--that is, ever since the days of Constantino--the Christians have
acted on the assumption that the countrymen of Jesus did actually cry
out before Pilate, "His blood be on our heads!" and that they and
their posterity deserved any amount of robbery and outrage until they
unanimously confessed their sin and worshipped him whom they crucified.
It made no difference that the contemporaries of Jesus Christ could
not transmit their guilt to their offspring. The Christians continued,
century after century, to act in the spirit of the sailor in the story.
Coming ashore after a long voyage, Jack attended church and heard a
pathetic sermon on the Crucifixion. On the following day he looked into
the window of a print-shop, and saw a picture of Jesus on the cross.
Just then a Jew came and looked into the window; whereupon the
sailor, pointing to the picture, asked the Hebrew gentleman whether he
recognised it. "That's Jesus," said the Jew, and the sailor immediately
knocked him down. Surprised at this treatment, the Hebrew gentleman
inquired the reason. "Why," said the sailor, "didn't you infernal Jews
crucify him?" The poor son of Abraham admitted the fact, but explained
that it happened nearly two thousand years ago. "No matter," said the
sailor, "I only heard of it yesterday."

Now it is perfectly clear, according to the Gospels, that the Jews did
_not_ kill Jesus. Unless they lynched him they had no power to put him
to death. Judaea was then a Roman province, and in every part of the
Empire the extreme penalty of the law was only inflicted by the Roman
governor. Nevertheless it maybe argued that the Jews _really_ killed
him, although they did not actually shed his blood, as they clamored for
his death and terrorised Pontius Pilate into ordering a judicial murder.
But suppose we take this view of the case: does it therefore follow
that they acted without justification? Was not Jesus, in their judgment,
guilty of blasphemy, and was not that a deadly crime under the Mosaic
law? "He that blasphemeth the name of the Lord," says Leviticus xxiv.
16, "shall surely be put to death." Were not the Jews, then, carrying
out the plain commandment of Jehovah?

Nor was this their only justification. In another part of the Mosaic
law (Deut. xiii. 6-10), the Jews were ordered to kill anyone, whether
mother, son, daughter, husband, or wife, who should entice them to
worship other gods. Now it is expressly maintained by the overwhelming
majorit