Alas! it has required more than eighteen hundred years for the blood that he shed to bear its fruits.  Tortures and death have been inflicted for ages in the name of Jesus, on thinkers as noble as himself.  Even at the present time, in countries which call themselves Christian, penalties are pronounced for religious offences.  Jesus is not responsible for these errors.  He could not foresee that people, with mistaken imaginations, would one day imagine him as a frightful Moloch, greedy of burnt flesh.  Christianity has been intolerant, but intolerance is not essentially a Christian fact.  It is a Jewish fact in the sense that it was Judaism which first introduced the theory of the absolute in religion, and laid down the principle that every innovator, even if he brings miracles to support his doctrine, ought to be stoned without trial.[1] The pagan world has also had its religious violences.  But if it had had this law, how would it have become Christian?  The Pentateuch has thus been in the world the first code of religious terrorism.  Judaism has given the example of an immutable dogma armed with the sword.  If, instead of pursuing the Jews with a blind hatred, Christianity had abolished the regime which killed its founder, how much more consistent would it have been!—­how much better would it have deserved of the human race!

[Footnote 1:  Deut. xiii. 1, and following.]

CHAPTER XXV.

DEATH OF JESUS.

Although the real motive for the death of Jesus was entirely religious, his enemies had succeeded, in the judgment-hall, in representing him as guilty of treason against the state; they could not have obtained from the sceptical Pilate a condemnation simply on the ground of heterodoxy.  Consistently with this idea, the priests demanded, through the people, the crucifixion of Jesus.  This punishment was not Jewish in its origin; if the condemnation of Jesus had been purely Mosaic, he would have been stoned.[1] Crucifixion was a Roman punishment, reserved for slaves, and for cases in which it was wished to add to death the aggravation of ignominy.  In applying it to Jesus, they treated him as they treated highway robbers, brigands, bandits, or those enemies of inferior rank to whom the Romans did not grant the honor of death by the sword.[2] It was the chimerical “King of the Jews,” not the heterodox dogmatist, who was punished.  Following out the same idea, the execution was left to the Romans.  We know that amongst the Romans, the soldiers, their profession being to kill, performed the office of executioners.  Jesus was therefore delivered to a cohort of auxiliary troops, and all the most hateful features of executions introduced by the cruel habits of the new conquerors, were exhibited toward him.  It was about noon.[3] They re-clothed him with the garments which they had removed for the farce enacted at the tribunal, and as the cohort had already in reserve two thieves who were to be executed, the three prisoners were taken together, and the procession set out for the place of execution.