"The scandal of the Christian Religion" is an impertinent joke.
Christianity, as Lord Coleridge remarked, is no longer, as the
old judges used to rule, part and parcel of the law of England.
I argued the matter at considerable length in addressing the jury,
and his lordship supported my contention with all the force of his
high authority. After pointing out that at one time Jews, Roman
Catholics, and Nonconformists of all sorts--in fact every sect
outside the State Church--were under heavy disabilities for religion
and regarded as hardly having civil rights, and that undoubtedly at
that time the doctrines of the Established religion were part and
parcel of the law of the land, Lord Coleridge observed, as I had done,
that "Parliament, which is supreme and binds us all, has enacted
statutes which make that view of the law no longer applicable."
I had also pointed out that there might be a Jew on the jury.
His lordship went further, and remarked that there might be a
Jew on the bench. His words were these:

"Now, so far as I know, a Jew might be Lord Chancellor; most
certainly he might be Master of the Rolls. The great and
illustrious lawyer [Sir George Jessel] whose loss the whole
profession is deploring, and in whom his friends know that they
lost a warm friend and a loyal colleague; he, but for the accident
of taking his office before the Judicature Act came into operation,
might have had to go circuit, might have sat in a criminal court
to try such a case as this, might have been called upon, if
the law really be that 'Christianity is part of the law of the
land' in the sense contended for, to lay it down as law to a jury,
amongst whom might have been Jews,--that it was an offence
against the law, as blasphemy, to deny that Jesus Christ was