"You seek to kill Me because My word takes no hold upon you" (St. John 8:37).

   All this happened before Christ was arrested by order of the high priests and elders and taken before the Sanhedrists for trial. Then came the final test as to the divinity of Christ, when Caiaphas, the officiating religious head of Jewry, asked the momentous question,

"I adjure thee by the living God that you tell us whether thou art the Messiah, the Son of God" (St. Matt. 26:57-68).

The calm answer of Christ stood out in striking contrast to the impassioned query. It was a declaration that He is the Messianic Lord, who will sit at the right hand of Omnipotence, as the King of Kings, as Judge,

"Thou hast said it. Nevertheless, I say to you, hereafter you shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power and coming upon the clouds of heaven."

   Caiaphas understood correctly, Christ claimed to be the Messiah. The high priest, being incensed, rent his garments, and in his rage cried out,

"He has blasphemed; what need have we of witnesses?"

There was no need of calling witnesses to prove that Christ claimed to be their Messianic Lord, as he affirmed it under oath. "What do you think?" asked the high priest of the Sanhedrin, who were to vote their decision. The answer came back, "He is liable to death."
   I do not believe that the Jews would impose such a sentence if Christ were tried by them today. Yet the Jews of today, by denying that Jesus is their Christ, are one with their forebears in holding Christ to be an impostor and blasphemer. If Christ was not what he positively declared Himself to be, then He was an impostor who was guilty of blasphemy, an offense punishable by death according to the Mosaic Law,

"He that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, dying let him die: all the multitude shall stone him" (Lev. 24:16).

   The Jews would have enforced the Mosaic penalty themselves, by stoning Christ to death, had not the "scepter", the power, been "taken away from Judah" as predicted (Gen. 49:10). As the civil authorities alone had the power to inflict the death penalty, the Jews marched Christ from the palace of Caiaphas to the praetorium of Pilate. Pilate tried a few times to dodge imposing a death sentence, but of no avail, the rulers of Jewry would have nothing less than the life of the prisoner. As a charge of blasphemy would not be considered by Pilate, who was not concerned with Jewish religious affairs, nor with its God, the Jews charged Christ with sedition, thus—

"We have found this man perverting our nation, and forbidding the payment of taxes to Caesar and saying he is Christ (Messiah) a king" (St. Luke 23:1-5).

They cried out,

"If thou release this man, thou art no friend of Caesar: for anyone who makes himself king sets himself against Caesar"  (St. John 19:12).

"Crucify him, crucify him," the mob cried out, and Pilate in fear of the power of the Jews, assented to their clamor. Both the Jews and the Romans were responsible for the crucifixion, though the Jews in particular, as they arrested, passed sentence, and turned Christ over to the civil power. It is not I, but Christ Himself who said so while standing before Pilate,

"He who betrayed Me to thee has the greater sin" (St. John 19:11).

The Jewish denial that their forefathers in Israel crucified Christ is of modern origin. Prof. R. Travers Herford, an historian of favorable standing with leading Jews, says in "Christianity in the Talmud and Midrash," that

"The Talmud knows nothing of an execution of Jesus by Romans, but makes it solely an act of the Jews" (p. 68).

   In studying this touchy question, I beg of you, my dear Mr. Isaacs, to examine the character of the Sadducees, the Herodian priests who dominated the official affairs of Jewry twenty centuries ago. Then will you find it easy to believe that that aristocratic, arrogant, politically subservient class of Jews, who "ignored the Messianic teachings of their times," as the "Encyclopedia of Jewish Knowledge" says (p. 480), would think no more of putting a popular personage like Christ, who threatened their influence, to death, than did Stalin when he put Communists to death who deviated from his policies. They were bitterly hated by the populace. The Talmud, Prof. Joseph Klausner, Shalom Asch, and others of influence in Jewry, tell of the "street-ballad" that was sung in condemnation of the high priests of those days, who "beat the people with staves." They caused the populace that followed Christ to turn against Him as Mark Anthony turned the populace against Brutus, though by passionate appeals and force, and not be clever oratory.
   While the riffraff, when incensed, may be heard to call Jews "Christ-killers," it is not a practice common to Christians. And when this calling of names is resorted to, it is not on account of the crucifixion, but rather on account of actions on the part of Jews that are disliked, be they good, bad or indifferent. Such bad conduct is not due to having been taught the crucifixion of twenty centuries ago. Those who best know the story of the tragedy of Calvary; those who have the greatest love of Christ crucified, hold that such a fling at their Jewish neighbor is a sin against charity. St. Paul, whose life was devoted to "preaching Christ and Him crucified," was the personification of charity towards his fellow-Israelites. Instead of centering hostility against the Jews of today on account of the crucifixion, Catholics accuse themselves of being crucifiers of Christ by sin. It was sin that caused Christ to be crucified, and it is sin that continues to crucify Him. This is beautifully set forth in Father Caswell's Hymn to Jesus Crucified, which I have sent forth many times on the air through the four loud speakers on my lecture bus in many parts of our country,

"I see my Jesus crucified,
His wounded hands and feet and side
His sacred flesh all rent and torn,
His bloody crown of sharpest thorn.

"Those cruel nails I drove them in,
Each time I pierced Him with my sin;
That crown of thorns 'twas I who wove,
When I despised His gracious love.

"Then to those feet I'll venture near,
And wash them with a contrite tear,
And every bleeding wound I see,
I'll think He bore them all for me.

"Deep graven on my sinful heart,
Oh, never may that form depart,
That always with me may abide
The thought of Jesus crucified."

   The Jews of our day seem to have lost the introspective concept of religion, which causes man to look into himself, instead of into the other fellow, for the basic cause of his affliction, ever remembering that chastisement is an opportunity to move towards perfection. This principle Christianity stresses more than any other religion; it causes Catholics to say that "every cross is a crown." Introspection leads to an understanding that sin is hatred of Christ, a re-crucifixion of Him. Sin is without a question of reasonable doubt the cause of Jews suffering a form of persecution unknown to any other group in human society. To no sin, save the denial of Christ and His crucifixion, not merely twenty centuries ago, but today, can the cause be traced.
   There is no doubt that sin is the cause of moral suffering, be it in our hearts, homes, economic life, or in the relationship of nations. I repeat that sin and sin only is the cause of the suffering the Jews have borne during the past twenty centuries irrespective of the changes in governments, education, discoveries in arts, sciences and territories. To what sin, save the denial of Christ and His crucifixion, can the affliction of Israel be attributed? When Pilate washed his hands, claiming to be "innocent of the blood of this just man," "all the people" cried out "His blood be on us and on our children" (St. Matt. 27:24-25). Resent this, as you very likely will, the fact remains that the Jews have been a marked people. The blood, that is the vengeance, has been upon them. The story of the "Wandering Jew" is a fictional portrayal of the misery, the unrest, the deportation, that Jews have suffered on account of their opposition to God's gift to them of His only Begotten Son. It is a tragic traditional tale of Christ bearing the heavy cross upon His sacred shoulders, leaning against the porch of a place of business to rest. The Jewish owner struck Christ a blow and brusquely bade Him move on. To this Christ replied, turning to the assailant, "Thou shalt go on and never stop 'til I come again." To this day the miserable man, who symbolizes Jewry, wanders over the earth unable to find rest for his tired feet, and unable to die. This may be dismissed as a piece of fiction, but the fate of the crucifiers of Christ in Jerusalem, and in the rest of the world since then, stands out clearly as an historic fact, beyond a question of reasonable doubt.
   Judas hung himself.
   Pilate, who submitted to the mob demand that Christ be crucified, for fear that the Jews would cause him to be deposed, was degraded, banished to Gaul, where he committed suicide.
   Caiaphas was deposed as highest priest a year after he haunted Christ to His death upon the cross.
   The Temple was destroyed, and over a million Jews slaughtered by the soldiers of Titus.
   Jerusalem was laid waste.
   The Jewish priesthood and sacrifices came to a final end.
   And Jewry has since been, in the sympathetic words of Lord Byron,

"Tribes of a wandering foot and weary breast,
How shall ye flee away and be at rest!
The wild-dove hath her nest, the fox his cave,
Mankind their country--Israel but the grave."