A hate, which death alone could satisfy, was the consequence of these struggles.  John the Baptist had already provoked enmities of the same kind.[1] But the aristocrats of Jerusalem, who despised him, had allowed simple men to take him for a prophet.[2] In the case of Jesus, however, the war was to the death.  A new spirit had appeared in the world, causing all that preceded to pale before it.  John the Baptist was completely a Jew; Jesus was scarcely one at all.  Jesus always appealed to the delicacy of the moral sentiment.  He was only a disputant when he argued against the Pharisees, his opponents forcing him, as generally happens, to adopt their tone.[3] His exquisite irony, his arch and provoking remarks, always struck home.  They were everlasting stigmas, and have remained festering in the wound.  This Nessus-shirt of ridicule which the Jew, son of the Pharisees, has dragged in tatters after him during eighteen centuries, was woven by Jesus with a divine skill.  Masterpieces of fine raillery, their features are written in lines of fire upon the flesh of the hypocrite and the false devotee.  Incomparable traits, worthy of a son of God!  A god alone knows how to kill after this fashion.  Socrates and Moliere only touched the skin.  He carried fire and rage to the very marrow.

[Footnote 1:  Matt. iii. 7, and following, xvii. 12, 13.]

[Footnote 2:  Matt. xiv. 5, xxi. 26; Mark xi. 32; Luke xx. 6.]

[Footnote 3:  Matt. xii. 3-8, xxiii. 16, and following.]

But it was also just that this great master of irony should pay for his triumph with his life.  Even in Galilee, the Pharisees sought to ruin him, and employed against him the manoeuvre which ultimately succeeded at Jerusalem.  They endeavored to interest in their quarrel the partisans of the new political faction which was established.[1] The facilities Jesus found for escape in Galilee, and the weakness of the government of Antipas, baffled these attempts.  He ran into danger of his own free will.  He saw clearly that his action, if he remained confined to Galilee, was necessarily limited.  Judea drew him as by a charm; he wished to try a last effort to gain the rebellious city; and seemed anxious to fulfill the proverb—­that a prophet must not die outside Jerusalem.[2]

[Footnote 1:  Mark iii. 6.]

[Footnote 2:  Luke xiii. 33.]

CHAPTER XXI.

LAST JOURNEY OF JESUS TO JERUSALEM.

Jesus had for a long time been sensible of the dangers that surrounded him.[1] During a period of time which we may estimate at eighteen months, he avoided going on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.[2] At the feast of Tabernacles of the year 32 (according to the hypothesis we have adopted), his relations, always malevolent and incredulous,[3] pressed him to go there.  The evangelist John seems to insinuate that there was some hidden project to ruin him in this invitation.  “Depart