Military methods characterised the procurator's rule. To a man placed
as Pilate, the notion of a ruler independent of fighting supporters,
and that in territory held down by force of arms, was simply absurd.

Our Lord's further explanation seems to Pilate still more out of
keeping with the notion of royalty. Jesus says He was born to be a
king in order that He might bear witness to the truth. A
king--truth--what have these two words in common, the one referring to
the most real region, the other to the most ideal? To Pilate, the
conjunction is absolutely incongruous. "_What is truth_?" he asks, as
he turns away, too contemptuous to wait for an answer. This famous
utterance has been quoted as a text for the anxious inquirer, and
preachers have gravely set themselves to answer it. Jesus did nothing
of the kind. Evidently it was not a serious inquiry. Pilate flung off
the very idea of truth--a mere abstraction, nothing to a practical
Roman. Still, though he was not seeking any answer to his question, by
the very tone of it he suggested that he did not possess that gem which
those who hold it prize above all things. "The Scepticism of Pilate"
is the title of one of Robertson's greatest sermons. The preacher
traces it to four sources: indecision; falseness to his own
convictions; the taint of the worldly temper of his day; and that
priestly bigotry which forbids inquiry, and makes doubt a crime.
Pilate is the typical sceptic, who is worlds removed from the "honest"
doubter. Serious doubt, which is pained and anxious in the search of
truth, is in essence belief, for it believes in the value of truth, if
only truth can be discovered; but typical scepticism not only does not
credit what the believer takes for truth, but despises it as not worth
seeking. That is the fatal doubt, a doubt that eats into the soul as a
moral canker.