is true: it is indeed true that Catholicism has been the occasion of
more bloodshedding than has any of the ambitions or jealousies of man.

And it is, further, true that Jesus Christ pronounced this benediction;
that He bade His followers seek after peace, and that He commended them,
in the very climax of His exaltation, to the Peace which He alone could
bestow.

Yet, when we look closer, the case is not so simple. For, first, what
was, as a matter of fact, the direct immediate effect of the Life and
Personality of Jesus Christ upon the society in which He lived but this
very dissension, this very bloodshedding and misery that are charged
against His Church? It was precisely on this account that He was given
into the hands of Pilate. _He stirreth up the people. He makes Himself a
King._ He is a contentious demagogue, a disloyal citizen, a danger to
the Roman Peace.

And indeed there seem to have been excuses for these charges. It was not
the language of a modern "humanitarian," of the modern tolerant
"Christian," that fell from the Divine Lips of Jesus Christ. _Go and
tell that fox_, He cries of the ruler of His people. _O you whited
sepulchres full of dead men's bones! You vipers! You hypocrites!_ This
is the language He uses to the representatives of Israel's religion. Is
this the kind of talk that we hear from modern leaders of religious
thought? Would such language as this be tolerated for a moment from the
humanitarian Christian pulpits of to-day? Is it possible to imagine more
inflammatory speech, more "unchristian sentiments," as they would be
called to-day, than those words uttered by none other but the Divine
Founder of Christianity? What of that amazing scene when He threw the
furniture about the temple courts?