between these narratives may be exaggerated and perverted, they do not
prove it not to exist. We have no hint in the first three Evangelists
of Christ's presence at any of the Jerusalem feasts, between that in
His twelfth year and that which preceded His crucifixion. The scene of
the most memorable acts and discourses recorded in St. John, is laid
at Passover, Tabernacle, Dedication feasts, to which He had come up
from Galilee. The three Evangelists speak of Him continually as
teaching in the synagogues; only at the close of His ministry as
teaching in the Temple. The second manifestation of our Lord spoken of
by St. John is when He drove out of the Temple those who were selling
and buying in it.
This narrative is the most signal instance of discrepancy between St.
John and the other Evangelists which we shall meet with in our whole
course. An act similar, in nearly every particular, to that which our
Gospel appears to connect with the period immediately after Christ's
baptism--before the Baptist's imprisonment--is said in the others to
have been performed when He was about to keep the last passover. 'May
not these reports,' it has been asked, 'refer to the same transaction?
Need we suppose that St. John troubled himself about chronology? May
not his recollections of events at which he was present have been
united by some other thread than one of years or days? Oftentimes we
may have observed how a word evokes a train of slumbering thoughts.
Why may not he who had just been speaking of the first _sign_ which
Jesus did, have been led on by that name to the question of the Jews
in the eighteenth verse, "_What sign shewest Thou that Thou doest
these things?_"'
Such a method of removing a grave difficulty might be reasonable
enough. But is there a grave difficulty--is there any difficulty--to
be removed? There is no internal improbability in the supposition that
our Lord inaugurated His ministry by one act of purification, and
wound it up by another. If we accept the one Evangelist as an
authority for the first, the three for the second, we gain, I think,
what more than compensates us for an apparent repetition. We acquire a
deeper sense of the meaning of the Temple, of the relation in which it
stood to the Jews, to mankind, and to Christ. We understand better
what the three Evangelists mean when they say that the disciples
thought that the destruction of the Temple must be the end of the age,
of their world; what St. John means when he speaks of the temple which
would be destroyed and raised again.
Some commentators upon the Scriptures, who really wish to understand
them, but who feel entangled by the habits and notions of their own
time, lament that they cannot reproduce the state of feeling which
belonged to the Jew when he gazed upon his temple, or entered within
its precincts. 'What help,' they say, 'lies in the descriptions of the
most accurate and lively travellers? What should we gain by beholding
them with our own eyes? We need to annihilate time as well as space.
The mind of the people who gazed eighteen hundred years ago upon these
spots will not come back to us merely because we are able to receive a
tolerably correct impression of the spots themselves.'
I confess, my brethren, that I am quite unable to sympathise with
these complaints. I do not think it requires any effort of
imagination to realize the state of mind of an ordinary Jew, as he
walked through the city of David, or stood upon the holy hill, in the
days of Herod and of Pilate. If we realize the state of mind of an
ordinary citizen of London, walking in our streets, or entering the
Abbey which contains the sepulchres of our kings and poets, we shall
not need any other aid to bridge over the chasm which divides us.
Occupation with everything that is before us, with the news of the
hour, with the private business which we have most in hand,
indifference and torpidity about the past,--these would be our general
characteristics. They may be varied by our greater or less interest in
architecture--our desire to maintain or confute some architectural
theory--by national pride, if we should be making our buildings known
to foreigners--by a certain painful sense that we ought to put our
minds into a sentimental attitude. Do you suppose the case would have
been different with the Jews? Do you suppose there was any charm in
the outside of the Temple, which forced a sensual money-getting race
into a more elevated or more serene habit of feeling than that which
we drop into? Do you suppose that their sacred traditions, their
glorious history, their divine calling, must have broken the charm of
custom for them, or have lifted the incubus of the world from their
hearts? If you do, you adopt a notion which the Scriptures confute in
every line. They never tell us that the gravitation of the Jewish soul
to earth was less strong than that of other men. They never represent
the Jew as wanting one bad and base tendency which belongs to you and
me. The evidence which the Bible has produced of its veracity to
people of all conditions, in all countries, the most unlike outwardly
to those of whom it speaks, is this, that it shows us creatures in all
_inward_ respects like ourselves, as little capable of being moved by
present signs or by records of the past, out of chillness and death,
as we are.
Accordingly, what spectacle is it which the passage I am considering
brings before us? The spectacle of no appalling crime, of none of
those hideous and revolting acts which we know from the Jewish
historian were perpetrated at the time, and in which the religious
sect of the day had its full share. It is a spectacle which had become
familiar to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, which every Pharisee had
continually before his eyes when he went into the Temple to
pray,--most glaringly, it is probable, during the most sacred
festivals. Within, the priests offered the regular sacrifices;
without, in another part of the house, there was a market for sheep
and oxen; there were seats for the money-dealer. The practice was so
regular, so sanctioned by prescription, that no one thought anything
of it. The pious Jew was no more scandalized by it than the pious
Englishman is scandalized by reading an advertisement for the sale of
a living. If we have distinctions which satisfy our consciences
between the disposing of an actual cure of souls and of the right to
endow another with such a cure,--if a line, sometimes invisible to the
naked eye, separates the sin of Simony from deeds which laymen may
lawfully do, and by which clergymen may lawfully benefit,--the people
of Jerusalem had distinctions just as recognised, quite as capable of
being defended in argument. The _holy_ place might not be approached
by any profane feet; that was sacred indeed to the Lord. But the outer
court--why might not that be left for ordinary traffic? Perhaps the
separation of the priests from the mere throng of worshippers--above
all, from the Gentile who might be found among them--was better marked
by the concession of this privilege. At all events, it was a privilege
guaranteed by usage to the trader. If it was disturbed, would he not
probably become disgusted with his country's sanctuary altogether?
Might he not betake himself to some Roman temple,--to a worship which
was more associated with amusement, if not with business?
I do not know that this calculation was altogether a wrong one. I do
not suppose that if the Sanhedrim had chosen or had been permitted by
its masters to prohibit these markets, any moral benefit would have
been gained for the nation. For what had made the Temple holy and dear
to any Jew of that day or of former days? Not its situation, not its
having been built by the wise king, not its having been restored after
the captivity, not the goodly stones with which Herod had adorned it.
No! but the sense of an invisible glory; the belief that God--whom no
man had seen at any time--had been pleased to meet His people there.
Could any Jewish laws restore this conviction when it had departed?
Could regulations to protect a certain enclosure from pollution give
rise to anything, except despicable subterfuges, except the vilest
hypocrisy, when the only ground and warrant for these regulations was
forgotten, when those who would have made them as little confessed the
Divine presence as those whom they would have excluded. For this--this
was the secret of the Jewish desecration of the Temple. The priests
who ministered at the inner shrine did not, for the most part, believe
in the Divine presence more than the people who sold sheep and oxen
without. A trade was going on in both places. There it was a traffic
with God; here it was a traffic among men. The awe of One who dwelt
with them, who revealed Himself to them, whose righteousness was their
strength, had been exchanged for the fear of One who might call them
to account for their treacheries to each other if they withheld their
customary and toilsome services from Him.
The preacher in the wilderness had been taught that, when a nation has
reached such a condition of rottenness as this, it is not enough to
lop off withered branches; the axe must be laid to the root. When the
Scribes and Pharisees came to him, he told them to bring forth fruits
of repentance, fruits which would show themselves in the Temple as
well as the market. But he did not visit either the Temple or the
market. Jesus concerned Himself with both. '_He went into the Temple,
and found them that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of
money sitting. And when He had made a scourge of small cords, He drove
them all out of the Temple, and the sheep and the oxen; and poured out
the changers' money, and overthrew the tables._'
Some who read this story say, that it offends their notion of our
Lord's dignity. Could He, with His own hand, chastise these traders?
Some say, it offends their notion of His benignity. Could the
All-Merciful exhibit such wrath against a tolerated, perhaps an
unconscious, profaneness? Before we consider these opinions, it may be
well to hear what the disciples felt, when they saw Him with the
scourge by whom they had sat at the feast, whom they had hailed as the
Giver of the marriage blessing, as the Inspirer of joy. '_They
remembered that it was written, The zeal of thine house hath eaten me
up._' These words came unbidden into their minds. His look, His
voice, expressed all that they had ever heard of the vehement
earnestness with which kings and prophets of old had felt the
pollutions of God's Temple, and had sought to purge it of them. Josiah
and Ezekiel revived in Him. He had forgotten Himself. He was possessed
by the spirit that possessed the men of old. There was a fire burning
in Him that could not be quenched, till it had consumed all the chaff
from the threshing-floor.
Such was their impression at the moment. Looking back upon it after
all later events had interpreted it, St. John felt that this was a
manifestation of grace and truth, as much as the making the water
wine, or the healing the sick. For he had learnt that a gracious Being
must be intolerant of that which is ungracious, that a true Being must
seek to destroy falsehood--that falsehood most which is nearest the
heart of a nation, the altar of God. He felt that this wrath must have
reached its highest point in the most gracious, most true Being, in
Him from whom all had received their portions of grace and truth. He
felt that this wrath must have been least restrained in Him by any
thoughts of what would look well in the eyes of men. What were all the
notions which he had formed about dignity or comeliness? The Word made
flesh was making it manifest that every punishment of every wrong doer
was administered by Him; that whatever agents He may employ to purify
his Church, to inflict vengeance upon those who have defiled it, the
rod is really in His hand,--that it is He who directs and measures
every blow.
But St. John saw more in the act than this. He had said in his former
chapter, not only, '_We beheld Him who was full of grace and truth,
Him of whose fulness we had all received_,' but '_We beheld His
glory, as the glory of the only-begotten of the Father_.' He teaches
us to recognise a manifestation of _this_ glory, also, in the driving
the money-changers out of the Temple. '_Jesus said to them that sold
doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of
merchandise._'
The zeal which devoured Jesus was surely a zeal for the house of that
God to whom Solomon had prayed, '_Lord, wilt thou in very deed dwell
upon earth?_' It was for the house of that God whom kings and prophets
had worshipped between the cherubim. But which of these had dared to
use the language which He used? Which of them had ever said, 'It is
the house of _my Father_'? It was a _new_ name,--a wonderful and awful
name. And yet the whole force of the testimony which Christ bore for
the old building--for the house in which their fathers worshipped--lay
in this name. If that house was not to be a house of merchandise--if
it was ever to be that again which holy men had believed and found it
to be--this new name must remove its debasement, this new revelation
must restore its greatness. No other could suffice to undo the
hypocrisy of the priests, because that hypocrisy came from their
thinking that the house was theirs--from not believing that there was
any relation between themselves and Him to whom they offered their
worship and their sacrifices. If there was a man who could call it 'my
Father's house,' heaven and earth were not at the distance they
thought and hoped,--their Judge was very near. On the other hand, no
revelation but this could have brought the outer court once more into
union with the inner court, could have made both parts of the house of
God. For the reason why the people traded in that court, and felt they
had no business anywhere else, was that they had no belief that God
cared for them, or that there was any fellowship between them and Him,
except through those priests who were the barriers to all fellowship.
If Jesus of Nazareth, the poor man, one of them, could say, 'It is my
Father's house,' the publican might feel then,--even the Gentile might
feel afterwards,--that there was a house for him; not a place for
selling sheep and oxen, and changing money, but a refuge from the
weariness of merchandise, from the haggling and lying of the world, in
the presence and heart of a Friend who giveth to all liberally, of One
who is altogether righteous and true.
In after days we shall find the Jews felt the boldness of this
language, and made it their principal charge against Jesus that He
dared to use it. On this occasion it seems to have fallen dead upon
their ears. Their question is not, '_What sign shewest thou seeing_'
thou sayest this, but '_seeing thou doest these things_?' They meant
nothing more, I suppose, than, 'Why dost thou, a mere Galilæan
stranger, take upon thee to drive out these oxen? A prophet might do
it--perhaps even a zealot, if he was a Levite, and claimed the honours
of his ancestor Phinehas, might do it--but what sign canst thou
produce that such an office belongs to thee?' I do not find more in
_their_ demand than this; but the answer of our Lord refers to His
previous words as well as to theirs. He could not give them a sign
that He had a right to cleanse the Temple, which would not also be a
sign that He had a right, in the strictest sense, to call the Temple
'His Father's house.' You must recollect that this was the claim He
had to make good, if you would understand Him when He says, '_Destroy
this temple, and in three days I will raise it up_.'
The sentence was, of course, enigmatical. The Jews regarded it simply
as the language of a fanatic or a madman. '_Forty and six years_,'
they said, '_was this Temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in
three days?_' St. John evidently indicates that it was not much more
intelligible to him and to his fellow-disciples, when they first heard
it, than to their countrymen. But he says a time came when they did
understand it. '_He spake of the temple of His body. When therefore He
was risen from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said
this unto them; and they believed the scripture, and the word that
Jesus had said._'
Are we to suppose that the _third_ day of the resurrection was the key
which unlocked our Lord's meaning? No doubt that was an outward help
in the discovery of it; but it would have been a most imperfect help,
if they had not attached a meaning to the resurrection which had
nothing to do with days or years. By raising Jesus from the dead, God
declared Him to be His Son. This was St. Paul's language to the
Romans,--this was the very substance of his preaching. By raising Him
from the dead, He declared that in Him all the building fitly framed
together grew to be an holy temple in the Lord. This was his language
to those Ephesians among whom the son of Zebedee was now dwelling. It
was the resurrection, then, which taught the disciples that the body
of Christ was that real temple of God, of which all stone temples had
been the symbols,--that in this only the fulness of God dwelt,--that
in this the prayer of Solomon, that God, whom the heaven of heavens
could not contain, would dwell with men upon earth, could be actually
fulfilled. Some critics say there is an awkwardness in supposing that
our Lord pointed to His own body when He spoke of destroying the
Temple; and that if He did not, the Evangelist would seem to charge
Him with using words in a double sense,--so deceiving His hearers. I
do not see why we should imagine Him to have pointed to His body; why
His eyes may not have been fixed on the building which He had called
His 'Father's house.' He did mean, that, if they destroyed _that_
house,--if their money-worship, falsehood, hypocrisy, brought it to
utter ruin, and it was at last given up to Roman soldiers,--there was
a house not made with hands, which was all that Solomon's, in the very
best and noblest conception of it, had tried to be. He meant certainly
more than this. He meant that they might and would try to destroy the
outward fabric of _this_ more glorious temple; but that in three days
the dead body would come back from the tomb, and be proclaimed to the
world as God's own everlasting habitation. You may call this a double
sense of words, if you like; but by _such_ double senses deceptions
are not caused or promoted--they are cleared away. The Jew was
labouring under a terrible deception; he was practising a continual
equivocation. The Temple of the Lord was a sacred place to him,--he
gloried in possessing it; yet he did not in his heart believe that God
was meeting His creatures, holding any intercourse with them, caring
for them. The building itself, therefore, acquired a reverence in his
mind which was apart from reverence to God, nay, fatal to that
reverence. God was absorbed in the Temple. The inward thought of the
priest was, that if it perished God would perish. Hence arose infinite
contradictions in his practice, alternations of scrupulosity and
profaneness. Now the money-changer is permitted to sit within it,--now
a cry is raised that a Stephen speaks evil words against the holy
place, and must be stoned. There was but one way of breaking down
this habit of mind: it was to affirm and prove that the Temple was
not a fiction,--that the belief of the elder men respecting it was not
a fiction,--that God and man were not divided,--that the prophecy of
their complete fellowship was not an idle prophecy leading to
nothing,--that men might draw nigh to God, as to a father, on the holy
hill of Zion; because there was an only-begotten Son, whose body was
filled with that Spirit which would raise it out of the grave.
No; our Lord did not deceive the Jews when He gave them the fullest,
truest sense of their own Scriptures, of their own calling and
history. If any words, any acts could have undeceived them, they would
have been His. Alas! when money-worship has reached the vitals of a
nation, when it has entered into the house of God, the very words and
acts of the Son of God may not purge it of its delusions,--they may
take their shape and colour from these delusions. May God avert the
_omen_ from our land, from our Church! May He enable us to believe
that every building in which He permits us to worship Him, and to
present before Him the finished sacrifice of Christ, is indeed the
house of our Father, because of His Father! May every chastisement He
sends to us, individually or nationally, be viewed by us as a scourge
with which He is cleansing His temple of them that sell and them that
buy in it,--of our corrupt traffickings with our own consciences and
with Him! May He help us to believe in Christ's incarnation and
passion, that we may attain to the full glory of His resurrection, and
may find in it the proof that His body was the temple of the Holy
Ghost, and that ours are to be temples holy and acceptable unto Him!
DISCOURSE VII.
THE NEW BIRTH.
[Lincoln's Inn, Palm Sunday, March 16, 1856.]
ST. JOHN III. 3.
_Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee,
Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God._
It is undoubtedly right to connect the beginning of this chapter with
the latter verses of the preceding one. '_Now when He was in Jerusalem
at the passover, in the feast, many believed in His name, when they
saw the miracles which He did. But Jesus did not commit Himself unto
them, because He knew all men, and needed not that any should testify
of man: for He knew what was in man._' I must ask you here, as
everywhere else in St. John, to substitute the word _signs_ for
_miracles_. Our unfortunate adoption of this last word--which cannot
be referred, as some of our careless translations may be, to the
following of the Vulgate, for it has _signs_--has sadly weakened and
perplexed the Evangelist's statements. _Here_, for instance, he does
not tell us _what_ the acts of Christ were which were done at the
passover. He does not say whether He healed the sick, or cast out
devils. He fixes our attention on this point,--that the acts were
received by many of those who were gathered at the feast as signs.
'_They believed on His name._' The word _name_, in every part of
Scripture, expresses that which is invisible. It is the contrast to an
idol, or that which may be seen. Even idolaters recognised the _name_
of the god as that which was expressed by the outward image, as that
which only the mind could recognise. We cannot, then, give less force
to the phrase, '_They believed on His name_,' than this,--they
confessed a power within Him which put forth these outward
manifestations of itself. We should not try to be more definite when
we are describing the vague feelings of a people. One moment they
might think, '_Some_ divine power is at work in Him; He is _a_
Prophet.' At another, 'He is _the_ Deliverer, the King we are looking
for.' The passover was a time at which such opinions were most likely
to be discussed, when parties were most likely to be formed about any
new leader. The words which follow, '_But Jesus did not commit Himself
to them_,' indicate, I think, that such a party was ready to gather
itself round Him. He did not covet their support. He did not show the
least desire to make use of their services, as one claiming to be the
Christ might have done. But the language was capable of another sense.
It might denote the caution of a chieftain who was waiting till he had
sounded the dispositions of his followers, till he had assurance from
some competent witnesses of their fidelity. The notion of such
prudence in One who came to give His life for the world, of such need
of information in Him whose life was the light of men, was utterly
revolting. St. John adds, that the reason of His not committing
Himself to this party was, '_that He knew all men, and needed not that
any should testify concerning Man: for He knew what was in Man_.' They
were not to discern and choose Him; He was to discern and choose
them. He was not a King that a faction was to set up; He was the
original Lord of men--ruling them not as a stranger, not as one who is
separate from them, but as one possessing the most intimate knowledge
of that which is distinct and peculiar in each man, and of _the_ man
that is in all.