After the boys have, in this way, passed sentence on one of their companions and the master approves of it, this question is put to the rest of the school:—“Will any of you become this boy’s substitute? _i. e._, take his place, and bear his punishment, and let him go free?” And it generally happens that some little friend of the criminal comes forward and offers to bear the punishment instead of him. Then the only punishment the real offender has to bear is to carry the bread and water to his friend as long as he is confined in the dungeon. In this way, it generally happens that the most stubborn and hard-hearted boys are melted down, by seeing their companions willingly suffering for them what they know they deserved to suffer themselves. [Illustration: Jesus is Scourged And Pilate, when he had called together the chief priests and the rulers and the people, said unto them, Ye have brought this man unto me, as one that perverteth the people: and, behold, I, having examined _him_ before you, have found no fault in this man touching those things whereof ye accuse him. No, nor yet Herod: for I sent you to him; and, lo, nothing worthy of death is done unto him. 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.)—Then Pilate therefore took Jesus, and scourged _him_.—_St. Luke xxiii: 13-19; St. John xix: 1._ _NOTE BY THE ARTIST_ _In endeavoring to apprehend, however imperfectly, the sufferings endured by Jesus during this terrible day, there may be a tendency to under-estimate the significance of one detail which is only incidentally mentioned by the evangelists, namely, the punishment of scourging. But this was nevertheless so barbarously cruel, that the mind recoils in horror from the effort to realize the awful agony which it entailed. Bound in a crouching attitude to the pillar of torment, the quivering flesh lacerated by the fragments of bone and metal intertwisted with the thongs, few of its victims, save such as were in perfect physical health, were able to survive the infliction of the scourge, but perished either then and there, or shortly afterwards, from nervous shock or from mortification of the wounds. Yet it was a punishment so common, such an everyday occurrence, that the scourging of one more malefactor—Jesus by name—the justice or injustice of whose sentence they neither knew nor cared to know, would be regarded with utter indifference by the brutal soldiery charged with its infliction._ 64]