Jesus probably preached about a year in Galilee. We cannot be quite sure of this, for when the accounts came to be written people’s memories varied strangely. Some were quite sure they remembered his being in Jerusalem at the time of three different Passovers, and at one or two other feasts beside. If this were so, he must have preached for two or three years, and have been more than a year in Jerusalem. But others could not recollect his being in Jerusalem at all until the very end of his life, and were sure that he did almost all his teaching during a single year in Galilee. In three of the Gospels nothing is said about any feasts or any visit to Jerusalem except the last, but Jesus is spoken of as spending all his time going from village to village in Galilee. It seems to us now as if matters of such interest ought to have been better remembered; but as I have said. We never know how important any events are until after they have happened. I am not sure that any of you would do better if you should try thirty, forty or fifty years from now to describe things which are happening now, although you would have letters and newspapers to help your memory, and in those days they had none. Where the statements differ so much we have to choose between them. And as the first three Gospels were written earlier than the fourth, and as they all agree with each other about this, it seems more probable that their account is the correct one. And this is especially so as it does not seem likely that if Jesus taught in Jerusalem a whole year, any one could have forgotten it.

We must suppose, then, that Jesus’ entire ministry lasted about a year. When the time for the great feast of the Passover came, he determined to go with the other Jews, as his family had always done, to Jerusalem. Probably he would have gone in any case; but it was very natural, after he had once begun to preach, that he should wish to preach in Jerusalem, where the great leaders of the church were, and where the people came together from all parts of Judea. His disciples went with him, we are told, and several women beside. One writer says that his mother also was with him at this time, and did not leave him until his death. So they lived together in Jerusalem for two or three weeks.

But Jesus found Jerusalem very different from Galilee. Instead of being followed by crowds wherever he went, listening eagerly to all he said he found every one avoiding and opposing him. While he was on his way to Jerusalem, messengers had been sent by the leaders of the church, hoping to catch him in some hasty word for which they could accuse or arrest him; and this same party still pursued him. Some of his friends, or else the little children who had heard about him, shouted his name in the streets and this displeased the priests very much, and gave them a chance to accuse him of making a disturbance, and trying to put himself in power.

Beside this, Jesus was offended at many of the religious practices that he saw in Jerusalem, and does not seem to have considered the city or the Temple such holy places as the other Jews thought them. At any rate, he had more than ever to say about the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and Scribes, and once, as we have seen, became so indignant with the traders who sold cattle and changed money inside the Temple that he drove a party of them out into the street. Instead of admiring the splendor of the Temple, as others did, he felt only the corrupt way in which God was worshipped there, and the ruin that was sure to come on both the Temple and the worshippers, unless some great change were made.

All this naturally offended the Jewish priests and rulers, and made them fear that the people would grow discontented by listening to such words, and lose faith in their religion. So they determined that Jesus must be stopped. Jesus knew this very well, and understood of course before he came to Jerusalem what risks he would run if he came there. Still, he continued to teach and preach just as he had done in Galilee, thinking no doubt that if he were to suffer, the truth which he taught would be all the more likely to prevail.

Matthew xxi. 42; xxii. 37, 38, 39; xxiii. 26