as they had done in Galilee, and were ready to offer again in Judea the crown he had refused on the shores of Lake Tiberias. The Judeans, on the other hand, looked with feelings of commingled anger and contempt upon this proposer of a new religion. They who had scornfully asked why Jesus did not come to Jerusalem to preach his Gospel of repentance were indignant at what seemed to them his audacity when he did. He preached, not to admiring auditors, as in Galilee, but to an excited and tumultuous mob. He was constantly interrupted by the jibes and jeers of the crowd. His miracles, of which he wrought but few,* produced as little permanent impression upon the residents of the city as his words. He made few permanent converts, and had no open and confessed followers. Attempts were repeatedly made to foment public prejudice against him.t Plans for his assassination were secretly formed. Twice in three months he was mobbed.§ Once an order for his arrest was issued, but left unexecuted.|| His disciples dared not accompany him. Only one has preserved any report of his teachings. Jesus seems not to have spent a single night within the city walls.¶ And his ministry in Judea, which lasted, with interruptions, from the Feast of the Tabernacles in October to the Feast of Dedication in December, was chiefly valuable as a witness against the city which, by its rejection of its Lord, has forever deprived itself of all right to the title of the Holy City. Of the subjects of Christ's Temple teaching during this eventful week of the feast we know but little. The merest fragments of it have been preserved to us. But there is enough to indicate its character. The Judeans, though blind The cure of the blind man (John ix.) is the only one of which any detailed account is given; but it must be remembered that John alone gives us any account of Jesus's ministry in Judea, and John never recounts a miracle except as it illustrates some spiritual truth, or introduces us to some spiritual discourse. † John vii., 15, 20, 27, 41, 52; viii., 48. § John viii., 51; x., 31. John viii., 1. John vii., 19, 25; viii., 37. ed by prejudice, were familiar with the holy Scriptures. They were able to comprehend, if they chose to do so, the mysteries of the kingdom of God. Christ therefore spoke to them thereof with a plainness which never characterized his public preaching to the humbler peasant population of Galilee. He set forth clearly his divine origin.* He declared in no parable his approaching death. He proclaimed himself, what his Church has ever believed him to be, the only-begotten Son of the Father, the manifestation to humanity of the invisible Jehovah. And he availed himself of the symbolic services of the Temple to indicate more clearly his character and his commission. On each day of the feast the high-priest brought water for the Temple service from the Pool of Siloam, and poured it out upon the altar. The people accompanied this priestly service, marching to the music of the trumpet, waving their palm branches, and chanting in grand processional choral from one of their ancient prophets: "With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation." Thus they reminded themselves of the day when, at the word of Moses, living waters gushed from the rock in the wilderness, and revived their hope of the promised hour when the Spirit of God should be poured out as water, and their sons and their daughters should prophesy, and their old men dream dreams, and their young men see visions.¶ "Whoever," say the Rabbis, "has not seen the rejoicing in the drawing of this water, hath seen no rejoicing at all." And as the dusk of the seventh evening began to indicate that the religious ceremonies of the week were drawing to their close, all Israel crowded into the court of the women; the great Temple choir made its. arches echo with their magnificent chorals; religious dances accompanied these sacred songs; and a brilliant illumination cast its light from the Temple windows over the entire city. Jesus, reminding the people of these well-recognized featJohn viii., 18, 19. Joel ii., 28, 29. * John vii., 29, 30. $ John viii., 20. † John vii., 34, 35. ures of their festival, declared that the hour to which these symbolic services pointed had already come. "If any man thirst," said he, "let him come unto me and drink." "He that believeth on me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water."* Jesus is himself the Rock of Ages. Every true follower of Jesus becomes in turn a spring in the wilderness, and by the cheeriness of his presence refreshes many weary souls. "I am the light of the world," again he said: "he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." Jesus, more than the pillar of cloud and fire that leads Israel only, brighter than the Shekinah which filled the Jewish Temple only, is the light of the whole world, and from his sacred hill his beams go forth a light unto all nations. - These sacred instructions, as we have said, were delivered despite perpetual interruptions. Christ's teaching was not that of a sermon, but that of a dialogue; not with honest inquirers or perplexed skeptics, but with bigoted, resolute foes. The Judeans denied his right to preach at all. He was not in the ministerial succession; he had never been ordained. Any one might, indeed, repeat the lessons of regularly-recognized Jewish scribes; but a rule, analogous to that which still prevails in most Church communions, forbade any Rabbi to teach new truths except he was a regular graduate of one of the theological schools. He might catechize, but he could not preach. This rule the Jews cited against Jesus. "How," said they, contemptuously, "does this man know any thing of sacred literature, being no graduate?" Jesus, in reply, defended the right of lay preaching, while he pointed out the only true source of all ministerial authority. "My doctrine," said he, "is not mine, but his that sent me." He that is ordained by the Spirit of God has all the ordination which Jesus had. He who has not received the baptism of the Spirit is not in orders, whatever bishop may have laid hands upon him.t *John vii., 37, 38. † John viii., 12. + John vii., 15-18. As little inclined to welcome any contribution to the common weal of humanity, if proffered by any one without their favored circle, as the genuine Chinaman is to receive any civilization that has originated beyond the bounds of his Celestial Empire, the Judeans derided the idea of a Galilean prophet. "When Christ cometh," said they, "no man will know whence he is; but the plebeian birth of this son of the Galilean carpenter we all know." Jesus, replying, calmly asserted his divine origin, and declared that they neither knew him, nor, despite their claim to be the children of God, did they know his Father, whence he proceeded, and by whom he was sent.* The popular enthusiasm among the pilgrim strangers was too strong to be disregarded; but the Judeans attempted to turn it against Jesus by reviving the charge of Sabbath-breaking. In the very act of healing a poor cripple he had violated the Rabbinical precept, "Let no one console the sick or visit the mourning on the Sabbath day." Jesus replied by setting against the Rabbinical precept the precept of the Scriptures and the practice of the priesthood. The Judeans circumcised without scruple on the Sabbath, that the ceremonial law of Moses might not be violated; how, then, could they find fault with him, who had made the impotent man every whit whole, that the greater law of mercy might be maintained ?t Defeated and humiliated, Jesus's foes resorted to the common appeal of moral weakness-brute force. They demanded indignantly that the authorities should prevent this pestilential heresy by arresting the prophet who preached it. But when, complying with the demand, the Sanhedrim sent the police of the Temple to arrest him, there was something in his air and manner which deterred them. The divinely-inspired courage which sustained Luther in the Diet of Worms, in a larger measure abiding in Christ, was his sufficient safeconduct in Jerusalem, and they returned with no other ex* John vii., 27, 30. † John vii., 21-24. John vii., 27-32. 'cuse for their failure to carry out the orders of their superiors than "Never man spake as this man."* So flagrant, indeed, was the proposed illegality of the chief priests and rulers, the leaders of the Judean party, that it even evoked a protest from one of their own number. Nicodemus, professing no friendship for Jesus, demanded that the forms of law should not be disregarded in his condemnation. “Doth our law," said he, “judge any man before it hear him, and learn what he doeth ?" But these followers of Moses, who could quote his law when it served their purpose, and disregard it when it did not, silenced this demand for legal proceedings by one of those appeals to partisan spirit as ef fective in the nineteenth century as in the first. "Art thou also," they replied, " of Galilee? for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet." They were wrong. Jonah was a Galilean; perhaps Amos also. Prejudice blinded them to their own history. Thus baffled, the Judeans resorted to a stratagem to arouse the prejudices of the populace, whom they professed to despise, but whom they dared not disregard. To this attempt we are indebted for an incident which the pen of the poet and the pencil of the painter will never weary of portraying. The law of Moses provided the penalty of death for the crime of adultery. In that early age, and in a polygamous community, severe penalties were needed to keep sacred the marriage bond. No less were they needed to prevent that private revenge which our laxer code of modern morals winks at; for the husband whose honor is not protected by the law will be sure to avenge his dishonor by his own hand. This provision of the Mosaic code had, however, long since become obsolete. There is, indeed, no authentic case in Jewish history of an execution occurring under it. This forgotten statute of the past the Jewish Rabbis now revived, not for the purpose of securing purity in society, but for the purpose of confounding and silencing Jesus. * John vii., 32, 45-49. John vii., 50-52. Levit. xx., 10. |