This was genuine Sadducean language,--precisely what one would expect to come from such a mouth. But it was also triumphant language. The Pharisee must yield to it, or else forego the gratification of his own chief desire. He might very much have preferred to assert Jewish law. He might have been willing to run some risk in enforcing it. To do otherwise was to stoop to the maxims of a sect which he detested. But a compromise was the only possible course. By adopting it, he could ensure a general agreement among the rulers in bringing about the death of Jesus at the next Passover. And there would be some compensation. The death would be more ignominious than the national customs would have made it. We are told, therefore, that '_from that day forth they took counsel to put Him to death_.' There was now no division, either about the end or the means. Pilate was to be the judge; the death they were to aim at was the death of the Cross. Such, I suppose, was what Caiaphas himself understood by the words, '_It is expedient for us that one man should die for the nation, and that the whole nation perish not_.' A narrow meaning enough,--one in which there was nothing of patriotism, in the vulgarest sense of that word. Caiaphas would save his nation by binding the chains of foreign domination more strictly upon it; he would put on a new badge of slavery, that it might be permitted to exist. But then, as now, men utter words--made, as they think, to fit an occasion--intended to express only some paltry device of their minds--which are pregnant with a signification that ages unborn will confess and wonder at. St. John does not say to his Ephesian readers or to us,--'_We_ can see another force in the words of the High Priest than that which he put on them; _we_ can translate them in our way and to our use.' But he says, 'There _was_ that force in them always.' Caiaphas had not the power to contract his speech to the dimensions of his wit. '_Being high priest that year, he prophesied._' The grandeur of the office, which had witnessed the relation of God to His people for fourteen hundred years, manifested itself through the poor creature, who could look no further than the expediency of the moment; to whom the past and the future were as nothing. He who believed in no angel or spirit was compelled to be the spokesman of the Divine Word, even when he was plotting His death. Strange and awful reflection! And yet so it must be,--so experience shows us continually that it is. Our words are not our own,--we are not lords over them, whatever we may think. Is it not well for us to ask who is Lord over them; how such terrible instruments--so immeasurably more terrible than swords or rifles--may be used lawfully, for the protection, and not the destruction, of our brethren; how we may be the willing, and not merely, like Caiaphas, the unconscious, proclaimers of a Divine purpose; how we may execute it by obeying it, not by the crimes which strive, vainly, to defeat