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Rh these men continually cried the name of the criminal, his crime, and who were the witnesses, and called upon any person who knew anything in his favor to come forward and testify. After the testimony was taken the eleven men cast lots or voted, and their decision was shown to the high priest. As he was too holy to act by himself, but only as the mouthpiece of God, he went up to a basin or a ewer, as it is called by them, and washed his hands in token of the innocence of the court, thus testifying that the criminal's own action had brought condemnation on himself. As soon as the soldiers saw this, they took the man to the place of execution, and there stoned him till he was dead. Not one of them was allowed to speak, not even to whisper, while the execution was going on. Nothing was heard but the pelting of stones and the shrieks of the criminal. To my mind this would be a most awful mode of death, and one that would be likely to deter others from committing crime.

Now, I ask the reader to consider the mode of a Roman execution, and see what a beautiful chain of divine Providence is brought out in the execution of Jesus of Nazareth. There was a law in the criminal code of the Romans, enacted by Meeleesen, a philosopher by nature, who taught that if a man was accused of a crime and was tried and found not guilty, he should be publicly chastised. His reasons were that the man had acted improperly—so much so that he had created suspicion. This would seem to give license to an enemy to work mischief. But the same