ust have fallen back on their seats or started from
them in horror when so awful a claim was made by the human figure
standing bound before them. There were men among them who would have
advocated His claim to be the Messiah, who believed Him to be a man sent
from God; but not a voice could be raised in His defence when the claim
to be Son of God in a Divine sense passed His lips. His best friends
must have doubted and been disappointed, must have supposed He was
confused by the events of the night, and could only await the issue in
sorrow and wonder.

Was the Sanhedrim, then, to blame for condemning Jesus? They sincerely
believed Him to be a blasphemer, and their law attached to the crime of
blasphemy the punishment of death. It was in ignorance they did it; and
knowing only what they knew, they could not have acted otherwise. Yes,
that is true. But they were responsible for their ignorance. Jesus had
given abundant opportunity to the nation to understand Him and to
consider His claims. He did not burst upon the public with an
uncertified demand to be accepted as Divine. He lived among those who
were instructed in such matters; and though in some respects He was very
different from the Messiah they had looked for, a little openness of
mind and a little careful inquiry would have convinced them He was sent
from God. And had they acknowledged this, had they allowed themselves to
obey their instincts and say, This is a true man, a man who has a
message for us--had they not sophisticated their minds with quibbling
literalities, they would have owned His superiority and been willing to
learn from Him. And had they shown any disposition to learn, Jesus was
too wise a teacher to hurry them and overleap needed steps in conviction
and experience. He would have been slow to extort from any a confession
of His divinity until they had reached the belief of it by the working
of their own minds. Enough for Him that they were willing to see the
truth about Him and to declare it as they saw it. The great charge He
brought against His accusers was that they did violence to their own
convictions. The uneasy suspicions they had about His dignity they
suppressed; the attraction they at times felt to His goodness they
resisted; the duty to inquire patiently into His claims they refused.
And thus their darkness deepened, until in their culpable ignorance they
committed the greatest of crimes.

From all this, then, two things are apparent.