d hold out to them some hope of a better
and happier day. Consequently He was for a time extremely popular, and
even the Pharisees deliberated as to whether He might prove to be the
long-expected leader who should restore the kingdom to Israel. But
this attitude soon changed. People and rulers alike became
disappointed with Jesus. They were looking for a kingdom which should
come by force, and Jesus for one which should come by love. They
wanted material benefits forthwith, while to Jesus these were
altogether a secondary matter. Then, too, He became an inconvenience.
His standard of rectitude was exacting. He saw through the hypocrisies
and villanies of many of those who posed as the guides and directors of
the nation, and He was not silent about them. He spoke out without
fear or hesitation. What other people had been thinking and dared not
say He said without pausing to consider what the consequences might be.
No wonder the ecclesiastics came to feel that He must be silenced at
any cost. It can hardly be supposed that people in general were
offended by His plain language concerning those in high places, but
then they wanted Him to do something besides talk. They wanted to see
Him drive out the Roman without delay and inaugurate the era of power
and plenty. Jesus saw well enough what the end of all this must be.
He must either temporise a little, or go away and hide, or go straight
on doing His work until the night came and He could work no more. He
decided for the last-named course, leaving the results to God. It was
in the line of His duty to go up to Jerusalem for the feast of the
Passover, so to Jerusalem He went. He could hardly have been under any
delusion as to what awaited Him there. The crowds in the capital were
very excited about Him; His name was on every lip, and there were many
who would have declared for Him at once if He had only offered Himself
as the national champion against the foreigner. But by this time
priests, Pharisees, and scribes understood that, in their sense of the
word, a national champion He would never be. The crisis was reached at
the cleansing of the Temple. The moral greatness, the tremendous
impressiveness, of the personality of Jesus were never more clearly
demonstrated than on this occasion. There was no earthly reason why
dove-sellers, money-changers, priests, and Temple officials should be
driven pell-mell out of precincts they had come to look upon as their