The watchman and southron. [volume] (Sumter, S.C.) 1881-1930, 1903-04-15
The Crucifxion and the Jews.

The CruCIfixl0n and the Jews.
(From sermon in the Unitarian
Church, Cincinnati, March %, by
Rev. George A. Thayer, upon the
tragedy of the death of Jesus.
The sentence of death seems then to
have been from substantially the same
motives which have inflicted lgnom-
inious punishments upon blasphemers
against established religious systems
in all ages. The Christian church
through its official heads has done the
same thing thousands of times; SO has
the Mohammedan religion.
Your and my Unitarian beliefs have
many a time been deemed equally
blasphemous and dangerous; one OF
the last of English laws for Furnishing
blasphemy by death, being directed
against denial of the doctrine OF the
Trinity.
From our stadpoint of the sacredness
of all private religious opinion, no
matter whose doctrine it offends, the
Jewish Council of Seventy, which
crucifed Jesus, and the Roman church
which burned hosts of Protestants, and
tie Calvinist and Lutheran churches
which butchered thousands OF Ana
baptists and other enthusiasts, and the
English church which hurried to their
graves thousands of dissenters from
the Thirty Nine Articles, were all IN
one and the same category OF we'll
meaning but mischief making men.
Put some Christians of today in the
shoes of the Jewish Sanhedrlm and
they would have done the same deed
with a clear conscience. Conscience
without knowledge has wrought much
in1quity.
We're the rank and file of Jews par
ticipants in this crime?
think the most of Judea Of the year
SO did not hear that there had been
any crucifxion Of Jesus. That was
not a time of swift circulation Of
tidings; each little village lived IN
its own narrow world of small inter-
ests, and the world tragedies seldom
reached their ears.
But those who did hear were prob
ably divided in their minds; few
sympathizing with the victim, as few
always have tender hearts for suffer
ers, but the most assuming that what
the dignitaries did was all right.
That is the way we think upon most
questions outside of our private hurt.
The government, we say, is probably
right, especially if the government is
our political party
One feature of the ecclesiastical ways
repulsive to me, that is, the emphasis
at this Lenten time is a protracted
dwelling. upon the alleged exceptional
agony of Jesus while on the cross.
Crucifxion was indeed an exquisite
torture chiefly because the victim
usually fingered many days; but Jesus,
possibly on account of the rupture OF
some blood vessel, died in three or
six hours, (the statements differ upon
this point, period Of agony not
nearly as long drawn out as has been
endured by thousands who have been
submitted to the rack, the thumb
screw, and slow burning wood in the
name of religion and law before and
since.
. But under the influence of a theo-
logical theory that the death agonies
of Cavalry were, in some mysterious
way, the concentrated pangs of mil
lions of deaths, it has since been
preached with all the vehement emo
tion of innumerable impassioned pulpit
orators that they who inflicted this
punishment and all their race there
after were the most Infamous criminals
that ever were upon the earth.
The long unremitting tragedy of
Christendom's brutalities against the
Jewish people, lasting in some parts
of Europe until now, constitutes one
of the blacklist pages of the worlds
history.
There is not a form of torture, by
fire or cross, or knife or dungeon or
starvation which has not been inflicted
in Christian countries upon Jews be-
cause some of their ancestors were
officially responsible for the death Of
Jesus; not a humiliation not an in
dignity against their women and chill
dren which has not been heaped upon
them in the name of the religion of
him whose last words were Father
forgive them!''
If Christian churches seek some
motive for great day of expression OF
shame and penitence for some of the
deepest sins of their fore runners they
might find it in this dark and grew
some tale CT the attempt to implicate
whole race, for twenty centuries, in
the offence of the religious intolerance
of some Jewish officials of the year 81.
A great black day of fasting and
humiliation might appropriately follow
or supplant the awful festival called
Good Friday.