w the risks, but deliberately chose to incur them, that the will of
Jehovah might be accomplished.

We next hear of Jesus travelling down to Jerusalem by way of Jericho,
and entering the sacred city in his character of Messiah, attended by a
great multitude. It was near the time of the Passover, when people from
all parts of Galilee and Judaea were sure to be at Jerusalem, and the
nature of his reception seems to indicate that he had already secured a
considerable number of followers upon whose assistance he might hope
to rely, though it nowhere appears that he intended to use other than
purely moral weapons to insure a favourable reception. We must remember
that for half a century many of the Jewish people had been constantly
looking for the arrival of the Messiah, and there can be little doubt
that the entry of Jesus riding upon an ass in literal fulfilment of
prophecy must have wrought powerfully upon the imagination of the
multitude. That the believers in him were very numerous must be
inferred from the cautious, not to say timid, behaviour of the rulers
at Jerusalem, who are represented as desiring to arrest him, but as
deterred from taking active steps through fear of the people. We are
led to the same conclusion by his driving the money-changers out of the
Temple; an act upon which he could hardly have ventured, had not the
popular enthusiasm in his favour been for the moment overwhelming. But
the enthusiasm of a mob is short-lived, and needs to be fed upon the
excitement of brilliant and dramatically arranged events. The calm
preacher of righteousness, or even the fiery denouncer of the scribes
and Pharisees, could not hope to retain undiminished authority save by
the display of extraordinary powers to which, so far as we know, Jesus
(like Mohammed) made no presence (Matt. xvi. 1-4). The ignorant and
materialistic populace could not understand the exalted conception of
Messiahship which had been formed by Jesus, and as day after day elapsed
without the appearance of any marvellous sign from Jehovah, their
enthusiasm must naturally have cooled down. Then the Pharisees appear
cautiously endeavouring to entrap him into admissions which might
render him obnoxious to the Roman governor. He saw through their design,
however, and foiled them by the magnificent repartee, "Render unto
Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that
are God's." Nothing could more forcibly illustrate the completely
non-po