hat 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.

Again, He died for all, in that His sacrifice represents the sacrifice
of all. We have heard of the doctrine of "imputed righteousness;" it
is a theological expression to which meanings foolish enough are
sometimes attributed, but it contains a very deep truth, which it
shall be our endeavour to elicit.

Christ is the realized idea of our Humanity. He is God's idea of Man
completed. There is every difference between the ideal and the
actual--between what a man aims to be and what he is; a difference
between the race as it is, and the race as it existed in God's
creative idea when he pronounced it very good.

In Christ, therefore, God beholds Humanity; in Christ He sees
perfected every one in whom Christ's spirit exists in germ. He to whom
the possible is actual, to whom what will be already _is_, sees all
things _present_, gazes on the imperfect, and sees it in its
perfection. Let me venture an illustration. He who has never seen the
vegetable world except in Arctic regions, has but a poor idea of the
majesty of vegetable life,--a microscopic red moss tinting the surface
of the snow, a few stunted pines, and here and there perhaps a
dwindled oak; but to the botanist who has seen the luxuriance of
vegetation in its tropical magnificence, all that wretched scene
presents another aspect; to him those dwarfs are the representatives
of what might be, nay, what has been in a kindlier soil and a more
genial climate; he fills up by his conception the miserable actuality
presented by these shrubs, and attributes to them--imputes, that is,
to them--the majesty of whic