Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/458

 *ed by one of the common, uneducated mass. But the very circumstances which effected and constituted the evil, were also the grand obstacles to the removal of it. Jesus was by these means seated firmly in the love and reverence of the people,—and of the vast numbers of strangers then in Jerusalem at the feast, there were very many who would have their feelings strongly excited in his favor, by the circumstance that they, as well as he, were Galileans, and would therefore be very apt to make common cause with him in case of any violent attack. All these obstacles required management; and after having been very many times foiled in their attempts to seize him, by the resolute determination of the thousands by whom he was always encircled, to defend him, they found that they must contrive some way to get hold of him when he was without the defenses of this admiring host. This could be done, of course, only by following him to his secret haunts, and coming quietly upon him before the multitude could assemble to his aid. But his movements were altogether beyond their notice. No armed band could follow him about, as he went from the city to the country in his daily and nightly walks. They needed some spy who could watch his private movements when unattended, save by the little band of the twelve, and give notice of the favorable moment for a seizure, when the time, the place, and the circumstances, would all conspire to prevent a rescue. Thus taken, he might be safely lodged in some of the impregnable fortresses of the temple and city, so as to defy the momentary burst of popular rage, on finding that their idol had been taken away. They knew too, the fickle character of the commonalty, well enough to feel certain, that when the tide of condemnation was once strongly set against the Nazarene, the lip-worship of "Hosannas" could be easily turned, by a little management, into the ferocious yell of deadly denunciation. The mass of the people are always essentially the same in their modes of action. Mobs were then managed by the same rules as now, and demagogues were equally well versed in the tricks of their trade. Besides, when Jesus had once been formally indicted and presented before the secular tribunal of the Roman governor, as a rioter and seditious person, no thought of a rescue from the military force could be thought of; and however unwilling Pilate might be to minister to the wishes of the Jews, in an act of unnecessary cruelty, he could not resist a call thus solemnly made to him, in the character of preserver of the Roman sway, though