Did Caiaphas know that he was killing an inspired Prophet? No, of course he did not. “Brethren, I wot that through ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers,” is the Apostolic verdict. The high priest condemned the Messiah to death in ignorance; and are we sure that the prayer, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” was meant to apply only to the Roman soldiers? But ignorance is not always an excuse. Ignorance is a consequence as well as a cause. If the high priest, when confronted with the Son of God, saw in Him only a mischievous agitator, to be suppressed in the interests of the Church, we must ask, Why was this judicial blindness sent upon him?
Self-interest mixed with religious formalism was the cause of Caiaphas' fall. It was accelerated by his unscrupulousness. Take these three strands separately.
1. Self-interest.-Our Lord had exposed the selfishness and hypocrisy of the ruling class with merciless severity. Only a few days before He had overturned the money-changers' tables in the Temple court as a protest against a highly ingenious and lucrative form of extortion, out of which the high officials enriched themselves. The sacrificial animals could be bought only on the spot, at a price fixed by the priests; and, as Roman money was not taken, those who brought it must exchange it for shekels-and the rate of exchange was fixed by the priests. This arrangement had been denounced and attacked; and therefore the rulers thought, “It is expedient (not for us, of course, but for the people) that he should die.” Do we ever give our parliamentary and other votes for ourselves or our class, and then find some patriotic reason for our choice?
This selfish consideration of our own interests will make us as blind as bats to the most radiant beauty of truth; ay, and to Christ Himself, if the recognition of Him and of His message seems to threaten any of these. They tell us that fishes which live in the water of caverns lose their eyesight; and men that are always living in the dark holes of their own selfish, absorbed natures also lose their spiritual sight; and the fairest, loftiest, truest, and most radiant visions (which are realities) pass before their eyes, and they see them not. When you put on regard for yourselves, as they used to do blinkers upon horses, you have no longer the power of wide, comprehensive vision, but only see straight forward upon the narrow line which you fancy is marked out by your own interests. If ever there comes into the selfish man's mind a truth, or an aspect of Christ's mission, which may seem to cut against some of his practices or interests, how blind he is to it! When Lord Nelson was at Copenhagen, and they hoisted the signal of recall, he put his telescope to his blind eye and said, “I do not see it”! And that is exactly what this self-absorbed regard to one's own interests does with hundreds of men who do not in the least degree know it. It blinds them to the plain will of the commander-in-chief flying there at the masthead. “There are none so blind as those who will not see”; and there are none who so certainly will not see as those who have an uneasy suspicion that if they do see they will have to change their tack.
Look at the contrast. Against the overbearing insolence of Caiaphas, “Ye know nothing at all,” set the perfect resignation of Christ, “Not my will, but thine be done.” Against the selfish and cruel policy of Caiaphas, “It is expedient for us-for you and for me-that one man should die,” set the absolute renunciation of Christ, “I lay down my life for my sheep.” “It is expedient for you that I go away.”
Interest in the common good is at present so weak a motive in the generality, not because it can never be otherwise, but because the mind is not accustomed to dwell on it as it dwells from morning till night on things which tend only to personal advantage. When called into activity, as only self-interest now is, by the daily course of life, and spurred from behind by the love of distinction and the fear of shame, it is capable of producing, even in common men, the most strenuous exertions as well as the most heroic sacrifices. The deep-rooted selfishness which forms the general character of the existing state of society is so deeply rooted only because the whole course of existing institutions tends to foster it; and modern institutions in some respects more than ancient, since the occasions on which the individual is called on to do anything for the public without receiving its pay are far less frequent in modern life than in the smaller commonwealths of antiquity.1 [Note: J. S. Mill, Autobiography (ed. 1908), 133.]
2. Religiosity.-One of the awful warnings to be derived from this most terrible event in the history of mankind is the blindness, the vanity, the capability of unutterable wickedness which may co-exist with the pretentious scrupulosities of an external religionism. The priests and Pharisees had sunk into hypocrisy so deep and habitual that it had become half-unconscious, because it had narcotized and all but paralyzed the moral sense. They were infinitely particular about peddling littlenesses, but, with a hideous cruelty and a hateful indifference to all their highest duties to God and man, they murdered, on false charges, the Lord of Glory. A vile self-interest-the determination at all costs to maintain their own prerogatives, and to prevent all questioning of their own traditional system-had swallowed up every other consideration in the minds of men whose very religion had become a thing of rites and ceremonies, and had lost all power to touch the heart or to inspire the moral sense. “The religion of Israel,” it has been said, “falsified by priests, perverted from the service of the Living God into a sensuous worship-where the symbol superseded the reality, the Temple overshadowed the God, and the hierarchy supplanted His law-could find no love in its heart, no reverence in its will, for the holiest Person of its race; met Him not as the fruition of its hopes, and the end of its being, but as the last calamity of its life, a Being who must perish that it might live.”
For Caiaphas something may be said. All that he knew of religion was bound up with the Temple service. This was not, in his view, a vulgar conflict about the material advantages of the priesthood; he was a custodier of a great tradition, which was seriously threatened by the Galilæan ministry. By clearing the Temple courts, Jesus had called attention to an abuse which the priests had suffered to grow up; and on the same occasion He had declared that, though the sanctity of the Temple were altogether destroyed, He could of Himself rear up a new order of right worship. He set His own decision against that of Moses, and affirmed or limited parts of the Law as one who had authority. And in all this He won the assent of many. The man healed of blindness was bold, in face of the council, to declare, “He is a prophet.” Officers sent to report His words returned with a new sense of awe, for “never man spake like this man.” Men of rank within the council-Nicodemus and Joseph-were wavering; for this obscure man, of whom the worst was credible, was somehow able to break the weapons which were used by Caiaphas against Him, and held on His dangerous way, unfixing men's regard for the ancient order of religion. So disdain changed to irritation, and that deepened into hatred against One who threatened what was sacred in the high priest's eyes. And throughout that process, Caiaphas never once was able to see Christ justly; he saw a distorted imagination of Him through the mist of his own ignorance and his threatened interests. And when, at length, Jesus stood before him, Caiaphas was unable to see Him from the constraint of habit. He sought not for the truth about his Prisoner, but for a better persuasion that he already knew the truth.
Carlyle quotes out of the Koran a story of the dwellers by the Dead Sea, to whom Moses was sent. They sniffed and sneered at Moses; saw no comeliness in Moses; and so he withdrew. But Nature and her rigorous veracities did not withdraw. When next we find the dwellers by the Dead Sea, they, according to the Koran, are all changed into apes. “By not using their souls, they lost them.” “And now,” continues Carlyle, “their only employment is to sit there and look out into the smokiest, dreariest, most undecipherable sort of universe. Only once in seven days they do remember that they once had souls. Hast thou never, O traveller! fallen in with parties of this tribe? Methinks they have grown somewhat numerous in our day.” The old Greek proverb was that the avenging deities are shod with wool; but the wool grows on the eyelids that refuse the light. “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad”; but the insanity arises from judicial blindness.1 [Note: Joseph Cook, Boston Monday Lectures, i. 35.]
But when we in our viciousness grow hard,-
O misery on't!-the wise gods seel our eyes;
In our own filth drop our clear judgments; make us
Adore our errors; laugh at's while we strut
To our confusion.2 [Note: Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, III. xi. 111.]
And now we have reached the Eighth Circle [of the Inferno]-the circle in which Dante keeps us so long. He calls it Malebolge: Evil Ditches. It slopes all round downwards and is divided into ten ditches. Around each ditch there runs a mole or embankment, and bridges of stone at intervals make causeways, by which to pass across the ditches. The shape of Malebolge is that of a basin, with a central hollow, and the embankments, of course, drop in level, from first to last, so that the bridges and embankments are always higher in each upper ditch than in the lower ditches, on the side nearest to the outer wall.… The Sixth Ditch-of the Hypocrites-is, to me, the most arresting. It is the only place, besides the descent to the Seventh Circle, where the ravages of the Crucifixion earthquake are in evidence. Weary and weeping, these sinners tramp their round, weighed down with monks' hoods, gilded externally but fashioned of lead. At one point in each circuit of their external course they march over a recumbent naked figure, with arms outstretched, impaled upon the ground with three stakes, reminding us of the three nails of the Cross. It is Caiaphas, the arch-hypocrite, whose sin we all know. Annas, his father-in-law, and all the Sanhedrim of his time are near him. He has to feel through all eternity the weight of all the hypocrisy that has not been repented. Vergil starts at sight of Caiaphas. Is it because he realizes here a deeper meaning than he had when in his Æneid he prophesied “Unum pro multis dabitur caput” (Æneid, v. 815)?1 [Note: H. B. Garrod, Dante, Goethe's Faust, and other Lectures, 109.]
3. Unscrupulousness.-Lastly, Caiaphas was lost because of his unscrupulousness. We are told sometimes that the wise can always find employment in remedying the mistakes made by the good. But the worst mistakes are made not by the good, but by the unscrupulous-by those who, to quote a homely phrase, are “too clever by half.” The unscrupulous man is a disastrous partner in any enterprise; in the direction of national or religious policy he is simply ruinous. History shows us many venerable institutions, many promising movements, undone by falling into the hands of a clever and ambitious knave. Of those who do evil that good may come, the Bible says shortly, “Their condemnation is just.”
The one thing you can say in seeming favour of Caiaphas is that he was clever. Note the precise force of that word. It is set forth that Caiaphas was clever and not that he was wise. In this we hit upon a valuable distinction the world needs to master. Men and women are meant by God to be spiritual; and since the spiritual is the line of our destiny, therefore goodness is the only true wisdom; and crafty villainy is only the worse for its cleverness. Do we believe this? Which would trouble us more, to be called a sinner, or to be spoken of as a fool? There is many a man who is rather complimented when an acquaintance calls him a sinner, but who flames with anger when alluded to as a fool. Think what that means. If you have any doubt as to whether goodness is the truest wisdom, consider what follows, and at least learn how clever villainy reveals its true quality by simply appearing.
No one can accuse Caiaphas of weakness. He was a strong and alert man of inflexible purpose, able to command men and secure results. If he had fought on the right side, what a warrior he would have made! If his dominant personality had been surrendered to Jesus, what a Christian leader he would have become! As it is, he stands forth typical of what strength and selfishness will make of a man. He failed to understand the meaning of events. He failed to understand the real significance of Jesus. He beat his strength in vain against the walls of God's purpose. Pride and selfishness and a secular mind had blinded his eyes and hardened his heart. When he died the new religion was girding itself to conquer the world.
Cleverness is something very petty. It is the quick perception of single points; it does not imply any great grasp; rather it excludes it. You may speak of a clever boy, because, having his faculties still undeveloped, he sees single things quickly and clearly. To speak of a clever man or woman would be a disparaging term. It would imply want of grasp or compass. But this cleverness is a great temptation to vanity. The single remarks strike persons, and they admire them. Some smile shows it; and the person goes his way and is self-satisfied and his vanity is nourished. And these petty tributes may be the more numerous, because they are petty.
Now just watch yourself for the little occasions in which you think yourself cleverer than another. Perhaps you won't call it clever, but something more solid; a true perception of things. Set yourself against any supposed superiority to any one. One grain of love is better than a hundredweight of intellect. And after all, that blasted spirit, Satan, has more intellect than the whole human race.1 [Note: Spiritual Letters of Edward Bouverie Pusey, 104.]
The Church needs leaders. She needs men of wise counsel and prompt energy and determining speech. She needs men who will patiently and untiringly serve her tables. But the office they fill is full of giddy and dazing temptations. No class of men need more the continual reconsecration of aim and the fresh baptism of the Spirit. But these are gained only as men keep themselves in the faith and love of Jesus. The man to whom Christ is a name, or only an instrument of service, is a danger to the Church. But the man to whom He is Lord, in whose heart a deep devotion maintains its unquenched fire, may make mistakes, may seem to endanger sacred interests, but his blundering will be wiser than the cold prudence of the ecclesiastic. The great names in the Church of God, from Moses and Samuel to Wesley and Chalmers, have been men who lived in such adoring love to Christ that they dared to break with the old order and lead men in new departures owned and blessed of God. Ah, had Caiaphas only known his Lord, what a wonderful page of grace would have been written in this gospel: “And they that laid hands on Jesus led him away to Caiaphas. And when Caiaphas looked upon Him, and saw Him meek and lowly, he was deeply moved. And Jesus turned and looked upon Caiaphas, and in that hour his heart smote him, and his eyes were cleansed, and he saw the Son of God. And he came down from his high priest's seat, and took off the ephod he wore, and put it upon Jesus, and, being high priest that same year, he prophesied: ‘Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world. Behold the King of Israel.' And he kneeled down before Him and said: ‘Thou art an High Priest for ever, after the order of Melchizedek!' ” Alas, there is no such scripture. Christ was only the stone of stumbling, and the rock of offence to him, on which he fell to be broken for ever.1 [Note: W. M. Clow, The Day of the Cross, 23.]
