Whether or not this theory be true, it at least suffers from the vice of having been adopted without due examination. An opinion can rest on no solid basis unless its opposite has been duly supported by competent defenders. Now in the present instance this has not happened. Owing to the causes mentioned above, the Christian view has been practically uncontested, and writer after writer has taken it up and repeated it in the unreflecting way in which we all of us repeat assertions about which there is no dispute. Yet a very little consideration will show that so simple an explanation of the transaction has at least no _a priori_ probability in its favor. That a whole nation should be completely in the wrong, and a few individuals only in the right, is a supposition which can be accepted only on the most convincing evidence. And in order even to justify our entertaining it for a moment, we must be in possession of a report of the circumstances of the case from the advocates of the nation, as well as from the advocates of the individuals who suffered by its action. A one-sided statement from the partizans of a convicted person can never be sufficient to enable us to pronounce a conclusive verdict against his judges. The most ordinary rules of fairness prohibit this. Yet this is what is commonly done. No account whatever of the trial of Jesus has reached us from the side of the prosecution. Josephus, who might have enlightened us, is silent. On the other hand, the side of the defense has furnished us with its own version of what passed, and from the imperfect materials thus supplied we must endeavor to discriminate between the two as best we can. To do this justly, we must bear in mind, that even though the charges produced against Jesus should not appear to justify the indignation of his accusers, it is at least unlikely that that indignation was altogether without reasonable cause. And painful as it may be to be compelled to think that Jesus was in the wrong, it would surely—had not long habit perverted our natural sentiments—be quite as painful to believe that a large multitude of men, impelled by mere malignity against a virtuous citizen, had conspired to put him to death on charges which were absolutely groundless. The honor of an heroic, and above all, of a deeply religious people, is here at stake. It is no light matter to deal in wholesale accusations of judicial murder against them. It would surely be a happier solution if it could be shown that the individual condemned was not absolutely guiltless. But possibly we may be able to elude either alternative. Just as, according to the able reasoning of Grote, the upright character of Socrates may be compatible with a sense of justice on the part of the Athenians who condemned him to death, so it is conceivable that the innocence of Jesus may consist with the fact that the Jews who caused him to be crucified were not altogether without excuse.