y
justified.

"From that time," says the first evangelist, "Jesus began to show to his
disciples that he must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from
the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be put to death, and rise
again on the third day." Here we have, obviously, the knowledge of the
writer, after the event, reflected back and attributed to Jesus. It
is of course impossible that Jesus should have predicted with such
definiteness his approaching death; nor is it very likely that he
entertained any hope of being raised from the grave "on the third day."
To a man in that age and country, the conception of a return from the
lower world of shades was not a difficult one to frame; and it may well
be that Jesus' sense of his own exalted position was sufficiently great
to inspire him with the confidence that, even in case of temporary
failure, Jehovah would rescue him from the grave and send him back
with larger powers to carry out the purpose of his mission. But
the difficulty of distinguishing between his own words and the
interpretation put upon them by his disciples becomes here insuperable;
and there will always be room for the hypothesis that Jesus had in
view no posthumous career of his own, but only expressed his unshaken
confidence in the success of his enterprise, even after and in spite of
his death.

At all events, the possibility of his death must now have been often in
his mind. He was undertaking a wellnigh desperate task,--to overthrow
the Pharisees in Jerusalem itself. No other alternative was left him.
And here we believe Mr. F. W. Newman to be singularly at fault in
pronouncing this attempt of Jesus upon Jerusalem a foolhardy attempt.
According to Mr. Newman, no man has any business to rush upon certain
death, and it is only a crazy fanatic who will do so. [21] But such
"glittering generalizations" will here help us but little. The historic
data show that to go to Jerusalem, even at the risk of death, was
absolutely necessary to the realization of Jesus' Messianic project.
Mr. Newman certainly would not have had him drag out an inglorious and
baffled existence in Syro-Phoenicia. If the Messianic kingdom was to be
fairly inaugurated, there was work to be done in Jerusalem, and Jesus
must go there as one in authority, cost what it might. We believe him to
have gone there in a spirit of grand and careless bravery, yet seriously
and soberly, and under the influence of no fanatical delusion. He
kne