"What is the charge against Him? What has this man done?" demands the Roman governor, with a show of justice as he steps out to the front of his palace and looks at the mob. "He says he is Christ, the King," some of the accusers answer. Pilate goes back into the great hall, with the marble floor and the gilded ceilings. He himself has no love for the Jews. They have no love for Pilate. He knows the Jerusalemites to be a seditious lot of zealots, quarreling forever among themselves, and fanatical in their adherence to the laws of Moses. The Jews know Pilate to be a hater of their creeds and customs. They regard him, too, a brutal governor; but now they would use this brutality against one of whom they were a little afraid, for in the villages this Galilean, whom they were persecuting, had many friends. Would not the people rise, moved by His wonderful miracles, and at last put an end to all their religious pretenses? It was the temple-people, the Sanhedrins, and the Pharisaic priests who stood in front of this mob, gathered at Pilate's palace on that early morning. They had already decided their victim must die, and they were inciting all the ignorant to violence. Because of the Roman occupation, Pilate's approval was a necessity before they could quite kill a man. They reckoned, however, that he would want to please them some, and so lessen his own unpopularity. In a little time the governor called Jesus into the judgment hall. Looking at the wronged, the suffering, the persecuted being who stood before him, the blood falling from His poor body to the floor Pilate asked Him plainly if He were the king of the Jews? "Do you ask that of yourself," said the persecuted but heroic prisoner, "or did others tell it of me?" Pilate was in fact greatly impressed by the face, serene, even in suffering, and the mild words of one falsely accused. The Savior explained that if He was a king it was not of this world. His kingdom was of the spirit. Pilate did not quite understand that. He himself was not very spiritual. Jesus added, "I am a witness to the Truth." "Then what is Truth?" said Pilate. We can only guess the answer given him. It may have greatly moved the Roman, for he at once went out to the mob assembled on the pavement and said, "I find no fault in this man." Some one in the crowd spoke up and accused Jesus of stirring up the peasants in Galilee.