"Murmur not among yourselves. No man can come to me except the Father which sent me draw him; and I will raise him up the last. . . . I am the bread of life. . . . . I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any man eat of this bread he shall live forever; yea, and the bread that I will give you is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.'
"Strange doctrines for Jews to weigh. Then leapt hot words among them, and some of those who had meant to believe in him drew back. If he were the Christ, the Son of David, the King of Israel, why was he not marching on Jerusalem, why not driving out the Romans, why not assuming a kingly crown? 'How can this Man give us his flesh to eat?'
"The Lord spoke again, still more to their discontent and chagrin, seeing that they wanted an earthly Christ:
"'Except ye eat of the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.'
"This was too much for many, even for some who had been brought to the door of belief. . . . . The service of the synagogue ended, the elders came down from the platform, the chazzan put away the sacred vessels, the congregation came out into the sun, angry in word and mocking spirit. They wanted facts; he had given them truth. They hungered for miraculous bread, for a new shower of manna; he had offered them symbolically his flesh and blood. They had set their hearts on finding a captain who would march against the Romans, who would would cause Judas of Gamala to be forgotten, who would put the glories of Herod the Great to shame. They had asked him for earth, and he had answered them with heaven."
But the scene was drawing to a close; Jesus went on with his work after this tumult in the synagogue, opposing himself to the senseless rites of the Pharisees, defying the oral law, healing the sick, and preaching to the people. Passing through the country from Galilee a Syro-Phenecian woman who had heard of him, and perhaps seen him, ran after him in the road, and besought him to heal her daughter who was a lunatic. The disciples urged him to send her away, for his life would not have been safe if he had another conflict with the Jews in that quarter, and to heal this Gentile woman's child would be sure to bring them on his track. Turning to the woman, Jesus told her he was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel; but she persisted, crying, "Lord, help me!" an evidence of faith which was quite sufficient, and Jesus turned to her and said, "Great is thy faith, O woman, be it unto thee as thou wilt." This was a fatal blow to the Jewish exclusiveness, a Gentile had been called into the church, and the pride of the Jew humbled forever. On the last Sabbath day which Jesus spent on earth, he struck another blow at the ceremonial law, by taking his disciples to dine at the house of one Simon a leper. He had reached Bethany, and taken up his abode in the house of Martha and Mary, among the outcast and the poor, for that last seven days now called in the church the holy week. The scene was an impressive one. The city, as far as the eye could reach, was one vast encampment, caravans were arriving from every direction, bringing thousands of Jews to the feast, who, selecting their ground, drove four stakes into the earth, drew long reeds round them, and covered them with leaves, making a sort of bower; others brought small tents with them; the whole city, Mount Gibeon, the plain of Rephaim, the valley of Gihon, the hill of Olivet, were all studded with tense, and crowded with busy people hastening to finish their preparations before the shofa should sound at sunset, and the Sabbath begin, when no man could work. In the temple, the priests, the doctors, the money-changers, the bakers of shew-bread, were all at work, and the last panorama in the life of Christ commenced.
On the first day in Holy Week, now known as Palm Sunday, Jesus entered Jerusalem on an ass's colt, a prominent figure in the festivities, for the crowds rushed up see him, with their palms, and marched with him singing psalms; they had come out from Jerusalem to meet him, and they escorted him into the city. At night he returned to Bethany.
On the Monday and Tuesday he went early to the temple, mixing among the people, restoring sight to the blind, and preaching to the poor. As his life began with a series of temptations, so it was the will of his Father that he should be persecuted with them at its close—a lesson we may all do well to dwell upon. Up to the last days of his life Jesus was subjected to temptations. On the Tuesday some emissaries of the Sanhedrim came to the court where he was preaching to question him, and gather evidence against him. They found him amongst a crowd of Baptists, and demanded his authority for teaching. Christ retorted by putting them to the dilemma of stating whether John's baptism was of heaven or not; they were too much afraid of the people to say it was of men, and if they said of heaven, Jesus would have reproached them for their want of faith; they confessed their ignorance. Then each party tried to entrap him.
The Pharisees brought him a woman taken in adultery. By the Mosaic law this offence would have been punished with death. But the Roman government would have executed any Jew who would venture to carry out such a law, and therefore the question seemed to compel Jesus to speak either against Moses or the Romans. He quietly turned to the witnesses, and told the man who was [{512}] innocent among them to cast the first stone at her.