The third been admitted without resistance; and probably the assertion of the violated dignity of the Temple was a point on which the devotional feelings would have been so strongly in favour of the Reformer, that it would have been highly dangerous and unwise for the magistrates to risk even the appearnce either of opposition or of dissatisfaction. The third morning arrived. As Jesus passed to the Temple, the day. fig-tree, the symbol of the Jewish nation, stood utterly withered and dried up. But, as it were, to prevent the obvious inference from the immediate fulfilment of his malediction,—almost the only destructive act during his whole public career, and that on a tree by the wayside, the common property,-Jesus mingles with his promise of power to his Apostles to perform acts as extraordinary, the strictest injunctions to the milder spirit inculcated by his precept and his example. Their prayers were to be for the forgiveness, not for the providential destruction, of their enemies. Deputation from the rulers. The Sanhedrin had now determined on the necessity of making an effort to discredit Jesus with the more and more admiring multitude. A deputation arrives to demand by what authority he had taken up his station, and was daily teaching in the Temple, had expelled the traders, and, in short, had usurped a complete superiority over the accredited and established instuctors of the people (1)? The self-command and promptitude of Jesus caught them, as it were, in their own toils, and reduced them to the utmost embarrassment. The claim of the Baptist to the prophetic character had been generally admitted and even passionately asserted; his death had, no doubt, still further endeared him to all who detested the Herodian rule, or who admired the uncompromising boldness with which he had condemned iniquity even upon the throne. The popular feeling would have resented an impeachment on his prophetic dignity. When, therefore, Jesus demanded their sentence as to the Baptism of John, they had but the alternative of acknowledging its divine sanction, and so tacitly condemning themselves for not having submitted to his authority, and even for not admitting his testimony in favour of Jesus; or of exposing themselves, by denying it, to popular insult and fury. The self-degrading confession of their ignorance, placed Jesus immediately on the vantage ground, and at once annulled their right to question or to decide upon the authority of his mission,-that right which was considered to be vested in the Sanhedrin. They were condemned to listen to language still more humiliating. In two striking parables, that of the Lord of the Vineyard, and of the Marriage Feast (2), Jesus not obscurely intimated the rejection of those labourers who had been first summoned to the work of God; of those guests who (1) Matt, xxi. 23-27.; Mark, xi. 27-34.;` Luke, xx. 1-8. (2) Matt. xxi. 28. to xxii. 14.; Mark, xii. 1— 12.; Luke, xx. 9-18. had been first invited to the nuptial banquet; and the substitution of meaner and most unexpected guests or subjects in their place. day. The fourth day (1) arrived; and once more Jesus appeared in The fourth the Temple with a still increasing concourse of followers. No unfavourable impression had yet been made on the popular mind by his adversaries; his career is yet unchecked; his authority unshaken. dians. His enemies are now fully aware of their own desperate situation; the apprehension of the progress of Jesus unites the most discordant parties into one formidable conspiracy; the Pharisaic, the Sadducaic, and the Herodian factions agree to make common cause against the common enemy: the two national sects, the Traditionists, and the Antitraditionists, no longer hesitate to accept the aid of the foreign or Herodian faction (2). Some suppose the Hero- The Herodians to have been the officers and attendants on the court of Herod, then present at Jerusalem; but the appellation more probably includes all those who, estranged from the more inveterate Judaism of the nation, and having, in some degree, adopted Grecian habils and opinions, considered the peace of the country best secured by the government of the descendants of Herod, with the sanction and under the protection of Rome (3). They were the foreign faction, and as such, in general, in direct opposition to the Pharisaic, or national party. But the success of Jesus, however at present it threatened more immediately the ruling authorities in Jerusalem, could not but endanger the Galilean government of Herod. The object, therefore, was to implicate Jesus with the faction, or at least to tempt him into acknowledging opinions similar to those of the Galilean demagogue, a scheme the more likely to work on the jealousy of the Roman government, if it was at the last Passover that the apprehension of tumult among the Galilean strangers had justified, or appeared to justify, the massacre perpetrated by Pilate. The plot was laid with great subtlety; for either way Jesus, it appeared, must commit himself. The great test of the Galilean opinion was, the lawfulness of tribute to a foreign power; which Judas had boldly declared to be not merely a base compromise of the national independence, but an impious infringement on the first principles of their theocracy. But the independence, if not the (3) Of all notions on the much-contested point of the Herodians, the most improbable is that which identifies them with the followers of the Galilean Judas. The whole policy of the Herodian family was in diametrical hostility to those opinions. They maintained their power by foreign influence, and, with the elder Herod, had systematically attempted to soften the implacable hostility of the nation by the introduction of Grecian manners. Their object accordingly was, to convict Jesus of the Galilean opinions, which they themselves held in the utmost detestation. The Sadducees. universal dominion of the Jews was inseparably bound up with the popular belief in the Messiah. Jesus, then, would either, on the question of the lawfulness of tribute to Cæsar, confirm the bolder doctrines of the Galilean, and so convict himself, before the Romans, as one of that dangerous faction; or he would admit its legality, and so annul at once all his claims to the character of the Messiah. Not in the least thrown off his guard by the artful courtesy, or rather the adulation of their address, Jesus appeals to the current coin of the country, which, bearing the impress of the Roman emperor, was in itself a recognition of Roman supremacy (1). The Herodian or political party thus discomfited, the Sadducees advanced to the encounter. Nothing can appear more captious or frivolous than their question with regard to the future possession of a wife in another state of being, who had been successively married to seven brothers, according to the Levirate law. But, perhaps, considered in reference to the opinions of the time, it will seem less extraordinary. The Sadducees, no doubt, had heard that the resurrection and the life to come, had formed an essential tenet in the teaching of Jesus. They concluded that his notions on these subjects were those generally prevalent among the people. But, if the later Rabbinical notions of the happiness of the renewed state of existence, were current or even known in their general outline, nothing could be more gross or unspiritual (2): if less voluptuous, they were certainly not less strange and unreasonable, than those which perhaps were derived from the same source-the Paradise of Mahomet. The Sadducees were accustomed to contend with these disputants, whose paradisaical state, to be established by the Messiah, after the resurrection, was but the completion of those temporal promises in the book of Deuteronomy, a perpetuity of plenty, fertility, and earthly enjoyment (3). The answer of Jesus, while it declares the certainty of another state of existence, carefully purifies it from all these corporeal and earthly images; and assimilates man, in another state of existence, to a higher order of beings. And in his concluding inference from the passage in Exodus, in which God is described as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the allusion may perhaps be still kept up. The temporal and corporeal resurrection of the common Pharisaic belief was to take place only after the coming of the Messiah; yet their reverence for the fathers of the race, would scarcely allow even the Sadducee to (1) The latter part of the sentence. "Render therefore unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's," and "to God the things that are God's," refers, in all probability, to the payment of the Temple tribute, which was only received in the coin of the country. Hence, as before observed, the money changers in the temple, Matt., xxii. 2333.; Mark, xii. 18-27.; Luke, xx. 27-38. (2) It is decided, in the Sohar on Genesis, fol. 24. col. 96., " that woman, who has married two husbands in this world, is restored to the first in the world to come." Schoetgen in loco. (3) Josephus, in his address to his countrymen, mingles up into one splendid picture the Meteinpsychosis and the Elysium of the Greeks. In Schoetgen, in loco, may be found extracts from the Talmud, of a purer character, and more resembling the language of our Lord. suppose their total extinction. The actual, the pure beatitude of the Patriarchs, was probably an admitted point; if not formally decided by their teachers, implicitly admitted, and fervently embraced by the religious feelings of the whole people. But if, according to the Sadducaic principle, the soul did not exist independent of the body, even Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had shared the common fate, the favour of God had ceased with their earthly dissolution; nor in the time of Moses could he be justly described as the God of those, who in death had sunk into utter annihilation. Although now engaged in a common cause, the hostility of the Pharisaic party to the Sadducees, could not but derive gratification from their public discomfiture. One scribe of their party is so struck by the superiority of Jesus, that, though still with something of an insidious design, he demands in what manner he should rank the commandments, which in popular belief were probably of equal dignity and importance (1). But when Jesus comprises the whole of religion under the simple precepts of the love of God and the love of man, he is so struck with the sublimity of the language, that he does not hesitate openly to espouse his doctrines. Paralysed by this desertion, and warned by the discomfiture of the two parties which had preceded them in dispute with Jesus, the Pharisees appear to have stood wavering and uncertain how to speak or act. Jesus seizes the opportunity of still further weakening their authority with the assembled multitude; and, in his turn, addresses an embarrassing question as to the descent of the Messiah (2). The Messiah, according to the universal belief, would be the heir and representative of David: Jesus, by a reference to the second Psalm, which was considered prophetic of the Redeemer, forces them to confess that, even according to their own authority, the kingdom of the Messiah was to be of far higher dignity, far wider extent, and administered by a more exalted sovereign than David, for even David himself, by their own admission, had called him his Lord. The Pharisees withdrew in mortified silence, and for that time abandoned all hope of betraying him into any incautious or unpopular denial by their captious questions. But they withdrew unmoved by the wisdom, unattracted by the beauty, unsubdued by the authority of Jesus. After some delay, during which the beautiful incident of his approving the charity of the poor widow (3), who cast her mite into the treasury of the Temple, took place, he addressed the wondering multitude, ("for common people heard him gladly") (4) in a grave and solemn denunciation against the tyranny, the hypo (1) Matt. xxii. 34-40.; Mark, xii. 28-40.; Luke. xx. 39, 40. (2) Matt. xxii. 41-46.; Mark, xii. 35-37.; Luke, xx, 39-44. (3) Mark, xii. 41-44.; Luke xxi. 1-4. The Pha risces. The crisis, of Jesus, crisy, the bigoted attachment to the most minute observances, and at the same time the total blindness to the spirit of religion, which actuated that great predominant party. He declared them possessed with the same proud and inhuman spirit, which had perpetually bedewed the city with the blood of the Prophets (1). Jerusalem had thus for ever rejected the mercy of God. This appalling condemnation was, as it were, the final declaration of war against the prevailing religion; it declared that the new doctrines could not harmonise with minds so inveterately wedded to their own narrow bigotry; but even yet the people were not altogether estranged from Jesus, and in that class in which the Pharisaic interest had hitherto despotically ruled, it appeared as it were trembling for its existence. And now every thing indicated the approaching, the immediate in the fate crisis. Although the populace were so decidedly, up to the present instant, in his favour,-though many of the ruling party were only withholden by the dread of that awful sentence of excommunication, which inflicted civil, almost religious death (2), from avowing themselves his disciples, yet Jesus never entered the Temple again the next time he appeared before the people, was as a prisoner, as a condemned malefactor. As he left the Temple, a casual expression of admiration from some of his followers, at the magnificence and solidity of the building, and the immense size of the stones of which it was formed, called forth a prediction of its impending ruin; which was expanded, to four of his Apostles, into a more detailed and circumstantial description of its appalling fate, as he sate, during the evening upon the Mount of Olives (3). Jesus on of Olives. It is impossible to conceive a spectacle of greater natural or moral sublimity, than the Saviour seated on the slope of the Mount of Olives, and thus looking down, almost for the last time, on the whole Temple and city of Jerusalem, crowded as it then was with near Evening three millions of worshippers. It was evening, and the whole irreJerusalem gular outline of the city, rising from the deep glens, which encircled Temple. it on all sides, might be distinctly traced. The sun, the significant view of and the emblem of the great Fountain of moral light, to which Jesus and his faith had been perpetually compared, may be imagined sinking behind the western hills, while its last rays might linger on the broad and massy fortifications on Mount Sion, on the stately palace of Herod, on the square tower, the Antonia, at the corner of the Temple, and on the roof of the Temple, fretted all over with golden spikes, which glittered like fire; while below, the colonnades and lofty gates would cast their broad shadows over the courts, and afford that striking contrast between vast masses of gloom, and (1) Matt., xxiii.; Mark, xii. 38-40.; Luke, xx. 45-47. (2) See His. of the Jews, vol. iii. p. 111–147. (3) Matt. xxiv. xxv.; Mark, xiii. Luke, xxi. 5-38, |