Let us place ourselves for one instant in the position of the logical and conscientious Jew. “‘Jehovah’ is a name of awe, unapproachable in thought or act except in ways Himself has specified. To attempt unlawful approach is to blaspheme. As Jehovah is infinitely great, presumptuous offence is infinitely heinous, is criminal, is the last crime as committed against Him who is the First. The blasphemer is worthy of death. This man makes himself equal with God, the unapproachable. He is a blasphemer, arrogant as Beelzebub. He is doubly worthy of death. To the people of the Jews is committed in trust the honoured Name; upon them it is incumbent to exterminate the blasphemer. The man must die.” Here is the secret of the virulent hatred which dogged the steps of the blameless Life. These men were following the dictates of reason, and _knew_, so they would say, that they were doing right. Here we have the invincible ignorance which the Light of the world failed to illumine; and He, “Who knows us as we are, Yet loves us better than He knows,” offers for them the true plea, “They know not what they do.” The steps of the argument are incontrovertible; the error lies in the initial idea,--such conception of Jehovah as made the conception of Christ inadmissible, impossible. Thus reasoned the Jew upon whom his religion had the first claim. The patriotic Jew, to whom religion itself was subservient to the hopes of his nation, arrived by quite another chain of _spontaneous_ arguments at the same inevitable conclusion:--“The Jews are the chosen people. The first duty of a Jew is towards his nation. These are critical times. A great hope is before us, but we are in the grip of the Romans; they may crush out the national life before our hope is realised. Nothing must be done to alarm their suspicions. This Man? By all accounts He is harmless, perhaps righteous. But He stirs up the people. It is rumoured that they call Him King of the Jews. He must not be permitted to ruin the hopes of the nation. He must die. It is expedient that one man die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.” Thus the consummate crime that has been done upon the earth was done probably without any consciousness of criminality; on the contrary, with the acquittal of that spurious moral sense which supports with its approval all _reasonable_ action. The Crucifixion was the logical and necessary outcome of ideas imbibed from their cradles by the persecuting Jews. So of every persecution; none is born of the occasion and the hour, but comes out of the habit of thought of a lifetime. It is the primal impulse to these habits of thought which children must owe to their parents; and, as a man’s thought and action Godward is-- “The very pulse of the machine,”