Undoubtedly our Master partook of the Jews' feast of the Passover, and drank from their festal wine-cup. [5] This, however, is not the cup to which I call your at- tention,--even the cup of martyrdom: wherein Spirit and matter, good and evil, seem to grapple, and the human struggles against the divine, up to a point of discovery; namely, the impotence of evil, and the om- [10] nipotence of good, as divinely attested. Anciently, the blood of martyrs was believed to be the seed of the Church. Stalled theocracy would make this fatal doctrine just and sovereign, even a divine decree, a law of Love! That the innocent shall suffer for the guilty, is inhuman. The [15] prophet declared, "Thou shalt put away the guilt of innocent blood from Israel." This is plain: that what- ever belittles, befogs, or belies the nature and essence of Deity, is not divine. Who, then, shall father or favor this sentence passed upon innocence? thereby giving the [20] signet of God to the arrest, trial, and crucifixion of His beloved Son, the righteous Nazarene,--christened by John the Baptist, "the Lamb of God."
Oh! shameless insult to divine royalty, that drew from the great Master this answer to the questions of the [25] rabbinical rabble: "If I tell you, ye will not believe; and if I also ask you, ye will not answer me, nor let me go."
Infinitely greater than human pity, is divine Love,-- that cannot be unmerciful. Human tribunals, if just, borrow their sense of justice from the divine Principle [30] thereof, which punishes the guilty, not the innocent. The Teacher of both law and gospel construed the substitution
of a good man to suffer for evil-doers--a _crime_! When [1] foretelling his own crucifixion, he said, "Woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh!" [5]
Would Jesus thus have spoken of what was indis- pensable for the salvation of a world of sinners, or of the individual instrument in this holy (?) alliance for accom- plishing such a monstrous work? or have said of him whom God foreordained and predestined to fulfil a divine [10] decree, "It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea"?