“Ye wish to bring this Man’s blood upon us,”

“Ye wish to bring this Man’s blood upon us,” were the words of indignant scorn with which the High Priest resented the accusations which the apostles, in their preaching, 62 brought against their nation, and specially against its rulers (Act 5:28). They were the words of well-feigned contempt, but they were words of fear. “Ye wish to bring this Man’s blood upon us,” was the utmost extent of an answer attempted by the High Priest to these accusations—as if he would thus insinuate that they were as false as they were absurd and impossible. “This Man’s blood! What have we to do with it; what mean you by charging us with the guilt of it?” The High Priest had not mistaken the meaning of the apostles, nor misconstrued the drift of their charge. He was altogether correct in his statement. The apostles did intend to “bring this Man’s blood upon them.” There was no need of calling witnesses to prove that they both said so, and meant so. They denied it not. They were not ashamed of having made the declaration, nor afraid to repeat it. They made no secret of it. They reiterated it in every sermon; they dwelt and insisted upon it continually. It formed part of their message everywhere. “Ye are the crucifiers of the Lord of glory; your hands are stained with the blood of God’s own Son.” This might be said to be the commencement or preamble of each sermon, each address (Act 2:23; 3:15). Bitterly was this felt by those against whom it was directed. The arrow went deep and rankled sore in the wound. The anger of the priests arose. They denied the charge. They treated it as a slander upon their good name, and reviled the apostles as calumniators. The charge of blood they resented and repelled. This does seem strange. For, but a short time before, they had come forward voluntarily to take upon them the guilt and the consequences of this bloodshedding. How eagerly they shouted, “His blood be upon us and on our children!” Then they made light of this blood. They valued it at thirty pieces of silver. They rushed forward to shed it, as if they could not rest till they had poured it out like water upon the earth. But now they shrink from the imputation, and are stirred up to anger when it is cast upon them. Nay, so much do they resent it, that they seek to imprison or put to death those who make it. Why this sudden change of feeling? Why this sensitiveness to the charge of bloodguiltiness? It cannot be from dread of the men who bring it forward. They are few in number, and have no power to injure. The charge which they make is accompanied with no threat; nor does it bring with it any temporal evil or danger. It can issue in nothing disastrous or fatal, so far as man and time and the laws are concerned. Why then this nervous irritability under the charge brought against them by these unoffending men— these fishermen of Galilee? Conscience had made them cowards. Its murmurs were irrepressible and unwearied. It tormented them before the time. Their attempts to smother and silence it only turned its course and sent it inward, to work the disease into the whole frame, thereby producing that singular revulsion of feeling which has been noticed, and occasioning that wrathful sensitiveness which they so often exhibited under the preaching of the apostles. Bold enough before the deed was done, now they are full of continued alarms, as if haunted by a specter, or beset with weapons which they feared might every moment pierce them, and avenge the blood which they had shed. 63 Conscience said, 1. His blood is upon you; and you know it. You shed it, and you cannot deny the deed. You thirsted for the shedding of it. You gloried in the deed. 2. It was innocent blood, and you knew it. It was the blood of one who had never wronged you, who had done evil to none, but good to all; against whom no charge of sin had been proved. 3. It was blood shed by means of treachery and falsehood. You had to buy and bribe the traitor. You suborned witnesses, whose testimony you knew to be false. Everything connected with that trial casts dishonor upon those who did the deed, or procured it to be done. 4. It was perhaps, after all, the blood of God’s own Son! He claimed this title. Many admitted it. There were signs of its being authentic. What then if it be really true? Could there be a crime like this? Such might be the workings of their spirits, the secret suggestions of consciences not at rest, but ever and anon starting from the slumber into which they had been in some measure lulled. No wonder that the men were cut to the heart, and roused up to fiercest anger by the preaching of the apostles. The serpent had twined itself around them. It might at times be torpid or asleep. But every fresh mention of the blood, or of the name of Him whom they had slain, awoke it, and sent its sting into their vitals. Hence they hated the mention of that blood and that name. Vengeance was in their hearts and on their lips against everyone who might venture upon an illusion so hateful. In words they repelled the charge as slanderous, but the inner man confessed it. Addressing the apostles they might use the language of denial, Thou canst not say, I did it. But the fear, the anger, the remorse which awoke within them, betrayed the consciousness of guilt in a way which could not be mistaken. If they were not the actual murderers, they were at least accomplices in the deed of murder; and as such they were self-convicted and self-condemned. True children of Cain! Both in their crime, and in their evasive denial of it! When Jehovah charged the first murderer with his brother’s blood, how insolent, yet how evasive the answer—“Am I my brother’s keeper?” As if he had said, “Do you mean to charge me with Abel’s blood? What do I know about it or its shedder?” So with these Jewish rulers. They commit the crime, and then they challenge the proof of their guilt. Their hands are still stained with the crimson, yet they can say, “Do you mean to bring this Man’s blood upon us?” True children of Cain! For where was there rest now for them? Fugitives and vagabonds they now must be, at least in spirit; carrying within them a hidden wound which they try in vain to cover; disturbed with horrors which they cannot allay; trembling at the sound of the shaken leaf or the rustling breeze. 64 True children of Cain! They go out from the presence of the Lord, and seek to drown their terrors in worldly undertakings, in dreams of vanity, or in the lusts of pleasure. The worm that never dies has begun to gnaw them! Yet they will not look on Him whom they have pierced. They turn away in anger when He is set before them! The blood they had shed would heal them; for it speaketh better things than that of Abel; but they will not be healed. The blood that alarmed would also have laid all their alarms to rest. But they turn away from it. It accused them, no doubt; yet it brought forgiveness with it for the very crime which it laid to their charge. It spoke to them as to murderers—sinners for whose crime and conduct there could be no excuse. But it also said, “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”—even “the chief” (1Ti 1:13-16). They might be “blasphemers, persecutors, and injurious”; but “the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant.” Nay, and of some of them at least it might be said, “They did obtain mercy, that in them the chief, Jesus Christ might show forth all longsuffering, for a pattern to them, who should hereafter believe on Him to life everlasting.”