XIII. THE GREAT REFUSAL. Thou canst imagine with what feelings of expectation all Jerusalem awaited the coming of Jesus next morning. Many of the Pharisees had come together the eve before, and spoken of the public insult Jesus had given to their sect on the preceding day. Hanan the High Priest, we heard, had quarrelled furiously with his son‐in‐law Joseph Caiaphas, for that he had not allowed him to summon his guard after the humiliation he had put upon them in the Temple. Yet neither the Pharisees nor the Sadducees who followed the High Priests dared lay hands upon this Jesus, because of the evident favor in which he was held by the common folk of Jerusalem, and above all by the many from country parts who had come up, like him, to spend the Passover in the Holy City. Among all these there was no talk but of Jesus the Liberator; nay! many spake of him as Jesus the Christ. And if he were indeed to be the Christ, the King of Israel, the Founder of the New Kingdom, it could not be that he would suffer longer the yoke of the Romans to lie upon the neck of Israel. Yet there was one thing that perplexed many, and opinion went hither and thither among the minds of men concerning it. The Christ who was to deliver Israel and to rule over mankind, was he not to be the son of David? Yet this Jesus was of Galilee, where the admixture of blood had been greatest in all Israel. “There is no unleavened bread in all Galilee,” the scoffers used to say, meaning thereby that their genealogy was sprinkled with yeast, as we call foreign admixture. And for this man’s genealogy, who could declare it? Many, indeed, as I have told thee, thought him to have no right even to be called son of his father. A _mamzer_ shall not sit in the congregation of Israel. How, then, could one ascend Israel’s throne? When, therefore, Jesus came next morning from his lodging in Bethany, all Jerusalem turned out to welcome him, for the Passover was coming anear, and if aught was to be done to clear the city of the Romans, it must be done quickly, must be done on that day. Never saw I the courts of the Temple so crowded as on that day when I came thither, and found Jesus standing in the Court of the Gentiles, with almost all the leading men of Jerusalem and many of the common folk surging about him. Scarce room was left for the Roman sentry to march his guard in front of the Beautiful Gate. Yet he took no heed of us barbarians, but with shield and spear shouldered his way backward and forward, backward and forward, a sign to all men that the house of God was in the hands of God’s enemies.