or timbre of his voice--what he thinks or can make up
his mind to think, of what I am saying--on this next page.

CHAPTER X

A DEMOCRATIC THEORY OF HUMAN NATURE

If the men who were crucifying Jesus could have been suddenly stopped at
the last moment, and if they could have been kept perfectly still for
ten minutes and could have thought about it, some of them would have
refused to go on with the crucifixion when the ten minutes were over. If
they could have been stopped for twenty minutes, there would have been
still more of them who would have refused to have gone on with it. They
would have stolen away and wondered about The Man in their hearts. There
were others who were there who would have needed twenty days of being
still and of thinking. There were some who would have had to have twenty
years to see what they really wanted, in all the circumstances, to do.

People crucified Christ because they were in a hurry.

They did what they wanted to do at the moment. So far as we know, there
were only two men who did what they would have wished they had done in
twenty years: there was the thief on the other cross, who showed The Man
he knew who He was; and there was the disciple John, who kept as close
as he could. John perhaps was thinking of the past--of all the things
that Christ had said to him; and the man on the other cross was thinking
what was going to happen next. The other people who had to do with the
crucifixion were all thinking about the thing they were doing at the
moment and the way they felt about it. But the Man was Thinking, not of
His suffering, but of the men in front of Him, and of what they could be
thinking about, and what they would be thinking about afterward--in ten
minutes, in twenty minutes, in twenty days, or in twenty years; and
suddenly His heart was flooded with pity at what they would be thinking
about afterward, and in the midst of the pain in His arms and the pain
in His feet He made that great cry to Heaven: "Father, forgive them;
they know not what they do!"

It is because Christians have never quite believed that The Man really
meant this when He said it that they have persecuted the Jews for two
thousand years. It is because they do not believe it now that they blame
Mr. Rockefeller for doing what most of them twenty years ago would have
done themselves. It was one of the hardest things to do and say that any
one ever said in the world, and it was said at the hardest po