266 THE LAST PASSOVER. Boox 1. CHAPTER VII. The last Passover.-The Crucifixion. THE Passover rapidly approached; the roads from all quarters were already crowded with the assem Last bling worshippers. It is difficult for those who are ignorant of the extraordinary power which local religious reverence holds over Southern and Asiatic nations, to imagine the state of Judæa and of Jerusalem at the time of this great periodical festival. The rolling onward of countless and gathering masses of population to some of the temples in India; the caravans from all quarters of the Eastern world, which assemble at Mecca during the Holy Season; the multitudes which formerly flowed to Loreto or Rome at the great ceremonies, when the Roman Catholic religion held its unenfeebled sway over the mind of Europe-do not surpass, perhaps scarcely equal, the sudden, simultaneous confluence, not of the population of a single city, but of the whole Jewish nation, towards the capital of Judæa at the time of the Passover. Dispersed as they were throughout the world, it was not only the great mass of the inhabitants of Palestine, but many foreign Jews who thronged from every quarter-from Babylonia, from Arabia, from Egypt, • Μύριοι ἀπὸ μυρίων ὅσων πόλεων, | καὶ μεσημβρίας, καθ ̓ ἑκάστην ἑορτὴν οἱ μὲν διὰ γῆς, οἱ δὲ διὰ θαλάττης. εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν καταίρουσιν. Philo, de ἐξ ἀνατολῆς καὶ δύσεως, καὶ ἄρκτου | Monarch. 821. CHAP. VII. THE PASCH-ANXIETY AT JERUSALEM. 267 from Asia Minor and Greece, from Italy, probably even from Gaul and Spain. Some notion of the density and vastness of the multitude may be formed from the calculation of Josephus, who, having ascertained the number of paschal lambs sacrificed on one of these solemn occasions, which amounted to 256,500, and assigning the ordinary number to a company who could partake of the same victim, estimated the total number of the pilgrims and residents in Jerusalem at 2,700,000. Through all this concourse of the whole Jewish race, animated more or less profoundly, according to their peculiar temperament, with the same national and religious feelings, rumours about the appearance, the conduct, the pretensions, the language of Jesus, could not but have spread abroad, and be communicated with unchecked rapidity. The utmost anxiety prevails throughout the whole crowded city and its neighbourhood, to ascertain whether this new prophet-this more, perhaps, than prophet-will, as it were, confront at this solemn period the assembled nation; or, as on the last occasion, remain concealed in the remote parts of the country. The Sanhedrin are on their guard, and strict injunctions are issued that they may receive the earliest intelligence of his approach, in order that they may arrest him before He has attempted to make any impression on the multitude. C Already Jesus had either crossed the Jordan, or b Or, according to Mr. Greswell's | jacent villages, compared together, seem reading, 266,500. I must confess that my general scepticism as to the numbers in the Jewish history extends to this calculation. The number and the space, embracing within that space all the ad to me altogether irreconcileable with reason and probability. Still I doubt not the fact of an uncalculated and incalculable concourse. • John xi. 55, 57. 268 ZACCHEUS. BOOK I. descended from the hill country to the north. He had passed through Jericho, where he had been recognised by two blind men as the Son of David, the title of the Messiah probably the most prevalent among the common people; and instead of disclaiming the homage, he had rewarded the avowal by the restoration of their sight to the suppliants.d On his way from Jericho to Jerusalem, but much Zaccheus. nearer to the metropolis, He was hospitably received in the house of a wealthy publican named Zaccheus, who had been so impressed with the report of his extraordinary character, that, being of small stature, he had climbed a tree by the road-side to see him pass by; and had evinced the sincerity of his belief in the just and generous principles of the new faith, both by giving up at once half of his property to the poor, and offering the amplest restitution to those whom he might have oppressed in the exercise of his function as a publican. The noblest homage to the power of the new faith! It is probable that Jesus passed the night, perhaps the whole of the Sabbath, in the house of Zaccheus, and set forth, on the first day of the week, through the villages of Bethphage and Bethany to Jerusalem. Let us, however, before we trace his progress, pause to ascertain, if possible, the actual state of feeling at this precise period, among the different ranks and orders of the Jews. Jesus of Nazareth had now, for three years, assumed the character of a public teacher; his wonderful works were generally acknowledged; all no doubt considered him as an extraordinary being; but whether he was the d Matt. xx. 30; Mark x. 46; Luke xviii. 35. • Luke xix. 1-10. CHAP. VII. STATE OF FEELING AMONG THE JEWS. 269 His Messiah still, as it were, hung in the balance. language, plain enough to those who could comprehend the real superiority, the real divinity of his character, was necessarily dark and ambiguous to those who were insensible to the moral and spiritual beauty of his words and actions. Few, perhaps, beyond his more immediate followers, looked upon him with implicit faith; many with doubt, even with hope; perhaps still greater numbers, comprising the more turbulent of the lower class, and almost all the higher and more influential, with incredulity, if not with undisguised animosity. For, though thus for three years He had kept the public mind in suspense as to his being the promised Redeemer, of those circumstances to which the popular passions had looked forward as the only certain signs of the Messiah's coming; those, which among the mass of the community were considered inseparable from the commencement of the kingdom of heaven-the terrific, the awful, the national, not one had come to pass. The deliverance of the nation from the Roman yoke seemed as remote as ever; the governor had made but a short time, perhaps a year, before, a terrible assertion of his supremacy, by defiling the Temple itself with the blood of the rebellious or unoffending Galileans. The Sanhedrin, imperious during his absence, quailed and submitted whenever the tribunal of Pilate was erected in the metropolis. The publicans, those unwelcome remembrancers of the subjugation of the country, were still abroad in every town and village, levying the hatefu tribute; and instead of joining in the popular clamour against these agents of a foreign rule, or even reprobating their extortions, Jesus had treated them with his accustomed equable gentleness; he had entered familiarly into their houses; one of his constant followers, 270 HOSTILITY TO JESUS-THE PHARISEES. BOOK I. one of his chosen twelve, was of this proscribed and odious profession. All sects hostile to Jesus. The Pharisees. Thus, then, the fierce and violent, the avowed or the secret partisans of the Galilean Judas, and all who, without having enrolled themselves in his sect, inclined to the same opinions, if not already inflamed against Jesus, were at least ready to take fire, on the instant that his success might appear to endanger their schemes and visions of independence: and their fanaticism once inflamed, no considerations of humanity or justice would arrest its course or assuage its violence. To every sect Jesus had been equally uncompromising. To the Pharisees he had always proclaimed the most undisguised opposition; and if his language rises from its gentle and persuasive, though authoritative tone, it is ever in inveighing against the hypocrisy, the avarice, the secret vices of this class, whose dominion over the public mind it was necessary to shake with a strong hand; all communion with whose peculiar opinions it was incumbent on the Teacher of purer virtue to disclaim in the most unmeasured terms.1 But this hostility to the Pharisaic party was likely to operate unfavourably to the cause of Jesus, not only with the party itself, but with the great mass of the lower orders. If there be in man a natural love of independence both in thought and action, there is among the vulgar, especially in a nation so superstitious as the Jews, a reverence, even a passionate attachment to religious tyranny. The bondage in which the minute observances of the traditionists, more like those of the Brahminical Indians than the free and more generous institutes of their Lawgiver, had fettered f Luke xi. 39-54. |