But let us look further up the historic stream of sectarian animosity. What of Jesus, the Son of God himself? If the sectarian Jews, his contemporaries, are alone to be the accepted witnesses of his words and actions and character, what would be the effect of their testimony upon the historic Christ? It would make him base born, a wine bibber, an associate of harlots, publicans and sinners; it would make him an innovator of sacred customs, a desecrator of the temple, a seditious person, a blasphemer. And so well did the sectaries of his day succeed in making themselves believe that the populace of Jerusalem surged through the streets crying "crucify him, crucify him!" and he was condemned by the Sanhedrin to death, from which fate not even a friendly disposed Roman procurator could save him. The sectarian Jews suborned witnesses, who either swore falsely against the Christ, or wrongly interpreted his words and actions; and all this in a holy zeal for the preservation of the established order of things among the Jews. After his resurrection the same characters bribed the Roman guard set to watch the sepulchre, put a lie into their mouths, and pledged their influence as a guarantee against punishment from their superior officers for the neglect of duty involved in the falsehood they were bribed to tell. [9] What was Paul's experience with the same sectarian Jews after he became a proselyte to the Christian faith? Briefly told, the same in character as his master's. [10] So well known is the fact of sectarian bitterness; such the zeal of the orthodox for the established faith, that the Emperor Julian, usually called the "Apostate," who both understood and derided the theological disputes of the hostile Christian sects, invited to the palace the leaders of the hostile sects, that he might enjoy the agreeable spectacle of their furious encounters. [Footnote 9: Matthew xxvi, 59-70; see also xxvi, xxvii.] [Footnote 10: See Acts of the Apostles from Chapters viii to xxvii, inclusive.] "The clamor of controversy sometimes provoked the emperor to exclaim, 'Hear me! The Franks have heard me, and the Alemanni;' but he soon discovered that he was now engaged with more obstinate and implacable enemies; and though he exerted the powers of oratory to persuade them to live in concord, or at least in peace, he was perfectly satisfied, before he dismissed them from his presence, that he had nothing to dread from the union of the Christians." [11] [Footnote 11: "History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," by Edward Gibbon, chap. xxiii.] Such the bitterness of sectarian strife, in which the orthodox party has ever been as harsh, as untruthful, as unscrupulous, as resourceful at invention of evil things, as savage and cruel as the heretics have been. Nay, in the sum of such things the preponderance is on their side. VARIOUS CLASSES OF WITNESSES.