It was not that many good people here, as in Galilee, were not touched; but such was the power of the dominant orthodoxy, that very few dared to confess it. They feared to discredit themselves in the eyes of the Hierosolymites by placing themselves in the school of a Galilean. They would have risked being driven from the synagogue, which, in a mean and bigoted society, was the greatest degradation.[1] Excommunication, besides, carried with it the confiscation of all possessions.[2] By ceasing to be a Jew, a man did not become a Roman; but remained without protection, in the power of a theocratic legislation of the most atrocious severity. One day, the inferior officers of the temple, who had been present at one of the discourses of Jesus, and had been enchanted with it, came to confide their doubts to the priests: "Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed on him?" was the reply to them; "but this people who knoweth not the Law are cursed."[3] Jesus remained thus at Jerusalem, a provincial admired by provincials like himself, but rejected by all the aristocracy of the nation. The chiefs of schools and of sects were too numerous for any one to be stirred by seeing one more appear. His voice made little noise in Jerusalem. The prejudices of race and of sect, the direct enemies of the spirit of the Gospel, were too deeply rooted there. [Footnote 1: John vii. 13, xii. 42, 43, xix. 38.] [Footnote 2: 1 Esdr. x. 8; Epistle to Hebrews x. 34; Talmud of Jerus., _Moedkaton_, iii. 1.] [Footnote 3: John vii. 45, and following.]