[Footnote 2: Luke xiii. 33.]
CHAPTER XXI.
LAST JOURNEY OF JESUS TO JERUSALEM.
Jesus had for a long time been sensible of the dangers that surrounded him.[1] During a period of time which we may estimate at eighteen months, he avoided going on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.[2] At the feast of Tabernacles of the year 32 (according to the hypothesis we have adopted), his relations, always malevolent and incredulous,[3] pressed him to go there. The evangelist John seems to insinuate that there was some hidden project to ruin him in this invitation. "Depart hence, and go into Judea, that thy disciples also may see the works that thou doest. For there is no man that doeth anything in secret, and he himself seeketh to be known openly. If thou do these things, show thyself to the world." Jesus, suspecting some treachery, at first refused; but when the caravan of pilgrims had set out, he started on the journey, unknown to every one, and almost alone.[4] It was the last farewell which he bade to Galilee. The feast of Tabernacles fell at the autumnal equinox. Six months still had to elapse before the fatal denouement. But during this interval, Jesus saw no more his beloved provinces of the north. The pleasant days had passed away; he must now traverse, step by step, the painful path that will terminate only in the anguish of death.
[Footnote 1: Matt. xvi. 20, 21; Mark viii. 30, 31.]
[Footnote 2: John vii. 1.]
[Footnote 3: John vii. 5.]
[Footnote 4: John vii. 10.]
His disciples, and the pious women who tended him, met him again in Judea.[1] But how much everything was changed for him there! Jesus was a stranger at Jerusalem. He felt that there was a wall of resistance he could not penetrate. Surrounded by snares and difficulties, he was unceasingly pursued by the ill-will of the Pharisees.[2] Instead of that illimitable faculty of belief, happy gift of youthful natures, which he found in Galilee—instead of those good and gentle people, amongst whom objections (always the fruit of some degree of ill-will and indocility) had no existence, he met there at each step an obstinate incredulity, upon which the means of action that had so well succeeded in the north had little effect. His disciples were despised as being Galileans. Nicodemus, who, on one of his former journeys, had had a conversation with him by night, almost compromised himself with the Sanhedrim, by having wished to defend him. "Art thou also of Galilee?" they said to him. "Search and look: for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet."[3]
[Footnote 1: Matt. xxvii. 55; Mark xv. 41; Luke xxiii. 49, 55.]