small cords," and
overturned their tables.[3] In general, he had little love for the
temple. The worship which he had conceived for his Father had nothing
in common with scenes of butchery. All these old Jewish institutions
displeased him, and he suffered in being obliged to conform to them.
Except among the Judaizing Christians, neither the temple nor its site
inspired pious sentiments. The true disciples of the new faith held
this ancient sanctuary in aversion. Constantine and the first
Christian emperors left the pagan construction of Adrian existing
there,[4] and only the enemies of Christianity, such as Julian,
remembered the temple.[5] When Omar entered into Jerusalem, he found
the site designedly polluted in hatred of the Jews.[6] It was
Islamism, that is to say, a sort of resurrection of Judaism in its
exclusively Semitic form, which restored its glory. The place has
always been anti-Christian.

[Footnote 1: Jos., _B.J._, II. xiv. 3, VI. ix. 3. Comp. Ps. cxxxiii.
(Vulg. cxxxii.)]

[Footnote 2: Mark xi. 16.]

[Footnote 3: Matt. xxi. 12, and following; Mark xi. 15, and following;
Luke xix. 45, and following; John ii. 14, and following.]

[Footnote 4: _Itin. a Burdig. Hierus._, p. 152 (edit. Schott); S.
Jerome, in _Is._ i. 8, and in Matt. xxiv. 15.]

[Footnote 5: Ammianus Marcellinus, xxiii. 1.]

[Footnote 6: Eutychius, _Ann._, II. 286, and following (Oxford 1659).]

The pride of the Jews completed the discontent of Jesus, and rendered
his stay in Jerusalem painful. In the degree that the great ideas of
Israel ripened, the priesthood lost its power. The institution of
synagogues had given to the interpreter of the Law, to the doctor, a
great superiority over the priest. There were no priests except at
Jerusalem, and even there, reduced to functions entirely ritual,
almost, like our parish priests, excluded from preaching, they were
surpassed by the orator of the synagogue, the casuist, and the _sofer_
or scribe, although the latter was only a layman. The celebrated men
of the Talmud were not priests; they were learned men according to the
ideas of the time. The high priesthood of Jerusalem held, it is true,
a very elevated rank in the nation; but it was by no means at the
head of the religious movement. The sovereign pontiff, whose dignity
had already been degraded by Herod,[1] became more and more a Roman
functionary,[2] who was frequently removed in order to divide the
profits of the office. Opposed to