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EXPEDIENCY.

ST. LUKE, Xxiii. 16—19.

"I will therefore chastise Him, and release Him. (For of necessity he must release one unto them at the feast.) And they cried out all at once, saying, Away with this man, and release unto us Barabbas : (who, for a certain sedition made in the city, and for murder, was cast into prison)."

"I WILL therefore chastise Him, and release Him." A little was yielded in the hope that much might be saved. The consequence was, what the universal history of mankind teaches us to expect-the loss of all. "They cried out all at once, saying, Away with this man, and release unto us Barabbas." They might have been awed by firmness; but the least sign of yielding roused their fierce passions to the wildest pitch.

The Jews were to Pilate what our passions are to us; and as he dealt with the Jews, so do we too often deal with our temptations. To sin wilfully is the guilt of comparatively few-to sin under the guise of ignorance and good intentions, is the guilt, more or less, of us all.

Pilate was well intentioned: he was desirous

of saving our Blessed Lord- but not earnestly -not at all hazards. There he deceived himself; and his first action proved it. If Jesus was without fault, why was He not at once set free? Why was He to be first chastised? Uprightness, sincerity of purpose, and real strength of mind know no compromise with injustice-no dallying with evil. If Christ was not guilty, to punish Him was sin. But Pilate did not wish to avoid all sin; he only wished to avoid it in its extreme form. His grand principle was expediency. He desired to be just, and he persuaded himself that he could best attain his end by a slight injustice.

He would, on no account, on his own responsibility, have sentenced our Redeemer to death; but his sincerity went no further. That which he desired was merely to save himself from the reproaches of conscience, and the possible condemnation of the world. He feared evil, but he did not love good. There is a great gulf between those two states of mind-a gulf so narrow, that they who stand on the opposing brinks may appear to be side by side;-so deep that God only can fathom it now, and Heaven and Hell only will teach us to fathom it hereafter. Yet Pilate had at least a plausible excuse for his conduct; as he had no personal interest in our Lord's destruction, it could have been no personal enmity which induced him to propose a lesser form of punish

ment. And evil as is the sound of expediency, there are cases in which it is but another name for that wisdom of the serpent which is compatible with the harmlesness of the dove. But expediency, it must be remembered, can never make right that which in itself is wrong. To punish an innocent person, let the punishment be never so light, was an injustice; and if the happiness of millions could have been purchased by it, the act ought not to have been committed. Expediency, which chooses between different forms of innocent actions, is perfectly allowable; expediency, which chooses even the slightest form of an action which is not innocent, is absolutely inadmissible. And it was in this that the doubleness of Pilate's heart betrayed itself. With the professed intention of doing right he allowed himself to do wrong; and, the act once committed, he was no longer master of the consequences. In his miserable weakness he had owned our Lord to be, in a measure, guilty, and the fury of the people seized upon the acknowledgment, and converted it into that fiercer cry for death to which he at length yielded.

There is probably a tale, as sad, to be told of each one of us;-the history of a time when we have stood gazing afar upon some sinful deed, listening to the wild clamour of our passions, or the solicitations of those who call themselves our friends. We have, it may be, professed to resist the temptation; we have reasoned against it; we

have strengthened ourselves by arguments; but at length, as we have stood, gazing, thinking, resolving-yet unable to flee-the thought has arisen :what, if we could satisfy ourselves and others, by a slight yielding,-by that amount of concession which shall save us from the commission of the actual offence? Is there any need to recall the rest? God help us to bear the remembrance of the rapid, almost instantaneous, downfall; the increased concentrated power of the evil within us; the mocking force with which the tempter hurries us forward, bidding us look back helplessly at our lost resolution, even in the very act of following him wilfully and then the cold, heart-sickening, paralysing shock of finding ourselves suddenly— where but a few moments before we had thought it impossible we could ever be at Satan's side; having leaped the gulf and entered upon the road that ends in destruction.

Oh let us be true to ourselves. Real abhorrence of sin can tamper with it under no form; it dreads that which looks like it; it keeps far away from it; it knows that in times of great temptation -perhaps it may be said in every temptation— the least compromise is destruction; it feels that all which is lost on one side is gained on the other; that exactly in proportion as reason and conscience waver, the strength of passion grows mightier; and that thus-by steps few and fearful in their rapidity, the temptation which but a moment before appeared so slight as scarcely to require an

exertion to resist it, becomes overwhelming and irresistible.

Even if it were not so,-if we could escape outwardly unscathed from the furnace of temptation; if we were assured of victory, and could venture to the extremest verge of the act of sin, and retreat, conquerors over ourselves; should we really be justified in our boldness, or have cause to triumph in our victory? Christ, our merciful Lord, our loving Master, what does He ask of us? A heart that has proffered its allegiance to Him, and yet sighed longingly for the service of another? A mind tainted by thoughts of the evil which it trembled to commit? A love so little worth that it can dwell with pleasure upon the things which He hates? Be it that he will accept it,-be it that, in His wondrous mercy, He will look upon our weakness with compassion, on our coldness with forgiveness, on our treachery with forbearance. Are we Christians? are we even men-human beings capable of generosity, of devotion, of self-sacrifice; -and can we bear to offer such a heart for His acceptance?

Let us turn once more to Pilate. Had he been saved from that extremest form of sin which he committed when delivering up our Lord to His enemies, can we think that he would, therefore, have been numbered amongst Christ's friends? Loyalty and obedience lie in the will; and thousands there are whose wills are treacherous, though treachery will never in this world