The Christ's bearing before his Roman judge is of the same strain; the proud silence of the arraigned prince; the bold assertion of kingliness, when challenged; the stately defiance of the pagan's wrath; the appeal to supernatural support; the prediction of angelic succor in the hour of need, in strict accordance with the apocalyptic expressions thrown out at the last supper, and reverberated in tremendous rhetoric on the Mount of Olives and in the palace of the high priest, expressions in full and literal harmony with the Jewish conceptions of the Christ's relations with the angelic world, wholly in the spirit of Daniel, Enoch, and other apocryphal writings, leave no doubt on the mind that this personage moved within the limits of the common Messianic conception. Pilate condemns him reluctantly, feeling that he is a harmless visionary, but is obliged to condemn him as one who persistently claimed to be the "King of the Jews," an enemy of Cæsar, an insurgent against the empire, a pretender to the throne, a bold inciter to rebellion. The death he undergoes is the death of the traitor and mutineer, the death that would have been decreed to Judas the Gaulonite, had he been captured instead of slain in battle, and that was inflicted on thousands of his deluded followers. The bitter cry of the crucified as he hung on the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" disclosed the hope of deliverance that till the last moment sustained his heart, and betrayed the anguish felt when the hope was blighted; the sneers and hootings of the rabble expressed their conviction that he had pretended to be what he was not. The miracles ascribed to the Christ, so far from being inconsistent with the ordinary conception of the Messianic office, were necessary to complete that conception. It was expected that the Messiah would work miracles. This was one of his prerogatives; a certificate of his commission from Jehovah, and an instrument of great service in carrying out his designs. To the Jew of that, as of preceding periods, to the crude theist of all periods, the belief in miracles was and is easy. In such judgment, the will of God is absolute, and when should that will be exerted if not at providential crises of need, or in furtherance of his servants' work? The special miracles attributed to the Christ of the earliest New Testament literature are, as Strauss conclusively shows, patterned after performances which met satisfactorily the demands of the Jewish imagination; being either repetitions of ancient marvels, or concrete expressions of ideal faith. The miracles of this Christ are precisely adjusted to the exigencies of his calling, in no respect transcending or falling short of that standard.