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In company with Johanna, the wife of Herod’s steward, Mary, wife of Clopas, and Salomè, mother of Zebedee’s children, she had heard him reiterate the burning words of Jeremiah, and seen him purge the Temple of its traffickers; she had heard, too, the esoteric proclamation, “Before Abraham was, I am;” and she had seen him lash the Sadducees with invective.

Rivers of blood have been offered upon the altar of a blind intolerance. Look at Antiochus sacking the city of Jerusalem and laying the country waste. Look at the slaughter of the infants of Bethlehem under Herod’s jurisdiction. In many ages of the world religious intolerance has been the fruitful source of misery and bloodshed.

And he answered him and said, Thou sayest. 4 And Pilate said unto the chief priests and the multitudes, I find no fault in this man. 5 But they were the more urgent, saying, He stirreth up the people, teaching throughout all Judæa, and beginning from Galilee even unto this place. 6 But when Pilate heard it, he asked whether the man were a Galilæan. 7 And when he knew that he was of Herod’s jurisdiction, he sent him unto Herod, who himself also was at Jerusalem in these days.

The Temple, which, from its cressets, radiated to the hills beyond a glare of gold, was not as fair nor yet as vast as this. Within its gates an army could manœuvre; in its banquet-hall a cohort could have supped. It was Herod’s triumph, built subsequent to the Temple, to show the world, perhaps, that to surpass a masterpiece he had only to conceive another.

It was on that I counted, and I went out on Zion and Acra, where the crowd was less. It was getting late. Beth-horon was dim. I could see lights in Herod’s palace. Some one said that the tetrarch of Galilee was there, the guest of the procurator. I went back by way of Antonia to Birket Israil and the Red Heifer Bridge. I had given up; it seemed to me useless to make further attempt.

1 And it came to pass soon afterwards, that he went about through cities and villages, preaching and bringing the good tidings of the kingdom of God, and with him the twelve, 2 and certain women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary that was called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, 3 and Joanna the wife of Chuzas Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others, who ministered unto them of their substance.