There has been considerable diversity of opinion regarding the length of our Saviour’s ministry. [26:1] We could approximate very closely to a correct estimate could we tell the number of passovers from its commencement to its close, but this point cannot be determined with absolute certainty.  Four are apparently mentioned [26:2] by the evangelist John; and if, as is probable, they amounted to no more, it would seem that our Lord’s career, as a public teacher, was of about three years’ duration. [26:3] The greater part of this period was spent in Galilee; and the sacred writers intimate that He made several circuits, as a missionary, among the cities and villages of that populous district. [26:4] Matthew, Mark, and Luke dwell chiefly upon this portion of His history.  Towards the termination of His course, Judea was the principal scene of His ministrations.  Jerusalem was the centre of Jewish power and prejudice, and He had hitherto chiefly laboured in remote districts of the land, that He might escape the malignity of the scribes and Pharisees; but, as His end approached, He acted with greater publicity, and often taught openly in the very courts of the temple.  John supplements the narratives of the other evangelists by recording our Lord’s proceedings in Judea.

A few members of the Sanhedrim, such as Nicodemus, [27:1] believed Jesus to be “a teacher come from God,” but by far the majority regarded Him with extreme aversion.  They could not imagine that the son of a carpenter was to be the Saviour of their country, for they expected the Messiah to appear surrounded with all the splendour of secular magnificence.  They were hypocritical and selfish; they had been repeatedly rebuked by Christ for their impiety; and, as they marked His increasing favour with the multitude, their envy and indignation became ungovernable.  They accordingly seized Him at the time of the Passover, and, on the charge that He said He was the Son of God, He was condemned as a blasphemer. [27:2] He suffered crucifixion—­an ignominious form of capital punishment from which the laws of the empire exempted every Roman citizen—­and, to add to His disgrace, He was put to death between two thieves. [27:3] But even Pontius Pilate, who was then Procurator of Judea, and who, in that capacity, endorsed the sentence, was constrained to acknowledge that He was a “just person” in whom He could find “no fault.” [27:4] Pilate was a truckling time-server, and he acquiesced in the decision, simply because he was afraid to exasperate the Jews by rescuing from their grasp an innocent man whom they persecuted with unrelenting hatred. [27:5]