The various causes of the hatred of the members of the Sanhedrin for Jesus are too numerous and profound to admit of exhaustive treatment here. A thorough analysis of these causes would necessitate a review of the life of Christ from the manger to the sepulcher. A few reasons will suffice. But at this point a distinction should be made between that personal hatred which disqualifies and the hatred and loathing of the crime that do not disqualify. Every just and righteous judge should loathe and hate the crime itself; and a certain amount of loathing and dislike for the criminal is most natural and almost inevitable. But no judge is qualified to sit in judgment upon the rights of life, liberty, or property of another whom he hates as the result of a personal grudge, born of personal experience with the prisoner at the bar. The hatred that disqualified the members of the Sanhedrin, under Hebrew law, was that kind of hatred that had been generated by personal interest and experience. The most merciless invective, barbed with incomparable wit, ridicule, and satire, had been daily hurled at them by Jesus with withering effect. With a touch more potent than that of Ithuriel's spear He had unmasked their wicked hypocrisy and had blazoned it to the skies. Every day of His active ministry, which lasted about three years, had been spent in denouncing their shameless practices and their guilty lives. The Scribes and Pharisees were proud, haughty, and conceited beyond description. They believed implicitly in the infallibility of their authority and in the perfection of their souls. How galling, then, to such men must have been this declaration of an obscure and lowly Nazarene: "Verily, I say unto you, That the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you."[309] What impetuous invective this: "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretense make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves."[310] We can well imagine how these fiery darts pierced and tore the vanity of a haughty and contemptuous priesthood. Consider for a moment the difference in the spheres of Jesus and of His enemies. He, an obscure prophet from Nazareth in Galilee; they, the leaders of Israel and the guardians of the Temple at Jerusalem. He, the single advocate of the New Dispensation; they, the manifold upholders of the Old. He, without earthly authority in the propagation of His faith; they, clothed with the sanction of the law and the prestige of a mighty past. Imagine, then, if you can, the intensity of the hatred engendered by the language and the conduct of Jesus.