The appearance of Jesus and his teaching excited great commotion in Jerusalem; and there was much discussion among the people, whether he were the Messiah. The rulers were bewildered. They wished to arrest him and silence him; but there was nothing in what he said or did which could warrant them in any acts of violence. Many of the people in Jerusalem expressed the belief that Jesus was the Messiah, saying, “When Christ cometh, will he do more miracles than this man hath done?” The Pharisees and chief priests, alarmed by these indications of increasing popular favor, secretly sent officers to take him; but, though Jesus continued teaching the people without adopting any measures of concealment or defence, for some unexplained reason the officers did not arrest him. He, however, made an announcement to the people, which, at the time, they did not fully comprehend,――that, when his appointed time came, he should return to his Father in heaven, and that then they would seek him in vain. “Yet a little while,” said he, “am I with you; and then I go unto Him that sent me. Ye shall seek me, and shall not find me; and where I am, thither ye cannot come.”[25] Thus he continued boldly teaching until the last great day of the feast, when, in an emphatic voice, he uttered in the temple the memorable words, so assuming if he were but a man, so suitable if he were divine, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink;” adding, in phrase still figurative, that those who thus partook of the fountain of living waters should bestow liberal and constant blessings on their fellow-men. When the officers who had been sent to arrest Jesus returned without him, they replied to the inquiry why they had done so, “Never man spake like this man.” The Pharisees scornfully retorted, alluding to the undoubted fact that it was the common people who generally accepted Jesus, “Are ye also deceived? Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed on him? But this people who knoweth not the law are cursed.” Here Nicodemus, who was a member of the council, and who, several months before, had visited Jesus by night, ventured timidly to interpose. “Doth our law,” he inquired, “judge any man before it hear him and know what he doeth?” He was silenced by the contemptuous and somewhat menacing reply, “Art thou also of Galilee? Search and look; for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet.” While the rulers were thus seeking to entrap Jesus, he left the city, and ascended the greensward of the Mount of Olives, about a mile east of the walls. Here it seems that he spent the night beneath the stars of that serene and genial clime. Early the next morning, he returned to the temple. A multitude, as usual, gathered around him. The following remarkable scene which then ensued cannot be better described than in the language of the inspired writers:――