He went up to the Temple where all His enemies were assembled. On the hill-top the sacred fortress sunned its new whiteness in the magnificence of the day. The old Ark of the nomads, drawn by oxen through sweltering deserts and over battlefields, had halted on that height, petrified as a defense for the royal city. The moveable cart of the fugitives had become a heavy citadel of stone and marble, a pompous stronghold of palaces and stairways, shady with colonnades, lighted with courts, enclosed by walls, sheer above the valley, protected by bastions and by towers, a fortress rather than a place of worship. It was not only the precinct of the Holy of Holies, and the sacrificial altar, it was no longer only the Temple, the mystic sanctuary of the people. With its great old towers, its guardrooms, its warehouses for offerings, its strong-boxes for deposits, its open piazzas for trade and covered galleries for meetings and amusement, it was anything rather than a sanctuary for meditation and prayer. It was everything, a fortress in case of assault, a bank-vault, a market-place in time of pilgrimage and feast-days, a bazaar on all days, a forum for the disputes of politicians, the wranglings of doctors and the gossip of idlers; a thoroughfare, a rendezvous, a business center. Built by a faithless King to win over the favor of a captious and seditious people, to satisfy the pride and avarice of the priestly caste, an instrument of war and a market-place for trade, it must have seemed to the eyes of Jesus the natural focus for all the enemies of His truth.