disciples, went down to Capernaum for a few days, until it was time to go on their yearly pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to the feast of the passover, which was near at hand. Peter and Andrew were living there, and might join them in their journey to Judea; though they do not seem to have stayed with our Lord, but probably returned after the passover to their own home until He considered it a fit time to call them to leave all and follow Him.
CHAPTER III.
THE FIRST SUMMER.
For the first time Jesus went up to Jerusalem with His little band of followers, who knew Him to be the Messiah; and His cousins, who did not yet believe in Him, but were apparently willing to do so if He would act as they expected the Messiah to act. If He would repeat His miracle on a large scale, and so convince the mass of the people, they were ready enough to proclaim Him as the Messiah.
Would not John the Baptist be there too? He as a priest, and as a prophet, would no doubt be looked for, as Jesus afterwards was, at the feast of the passover. He must have had a strong impetuous yearning to see Him, who had been pointed out to him as the Lamb of God that should take away the sin of the world. Maybe He ate the Paschal Supper with Jesus and His disciples. We fancy we see him, the well-known hermit-prophet from the wilderness, in his robe of camel’s hair, with its leathern girdle, and his long, shaggy hair, and weatherbeaten face, following closely the steps of Jesus, through the streets, and about the courts of the Temple, listening to His words with thirsty ears, and calling himself ‘The friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth Him, rejoicing greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice.’ It was the last passover John the Baptist would ever celebrate; though that he could not know.
Upon going up into the Temple, Jesus found the court of the Gentiles thronged with sheep, and oxen, and doves, animals needed for the sacrifices, but disturbing the congregation, which assembled in the court of the women, by their incessant lowing and cooing. Moneychangers were sitting there also; for Roman coins were now in common use instead of the Jewish money, which alone was lawful for payment in the Temple. No doubt there was a good deal of loud and angry debate round the tables of the money-changers; and a disgraceful confusion and disorder prevailed. Jesus took up a scourge of small cords, and drove out of the Temple the noisy oxen and sheep, bidding the sellers of the doves to carry them away. The tables of the money-changers He overturned; and no one opposed Him, but conscious of the scandal they had brought upon the Temple they retreated before Him. ‘Make not My Father’s house a house of merchandise,’ He said. To Him it was always His ‘Father’s house;’ and before He could manifest forth His glory, His Father must first be glorified. The disciples, looking upon His face, remembered that it had been written, ‘The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.’
But the priests and Levites of the Temple, to whom this traffic brought much profit, were not so easily con-science-pricked as the merchants had been. They could not defend the wrong practices, but they came together to question the authority of this young stranger from Galilee. If John the Baptist had done it, probably they would not have ventured to speak, for all the people counted him a prophet But this was a new man from Galilee! The Jews held the Galileans in scorn, as only little better than the Samaritans. ‘What sign shewest Thou,’ they ask, ‘seeing that Thou doest such things? The things were signs themselves; the mighty, prevailing anger of the Lord, and the smitten consciences of the merchants, if they had not been too blind to see them. Jesus gave them a mysterious answer, which none could understand. ‘Destroy this temple,’ He said, ‘and in three days I will raise it up.’ What! were they to pull down all they most prided in, and trusted in: their Temple, which had been forty and six years in building! They left Him, but they treasured up His words in their memories. The disciples also remembered them, and believed them, when the mysterious sign was fulfilled.
But Jesus did not seek to convince the people without signs, and signs which they could understand. He worked certain miracles in Jerusalem during the week of the feast, which won a degree of faith from many. But their faith was not strong and true enough for Him to trust to it, and He held Himself aloof from them. What they looked for was an earthly king, who should plot and conspire for the throne; and the Roman soldiers, who garrisoned the strong fortress which overlooked the Temple, would not have borne the rumour of such a king. There was at all times great danger of these expectations reaching the ears of Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, who was not a man to shrink from needless bloodshed. For the sake of the people themselves Jesus did not commit Himself unto them.
Amongst those who heard of the miracles He had wrought was one of the Pharisees, a member of the great religious committee among them called the Sanhedrim. His name was Nicodemus, and he came to our Lord by night, to inquire more particularly what He was teaching. Jesus told him more distinctly than He had yet done what His new message to the Jews and to the whole world was: ‘For God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’ Nicodemus went away strongly impressed with the new doctrine, though not prepared to give up all for its sake, and not yet called upon to do so. But from that time Jesus had a firm friend in the very midst of the Pharisees, who used his powerful influence to protect Him; and the feast passed by without any further jealous interference from the priests.
But it was not quite safe or suitable to remain in Jerusalem; and after the greater number of their friends and kinsmen had returned home, Jesus, with two or three of His disciples, sought the banks of the Jordan, whither John the Baptist had already returned. The harvest was beginning, for it was near the end of April, and bands of harvesters passed to and fro from uplands to lowlands until all the corn was gathered in by the end of June. Down in the valley of the Jordan the summer is very hot; and the wants of life are few. They could sleep in the open air, or in some hut of branches rudely woven together; and their food, like John the Baptist’s, cost little or nothing. There was to be no settled home henceforth for any one of them. The disciples had left all to follow the Son of Man, and He had not where to lay His head.
Crowds of eager and curious followers came to Jesus, as the year before they had flocked to John the Baptist, who had now moved some miles farther up the river, and was still preaching ‘The kingdom of God is at hand.’ But John did no miracle, and the crowds that followed Jesus were greater than those who followed him. In the eyes of the Pharisees it must have seemed that the two prophets were in rivalry; and many a jest and a sneer would be heard in the Temple courts and in the streets of Jerusalem as they talked of those ‘two fanatics’ on the banks of the Jordan. Even John the Baptist’s disciples fancied that a wrong was done their Rabbi by this new teacher, who had been with him for a while, and so learned his manner of arousing and teaching the people. They went to John, and said, ‘Rabbi, He that was with thee beyond Jordan, to whom thou bearest witness, behold, the same baptizeth, and all men come unto Him.’
Now was John’s opportunity to manifest a wonderful humility and devotion. ‘I am of the earth, earthy, and speak of the earth,’ he said; ‘He that cometh from heaven is above all The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all tilings into His hands. I am but the friend of the bridegroom; I stand and hear Him, and rejoice greatly because of His voice. This my joy therefore is fulfilled.’
Did he hear that voice often, and rejoice in it? There were not many miles separating them, and both of them were hardy, and used to long marches. It may well be that during those summer months they met often on the banks of the river—the happiest season of John’s life. For he had been a lonely, unloved man, living a wild life in the wilderness, strange to social and homelike ways; his father and mother long since dead, with neither brother nor sister, he would find in Jesus all the missing relationships, and pour out to Him the richest treasures of a heart that no loving trust had opened until now.
So the summer passed away, and the autumn with its vintage; then the rainy months drew near. Bands of harvestmen and bands of pilgrims had gone by, tarrying for a few hours to learn truths they had never heard before, even in the Temple. Many of them were baptized by the disciples, though Jesus baptized not The new prophet had become more popular than the old prophet, and John’s words were fulfilled, ‘He