Page:The Eternal Priesthood - Manning.djvu/158

152 counted as one of the sinners of Jerusalem. It was bitter to be even suspected. But to be accused as a sinner was an infinite humiliation. The bitterness of sin entered into His sinless soul. He tasted the horror and the shame even of those who are justly accused. Innocent men arraigned at the bar, and though falsely yet skilfully accused of atrocious crimes, have afterwards told us that, for a time, they had the horrible sense of guilt upon them. And, in the measure of their innocence, their hatred of the evil laid to their charge will be more acute. To the sinful it brings little pain; for sin deadens the perception of the baseness, the grossness, the deadliness of sin. The agony of our Divine Lord in the Garden came from the vision and the contact of the sin of the world. The sins of mankind before the Flood, the sins of the tribes of Israel, the sins of the Christian world, and, above all, the sins of His own priests—these wrung from Him a sweat of blood. The sanctity of God in contact with the sin of the world caused a sorrow "unto death." For though God cannot sorrow as God, God Incarnate sorrowed by the suffering of His sinless humanity in this world of sin.

In the measure, then, of the innocence and purity of a priest's life and heart will be his suffering when falsely accused. They who accuse him little know the pain they inflict. They have