red on which final action was
taken.

They awaited the Prisoner in one of the larger halls of the palace,
sitting in Oriental fashion on cushions and pillows, in a half-circle,
with turbaned heads, crossed legs, and bare feet; the High Priest in
the centre, the others, on either side, according to age.

All the rules of justice were violated. The judge was chief
inquisitor; witnesses against the prisoner were alone summoned; and the
Court set itself from the first to get evidence to put the accused to
death.

Ever since Jesus had commenced His ministry it had been certain that He
would have to face some such tribunal as this. His soul was aflame for
Righteousness and Truth; it was inevitable that He should come into
conflict with these representatives of a traditional and external
religiousness, which consisted in a number of formal rules and rites
from which the life had long since fled.

This Gospel specially narrates the progress of the quarrel in the holy
city. As far back as ch. ii. 18 we are told that there had been an
altercation on the Lord's right to cleanse the Temple.

Ch. iv. 1-3.--He left Judaea because of the irritation of the Pharisees
at the numerous baptisms which were taking place under His ministry.

Ch. v. 18.--He was only at the beginning of the second year of His
ministry, and had just healed the impotent man at the pool of Bethesda,
and we find the Jews consulting how they might kill Him, and He was
compelled again to retire from Judaea.

Ch. vii. 19.--Such was the spirit of vindictiveness excited against our
Lord that when twelve months afterward He came to Jerusalem at the
Feast of Tabernacles, one of His first words was, "Why go ye about to
kill Me?" The people were well acquainted with the designs of the
rulers (vers. 25, 26); and ultimately officers were sent to arrest Him
(vers. 30, 32).

Ch. viii. 59.--They were so exasperated with His words that they took
up stones to stone Him.

Ch. ix. 34.--They excommunicated the blind man because their hated foe
had cured him, and he in his favor had dared to protest.

Ch. x. 31.--The Jews (and the Apostle always uses that word of the
Sanhedrim and their allies) took up stones to cast at Him; and in verse
39 we read that they sought again to take Him; but He escaped out of
their land to Perea, where He remained until the message of the sisters
called Him from His retreat.

Ch. xi. 47.--The raising of Lazarus produced such an effect th