l not feed the crows on
the cross."[16] There is a very striking phrase in St. Matthew: "And
sitting down they watched him there" (Matt. 27:36). The soldiers
nailed three men to crosses, and sat down beneath them to dice for
their clothes. Our tolerances, like our utterances, come out of the
abundance of the heart, and stamp us for what we are.

We cannot easily realize all that slavery meant. When we read in the
Fourth Gospel that "the Lamb of God taketh away the sin of the
world" (John 1:29), that was written before Jesus Christ had
abolished slavery; for, we remember, it was done by his people
against the judgement of the business experts. Slavery meant robbing
the man of every right that Nature gave him; and, as Homer said long
ago, "Farseeing Zeus takes away half a man's manhood, when he brings
the day of slavery upon him."[17] He became a thief, a liar, dirty,
and bad; and with the woman it was still worse. The slave woman was
a little lower than the animal; she might not have offspring. It was
"natural," men said; "Nature had designed certain races to be
slaves; slavery was written in Nature; it was Nature's law." These
were not the thoughts of vulgar people, but of some of the best of
the Greeks--not of all, indeed; but society was organized on the
basis of slavery. It was an accepted axiom of all social and
economic life.

As to the spiritual background, for the present let us postpone the
heathen world and consider the Jews, who represented in some ways
the world's highest at this period. Modern scholarship is shedding
fresh light on the literature and ideas that were prevalent between
the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New. But what
uncertainty about God! Why some people should think that it was
easier to believe in God in those days than now, I do not see. Far
less was known of God; the record of his doings was not so long as
it is for us, and it was not so well known. No one could understand
what God meant, if he was quite clear himself. Look at what he did
with the nation. He chose Israel, he established the kingdom of
David. They did not get on very well, and at last were carried away
into Captivity in Babylon. So much he did for his people; and when
he brought them back again to the Promised Land, it was to a very
trying and difficult situation; and worse still followed after
Nehemiah's day. Alexander the Great's conquest of the East left a
Macedonian dynasty ruling those regions, a