the money

Wanting funds to execute his mighty scheme, Pilate employed the Corban laid up in the Temple as given to God; Caiaphas either consenting to this public employment of public money, or agreeing to make no stir in the affair.

But the mob of Separatists, excited to madness by Pilate's appropriation of these sacred funds, gathered in thousands and in tens of thousands, before the palace gate, demanding that the waterworks should be stopped, the corban restored; clamouring with voice and gesture; cursing alike the aqueduct and the man who made it. The Roman general, not to be governed by a mob, sent a company of legionaries into the streets and the Temple courts, having cloaks over their armour, and orders to set upon these rioters and beat them down with staves. But the passions of his men being roused by previous insult and present opposition, the soldiers drew their short swords, and charging upon the Galilean rioters, threw them to the ground, trampled on them, drove them to the altars and into the shops for protection, so that many fell under their gashes and still more under the feet of their escaping countrymen. The Temple court was strewn with dead, whose blood was said to have mingled that day with the blood of the sacrificial goats and lambs.

Peace was restored to Jerusalem by this murder of unarmed men. Though the innocent had been butchered with the guilty, no stir was made by the priests, no complaint by the Sanhedrin, for these Galileans, strangers in Jerusalem, rioters, provincials, had few friends and many foes, and fear of Cæsar

weighed heavily upon all men's minds. Even to the Lord's disciples, this slaughter of their countrymen was a cause of secret joy. Peter and John would not grieve very much over the fate of enemies, whom they appear to have considered as being overwhelmed by a judgment from heaven. When, safe in Perea, they spoke of this massacre in the Temple court, JESUS turned to them and said:

"Suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans, because they suffered such things? I tell ye, nay: but except ye repent, ye shall likewise perish."

Antipas Herod, while operating against Aretas and the desert tribes, received the news of this slaughter of his people. Pilate excused the crime by saying that his soldiers in their fury had used their swords instead of using their staves; an explanation which in no degree mollified the Tetrarch's wrath; other events of his life having quickened into morbid activity his fear of still further encroachments on the part of Rome.

Under the safeguard of these suspicions and animosities between the two rulers, JESUS could remain near the Ford; preaching to the crowds who followed him from Jericho and the hamlets of Perea; and waiting for the time of the great Feast, when he proposed to go up with the Galilean caravan to Jerusalem and accept his appointed crown of thorns.

When JESUS had been living five weeks in Perea, news came down from Martha and Mary that their brother Lazarus lay sick and likely to die; on hearing which He told his disciples that he must go

up into the hill-country for a little while. "But the Jews will stone thee," they objected. Then he told them that Lazarus was dead; and that he should be raised again to life, to the intent that they might all believe in the Son of God. Some were afraid, remembering how the Galileans had been slain and how JESUS had been threatened with stones, until Thomas the Twin spake boldly to his fellows, saying, "Let us also go, that we may die with him."

After resting two days in Perea, they clomb the wady towards Jerusalem, staying the third night at the great desert khan, the Good Samaritan's inn, and coming nigh to Bethany on the fourth day after Lazarus died. Then was performed the most imposing of many miracles; performed in open day, in a public place, on the body of a great person, in the presence of many Jews. At a word Lazarus came forth from the sepulchral vault.

Many of those who had come from Jerusalem to mourn with Martha and Mary, stayed with him and believed in JESUS; others ran over Olivet to the Temple courts, spreading the news of his having come back, and of his having raised the dead man whom they all knew to life.

The high priests, hitherto so calm, appear to have grown uneasy about the public peace. A meeting of the Sanhedrin being called to consider these reports, Caiaphas went over from his palace on Zion to the Lishcath ha-Gazith to preside. As official high priest he had a right to the chief seat; but in what he laid before the elders he must be taken as speaking, not only for himself, but for Annas,

for

the Sadducees, and for all those politicians who leaned on Rome. Details are not given, but his line of argument is suggested by St. John. People were expecting a Messiah; one who could command the secrets of nature, who could free them from the stranger's yoke; and a man who was reported to have raised the dead to life, would be sure to draw away the multitude, to excite disturbance, and bring on their city and nation the wrath of Rome. Caiaphas said nothing about false teaching; for what would a philosophic Sadducee care whether a mob of dyers and porters believed in a resurrection, in rewards and punishments, or not? Caiaphas had faith in the power of Cæsar, and a riot in Jerusalem meant to him a visit from Pilate, an addition to the garrison, perhaps a change of high priests. He hinted that though they had lost much by tumults, they might lose yet more. Was it not better that one man should die, than that a whole people should be swept away?

Then the Sanhedrin agreed to consider JESUS a dangerous man, a disturber of the public peace. Orders to arrest him were given, and every one who knew of his coming and going was warned to send news of it to Caiaphas.

To avoid this proclamation until his time should come, JESUS left Bethany and the living witness of his power; going first to Ephraim, a place on the edge of the Wilderness of Judea, eight or nine miles from Jerusalem on the north, near Salem and those Springs at which he had parted from John the Baptist; making thence a secret and obscure journey,

through a part of Samaria, perhaps of Galilee; passing thence to the lower Jordan and the Ford from which he had first set out.

Spies from the Sanhedrin met him in Perea, where they had so little power to hurt him that they condescended to guile and fraud. They spread a report that Antipas Herod, troubled by the Arab war, was eager to seize and put him to death; but he answered them, by a saying, that he should not perish out of Jerusalem. Then they came to him with the question: as to whether a man could put away his wife for every cause? This point of law was mooted in the schools of Hillel and Shammai: more important still, it was the chief practical ques-· tion then being debated in Herod's court. Citizens argued it in gates, and soldiers wrangled over it in camps. John the Baptist had lost his head for it. Aretas had declared war upon it. But Jesus, seeing the snare they laid for him, answered them not as a partizan of either Herod or Aretas, but as a teacher of moral truth that man and wife are one flesh, joined together by God, never again to be separated except by sin against the marriage-bond by that crime of adultery which corrupts and severs the sacred tie, like death itself, without the intervention of human laws.

A time was now coming when JESUS would meet such snares, not with this lofty and patient wisdom, but with the resignation of one who is about to die.

Early in April, while the corn was still waving and the palms were in flower, the caravan arrived

The Holy Land. II.

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