All gentle cant and philosophizing to the contrary notwithstanding, no people in this world ever did achieve their freedom by goody-goody talk and moral suasion: it being immutable law that all revolutions that will succeed, must begin in blood.
So much blood has been shed by the Church because of an omission from the Gospel: “Ye shall be indifferent as to what your neighbor's religion is.” Not merely tolerant of it, but indifferent to it. Divinity is claimed for many religions; but no religion is great enough or divine enough to add that new law to its code.
When you kill a beast, say to him in your heart: ~By the same power that slays you, I too am slain, and I too shall be consumed. ~For the law that delivers you into my hand shall deliver me into a mightier hand. ~Your blood and my blood is naught but the sap that feeds the tree of heaven.
The bread that you see on the altar is the Body of Christ as soon as it is sanctified by God's word. The chalice, or better what is contained in the chalice, is the Blood of Christ as soon as it is sanctified by God's word
His friends were those of his own blood or those whom he had known the longest; his affections, like ivy, were the growth of time, they implied no aptness in the object.
So he was deserted. The whole world was clamouring: Kill yourself, kill yourself, for our sakes. But why should he kill himself for their sakes? Food was pleasant; the sun hot; and this killing oneself, how does one set about it, with a table knife, uglily, with floods of blood, - by sucking a gaspipe? He was too weak; he could scarcely raise his hand. Besides, now that he was quite alone, condemned, deserted, as those who are about to die are alone, there was a luxury in it, an isolation full of sublimity; a freedom which the attached can never know.
If we consider how greatly he has sinned against the masses in the course of the centuries, how he has squeezed and sucked the blood again and again; if furthermore, we consider how the people gradually learned to hate him for this, and ended up by regarding his existence as nothing but punishment of Heaven for the other peoples, we can understand how hard this shift must be for the Jew.