CHAPTER VIII

Early Days of Holy Week

TELL ye the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy King

cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass.' So was it written in the Prophets, and so must it be fulfilled by Christ. Every act and every word is now full of deepest meaning. The ass and the colt with her' are duly found and brought. Seating the spare form of their divine Master on the foal, they leave the wooded dell of Bethany, and slowly ascend the rocky path which leads over the shoulder of the hill towards Jerusalem. Thousands of Galilean pilgrims follow in His train. A vast multitude from the Holy City stream forth to meet them, tearing down the long vernal fronds of the palms, and waving them with loud Hosannas as they approach. Eagerly they tell or hear of all the wonders He has done, -and most of all of Lazarus. Is not this the Messiah, their promised king? Nor shall royal honours be wanting the crowd that meet them, turning and heading the procession, strew the path with their palm-leaves, while others carpet the ground under His feet with their garments. Thus the long procession sweeps over the crest of the hill, and the Holy City bursts upon their view. Again the Messianic psalm is raised by the disciples, 'Blessed be the King that cometh in the name of the Lord; peace in

heaven and glory in the highest !' And the multitude in front take up the strain, while they that follow make answer, waking the echoes of the deep ravine with their Hosannas. Nor does He, the Messiah, refuse their adoration; 'I tell you, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.'

But another vision was rising before the prophetic eye of Jesus; a vision of Roman armies, of long lines of siege, of ruin, and of slaughter; and as He gazed at the beautiful city, He wept over it, saying, 'If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes.'

Again they move on, slowly down through the olivegardens, and across the deep torrent bed of the Kedron, and up the rocky slope on the further side, and so through one of the city gates to the levelled ledge of Mount Moriah, on which the Temple stood. The whole day, the whole of that Palm Sunday, seems to have been spent in this solemn entry1.

St. Mark simply tells us that Jesus entered the Temple; and when He had looked round about upon all things, and now the eventide was come, He went out again to Bethany with the twelve.' Early, as it would seem, on Monday morning, Jesus again bent His steps towards Jerusalem. Hungering by the way, He went up to a fig-tree, whose unusually early show of leaves made Him expect to find fruit; but finding none, and following the train of feeling with which the sight of the city on this same spot the day before had filled His mind, He spoke His thought aloud, and said, 'No man eat fruit of thee hereafter

1 No one who has read it can forget Dean Stanley's vivid description of this Entry, in his Sinai and Palestine.

for ever!'-oh that His people had shown the fruit that He looked for in this day of His visitation! But now it was too late! Passing on He entered the Temple. Once more shall ‘the Lord come suddenly to His temple, and purify the sons of Levi.' As at the first, so now at the last, Passover of His ministry, He purged the holy courts of His Father's house of the unseemly traffic which profaned them. The multitude crowd around Him, bringing their blind and their lame and the Messiah heals them all. The chief priests and scribes can bear it no longer; for the very children were crying, 'Hosanna to the son of David !' 'Hearest Thou what these say?' they ask indignantly. 'Yes,' Christ answers; 'have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings Thou hast perfected praise?' In the present temper of the people it was impossible to lay hands on Him. The day was spent in the Temple; in the evening He withdrew again to that favoured home at Bethany.

Tuesday, the 12th of Nisan, appears to have been spent from early dawn to near sunset in the Temple in public teaching. In their early morning walk across the Mount of Olives, the disciples noticed that the fig-tree was already withered,-such was the power of even the least of Christ's words! And such too might be the power of their words (He told them) if only they would pray in faith.

In the Temple, which He had cleared the day before, He was met by a deputation from the Sanhedrim, asking by what authority He had done it. Christ silenced them by asking in return, in the hearing of all the people, to what authority they ascribed the reformation which the Baptist had preached-divine or human? They could not for shame say St. John's

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mission was divine, for they had themselves rejected him; they dared not say it was human, for all the people believed in him. Thus either way they would be discredited in the eyes of the multitude. Then Christ took up His parable against the Pharisees, and denounced their hypocrisy before all the people. They were like the son who said unto his father, 'I go, sir,' and went not; they were like the wicked husbandman who slew the Heir when He came to seek fruit from His vineyard; they were like the rebellious guests who refused to come to the wedding feast. Even such were these Pharisees, and even thus were they drawing down on themselves that fearful retribution which so continually, during this week, rose up before Christ's vision.

Stung to the quick by these parables, His enemies would there and then have laid their hands upon Jesus; but the people protected Him, and their baffled rulers retired to their council-chamber to concert another mode of attack. Their only hope now was to discredit Him either with the Romans on one side, or with the populace on the other. They will frame a double-edged question, which He cannot answer without giving offence either to Pilate or to the Jews and that His answer, on whichever side it be, may be duly witnessed and reported, they send, along with the Pharisees, some Herodians-courtiers of the Roman power. With flattering words they pretend to be referring to Him a case of conscience. 'What thinkest Thou, is it lawful to give tribute to Cæsar or not?' Little were they prepared for the divine simplicity with which our Lord at once evaded the snare, rebuked their malice, and proclaimed one of the great principles of His kingdom. 'Why tempt

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ye Me, ye hypocrites? show me the tribute-money.' 'Whose is this image and superscription?' Thus He obliged them with their own mouth to confess the master whom, for their sins, God had placed over them. 'Render, therefore, unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and unto God the things that are God's.' Thus Christ reconciled for ever the duty of obedience to human law and to divine law,-whatever hardship we suffer under the first, must be accepted as a penalty for our disobedience to the second. Assuredly as we obey the second, so surely will God's providence bring about an amendment of the first.

One party in the Sanhedrim being thus foiled and silenced, another party came forward. The Sadducees believed not in a future state, and thought they would perplex Jesus on this much-disputed question. They put the case of a woman who had seven husbands in this world, flippantly asking 'whose wife shall she be in the next?' Not content with showing the folly of their question-all such relationships ceasing in the other world,—Christ proved from their own Pentateuch the doctrine they denied. Jehovah would not continue to call Himself the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, unless Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were still living! He is not the God of the dead, but of the living for all live unto Him!

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One more among their number-a lawyer-made a last attempt to draw Him into controversy, asking which was the greatest of the commandments; but seems to have been so struck by the wisdom of Christ's answer, that he was almost induced to range himself on His side.

Thus one and all they stood discomfited. And now it was their turn to be questioned. As in His