responsible in that degree and so far as he himself acquiesced in the
duplicities of public dealing; every careless juror, every unrighteous
judge, every false witness, has done his part in the reduction of
society to that state in which the monster injustice has been
perpetrated. In the riot of a tumultuous assembly by night, a house
may be burnt, or a murder committed; in the eye of the law, all who
are aiding and abetting there are each in his degree responsible for
that crime; there may be difference in guilt, from the degree in which
he is guilty who with his own hand perpetrated the deed, to that of
him who merely joined the rabble from mischievous
curiosity--degrees from that of wilful murder to that of more or less
excusable homicide.

The Pharisees were declared by the Saviour to be guilty of the blood
of Zacharias, the blood of righteous Abel, and of all the saints and
prophets who fell before He came. But how were the Pharisees guilty?
They built the sepulchres of the prophets, they honoured and admired
them; but they were guilty, in that they were the children of those
that slew the prophets; children in this sense, that they inherited
their _spirit_, they opposed the good in the form in which it showed
itself in _their day_, just as their fathers opposed the form
displayed to theirs; therefore He said that they belonged to the same
confederacy of evil, and that the guilt of the blood of all who had
been slain should rest on that generation. Similarly we are guilty of
the death of Christ. If you have been a false friend, a sceptic, a
cowardly disciple, a formalist, selfish, an opposer of goodness, an
oppressor, whatever evil you have done, in that degree and so far you
participate in the evil to which the Just One fell a victim--you are
one of that mighty rabble which cry, "Crucify Him, Crucify Him!" for
your sin He died; His blood lies at your threshold.