Jesus Christ was a Jew, and it might have been expected that the advent of the most illustrious of His race, in the character of the Prophet announced by Moses, would have been hailed with enthusiasm by His countrymen. But the result was far otherwise. "He came unto his own, and his own received him not." [163:1] The Jews cried "Away with him, away with him, crucify him;" [163:2] and He suffered the fate of the vilest criminal. The enmity of the posterity of Abraham to our Lord did not terminate with His death; they long maintained the bad pre-eminence of being the most inveterate of the persecutors of His early followers. Whilst the awful portents of the Passion, and the marvels of the day of Pentecost were still fresh in public recollection, their chief priests and elders threw the apostles into prison; [163:3] and soon afterwards the pious and intrepid Stephen fell a victim to their malignity. Their infatuation was extreme; and yet it was not unaccountable. They looked, not for a crucified, but for a conquering Messiah. They imagined that the Saviour would release them from the thraldom of the Roman yoke; that He would make Jerusalem the capital of a prosperous and powerful empire; and that all the ends of the earth would celebrate the glory of the chosen people. Their vexation, therefore, was intense when they discovered that so many of the seed of Jacob acknowledged the son of a carpenter as the Christ, and made light of the distinction between Jew and Gentile. In their case the natural aversion of the heart to a pure and spiritual religion was inflamed by national pride combined with mortified bigotry; and the fiendish spirit which they so frequently exhibited in their attempts to exterminate the infant Church may thus admit of the most satisfactory explanation.