ess which he assumed seems highly appropriate; and in such
a calamitous necessity, to risk exciting murderous enmity would be the
act of a hero: but as the account stands, it seems to me the deed of
a fanatic. And it is to me manifest that he overdid his attack, and
failed to commend it to the conscience of his hearers. For up to
this point the multitude was in his favour. He was notoriously so
acceptable to the many, as to alarm the rulers; indeed the belief
of his popularity had shielded him from prosecution. But after this
fierce address he has no more popular support. At his public trial the
vast majority judge him to deserve punishment, and prefer to ask free
forgiveness for Barabbas, a bandit who was in prison for murder. We
moderns, nursed in an arbitrary belief concerning these events, drink
in with our first milk the assumption that Jesus alone was guiltless,
and all the other actors in this sad affair inexcusably guilty. Let no
one imagine that I defend for a moment the cruel punishment which raw
resentment inflicted on him. But though the rulers felt the rage of
Vengeance, the people, who had suffered no personal wrong, were moved
only by ill-measured Indignation. The multitude love to hear the
powerful exposed and reproached up to a certain limit; but if reproach
go clearly beyond all that they feel to be deserved, a violent
sentiment reacts on the head of the reviler: and though popular
indignation (even when free from the element of selfishness) ill fixes
the due _measure_ of Punishment, I have a strong belief that it is
righteous, when it pronounces the verdict Guilty.

Does my friend deny that the death of Jesus was wilfully incurred? The
"orthodox" not merely admit, but maintain it. Their creed justifies it
by the doctrine, that his death was a "sacrifice" so pleasing to
God, as to expiate the sins of the world. This honestly meets the
objections to self-destruction; for how better could life be used,
than by laying it down for such a prize? But besides all other
difficulties in the very idea of atonement, the orthodox creed
startles us by the incredible conception, that a voluntary sacrifice
of life should be unacceptable to God, unless offered by ferocious and
impious hands. If Jesus had "authority from the Father to lay down his
life," was he unable to stab himself in the desert, or on the sacred
altar of the Temple, without involving guilt to any human being?
Did He, who is at once "High Priest" and