Priestly Plottings
461
for coming to some decision. With the exception of a few who dared
not speak their minds, the Sanhedrin received the words of Caiaphas as
the words of God. Relief came to the council; the discord ceased. They
resolved to put Christ to death at the first favorable opportunity. In
rejecting the proof of the divinity of Jesus, these priests and rulers had
locked themselves in impenetrable darkness. They had come wholly
under the sway of Satan, to be hurried by him over the brink of eternal
ruin. Yet such was their deception that they were well pleased with
themselves. They regarded themselves as patriots, who were seeking
the nation’s salvation.
The Sanhedrin feared, however, to take rash measures against
Jesus, lest the people should become incensed, and the violence med-
itated toward Him should fall upon themselves. On this account the
council delayed to execute the sentence they had pronounced. The
Saviour understood the plotting of the priests. He knew that they
longed to remove Him, and that their purpose would soon be accom-
plished. But it was not His place to hasten the crisis, and He withdrew
from that region, taking the disciples with Him. Thus by His own
example Jesus again enforced the instruction He had given to the dis-
ciples, “When they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another.”
Matthew 10:23
. There was a wide field in which to work for the salva-
tion of souls; and unless loyalty to Him required it, the Lord’s servants
were not to imperil their lives.
Jesus had now given three years of public labor to the world. His
example of self-denial and disinterested benevolence was before them.
His life of purity, of suffering and devotion, was known to all. Yet this
short period of three years was as long as the world could endure the
presence of its Redeemer.
His life had been one of persecution and insult. Driven from
Bethlehem by a jealous king, rejected by His own people at Nazareth,
condemned to death without a cause at Jerusalem, Jesus, with His few
faithful followers, found a temporary asylum in a strange city. He who
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was ever touched by human woe, who healed the sick, restored sight
to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and speech to the dumb, who fed
the hungry and comforted the sorrowful, was driven from the people
He had labored to save. He who walked upon the heaving billows,
and by a word silenced their angry roaring, who cast out devils that
in departing acknowledged Him to be the Son of God, who broke the