o one who is really confident that he has a claim on public
attention wanders about in solitary places, but repairs to the most
crowded haunts of men. Go up now to the feast, and your disciples will
gather round you, and your claims will be settled once for all."

To this Jesus replies that the hour for such a proclamation of Himself
has not yet come. That hour is to come. At the following Passover He
entered Jerusalem in the manner desired by His brethren, and the result,
as He foresaw, was His death. As yet such a demonstration was premature.
The brothers of Jesus did not apprehend the virulence of hatred which
Jesus aroused, and did not perceive how surely His death would result
from His going up to the feast as the acknowledged King of the
Galilaeans. He Himself sees all this plainly, and therefore declines the
plan of operation proposed by His brothers; and instead of going up
with them as the proclaimed Messiah, He goes up quietly by Himself a few
days after. To go up as His brothers' nominee, or to go up in the way
they proposed, was counter to the whole plan of His life. Their ideas
and proposals were made from a point of view wholly different from His.
Very often we can do at our own instance, in our own way and at our own
time, what it would be a vast mistake to do at the instigation of people
who look at the matter differently from ourselves, and have quite
another purpose to serve. Jesus could safely do without display what He
could not do ostentatiously; and He could do as His Father's servant
what He could not do at the whim of His brothers.

The feast to which He thus quietly went up was the Feast of Tabernacles.
This feast was a kind of national harvest home; and consequently in
appointing it God commanded that it should be held "in the end of the
year, when thou hast gathered in thy labours out of the field;" that is
to say, in the end of the _natural_ year, or in early autumn, when the
farm operations finished one rotation and began a new series. It was a
feast, therefore, full of rejoicing.[29] Every Israelite appeared in
holiday attire, bearing in his hands a palm-branch, or wearing some
significant emblem of earth's fruitfulness. At night the city was
brilliantly illuminated, especially round the Temple, in which great
lamps, used only on these occasions, were lit, and which possibly
occasioned our Lord's remark at this time, as reported in the following
chapter, "I am the Light of the world." There