the ruler of the synagogue. This custom suggested to Jesus the most natural way of opening his
public ministry. When he returned from his baptism to Nazareth, "he entered, as his custom was,
into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read. And there was delivered unto him the
roll of the prophet Isaiah. And he opened the roll and found the place where it was written (61:1,
2) ’The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor;
he hath sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at
liberty them that are bruised, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.’ And he closed the book,
and gave it back to the attendant, and sat down: and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fastened
on him. And he began to say unto them, ’To-day hath this scripture been fulfilled in your ears.’
And all bare witness unto him, and wondered at the words of grace which proceeded out of his
mouth: and they said, Is not this Joseph’s son?"^196
On the great festivals he visited from his twelfth year the capital of the nation where the
Jewish religion unfolded all its splendor and attraction. Large caravans with trains of camels and
asses loaded with provisions and rich offerings to the temple, were set in motion from the North
and the South, the East and the West for the holy city, "the joy of the whole earth;" and these yearly
pilgrimages, singing the beautiful Pilgrim Psalms (Ps, 120 to 134), contributed immensely to the
preservation and promotion of the common faith, as the Moslem pilgrimages to Mecca keep up the
life of Islam. We may greatly reduce the enormous figures of Josephus, who on one single Passover
reckoned the number of strangers and residents in Jerusalem at 2,700,000 and the number of
slaughtered lambs at 256,500, but there still remains the fact of the vast extent and solemnity of
the occasion. Even now in her decay, Jerusalem (like other Oriental cities) presents a striking
picturesque appearance at Easter, when Christian pilgrims from the far West mingle with the
many-colored Arabs, Turks, Greeks, Latins, Spanish and Polish Jews, and crowd to suffocation the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre. How much more grand and dazzling must this cosmopolitan spectacle
have been when the priests (whose number Josephus estimates at 20,000) with the broidered tunic,
the fine linen girdle, the showy turban, the high priests with the ephod of blue and purple and scarlet,
the breastplate and the mitre, the Levites with their pointed caps, the Pharisees with their broad
phylacteries and fringes, the Essenes in white dresses and with prophetic mien, Roman soldiers
with proud bearing, Herodian courtiers in oriental pomposity, contrasted with beggars and cripples
in rags, when pilgrims innumerable, Jews and proselytes from all parts of the empire, "Parthians
and Medes and Elamites and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, in Judaea and Cappadocia, in Pontus
and Asia, in Phrygia and Pamphylia, in Egypt and parts of Libya about Cyrene, and sojourners
from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans, and Arabians,"^197 all wearing their national costume
and speaking a Babel of tongues, surged through the streets, and pressed up to Mount Moriah where
"the glorious temple rear’d her pile, far off appearing like a mount of alabaster, topp’d with golden
spires" and where on the fourteenth day of the first month columns of sacrificial smoke arose from
tens of thousands of paschal lambs, in historical commemoration of the great deliverance from the
land of bondage, and in typical prefiguration of the still greater redemption from the slavery of sin
and death.^198(^196) Luke 4:16-22.
(^197) Acts 2:8-12.
(^198) Comp. the description of King Josiah’s Passover, 2 Chr. 35:1-19.
A.D. 1-100.