because men live by facts, not by theories about them; by the
assimilation of food, not by the knowledge how food nourishes our bodies.

Following, then, the Christian, which is also the scientific method, we
now set out in search of the facts, the historical causes which brought
about the death of Christ.

Now these causes appear to have been, mainly, these three: prejudice, a
dead religion, and the love of gain and political ambition.

1. Prejudice may, perhaps, be best defined as the resolution to hold
fast to our belief, just because it is our belief; to adhere to an
opinion, and close our eyes to all that has been said on the opposite
side. Now nowhere and at no time has prejudice exerted a more absolute
dominion over the minds of men, than it did in Judaea in the first
century of our era. The people had inherited a traditional conception of
the Messiah, from which they could not imagine any deviation possible. He
was the Deliverer and the Restorer predestined of God. He would throw
off the hated foreign yoke, and make the people of God supreme over all
the nations of the earth. It was for a long time doubtful whether Jesus
of Nazareth intended to claim the position, and to enact the part of the
Messiah. "How long keepest thou our soul in suspense?" was the question
put to Him as late as the Feast of Dedication, 28 A.D., the year before
He suffered. But, finally, the people found themselves confronted with a
type of Messiah differing _toto caelo_ from the accepted traditional
type. The kingdom of God, which meant the Divine rule over the souls of
men, was at least not such a kingdom as they were looking for, as they
had been taught to expect. There is a long history in the gospels of the
gradual rise of a popular hope, more than once seeming to have attained
its eagerly longed-for goal; but at last doomed, and conscious that it
was doomed, to bitter and final disappointment. And it turned to hatred
of Him Who had aroused it from a long and fitful sleep of centuries.
"Crucify Him" was now their cry. Jesus was put to death on the legal
charge of being "Christ, a King," a provincial rebel. He really died
because He was not "Christ, a King," in such sense as He had been
expected to be. Thus the first historical cause of the death of our Lord
was prejudice, inveterate and ingrained, in the minds of the people.

2. The second historical cause of the death of our Lord was the
existence in His day and pla