 
 space or atrium of the palace. There 
 would be cheering entertainment and rous- 
 ing sport afoot, and none of their comrades 
 must miss it. 
 
 So, they called together the whole band. 
 How many they were, we know not. They 
 may or may not have been five hundred; 
 but they were a large mob of ruffians, prob- 
 ably enlisted from the region of Samaria, 
 and bearing for all the despised Jews (and 
 how much more for this outcast!) the hate 
 of Roman soldiers and of Samaritans, the 
 double hatred of political and religious bit- 
 terness. 
 
 Yes, they would make Him a king ! The 
 soldiers of Herod had begun the mockery: 
 the soldiers of Rome would show how an 
 upstart king should be treated. First, they 
 tore His clothes away from His body, which 
 was one raw, untended wound. And then 1 ? 
 
158 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 For the imperial purple, they cast an old 
 military cloak about His bleeding shoulders. 
 For His diadem, they took rushes from the 
 horses' litter and wove them into a cap or 
 mitre: and from the fagots for the camp- 
 fire they tore long, sharp thorns, and thrust 
 the piercing points through the woven cap 
 of rushes. And the crown was ready. 
 Down upon His head! and push it hard, 
 until the thorns force and cut their way 
 through skin and nerves and fasten it se- 
 curely! Oh, it was rare sport, this crown- 
 ing of the king ! 
 
 Robed and crowned! But the sceptre 
 was still lacking. A reed, like a piece of 
 cane, would be the very thing. Thrust it 
 into His hands ; but first strike that thorny 
 diadem, that the sceptre may make sure the 
 crown! 
 
 It was all perfect. And the whole cohort 
 gathered around, and laughed and cheered 
 and jeered and hissed, each man egged on by 
 the ribald applause of his comrades. There 
 sat the King upon the broken column on 
 which they had roughly thrust Him — the 
 King holding His court. And they retired 
 a short distance, and returning, advanced in 
 
CEUELTY 159 
 
 mock solemnity to pay Him homage. They 
 came and bowed the knee before Him and 
 mocked Him, saying: "Hail, King of the 
 Jews!" 1 And as they rose up, instead of 
 offering the kiss of reverence whereby kings 
 were saluted, they scoffed, and spat in His 
 face. On came the ranks of those jostling 
 courtiers, pushing and crowding, so as to 
 force the King from His throne : and as He 
 regained His position, they seized the reed 
 from His hands and struck that thorny 
 crown. Higher and higher rose the uproar ; 
 fiercer and fiercer grew the carousal of 
 cruelty; and again and again above the 
 clamor swelled the taunting cry, "Hail, King 
 of the Jews!" 
 
 King of the Jews? Ah, let us in aton- 
 ing love hail Him as our King: "Hail, 
 King of the souls of men !" When we were 
 baptized, we were clothed with the insignia 
 of children of His Kingdom; when the 
 chrism of confirmation anointed our brow, 
 we were sealed with the mark of soldiers of 
 the King. Have we been true to that King I 
 Are we true to Him now 1 From our heart 
 of hearts do we salute Him with the acclaim, 
 
 iMatt. XXVII, 26. 
 
160 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 1 'Hail, King of love! Hail, King of the 
 world"? 
 
 Let us be honest with Him and with our- 
 selves : let us not be cruel with the brutality 
 of unseeing pride. We are His. Are we 
 brave enough to go on where He has led? 
 Are we loyal enough to keep close to Him, 
 as He fights and conquers by scorning re- 
 proach and by being stronger than pain? 
 Can we follow Him, our King, not only 
 when the sky is bright and the heavens smile, 
 but when the storm-clouds gather and the 
 tempest breaks above our heads and the din 
 of war tests our inmost souls? And if we 
 are not courageous enough to resist unto 
 blood, shall we be so recreant as to play the 
 part of traitors and to join in with the cruel 
 onsets of selfishness and of pride ? 
 
 Pride ! The torment of the crowning and 
 mocking is Christ's special atonement for 
 the sins of pride. The cruelty of pride is 
 appalling; yet the prevalence of pride is 
 staggering. Isn't it the love of self unto 
 the forgetfulness or hatred of God (and 
 that, as St. Augustine said, is what pride 
 is) to clasp the gifts that come from God and 
 to have never a thought for the Giver of all 
 
CRUELTY 161 
 
 good? Isn't it insufferable arrogance to 
 claim to be the children of our Father who is 
 in heaven, and to dare to call Him before 
 the bar of our puny reason and make Him 
 justify His providence to our little, dark- 
 ened minds — nay, to blaspheme Him be- 
 cause He chastises us in love? Isn't it un- 
 speakable insolence for those who are the 
 kinsmen of the Outcast of the world to al- 
 low misfortune to turn them into harsh 
 critics of God, bitter haters of their fellow 
 men, and abettors of doctrines which over- 
 throw the home and the State ? 
 
 Such things as these are as brutal in their 
 proud mockery of Christ and as savagely 
 cruel to Him, as were those soldiers of 
 Pilate, who kept on with their diabolical 
 sport until a messenger came from the Gov- 
 ernor, commanding them to bring the pris- 
 oner before him. 
 
 Pilate, it has been noted, had not been 
 present during the outrage of the crowning, 
 as he probably was absent from the con- 
 tinuance of the scourging. Neither had the 
 Jews been within the Governor's palace: 
 they had remained outside the Pretorium, 
 in order that they might not contract legal 
 
162 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 defilement and thus be debarred from the 
 celebration of the Paseh. They would stain 
 their souls with the blood of an innocent 
 victim; but they would not violate the Law 
 by entering beneath a pagan roof. They 
 would "strain out a gnat and swallow a 
 camel." 1 From the windows and door- 
 ways some of them could catch an occasional 
 glimpse of what was transpiring within, and 
 more of them could hear the shouts and jeers 
 with which the soldiers mocked "the King 
 of the Jews." Whipped into fury by the 
 priests who moved quickly among them, they 
 knew no lessening of their panting desire 
 for the death of the Christ. Like a storm- 
 tossed sea off a rocky coast, the mob surged 
 back and forth before the palace. But 
 their restlessness increased. Perhaps they 
 feared that Pilate would carry out his inten- 
 tion of liberating the prisoner. So, they 
 shouted for their Victim. 
 
 Pilate was recalled to the conflict, and 
 gave orders that Jesus should be brought 
 before him. And Christ, the crimsoned, 
 mangled toy of cruelty, was once more led 
 into the presence of the Procurator, so 
 
 iMatt. XXIII, 24. 
 
CRUELTY 163 
 
 spent with pain and loss of blood, that He 
 could scarcely totter along, and may have 
 had to be supported by the guards, that He 
 might stand before His faithless judge. 
 
 Pilate was a man of blood and iron; but 
 he could not look upon the Christ without 
 emotion. Was that wreck the majestic Man 
 who had stood before him so short a time 
 ago? Surely, he thought, and the thought 
 does him credit — surely, no man could gaze 
 upon that breathing wound, that living 
 death, and demand more punishment. That 
 crown of thorns and that mockery of roy- 
 alty Pilate had neither meant nor com- 
 manded ; but it would all serve his purpose. 
 And he went out to the people. 
 
 With Christ stumbling on after him sup- 
 ported by the soldiers, Pilate advanced, and 
 from the portico faced the frenzied throng. 
 Then he pointed the Master out to the people 
 with the words, " Behold the Man!" x Oh, 
 what a sight He was ! That head, crowned 
 with thorns which pierced the skin and veins 
 and sent the blood trickling down over the 
 saddened face! That face, disfigured with 
 spittle, and clotted with dust and gore, and 
 
 i John XIX, 5. 
 
164 THE UNDYING TKAGEDY 
 
 cut and swollen with the strokes of the 
 scourge and the blows of the sceptre ! That 
 breast, furrowed with the lash; that body, 
 torn by the whips and showing ghastly 
 wounds between the folds of the tattered 
 purple cloak! Those hands, tied together 
 and grasping the broken reed, the sceptre of 
 scorn that had been the rod of torture! 
 That whole combination of anguish and 
 misery and abandonment, but illumined all 
 the while with a majestic patience which 
 even such torments could not kill! "Be- 
 hold the Man! " 
 
 Let us too behold the Man, the Victim of 
 cruelty. The heavenly Father points Him 
 out to each of us : the blessed Mother Mary 
 shows Him to everyone. Behold the mirror 
 of divine justice and mercy and of man's 
 ungrateful cruelty! The mirror of God's 
 justice ; for it required none less than such 
 a Man, the God-Man, in such woe to give the 
 reparation demanded by divine justice. 
 The mirror of God's mercy; because it was 
 for us and in our stead that the Savior bore 
 those pangs, and "by his bruises we are 
 healed." The mirror of man's ungrateful 
 cruelty; for it was man's sins that wrought 
 
CBUELTY 165 
 
 upon His back and tore His beautiful brow. 
 
 But that cruelty must one day face its 
 hour of reckoning; for that Man is the 
 Judge who will require His own blood at the 
 hands of men on the day of doom. If on 
 that day of days men cannot give an account 
 of that blood in their regard ; if they stand 
 with their souls, which had been washed 
 white in that saving flood, defiled with the 
 foulness of sin and hardened with the hard 
 rebellion of transgression — how will they 
 bear the sight of the awful, awful Christ? 
 With a fear that shall never die they will 
 call upon the mountains to fall upon them 
 and the hills to cover them, and will rush 
 into the flames of perdition, to escape the 
 fire that sears them from the eyes of their 
 Judge, terrible in His righteous wrath. 
 
 Behold the Man! It has been said to all 
 the generations of men since then, as they 
 have filed past that tribune beneath the 
 gaze of those blood-dimmed eyes. And 
 many have so beheld the Man, that the sight 
 has strangled the demon of avarice or lust 
 or pride within their souls, and they have 
 hailed Him as their King forever. But 
 many others have passed Him by, and have 
 
166 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 given Him no thought — or worse, have 
 cried aloud for His death ! Unworthy min- 
 isters of the Church have passed Him by, 
 as they clutched the money-bags of simony 
 and corruption. The rich whom selfishness 
 has hardened into stony-hearted egotists, 
 have passed Him by, as they spurned the 
 poor from their path. The poor whom for- 
 getfulness of their thorn-crowned Master 
 has maimed, have passed Him by, as they 
 railed against God and man and sank down 
 into the depths of despair. The votaries of 
 fashion and of pleasure whom sensualism 
 has corrupted, have passed Him by, and have 
 gathered the folds of their silken garments 
 closer about them to escape the defilement 
 of the dirt and blood of His bruised body; 
 aye, they may have cursed Him because His 
 bleeding form came between them and the 
 object of their lust. 
 
 Let us look long and well at the Victim 
 of relentless cruelty and see the work of 
 brutality against the Christ. Brutal cru- 
 elty! Its evil spirit thrives through the 
 centuries: it lives today. Let us learn to 
 hate it and keep it from our own lives; let 
 us help to lessen its fell results in the lives 
 
CEUELTY 167 
 
 of others. The cruelty of lust and pride, 
 as they work against the Master and against 
 the souls of those whom He has ransomed 
 with His blood, we have touched upon suf- 
 ficiently. But there is, besides, the cruelty 
 of avarice and of thoughtless selfishness, and 
 it counts its victims amongst individuals 
 and nations. 
 
 There's the cruelty of unmercifulness 
 towards the poor and helpless, which is heed- 
 less of the woes of the little ones of Christ. 
 Mercy is a noble attribute of God Himself ; 
 it is the most touching perfection of the 
 All-High, as He stoops from the height of 
 His infinity to the lowliness of our misery : 
 and mercy makes of mortals worthy images 
 of their Father in heaven. But selfishness 
 and whimpering softness may make one so 
 wrap himself in indifference towards others, 
 that he will not pain his eyes with the sight 
 of the sores of Lazarus, nor offend his 
 ears with the groans of the soul-piercing 
 wretchedness of the oppressed outcasts of 
 the race. Such a man does not wish to 
 know; he hugs his criminal ignorance, so 
 that he may not be disturbed in his com- 
 fortable egotism. 
 
168 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 His extravagant wastefulness might af- 
 ford the means of sustenance for many a 
 starving wretch. It might turn the wolf 
 from the door of some poor girl, fighting 
 against the seductions of "the easiest way." 
 It might dispel the darkness which hides the 
 affection of heaven from many a broken 
 spirit, that cannot realize the tender love of 
 God, since it has never experienced the true 
 love of men. But the unmerciful egotist 
 turns away from sights of misery, and asks, 
 as Cain dared to ask of the Almighty, "Am I 
 my brother's keeper?" * Yes, he is: we all 
 are. We are not isolated units in a sepa- 
 rated cosmos : we are brothers and sisters, one 
 of the other, because we are meant to be the 
 brothers and sisters of Christ Jesus. 
 
 The men and women who refuse to open 
 the doors of a wide mercy to the burdened 
 ones of mankind are hard with the rigidity 
 of cruelty. They might, possibly, shrink in 
 dismay from the positive infliction of pain ; 
 but the quiet permission of sorrows which 
 they might banish if they would, the refusal 
 to lift the loads which they might lighten if 
 they chose — all this, though only negative, 
 
 i Genesis IV, 9. 
 
CRUELTY 169 
 
 since it consists in not doing, is as real a 
 cruelty, as if by their hands the knife were 
 twisted in a mortal wound. It kills. 
 
 Moreover, there is a cruelty which sits in 
 gilded homes and dares to hold its head high 
 among its fellows, hut which positively does 
 the work of heartlessness and crushes de- 
 fenceless weaklings. Look at the trembling 
 old women and stunted girls, sewing 
 through the day and into the weary watches 
 of the night, stitching, stitching endlessly, 
 or driving unresting machines, leaden hour 
 after leaden hour, for a pittance to keep the 
 soul and body together in the hopeless strug- 
 gle against the inevitable end. The sunken 
 cheeks of the aged have lost the roses of 
 health, and the flaccid faces of the young 
 have never known them ; for these wretches 
 have been driven by the pitiless lash of the 
 ''sweating system" into the shadows of deso- 
 late despair. But, they have agreed to the 
 wage? It is a forced agreement: it is not 
 an equal contract : it is a case of trading on 
 the crying necessities of others — and this 
 is out-and-out injustice. 
 
 Look at the little children, with faces pre- 
 maturely old and eyes that have never shone 
 
170 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 with the glad light of happy childhood — 
 little children, bent and broken on the wheel 
 of a pagan materialism, destined to be cast 
 away on the scrap-heap of useless humanity 
 after a few years of enforced child-labor 
 have drained their feeble strength. They 
 have never a chance to grow and develop 
 and blossom from the sweetness of childhood 
 into the beauty of maidenhood or the buoy- 
 ancy of youth. And why? Because the 
 rapacious monster of industrial cruelty 
 laughs at souls and buys bodies at the cheap- 
 est rate. In many places, the laws of the 
 land now forbid such gruesome exploita- 
 tion. But, oh ! the cruelty, that should have 
 to face prison bars to be kept from crush- 
 ing God's children; and which, only too 
 often, still finds means to laugh at civil en- 
 actments and to wring gold from ruined 
 souls and bodies ! 
 
 It is cruelty that makes capital glutton- 
 ous: it is cruelty that makes labor incon- 
 siderate. Capital will break men, that for- 
 tunes may be swelled; it will drain the 
 heart's blood of the poor and the widow and 
 the orphan, that dividends may be fattened 
 and stocks may soar. Labor will stand un- 
 
CRUELTY 171 
 
 moved by the distressing cry of country in 
 the throes of a disastrous conflict, which calls 
 for the forgetting of individual grievances ; 
 it will drive the knife into the soul of the 
 nation, if thus it may reach the heart of its 
 hated antagonist. Cruelty has, only too 
 often, debased the relation between capital 
 and labor to the fierceness of jungle hate; 
 it has made uncompromising enemies out 
 of those who should be brothers in the work 
 to which both contribute in common. And 
 the sorry results of this war for wealth 
 are like the ruinous effects of the war of 
 blood. 
 
 In addition to all this, cruelty has blasted 
 the souls of nations. It has done it by the 
 adoption of the doctrine of force and the 
 philosophy of brute might, which ignores 
 the soul and makes of the body the toy of 
 superior strength. The ferocity of the 
 " superman" grows into the brutality of the 
 " superstate." Such a deified monstrosity 
 sneers at right as a superstition ; it demands 
 that the children of men be fed into the flam- 
 ing mouth of Moloch, and that multitudes be 
 crushed by the chariot of Juggernaut, in 
 order that it may have "a place in the sun," 
 
172 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 and that its Kultur may enslave a cringing 
 world. Men ? They are flies to be crushed 
 by the wheel of progress, as a deified State 
 rolls on to victory. Families? They are 
 but pawns in the great game of conquest. 
 Nations f If they are stronger, they are to 
 be strangled in the cords of treachery and 
 deceit: if they are weaker, they are to be 
 scourged and crowned with thorns and 
 mocked — for "might is right" ! 
 
 This is not mad fancy. The tear-stained 
 faces and wounded hearts of thousands in 
 our own land ; the desolated towns and cities 
 across the sea; the nameless crosses in the 
 shell-riddled fields of Belgium and France, 
 mutely speaking to a listening world; the 
 shattered manhood and deflowered woman- 
 hood of war's unreckoning waste — all these 
 are the bitter fruits which grow on the tree 
 of cruelty. 
 
 We shall not dwell upon them, lest un- 
 christian hate defile the peace of "men of 
 good will" and blacken the souls of those 
 who are pledged to follow the scourged and 
 thorn-crowned King of mankind. Let us 
 forget them, if we can. But let us never for- 
 get that barbarous cruelty is the mother of 
 
CRUELTY 173 
 
 evil, just as it is the hateful offspring of lust 
 or pride or avarice or selfishness. 
 
 Back before the Christ let us take our 
 minds and hearts. Let us look on Him, as 
 He stands on the portico of Pilate's palace, 
 gazing down at us through the tears and 
 blood that dim His tender eyes. He speaks 
 to us amid the roar of the hate-maddened 
 mob. His very wounds plead with us. 
 Shall we close our ears to the caressing call- 
 ing of His voiceless words I Shall we turn 
 away from the sight of His torn flesh, and 
 ruin ourselves by the very sins which He has 
 been expiating in the unspeakable sufferings 
 of those awful hours'? Again, God forbid! 
 
 If lust calls, may the strength that comes 
 from the vision of that lash-cut body, which 
 sin has wrought upon, crush the demon in 
 our hearts ! May we never be found scourg- 
 ing again the God-Man who loved us to the 
 end! If pride would lift us up to the "bad 
 eminence," whence the fall into the abyss is 
 certain, let us not add one thorn to those 
 that pierced His throbbing temples. If 
 avarice or unmercifulness or barbarity in 
 any of its other myriad forms should lure 
 us with siren voice away from the path where 
 
174 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 walk the followers of the Christ, let the 
 memory of His anguish-broken Heart, 
 yearning for His loved ones, make us too 
 big for the meanness of selfishness and too 
 high-minded for the degradation of egotism. 
 We are the subjects of a King, clad in 
 robes of mockery which are reddened with 
 the royal crimson of His own blood, 
 crowned with the thorns of pain and igno- 
 miny — our King, by right divine and by right 
 of the conquest of love. And, as we gaze 
 upon Him in His majestic misery, as we 
 "behold the Man," let our faithful love and 
 unswerving loyalty acclaim Him for what 
 He is: "Hail, King of truth and holiness 
 and love! Hail, King of our souls! Hail, 
 King of the world ! Hail, King of this earth 
 and of the glorious realms of heaven's bless- 
 edness!" In serried ranks before that 
 King let us pledge Him our undying fealty, 
 as it was pledged for us on the day of our 
 baptism when we could not lisp the words; 
 and, in the full realization of our duty and 
 of His rights, let us say: "We renounce 
 Satan and all his works and pomps, and we 
 attach ourselves to Jesus Christ forever. ' ' * 
 
 i Baptismal Vows. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE PEOPLE AND APOSTASY 
 
 "He came unto his own, and his own received him 
 not." John I, 11. 
 
 "But the whole multitude together cried out, say- 
 ing: Away with this man, and release unto us Bar- 
 abbas. . . . They cried again, saying: Crucify him; 
 crucify him." Luke XXIII, 18, 21. 
 
 "But they cried out: Away with him; away with 
 him; crucify him. Pilate saith to them: Shall I 
 crucify your king? The chief priests answered: We 
 have no king but Caesar. ' ' John XIX, 15. 
 
 The climax of evil is the total turning 
 away from God, the final and decisive cast- 
 ing off of allegiance to Him. It is apostasy. 
 All mortal sin is a form of this dereliction of 
 bounden and loyal duty ; for such a sin puts 
 a creature in the place of the Sovereign 
 Lord. But apostasy digs the bottomless 
 abyss of complete desertion of the King of 
 heaven and earth. Since, in our reflections, 
 we have dwelt upon many other sources of 
 wickedness, we must not pass by the consid- 
 
 175 
 
176 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 eration of this poisoned font of transgres- 
 sion. 
 
 It was of apostasy in particular that St. 
 Paul was speaking, when he said that those 
 who are guilty of it crucify again to them- 
 selves the Son of God and make Him a 
 mockery. 1 All the crimes in the catalogue 
 of sin are minor in comparison with this con- 
 summated treason, which, even in this life, 
 is almost damnation. Ordinarily, the apos- 
 tate's fall is irreparable: "when he falls, 
 he falls like Lucifer, never to hope again. " 2 
 "It is impossible," says the great Apostle — 
 that is, it is so hard, and so much against 
 what commonly happens, that it may be 
 called impossible — "it is impossible for those 
 who were once illuminated, have tasted also 
 the heavenly gift and were made partakers 
 of the Holy Ghost . . . and are fallen away, 
 to be renewed again to penance. ' ' 3 
 
 That is the way in which the people, the 
 Jewish nation, fell away from God — not al- 
 together without hope, but quite beyond the 
 reach of anything except the infinite mercy 
 of the Almighty. They were apostates. 
 
 i Cf. Heb. VI, 6. 3 Heb. VI, 4, 6. 
 
 2 Henry VIII, Act III, Scene II. 
 
APOSTASY 177 
 
 And as the other forces of evil had part in 
 the tragedy of Calvary, so too did this hor- 
 rible apostasy ; and the fallen people of God 
 were the embodiment of this disastrous 
 agency, which did not die after its fight 
 against the Christ, but has gone on through 
 the years doing the work of hell. So, let 
 us close our work of honest love with the 
 consideration of the People and Apostasy. 
 
 The scene of the apostasy of the Jews? 
 Tt was the court-yard before the palace of 
 Pilate. Out before the eyes of the frantic 
 mob the Governor had brought the torn 
 Christ. He had pointed out the Master with 
 the words, "Behold the Man!" and the peo- 
 ple's voice of hate had thundered back the 
 cry, "Crucify him!" Pilate had tried to 
 reason with the obstinate rioters; but their 
 only answer to his urging was, "Let him be 
 crucified!" He had again and finally de- 
 clared the innocence of the accused ; but the 
 Jews had shrieked that the Nazarene must 
 die the death, because He was a blasphemer 
 who had made Himself the Son of God. At 
 these words Pilate had taken the Christ 
 within the hall; he had asked Him whence 
 He came ; and in fear of condemning one who 
 
178 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 might be more than man, he had definitely 
 made up his mind, that the prisoner must be 
 released. But when he was about to an- 
 nounce to the crowd this his final verdict, 
 they had threatened him with the Emperor's 
 displeasure, if he allowed an upstart king to 
 play the sovereign beneath the eyes of the 
 representative of Rome. 
 
 Pilate was conquered; and he knew it. 
 Forgetful of honor; forgetful of the more 
 than human majesty of the prisoner; forget- 
 ful of the warning of his own wife, who had 
 spoken as if from another world and had 
 urged him to have naught to do with this 
 just man ; * forgetful of all except the lower- 
 ing brow of the Caesar across the sea — Pilate 
 knew that he was beaten, and that, to save 
 himself, he would sentence this Innocent One 
 to death. 
 
 But as the realization of his disgraceful 
 defeat rushed over his terror-stricken heart, 
 his anger against the Jews, who had con- 
 quered him, rose to his brain and made him 
 cast all caution and restraint to the winds. 
 He whipped his conquering enemies with his 
 scorn and hatred, and tormented them with 
 
 i Cf. Matt. XXVII, 19. 
 
APOSTASY 179 
 
 words that stung like lashes and burned like 
 fire. He mounted the steps of the judgment- 
 seat and ordered Christ to be brought again 
 before the sight of all. As the torn and 
 bleeding form of the Master appeared, Pilate 
 said : ' ' Behold your king ! ' ' Their answer 
 was: "Away with him! Away with him! 
 Crucify him!" "Shall I crucify your 
 king V 1 Pilate too was fierce now. He re- 
 peated with taunting glee the insult to their 
 pride, and he laughed with bitter scorn, as 
 these triumphant foes of his writhed be- 
 neath his words. "Your king! Shall I 
 crucify your king 1 ' ' And the chief priests, 
 as the representatives of the people, and the 
 people with them cried out: "We have no 
 king but Caesar." 2 That cry shrilled the 
 apostasy of the Jews, priests and people, 
 from their country, their religion, and their 
 God. With those words fell a nation, the 
 chosen race of the Most High. 
 
 The Jews had been separated from the 
 rest of mankind, to keep alive the memory of 
 Him who beneath the shadow of the trees 
 of Paradise had been promised to the world. 
 
 i John- XIX, 14, 15. 
 2 John XIX, 15. 
 
180 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 They had been loaded with the choicest 
 favors of Almighty God because of their 
 special relation to the Messiah. To them 
 were made the promises concerning the 
 Anointed of the Lord, who was to be of their 
 race, flesh of their flesh and bone of their 
 bone. 
 
 The Messiah was the centre of their re- 
 ligion, the reason of their national existence. 
 It was for Him that the prophets had spoken 
 their inspired words: it was for Him that 
 David and Solomon had raised Israel to the 
 height of its glory: it was for Him that 
 Jahve deigned to dwell in the gorgeous pile 
 of marble and gold, which stood as His tem- 
 ple on Mount Moriah. For Him the ages 
 had waited: for Him the holy ones had 
 prayed and sighed: for Him the noblest of 
 human souls had longed, as they pleaded 
 with the Lord, that the heavens might rain 
 down the Just One and the earth bud forth 
 the Savior. 
 
 The Messiah meant all to them; but they 
 rejected Him. This rejection was uncon- 
 sciously begun upon His appearance on the 
 earth, when "he came unto his own and his 
 own received him not." It was continued, 
 
APOSTASY 181 
 
 as they claimed Barabbas as their own in- 
 stead of the all-holy God-Man. It had 
 grown cruel, when they clamored: "Away 
 with this man ! Crucify him ! " It was im- 
 piously consummated, when, with the words, 
 "We have no king but Cassar," they for- 
 mally spurned the kingship of the Messiah 
 and the lordship of God Himself. Yes, they 
 denied Jahve; they forswore the Expected 
 of nations ; they became apostates from God, 
 as they made themselves traitors to their 
 country. 
 
 Treason to one's country is such a das- 
 tardly crime, that the souls of true and noble 
 men turn away from the traitor with un- 
 speakable loathing; and the minds of the 
 most tender-hearted admit, that the greatest 
 punishment in the keeping of society is the 
 just meed of such an ingrate and pervert. 
 But, vile as is the treachery to one's land, and 
 deserving as the guilty is of the severest 
 chastisement; the enormity of apostasy is 
 more heinous still and the penalty which it 
 merits is more dreadful, by as much as God 
 is more worthy than country itself of our 
 souls' whole allegiance and our hearts' best 
 love. 
 
182 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 Would to God, that apostasy had ceased 
 on that day, when it wrought its will on the 
 Christ in the hour of evil and the power of 
 darkness ! * But it did not die then. It 
 has lived on, doing the work of destruction. 
 It is doing it to-day in individuals and na- 
 tions. 
 
 How many men and women have turned 
 their backs on God! Reference is here 
 made, not only to the equivalent apostasy 
 (which is also equivalent idolatry) of every 
 mortal sin, but to the formal apostasy of 
 those who have thrown off allegiance to God 
 by an explicit rejection of all religion. 
 "Tainted money" was the reason with some ; 
 for the} r could not keep it in their itching 
 palms, unless they forswore God — and they 
 cast Him aside. Forbidden lustful fascina- 
 tion, which was lyingly called love, was the 
 cause why others abandoned Him ; for they 
 would not own a lash-torn, thorn-crowned, 
 blood-mantled King, who dared to say: 
 "If any man will come after me, let him 
 deny himself, and take up his cross, and fol- 
 low me. ' ' 2 Unbounded pride was the step 
 
 i Cf. Luke XXII, 53. 
 2 Matt. XVI, 24. 
 
APOSTASY 183 
 
 on which many others slipped; for they 
 would brook no restraint and no correction, 
 even by the accredited ministers of the Lord. 
 
 Apostasy ? Oh, it is no myth ! Have we 
 not known those who broke off all connection 
 with Mother Church for causes which ap- 
 peared big to pampered selfishness, but 
 which were lighter than chaff when weighed 
 in the balance of God's unfailing truth? 
 And, let it be noted well, apostasy from 
 God's Church is apostasy from God Him- 
 self. The Blessed Master said to the Apos- 
 tles, who were to be the Church that was to 
 continue His work: "He that heareth 
 you, heareth me, and he that despiseth you, 
 despiseth me. And he that despiseth me, 
 despiseth him that sent me. ' ' * Yes, an 
 apostate from the Church is an apostate 
 from Christ; and an apostate from Christ 
 is an apostate from the great God. 
 
 Yet the heart of Mother Church, as the 
 big, fatherly heart of the Eternal, has been 
 saddened by many such defections. Mere 
 words'? No: solid facts! What of those 
 who disdainfully brave the thunderbolts of 
 the Church's excommunication, because, to 
 
 i Luke X, 16. 
 
184 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 the peril and loss of faith and purity, they 
 know better than she what they ought to 
 read? or because they think more of the 
 supposed temporal advantages of con- 
 demned secret societies, than of the good will 
 of God Himself? What of those, who not 
 only disregard, but arrogantly and supercil- 
 iously sneer at the insufferable intrusion ( !) 
 of the Church that dares to legislate 
 with regard to marriage, and to safeguard 
 her children and her children's children 
 from indifference to the faith, aye, the abso- 
 lute destruction of the faith, which cost 
 Christ His cross? What of those who, 
 against the right of the little ones of the 
 Master and the formal and solemn prohibi- 
 tion of Christ's Spouse, deprive their chil- 
 dren of their heaven-given dower of a 
 Christian education ? 
 
 May God keep us from the first steps in 
 the way that leads to entire apostasy from 
 the Church! Let us glory in the sacred 
 privilege, granted to us above so many mil- 
 lions, of being the children of the one true 
 Church of the Master. We are chosen ones, 
 more than the Jews were. Let us not cast 
 away our hallowed prerogative. A child of 
 
APOSTASY 185 
 
 the Church ! A son or daughter of her who 
 has walked unconquered down the centuries, 
 with her head held high before the face of 
 God, scattering spiritual blessings on the 
 souls of men, and in the plenitude of her 
 tender affection, like the boundless love of 
 her Bridegroom, easing the sorrows of 
 earth, spreading the good things of Chris- 
 tian civilization! How it should thrill our 
 very souls ! 
 
 We owe no apology to the world for the 
 fact that we are Catholics : we need plead for 
 no sufferance from a disdaining multitude. 
 We are the children of the saints. We are 
 the offspring of the Bride of Christ — and 
 heaven forbid, that we should ever be 
 ashamed of that Mother! There are those 
 who are. There are those who are quite 
 willing deploringly to admit to those who 
 carp, that it is too bad that the Church is not 
 a little more broad-minded in many things ; 
 that it is unfortunate that she should insist 
 upon such dead things as dogmas, when all 
 that the world needs is a little considerate 
 stretching of doctrine to accommodate the 
 modern spirit; that it is regrettable that 
 her principles, which offend a progressive 
 
186 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 and cultured part of the "best people," 
 should be paraded before scandalized eyes. 
 Alas! it is but the echo of the cry of that 
 first Good Friday, "Away with this man! 
 We have no king but Caesar !" 
 
 Nor are individuals the only ones whose 
 souls have been blasted by apostasy. Na- 
 tions too have been guilty of social derelic- 
 tion of the Church, of Christ, of God. Let 
 the words of the Master to His Church be 
 remembered: "He that heareth you, hear- 
 eth me, and he that despiseth you, despiseth 
 me : and he that despiseth me, despiseth him 
 that sent me." 1 Time was when the na- 
 tions, as nations, recognized the sovereignty 
 of Christ and the position of His one true 
 Church; but today few are the nations, 
 which as such cleave to that holy Mother 
 and to her Spouse. "Governments, as gov- 
 ernments are organized today, know very 
 little of God." 2 
 
 This sad havoc, whose effects are with us 
 now, was not wrought in a day. There were 
 smaller storms of this evil, when the Eastern 
 Schism disturbed the tranquil peace of 
 
 i Luke X, 16. 
 
 2 P. L. Blakely, S. J., in America, Jan. 11, 1919. 
 
APOSTASY 187 
 
 Christendom ; but the full tempest of black 
 horror burst upon the world in the revolt 
 of the sixteenth century. Then whole na- 
 tions, in their governments and in large 
 numbers of their members, turned their 
 backs upon the Church of the Master and 
 clamored for her death, whilst at the same 
 time they echoed the cry of the Jews, "We 
 have no king but Caesar." For, from parts 
 of the universal Church, the Catholic 
 Church, they fashioned distinct, national 
 churches, subservient to the State — and 
 turned away from Christ. 
 
 And farther and farther the ghastly evil 
 spread in the separated bodies. Having de- 
 spised the Church, they came to despise 
 Christ and His heavenly Father. Thus, the 
 seventeenth century saw the apostasy that 
 came from deism, which began with the re- 
 jection of God's special providence over the 
 world and ended in scepticism. The eight- 
 eenth and nineteenth centuries witnessed the 
 apostasy that came from materialism and 
 rationalism, which went to the lengths of 
 atheism and its sister, pantheism. They 
 were sowing the storm, and they reaped the 
 whirlwind in the twentieth century, when a 
 
188 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 pagan Kultur assaulted the very foundations 
 of civilization. 
 
 The steps are not hard to trace, if only we 
 open our eyes. Spurning the Church, they 
 spurned her Founder, and despising Him, 
 they despised Him who sent Him. Then 
 from ignoring God they came to adore them- 
 selves; and the blinded adherents of a dei- 
 fied State- bowed down before it as the source 
 of all rights and the end of all endeavors. 
 State-idolatry inevitably leads to the false 
 and pernicious notion that the citizen "be- 
 longs" to the State, that the State is not for 
 him, but that he is for the State. And the 
 outcome of all this? Paternal absolutism, 
 on the one hand ; and, on the other, the hor- 
 rors "which the tribe of eugenists amongst 
 us have borrowed from paganism and the 
 methods of the stock-yard. ' ' x 
 
 If this old world of ours is not altogether 
 in ruins, it is not from anything that came 
 from the saving spirit of this unhallowed 
 apostasy; but because of the principles of 
 truth and uprightness, which were living in 
 the souls of the better ones of mankind, pre- 
 served by God's providence and especially 
 
 i Joseph Keating, S. J., in The Month, Dec, 1918, p. 467. 
 
APOSTASY 189 
 
 by the watchful guardianship of the dear old 
 Church. 
 
 But ruins are there, and the cause of the 
 ruins is lurking in the black background. 
 As we face the problem of reconstruction, 
 let us learn the lessons of the past. As far 
 as we may, let us undo the evils that have 
 come from the apostasy of the nations. 
 
 The peoples of the earth, in their social 
 organization, are bound to render social 
 homage to the God on whom they depend. 
 This is as true as it is that the individual 
 man must worship the Deity from whom he 
 has his being. Nations exist by the will of 
 God ; the authority by which they work out 
 their destiny is from Him: and therefore 
 they lie under the obligation to express their 
 dependence upon Him and upon His 
 Christ. By right divine and by right of the 
 conquest of Calvary our Blessed Lord is 
 King of the world and has a right to social 
 sovereignty over the nations. His desire, 
 His solemn will is that there should be but 
 one fold and one shepherd for the spiritual 
 regeneration of mankind. This will of His 
 was realized before the apostasy of the na- 
 tions: it can never be realized again, until 
 
190 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 Christ has triumphed in individual souls and 
 in families, which are the units of so- 
 ciety. After that, He will reign gloriously 
 and victoriously over the peoples of the 
 world. 
 
 Today that triumph of His is not yet 
 complete : and so, as things stand in the di- 
 vided religious world, there must be some 
 sort of separation between Church and 
 State. This is not the ideal condition: it 
 is not what Christ longs for. Yet, if it 
 must be, in heaven's name let it be a separa- 
 tion which includes reverence for God and 
 respect for the sanctity of the individual 
 conscience, not the propaganda of atheism 
 or of ungodly cult : let it be the separation 
 that exists here in our own loved land, not 
 the farce of separation, which is but a 
 thinly disguised persecution, as in Mexico 
 and France. 
 
 Mexico reveled in a debauchery of rob- 
 bery of churches and in a riot of sacrilegious 
 oppression of the children of Christ's 
 Spouse. France denied to her religious the 
 right, which was theirs as citizens of the 
 republic, to organize and associate. She 
 banished them from their country; but she 
 
APOSTASY 191 
 
 summoned them back to fight, when her 
 existence was endangered. They were 
 slanderously named a menace to the State 
 because of their loyal allegiance to the 
 Church and to God ; but, because of this loyal 
 allegiance, when their country called they 
 served the State as none others did. The 
 record of one religious order shows, that of 
 its men called to arms ninety-three per cent, 
 won decorations for distinguished service 
 and heroic bravery. 1 Yes, their record and 
 that of others, from the soldier priests and 
 the heroic sisters to the brave Catholic youth 
 of France and to Foch, "the gray man of 
 Christ," gave the same answer as that 
 thrown into the faces of the bigots in our 
 own country: that fidelity to Christ and to 
 
 iThe Society of Jesus. The Queen's Work (cf. April, 1919, 
 p. 86 ) , commenting on this fact, quotes the following from 
 the Cincinnati Enquirer: "Hear the record" (of the French 
 Jesuits). "When France declared war approximately seven 
 hundred and fifty Jesuits of French citizenship were called to 
 the colors from all over the earth, because they are great 
 missionaries. Only a few, less than fifteen, became chaplains. 
 The remainder donned the uniform of the fighting unit. Of 
 the entire number 112 were killed, 48 wounded, and 20 cap- 
 tured by the Germans, a mortality of fifteen per cent. But 
 this is not all. No less than 490 of the 528 survivors have 
 been decorated or cited for distinction in orders, many nations 
 joining in the awards of insignia of bravery. Taken as a 
 whole, this record is little short of marvelous." 
 
192 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 His Church makes for the truest and deep- 
 est patriotism. 
 
 Religious social unity is the will of the 
 Redeemer of mankind. If we cannot have 
 this social religious unity now, we can at 
 least, in our efforts at reconstruction, build 
 on the solid foundation of Christian prin- 
 ciples; and we must do so, because for na- 
 tions, as for men, " there is no other name 
 under heaven whereby we must be saved," * 
 not only for eternity, but for time, than the 
 name of the Lord Jesus. 
 
 "We are facing a future, in which it is 
 hoped that the League of Nations will make 
 of red-handed war as much of an impossibil- 
 ity as may be possible. A noble hope ! But 
 that league, even though possessing the 
 strong right arm of might (which we pray 
 may never have to be called into action), 
 must rest upon the moral law of God, if it 
 is to continue in existence and in effective 
 work towards a longed-for end. To prevent 
 war and to insure the continuance of peace, 
 overreaching ambitions must be restrained ; 
 and restrained they cannot be, unless God 
 reigns in acknowledged sovereignty over the 
 
 lActs IV, 12. 
 
APOSTASY 193 
 
 peoples of the world. "It was the spirit 
 embodied in the Prussian War-Lords, the 
 anti-Christian ethic that sets the State above 
 God and puts national interest before just 
 dealing, that brought about the holocaust" 1 
 of the world-struggle which crucified the na- 
 tions. And if the peoples of the earth shriek 
 their apostasy from God in the cry of the 
 Jews, "We have no king but Caesar," the 
 war beast will not have been killed, but will 
 nurse its hurts until it is strong enough to 
 rend again a helpless universe. 
 
 As from the battle-scarred lands across 
 the sea we turn our eyes to our own shores, 
 we must realize that a work of rebuilding 
 must be done at home. The social fabric 
 of the nation is endangered by economic 
 evils which clamor for redress. The de- 
 structive war between capital and labor 
 must not go on ; the causes of that struggle 
 must not be allowed to sap the strength of 
 the country, if we are to endure. None but 
 the wilfully blind can fail to see that there 
 are glaring and deplorable inequalities, in 
 violation of the principles of right and jus- 
 tice ; and these must be remedied. Men can- 
 
 iThe Month, 1. c, p. 461. 
 
194 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 not be treated like machines, without an in- 
 evitable revolt. On the other hand, ex- 
 travagant demands, backed up by the threat 
 of violence, cannot found a lasting peace be- 
 tween antagonists. Nay, if the forces re- 
 main antagonistic, instead of becoming allies 
 and brothers, the fires of the volcano are but 
 smothered for a time, and are gathering 
 strength to break out in a fearful eruption. 
 Unquestionably there are abuses; and 
 Bolshevism is exploiting them, and is 
 clamoring for recognition because of them. 
 These abuses must be removed; and they 
 can be removed — though not by Bolshevism. 
 The unjust inequalities are irremovable only 
 "if there is no moral law and no God of 
 justice behind the law." 1 Human legisla- 
 tion can and should help to do away with 
 the iniquitous exploitation of men by men; 
 but human legislation is not enough. For, 
 "human selfishness cannot be effectually re- 
 strained except by God's commandments and 
 their sanction." 2 So long as the apostasy 
 from God lasts there can be no permanent 
 
 i The Month, 1. c, p. 464. 
 2 Id. ib. 
 
APOSTASY 195 
 
 and stable rebuilding along the lines of 
 economic reform. 
 
 Again, in the work of reconstruction many 
 are calling attention to the need of reforma- 
 tion in educational efforts. Urgently and 
 imperatively is reform called for, though not 
 chiefly in the way proposed by most of its 
 champions. The reform must be away from 
 the apostasy from God, that stains the edu- 
 cation of most of the schools of our land. 
 Quite generally education is divorced from 
 religion and from God. Now, right here 
 is the place where reform must begin. Not 
 Catholics alone, but many clear-sighted 
 thinkers of other creeds have come to see the 
 absolute necessity of a change in this regard, 
 if our country is to be safe. 
 
 Some of the evils arising from this 
 apostasy in educational matters have been 
 mitigated by the fealty to God which is the 
 life-breath of Catholic heroism for religious 
 education. This has directly counteracted 
 some of the disastrous effects of godless 
 training; and it has indirectly helped 
 towards good by its practical protest against 
 a perversion of education into an ignomini- 
 
196 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 ous instrument for turning out mere money- 
 making machines. 
 
 Without a doubt, reform is needed; but 
 emphatically it is not to be accomplished by 
 binding all educational agencies in the 
 servile chains of an official bureaucracy, 
 which would grind out of existence the only 
 schools that are sowing the seeds of the 
 harvest of national salvation. Several 
 measures, lately proposed before State or 
 national legislatures, are more than danger- 
 ous. 1 They are fatal ; for they would mean 
 "the complete triumph of education with- 
 out God." 2 
 
 As we love God and cherish our country, 
 we must see to it, that the most American 
 of all the schools of our land be not strangled 
 by unjust discrimination. The Catholic 
 parochial schools and Colleges and Universi- 
 ties, and similar schools of the Lutherans, 
 the EjDiscopalians, and the like, are the most 
 American schools to be found from ocean to 
 ocean; because they alone are founded on 
 
 i Reference is made to measures like the Smith Bill, intro- 
 duced into the Senate in October, 1918, withdrawn in Feb- 
 ruary, 1919, and again presented in another form (in the 
 House and Senate) in May, 1919. 
 
 2Cf. P. L. Blakely, S. J., in America, Jan. 11, 1919. 
 
APOSTASY 197 
 
 the principles of religion, of Christianity — 
 and our nation is a religious, a Christian na- 
 tion. These religious schools must be un- 
 hampered in their work of spiritual and 
 moral development of each future citizen 
 of the commonwealth ; "they are part of our 
 contribution as Americans to the true pros- 
 perity of our beloved country, and the monu- 
 ment which we raise to the glory of the one 
 true God." 1 
 
 We cannot do without God in our train- 
 ing for life, any more than we can do with- 
 out Him in life itself or in the death that 
 will close our earthly days. If we try to 
 do without Him, we shall meet the fate of 
 the apostates before Pilate's judgment- 
 seat. For the Jews, since that fateful day, 
 there has been no nation, no church, no 
 country. A people without all these they 
 are, because they threw away their allegi- 
 ance to their God, when they shrieked, "We 
 have no king but Caesar. ' ' Away, then, with 
 the apostasy of men and nations ! Back to 
 God and to fidelity to Christ ! 
 
 In this return and in this fidelity, the 
 splendidly magnificent example of the 
 
 i Id. ib. 
 
198 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 Master is our encouragement and our 
 strength. Fealty to His Father— that was 
 His glory. So His prophet had proclaimed 
 in His name: so He Himself declared: so 
 His Apostle Paul affirmed of Him, when he 
 said: "Wherefore when he cometh into the 
 world he saith: Sacrifice and oblation thou 
 wouldst not . . . holocausts for sin did not 
 please thee. Then said I: Behold I come 
 . . . that I should do thy will, O God." 1 
 To do the will of the Father had been to Him 
 as the staff of life. But His work accord- 
 ing to that will was not yet done, His sacri- 
 fice was not yet accomplished; for the will 
 of His Father led on to Calvary's hill. 
 
 When the Jews' words of apostasy had 
 crashed through the air, they had stunned 
 Pilate's soul with the realization of the ful- 
 ness of his utter failure. To make a quick 
 end of the whole wretched business, from the 
 judgment-seat he uttered the traditional 
 words of sentence, "Ibis ad crucem," "Thou 
 shalt go to the cross." The cross! The last 
 scene of the tragedy of the world was about 
 to be enacted. During it let us keep close 
 
 lHeb. X, 5-7. 
 
APOSTASY 199 
 
 by Christ's side: let us follaw Him to the 
 end, whilst He undoes the work of apostasy 
 and shows us the heroism of fidelity unto 
 death, even the death of the cross. 
 
 When Pilate speaks the words of doom, 
 it is near midday of that Friday which will 
 live forever. At once the cross is brought 
 forth — that cross which has cast its shadow 
 over the crib of Bethlehem, which has stood 
 out before Jesus in the days of Egypt and 
 Nazareth, which has beckoned to Him and 
 called with the caressing voice of a beloved 
 during the days of the public ministry — 
 that cross which is to be His death-bed and 
 the throne from which He will reign for- 
 ever. Whilst the executioners lay rough 
 hands upon Him to tear away the robe of 
 mockery and toss His own garments about 
 His lashed body, an officer steps up to the 
 Procurator with the tablet of wood, which 
 is to be carried before the condemned and 
 afterwards fixed to the cross to proclaim the 
 crime for which He suffers. What shall the 
 title be? "Write," says Pilate, "Jesus of 
 Nazareth, the King of the Jews." 1 And 
 
 i Cf. John XIX, 19. 
 
200 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 upon the white surface of the tablet, in 
 letters of red the scribe traces these words 
 in Latin and Greek and Hebrew. 
 
 The signal is given; the cross is laid on 
 Jesus ; and the procession starts on its way. 
 Out into the roadway sways the mob of 
 priests and people; the centurion and the 
 soldiers close in around the condemned ; and 
 they move forward. The Master's hands 
 no longer bear the sceptre of scorn, but hold 
 the cross which lies upon His mangled 
 shoulders. Upon His head there rests that 
 crown of ignominy, that helmet of pain, 
 which pierces Him with its thorny sharp- 
 ness. Over His face there drips the flow of 
 blood from that crown, there trickles the 
 vileness of the spittle of the soldier mob. 
 As the sad cortege moves on its way, disquiet 
 is felt in the very air ; the clouds roll up from 
 the horizon; a palpable gloom is settling 
 down over the city and its environs; the 
 flashing of jagged lightning is answered by 
 the rumbling of distant thunder; and the 
 ground is moving uneasily in the first throes 
 of the coming earthquake. 
 
 Poor, lonely, suffering Christ! Around 
 Him, as He stumbles on, are faces distorted 
 
APOSTASY 201 
 
 with contempt and scorn and hatred; lips 
 that vomit forth curses and revilings; 
 blood-maddened, hell-possessed hearts that 
 exult in His doom. No one to care for 
 Him! None? Yes, thank God! there are 
 some few. The devoted women lament over 
 Him. His sorrow-stricken Mother meets 
 Him, with the incarnation of love speaking 
 from her tear-dimmed eyes and the heroism 
 of martyr-sacrifice throbbing in her riven 
 heart. Yet — but a long, lingering look, and 
 the Savior totters on. 
 
 Out through the western gate He takes 
 His way, stumbling, fainting, falling be- 
 neath the cross. On again, with the cross 
 blessing the shoulders of Simon of Cyrene, 
 till the sheer front of the rock of Calvary 
 blocks the way. They turn aside to the west 
 (the fosse where the crosses will later be cast 
 lies to the east) , and they come by the north 
 to the rocky plateau which bears the name 
 of Golgotha. There Christ falls, embracing 
 the altar of His sacrifice. 
 
 The soldiers lose no time, but go on to the 
 completion of their gruesome work. For 
 the last time our dear Lord's garments are 
 jerked from His lacerated flesh, and He is 
 
202 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 placed upon the cross. He nerves Himself 
 for the coming crisis: His tight-drawn lips 
 are compressed with the resolution of hero- 
 ism, and perhaps again they whisper, 
 "Father, thy will be done!" A large nail, 
 three or four inches long, is placed against 
 the right palm, and with a few strong blows 
 is driven home to the hard wood, tearing 
 its way through flesh and nerve and sinew. 
 The fingers close convulsively about the 
 cruel iron, and the blood trickles down upon 
 the rock beneath. Another nail tears its 
 way through the left hand; two more, 
 through the throbbing feet— and He is fixed 
 fast to the rood. His chest expands in a 
 spasmodic effort to get more air; a quiver- 
 ing shudder passes through His frame, from 
 the thorn-crowned head, through the ex- 
 tended arms and gashed trunk, down to the 
 feet that press in agony against the hard 
 wood. And so— Father in heaven! so, they 
 crucify Him! 
 
 Through the angry mutterings of the 
 thunder, through His foes' exultant shouts 
 of demoniac triumph, we catch the sound 
 of His trembling voice. "Father," He 
 says, "Father, forgive them; for they know 
 
APOSTASY 203 
 
 not what they do" ; 1 and we learn the sacred- 
 ness of forgiving love and the heinousness of 
 bitter unforgiveness. Again He speaks. 
 It is to the repentant thief on His right 
 hand: and in answer to the prayer for a 
 little thought when the Lord shall have come 
 into His kingdom, He promises to the out- 
 cast the joys of heaven on that very day. 
 "Amen, I say to thee: this day thou shalt 
 be with me in Paradise. ' ' 2 
 
 Down the hillside and back to the city 
 frightened throngs are hurrying through the 
 unnatural darkness. They are casting ter- 
 rified glances back at the cross, which stands 
 out against the lurid blackness of angry 
 skies: they are gasping with fear, lest the 
 curse of God has fallen upon them. And 
 now, nearer to the cross comes the group 
 of the dying Savior's loved ones — and with 
 them, Mary His Mother. For, "there stood 
 by the cross of Jesus his Mother." 3 
 
 But, oh ! the sorrow of His desolate heart, 
 the anguish of her sword-pierced soul! 
 Mary looks up at that form that hangs be- 
 
 iLuke XXIII, 34. 
 2 Luke XXIII, 43. 
 s John XIX, 25. 
 
204 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 fore her, mangled, bruised, crushed, gashed, 
 bloody. And Bethlehem rises before her, 
 with the sweetness of His baby love, the 
 beauty of His baby face, the caresses and 
 clingings of His baby hands. Egypt and 
 Nazareth come back to her, with the beloved 
 intimacy between Mother and Boy. That 
 head, torn with the thorny crown, has rested 
 on her breast: those hands, dug with the 
 nails, have clung to her and blessed her: 
 those lips, swollen and discolored, have 
 kissed her and called her by the sacred name 
 of mother. Oh, Father! why have men 
 treated Him so? Why "have they dug His 
 hands and His feet and numbered all His 
 bones?" 1 
 
 In the fulness of His love for her, the 
 virgin Christ gives His Virgin Mother to 
 the virgin Apostle John. And now, it seems 
 that even she is gone from Him, and He has 
 nothing left on earth. No help, no solace, 
 no comfort! 
 
 So, He turns His blood-dimmed eyes to 
 heaven and looks up to His Father. But 
 there is no help even there! for He is cov- 
 ered with the sins of the world, an outcast, 
 
 i Cf. Ps. XXI, 17. 
 
APOSTASY 205 
 
 the object of anger in His Father's sight. 
 And as He turns away His weary eyes, the 
 heart-breaking thought appalls Him, that 
 He is alone, all alone with sin. And up 
 from the bleeding heart, out of the anguished 
 soul, through the pale and swollen lips comes 
 the cry, which speaks of an agony as close 
 to the pains of hell as a human soul could 
 go without despair: "My God, my God, 
 why hast thou forsaken me!" 1 May God 
 forgive us that awful pain, which we caused 
 the dying Christ! For, His soul-tearing 
 dereliction is the price of expiation for our 
 abandonment of God, when we turned away 
 from Him and made some vile satisfaction 
 the god of our being. May the woe of our 
 forsaken Master warm our souls to love 
 and keep us true to Him forevermore! 
 
 We are gazing at the beginning of the end. 
 Christ's cry, "I thirst," 2 tells of the unbear- 
 able pangs of the bodily thirst which has 
 burned up His veins from the loss of blood 
 and has flamed up from His untended 
 wounds. But, more eloquently still, it 
 speaks of His yearning for our nearness and 
 
 i Matt. XXVII, 46. 
 2 John XIX, 28. 
 
206 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 our love, which He craves and which (please 
 God!) we shall not refuse. 
 
 The dying Savior looks back over the 
 long line of prophecies about Himself, and 
 sees that they are all fulfilled. He has done 
 the work which the Father has given Him 
 to do : He has accomplished all but the last 
 detail of the atonement, demanded by God's 
 justice. The agony in the garden, the in- 
 justice of the mock trials, the tortures of the 
 bloody outrages at the hands of the soldiers, 
 the rejection by His people, the weary way 
 of the cross, the endless pains of the three 
 hours, hanging on His pierced hands and 
 f ee t_all these are past. And from His 
 heart well up the words of triumph, "It is 
 consummated." * 
 
 Faithful unto death, even the death of the 
 cross! He has only to lay down His life, 
 and His sacrifice of redemption will be ac- 
 complished. He has taught us how to live : 
 now He will show us how to die. The sun 
 is darkened; the thunder mutters; the 
 ground rocks and sways in the throes of the 
 earthquake; all nature is shaken, as if 
 caught in the agonies of a death-struggle. 
 
 i John XIX, 30. 
 
APOSTASY 207 
 
 And in the midst of it all the dying Master 
 is calm. The agony of dereliction is gone ; 
 the Father's anger is passing away. Back 
 of the Father's wrath the well-beloved Son 
 sees the smile of love upon His Father's 
 face — and He will go to Him. Not with the 
 weakness of a man done to his death, but 
 with the strength of the Master of life and 
 death, He will lay down His life when He 
 wills it. With His last breath He will again 
 proclaim His divine Sonship and the mutual 
 love between His Father and Himself. 
 "Father," He cries, " Father, into thy hands 
 I commend my spirit." 1 And a smile 
 comes over the haggard features, like the 
 first gleam of a rainbow after a storm. 
 " Father!" Like a tired child, falling 
 asleep in its father's arms, the dear Christ 
 bows His thorn-crowned head upon His 
 gashed bosom; His sacred, blood-dimmed 
 eyes close to the things of earth; a gasp 
 comes from His heaving breast; a shudder 
 passes over His mangled frame — and He is 
 still, oh! so still! And he gives up the 
 ghost. 
 Yes, it is over. He is dead. Jesus 
 
 i Luke XXIII, 46. 
 
208 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 Christ, the Son of God, is dead; and the 
 great High Priest of mankind has ' ' entered 
 . . . into the holies, having obtained eternal 
 redemption. ' ' x He has triumphed over dis- 
 loyalty and duplicity and time-serving and 
 lust and cruelty and apostasy. He has con- 
 quered, not only for Himself, but for His 
 followers, if they will follow Him. And by 
 His tremendous oblation He has won for 
 them the strength to follow, so that they 
 may form part of that great army which 
 will stand by Him under the standard of the 
 cross, when He delivers up the Kingdom to 
 the Father. 2 
 
 Amid the black clouds which lower over 
 the hill, amid the convulsions of nature 
 which split the rock of Calvary beneath our 
 feet and rend the veil of the temple back in 
 the darkened city, that did not "know the 
 time of its visitation, " 3 a calm gleam of 
 light illumines that figure on the cross. In 
 the splendor of that light our vision goes 
 back to Bethlehem, where the angels sang 
 in the starry night: "Glory to God in the 
 
 i Heb. IX, 12. 
 
 2 Cf. I Cor. XV, 24. 
 
 3 Luke XIX, 44. 
 
APOSTASY 209 
 
 highest and on earth peace to men of good 
 will. ' ' x That glory has been given and that 
 peace has been won by the Master, dead upon 
 the cross. 
 
 Down the future our vision leaps, and sees 
 the white-robed army of the martyrs, who 
 from the cross will gather the courage to 
 face the wild beasts of the arena and the 
 fiercer cruelty of tiger-hearted men. We 
 see the crowded ranks of confessors and 
 virgins, who will give Christ their all, and 
 will live for Him — which is sometimes 
 harder than to die for Him. We see the 
 heroes and heroines, who in the might of the 
 Crucified will turn away from the joys of 
 earth, to minister to God's abandoned ones, 
 to bring them to their blood-mantled Lover, 
 and to keep them with Him. We see the 
 millions, who through Him will be stronger 
 than the false splendor of earthly pomp and 
 the seductions of fleshly indulgence and the 
 degradation of worldly pride. 
 
 And on and on our vision sweeps, until it 
 pierces the veil of eternity, and we behold 
 the glory of the "Lamb that was slain" and 
 
 iLuke II, 14. 
 
210 THE UNDYING TRAGEDY 
 
 is "worthy to receive power and divinity 
 and wisdom and strength and honor and 
 glory and benediction," 1 and we glimpse 
 the radiance of the sons and daughters of 
 men, become forever the children of God, 
 bought back from their doom, and made the 
 "heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ." 
 And as the beauty of the vision thrills our 
 heart of hearts, we bow down before the 
 Victim of sin and the Victim of love, and 
 we say: "We adore thee, O Christ, and we 
 bless thee, because by thy cross thou hast re- 
 deemed the world. " 3 
 
 i Apoc. V, 12. 
 
 2 Rom. VIII, 17. 
 
 3 The Roman Breviary : Feast of Finding of the Holy Cross, 
 
 Noct. II. 
 
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