The trial of Alfred Dreyfus is still fresh in the minds and memories of
men. Troubled political seas still surge and roll in France because of
the hatred, prejudice, and passion that envelope the mysterious
_bordereau_. The French Republic is still rent by two contending
factions: Dreyfus and anti-Dreyfus. His friends still say that Dreyfus
was a Prometheus who was chained to an ocean-girt rock while the vulture
of exile preyed upon his heart. His enemies still assert that he was a
Judas who betrayed not God or Christ, but France and the Fatherland. His
banishment to the Island of the Devil; his wife's deathless devotion;
the implacable hatred of his enemies; the undying loyalty of friends;
and his own sufferings and woes are the warp and woof of the most
splendid and pathetic epoch of a century.
Other trials--of Mary Stuart, the beautiful and brilliant Scottish
queen; of Robert Emmet, the grand and gifted Irish patriot
martyr--thrilled the world in their day.
But these trials, one and all, were tame and commonplace, compared with
the trial and crucifixion of the Galilean peasant, Jesus of Nazareth.
These were earthly trials, on earthly issues, before earthly courts. The
trial of the Nazarene was before the high tribunals of both Heaven and
earth; before the Great Sanhedrin, whose judges were the master-spirits
of a divinely commissioned race; before the court of the Roman Empire
that controlled the legal and political rights of men throughout the
known world, from Scotland to Judea and from Dacia to Abyssinia.
The trial of Jesus was twofold: Hebrew and Roman; or Ecclesiastical and
Civil. The Hebrew trial took place before the Great Sanhedrin,
consisting of seventy-one members. The Roman trial was held before
Pontius Pilate, Roman governor of Judea, and afterwards before Herod,
Tetrarch of Galilee. These trials all made one, were links in a chain,
and took place within a space of time variously estimated from ten to
twenty hours.
The general order of events may be thus briefly described:
(1) About eleven o'clock on the evening of April 6th, A.D. 30, Jesus and
eleven of the Apostles left the scene of the Last Supper, which had been
celebrated (probably in the home of Mark) on the outskirts of Jerusalem,
to go to the Garden of Gethsemane.
(2) Jesus was arrested about midnight in Gethsemane by a band of Temple
officers and Roman soldiers guided by Judas.
(3) He was first taken to Annas, and was afterwards sent by Annas to
Caiaphas. A private preliminary examination of Jesus was then had before
one of these church dignitaries. St. John describes this examination,
but does not tell us clearly whether it was Annas or Caiaphas who
conducted it.
(4) After His preliminary examination, Jesus was arraigned about two
o'clock in the morning before the Sanhedrin, which had convened in the
palace of Caiaphas, and was formally tried and condemned to death on the
charge of blasphemy against Jehovah.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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