The people replied in words which showed their rising hatred, “Thou hast a devil. Who goeth about to kill thee?”
Jesus, referring to the healing of the man at the Pool of Bethesda, said, “I have done one work, and ye all marvel.” Then, to show them the unreasonableness of their hostility to him because he thus healed a man on the sabbath day, he said, “Moses gave unto you circumcision; and ye, on the sabbath day, circumcise a man. If a man on the sabbath day receive circumcision, that the law of Moses should not be broken, are ye angry at me because I have made a man every whit whole on the sabbath day?”
The appearance of Jesus and his teaching excited great commotion in Jerusalem; and there was much discussion among the people, whether he were the Messiah. The rulers were bewildered. They wished to arrest him and silence him; but there was nothing in what he said or did which could warrant them in any acts of violence. Many of the people in Jerusalem expressed the belief that Jesus was the Messiah, saying, “When Christ cometh, will he do more miracles than this man hath done?” The Pharisees and chief priests, alarmed by these indications of increasing popular favor, secretly sent officers to take him; but, though Jesus continued teaching the people without adopting any measures of concealment or defence, for some unexplained reason the officers did not arrest him. He, however, made an announcement to the people, which, at the time, they did not fully comprehend,—that, when his appointed time came, he should return to hisFather in heaven, and that then they would seek him in vain. “Yet a little while,” said he, “am I with you; and then I go unto Him that sent me.Ye shall seek me, and shall not find me; and where I am, thither ye cannot come.”[25]
Thus he continued boldly teaching until the last great day of the feast, when, in an emphatic voice, he uttered in the temple the memorable words, so assuming if he were but a man, so suitable if he were divine, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink;” adding, in phrase still figurative, that those who thus partook of the fountain of living waters should bestow liberal and constant blessings on their fellow-men.
When the officers who had been sent to arrest Jesus returned without him, they replied to the inquiry why they had done so, “Never man spake like this man.” The Pharisees scornfully retorted, alluding to the undoubted fact that it was the common people who generally accepted Jesus, “Are ye also deceived? Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed on him? But this people who knoweth not the law are cursed.”
Here Nicodemus, who was a member of the council, and who, several months before, had visited Jesus by night, ventured timidly to interpose. “Doth our law,” he inquired, “judge any man before it hear him and know what he doeth?” He was silenced by the contemptuous and somewhat menacing reply, “Art thou also of Galilee? Search and look; for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet.”
While the rulers were thus seeking to entrap Jesus, he left the city, and ascended the greensward of the Mount of Olives, about a mile east of the walls. Here it seems that he spent the night beneath the stars of that serene and genial clime. Early the next morning, he returned to the temple. A multitude, as usual, gathered around him. The following remarkable scene which then ensued cannot be better described than in the language of the inspired writers:—
“And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and, when they had set her in the midst, they say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, inthe very act. Now, Moses, in the law, commanded us that such should be stoned; but what sayest thou? This they said tempting him, that they might accuse him.
“But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground. So, when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground. And they which heard it, being convicted by conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last; and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her,Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.”[26]
Then, turning to the people assembled in the temple, he said, in phrases which will cause every thoughtful mind to pause and ponder, “I am the light of the world. He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”