First, undoubtedly, He was hated for His Holiness. Who can doubt that
the terrific standard of morality which He preached--the Catholic
preaching of which also is one of the charges of the Pagan--was a
principal cause of His rejection. For it was He, after all, who first
proclaimed that the laws of God bind not only action but thought; it was
He who first pronounced that man to be a murderer and an adulterer who
in his heart willed these sins; it was He who summed up the standard of
Christianity as a standard of perfection, _Be you perfect, as your
Father in Heaven is perfect;_ who bade men aspire to be as good as God!

It was His Holiness, then, that first drew on Him the hostility of the
world--that radiant white-hot sanctity in which His Sacred Humanity went
clothed. _Which of you convinceth me of sin?... Let him that is without
sin amongst you cast the first stone at her!_ These were words that
pierced the smooth formalism of the Scribe and the Pharisee and awoke an
undying hatred. It was this, surely, that led up irresistibly to the
final rejection of Him at the bar of Pilate and the choice of Barabbas
in His place. "_Not this man!_ not this piece of stainless Perfection!
Not this Sanctity that reveals all hearts, _but Barabbas_, that
comfortable sinner so like ourselves! This robber in whose company we
feel at ease! This murderer whose life, at any rate, is in no
reproachful contrast to our own!" Jesus Christ was found too holy for
the world.

But He was found, too, not holy enough. And it is this explicit charge
that is brought against Him again and again. It was dreadful to those
keepers of the Law that this Preacher of Righteousness should sit with
publicans and sinners; that this Prophet should allow such a woman as
Magdalen to touch Him. If this man were indeed a Prophet, He could not
bear the contact of sinners; if He were indeed zealous for God's