T

XIX

THE WORK IN JERUSALEM

HIS annual feast commemorated the wandering

in the deserts after the exodus from Egypt, dur

ing which wandering the people dwelt in booths or tents or tabernacles. It took place in the fall, six months after the Passover, and occupied a week. During the week the people of Jerusalem dwelt in arbors made of myrtle, pine and olive branches, erected on the flat roofs of their homes, while the many thousands of pilgrims dwelt in similar booths in the open streets, on top the encircling city wall, and on the slopes of the mountains that are about Jerusalem. See the holy city robed in festal green, crowned with a garland, and her rocky environs changed to a vast pleasure garden. The courts of the Temple were daily thronged with festive worshippers, clad in gay-colored holiday costume; the history of the wandering was read; the silver trumpets sounded; the great Hallel was sung by the multitude, waving palm branches, and following with their eyes the smoke of the sacrifice as it rolled upwards to the skies.

At the feast in October of the year 29, the Jews of the temple party sought for Jesus, asking, Where is he? They wished to gratify their enmity. The multitude, divided in opinion, spoke much of him, but in whispers, for fear of the rulers. This dark thread was interwoven with the festivity.80

About the middle of the week, Jesus entered the

Temple, and taking a seat under one of the colonnades, began to teach. He was not at once recognized by those who heard him, and they wondered at the scholarly wisdom of one unknown to their schools. But the teacher had no wish to dissemble. So after some words of self-abnegation and reproof, he asked:

"Why seek ye to kill me?"

"Thou hast a demon," was the rude retort. "Who seeketh to kill thee?"

The teacher replied with some pointed logic relative to his having healed a man there eighteen months before on the Sabbath, for which he had been arraigned by the Sanhedrin. This revealed him. The report of the presence of the famous and despised Nazarene spread. It reached the Sanhedrists, who sent some of the Levitical temple-guards to arrest him. But when these heard him for themselves, and saw the favor of the multitude, they dared not. And Jesus unmolested left the Temple.

When the chief priests and Pharisees of the Sanhedrin demanded of the guards, Why did ye not bring him? they answered indirectly but very thoughtfully, Never man so spake. The court, exasperated, was about to pass sentence; but Nicodemus protested:

"Doth our law judge a man unheard?"

They turned upon him fiercely with:

"Art thou also of Galilee? Search, and see that out of Galilee ariseth no prophet."

Their rage blinded them to Jonah, Nahum, and Hosea, and perhaps also Elijah himself, of Galilee.

however availed, and the Court adjourned.

The protest

On the last, the great day of the feast, Jesus again entered the Temple, and proclaimed:

"If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink." 81 This possibly had reference to the profuse libations at the altar. Some who heard him said, Of a truth this is the Christ; but others said, What, doth Christ come out of Galilee? So there arose a division among them.

Then Jesus went into the Treasury, the eastern court of the enclosure of the Sanctuary, where stood certain lofty candelabra. Probably with reference to these, he further proclaimed:

"I am the light of the world."

He was at once rudely interrupted by the Pharisees who, offended perhaps by his arrogant egotism, charged him with falsehood. Then followed a contention, growing more and more bitter. Jesus claimed his Father as a witness to his truth. They asked him, Where is thy father? Who art thou? He answered:

"When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am.”

This phrase "I am," here repeated, was to the Jews an enigma and a stumbling-block. Yet of the multitude many believed, and to them he said:

If ye abide in my word, ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

To this others objected haughtily and mendaciously: "We be Abraham's seed, and have never yet been in bondage to any man."

They discarded their four centuries of slavery in Egypt, their seventy years of captivity in Babylon, their century and a half of subjection to the Oriental Greeks, and their then present political bondage to Rome, signalized by the tower of Antonia frowning over the temple, and its Roman garrison, deployed with short swords at that moment along the western porch to enforce orders,

"Every one," replied Jesus, "that committeth sin, is the slave of sin. I know that ye are Abraham's seed; yet ye seek to kill me." To this he added, with great severity," Ye do the works of your father, the devil. He was ever a murderer, and a liar, and the father

thereof."

"Say we not well," they answered, "that thou art a Samaritan, and hast a demon?"

"I have not a demon," said Jesus, deeply hurt and indignant at the gross insult; "but I honor my Father, and ye dishonor me. Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day; and he saw it, and was glad."

"Thou art not yet fifty years old," said they scornfully," and hast thou seen Abraham?"

"Verily, verily, I say unto you," he replied with solemn emphasis, " Before Abraham was, I am."

These words assert not merely preexistence, but by confounding grammatical tenses, indicate an existence out of all relation to time, the eternal Now. In them the Lord again applied to himself the peculiar name by which Jehovah revealed himself to Moses (Exodus 3: 14). For a mere man to utter them would be the highest form of blasphemy; and so the Jews now interpreted it.

With loud outcries the mob rushed tumultuously through the eastern gate of the Treasury, the Beautiful Gate, to the outer court, there to gather up the marble chips scattered about the unfinished building, with which to stone him, the usual punishment for blasphemy. But when they returned, Jesus had disappeared. For meantime he and his sympathizers retired through the side door of the Treasury to the steps leading to Ophel. These he descended, followed by several disciples, and so departed from the Temple,