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 Victim, when “offering up himself” and “presenting his own blood unto God,” need any justification for using the sacrificial knife?  The orthodox view more clearly and unshrinkingly avows, that Jesus deliberately goaded the wicked rulers into the deeper wickedness of murdering him; but on my friend’s view, that Jesus was no sacrifice, but only a Model man, his death is an unrelieved calamity.  Nothing but a long and complete life could possibly test the fact of his perfection; and the longer he lived, the better for the world.

In entire consistency with his previous determination to die, Jesus, when arraigned, refused to rebut accusation, and behaved as one pleading Guilty.  He was accused of saying that if they destroyed the temple, he would rebuild it in three days; but how this was to the purpose, the evangelists who name it do not make clear.  The fourth however (without intending so to do) explains it; and I therefore am disposed to believe his statement, though I put no faith in his long discourses.  It appears (John ii. 18-20) that Jesus after scourging the people out of the temple-court, was asked for a sign to justify his assuming so very unusual authority:  on which he replied:  “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”  Such a reply was regarded as a manifest evasion; since he was sure that they would not pull the temple down in order to try whether he could raise it up miraculously.  Now if Jesus really meant what the fourth gospel says he meant;—­if he “spoke of the temple of his body;”—­how was any one to guess that?  It cannot be denied, that such a reply, prima facie, suggested, that he was a wilful impostor:  was it not then his obvious duty, when this accusation was brought against him, to explain that his words had been mystical and had been misunderstood?  The form of the imputation in Mark xiv. 58, would make it possible to imagine,—­if the three days were left out, and if his words were not said in reply to the demand of a sign,—­that Jesus had merely avowed that though the outward Jewish temple were to be destroyed, he would erect a church of worshippers as a spiritual temple.  If so, “John” has grossly misrepresented him, and then obtruded a very far-fetched explanation.  But whatever was the meaning of Jesus, if it was honest, I think he was bound to explain it; and not leave a suspicion of imposture to rankle in men’s minds.[6] Finally, if the whole were fiction, and he never uttered such words, then it was his duty to deny them, and not remain dumb like a sheep before its shearers.