pleasure they turned their faces towards Jerusalem and stood with awful joy in the courts of the house of Jehovah.

The people that heard Jesus speak this fearful enigma recollected that the Temple had been defiled. They recalled the days

Painful national recollections.

of Antiochus Epiphanes, who had forbidden the observance of the law, and had set up the "abomination of desolation" by making a sacrifice to Olympian Jove on the altar of Jehovah; * and they never forgot his loathsome end, when terror and remorse lashed him into an ignominious grave. "He came to his end, and there was none to help him." They recollected that Crassus, governor of Syria, on his way from Rome to fight the Parthians, plundered their Temple, and went forward to terrible defeat and captivity, and to a fearful death amid the desert sands. They had not ceased to feel that it was retribution from God, for his Temple's sake, which had sent Poinpey's head to Caesar, and left his dishonored trunk on the shore of Egypt.

Their love for their Temple was stronger than patriotism, or love of home, or the instinct of self-preservation. It was a passion and a fanaticism. As truly as beautifully does Milman say, "The fall of the Temple was like the bursting of the heart of the nation."

In such a state of mind the Jews heard this young teacher declare: "Destroy this Temple, and I will rebuild it in three days." Any careless speech in regard to the Temple was unpardonable; but to talk lightly of its destruction was an intolerable outrage. And that is just what they and his disciples understood him to say, and he knew that they did so understand. The suggestion that he pointed to his body, indicating that he referred to his Compare Diod. Sic., Eclog. xxxiv. | than the paragraph in Josephus ( Wars, i. 1; Daniel xi 31; xii. 11; 1 Macc. i. 8. § 8); but the mention by him shows 57; Josephus, Ant., xii. 5. 4. "The how any even reported disrespect to the abomination of desolation" was proba- Temple fired the Jewish heart. bly a small idolatrous shrine which was set up in the Temple on the 15th of the month Kisleu: just ten days after which the first victim was offered to Jupiter. The circumstances of the death of Antiochus Epiph. are narrated in Polybius (xxi. 2), and in Josephus (Ant., xii. 1, et seq.).

Pompey's fate is well known to all readers of history. Josephus says that Pompey's virtue kept him from carrying off the sacred treasure, but records the fact that he desecrated the Temple by entering the Holiest of Holies (Ant., xiv. iv. 4), and exainining those things which it was lawful for the priests

I find no other authority for this only to behold.

death and resurrection, is wholly inadmissible. If he had done so it must have been in sight of the Jews, or of his disciples only. He could scarcely have made the gesture significant to his disciples without also making it apparent to the Jews, and it is not consistent with the general purity and simplicity and elevation of his character to fancy him winking to his disciples and concealing a gesture from the crowd. They believed that he meant the material Temple in which they were standing.

Retort of the Jews.

Their reply shows that: "Forty and six years was this Temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days?" This must refer to the completion of some main portion or principal wing of the Temple. Herod the Great had a taste for building, and had expended, and was still expending, vast sums and much time on this great work, in which he was assisted by the piety, the wealth, and the patriotic pride of the Jews. From the time he had commenced this work to the time this reply was made to Jesus it was just forty-six years. Josephus (Ant., xvi. 11. 1) says that he began in the eighteenth year of his reign; but in his Wars of the Jews (i. 21.1) he says in the fifteenth, the dates being founded respectively upon the death of Antigonus and Herod's appointment by the Romans. If the latter date be taken, it will give twenty years to the birth of Jesus, and thirty years to this passover, making fifty from which if we take four years to correct our era, the epoch of which is just that much too late, we have forty-six years.*

The nation shocked.

It was to Jewish ears a preposterous and a blasphemous thing in Jesus to intimate that the Temple should be destroyed, and to assert that he could rebuild it in three days. They never forgave him. He had hurt them in every sensibility. And Jesus knew it. And he made no reply and no explanation. In his first public acts he had exhibited a zeal that seemed headstrong; he had certainly performed a most impolitic act. But it cannot be charged as an indiscretion or inadvertence, such as occur in every public man's life and give him great regrets. Jesus never regretted it. Ile

* Alford (on John ii. 20) notices that the Temple was not completed till A.D. 64, under Herod Agrippa II. and the procurator Albinus; so that I was in

66

building" must have referred to the greater part of the work then com. pleted.

must have known that he had virtually signed his own deathwarrant. He awaited the result. We shall see how this one sentence of his rankled in the heart of the nation, was made the strength of the indictment on which he was executed, and confronted him in the shape of gibe amid the horrors of his crucifixion.

The resurrection

thought.

He meant his own body. He thought of his death by violence, and his belief that he had power to take up his life again. He knew the unity of his own meaning and compre hended the multiplicity of its relations. It might refer to the desecration of the Temple by the men around him, or to its destruction by the Romans; it might refer to the abolition of the Jewish form of religion and the reconstruction of faith on the basis of his resurrection. Here as throughout his whole public life (compare Matt. xii. 40) this thought of his resurrection was ever present to his mind. Subsequently he seems to have told John and the other disciples that his allusion, in the offending speech, was to "the temple of his body." But even then they could not comprehend, they seemed scarcely able to apprehend, the idea of the resurrection of the body. The whole meaning came upon them only after they believed that they had seen him alive after death.*

An appeal.

An appeal may now be made to the candor of mankind against the disingenuousness of some modern critics. If any public man, say Pericles, or Cæsar, or Cromwell, or Washington, or Napoleon, had plunged into public life as Jesus did, would it be fair to charge that his intent was to pander to the public taste, to study the tides of fortune, to adapt himself to the desires of the masses, and thus to popularize himself? Suppose the act of cleansing the Temple would be agreeable to a few unsecularized devout old Jews; it would be disagreeable to the large majority of ruling, influential people, and hugely disgusting to the traffickers themselves; while the speech of the Temple would give point to the rancor of those whom the act had offended, and shield their resentment from the allegation of being based upon personal grounds, while it would be poignantly afflictive to the sensibilities of the pious few who would, but for the speech, have favored the act.

Read with care John ii. 21, 22.

Jesus had no policy.

On grounds of policy the act and the accompanying speech are wholly indefensible. If Jesus undertook the enterprise which is charged upon him by the critics, then he was simply a fool, whose folly it would be difficult to match from all the recorded mistakes of men. But whatever else be charged, he is not accused of folly. Then, he did not seek to draw men to his fellowship by going to their opinions. Then, he was an independent thinker and actor. Then, he was not politic. If, since his death, it be ascertained that he has exerted a vast influence over human thought and action,—if now he reigns king in the hearts of multitudes of men,—then it is possible to live a great life and die a great death without a policy. If devout men see in the life of Jesus something supernaturally beautiful, we shall find, in an undogmatic study of his career, the thing of all things most beautiful, pure naturalness.

derful works.

It would seem from the history that during his attendance upon the Passover Jesus did many wonderful things, even performed miracles, which convinced many that he was the Does many won- Messiah. They seemed more willing to trust him than he was to trust them. IIis intimate friend and biographer says that it was because "he knew what was in man." He knew that in the fervor of recent conviction they might soon form a mob of excited adherents, whose fidelity could not endure the test which such teaching and discipline as he would enforce would bring upon them. He was in no haste. Ile came to plant principles and demonstrate truths, not to create factions and secure partisans.

CHAPTER II.

NICODEMUS.

Nicodemus. John

iii.

JESUS was a light that could not be hid. The more thoughtful had begun to study the phenomena of his character and career. Even members of the Sanhedrim began to take interest in his teachings,-most with feelings of aversion, a few with solicitude, and one at least with kindly inclination. That one was Nicodemus. There must have been others whose observation had led them to desire to know more of Jesus. Such was Joseph of Arimathea, who became a disciple, "but secretly for fear of the Jews." (See John xix. 38.) How many more men of mark were in this circle we have no means of knowing. John says (xii. 42) that "among the chief rulers many believed on him." Of these we take Nicodemus as at once the leading spirit and the representative man.

*

He was a Pharisee as to faith, and a member of the Sanhedrin as to position. He had all the traditionary influence of his sect and his office to bind him to propriety and conservatism. He was not young. The Talmud speaks of a rich Sanhedrist, called Nicodemus Bonai, who, at a great age, was alive at the destruction of Jerusalem. There are no means of identifying this man with the Nicodemus spoken of by John, but there is no reason, so far as I know, why he may not have been the same.

This Nicodemus came to Jesus by night. The interview is reported condensedly by John, but is exceedingly interesting, as showing how ready Jesus was to set forth the most profound doctrines to any willing mind, even when that mind is still held in the bondage of old prejudices. Timid, afraid of the ban of his

*The Nicodemus of the Talmudists | the disciples of Jesus. Olshausen reIs called "son of Gorion," is represented fers to Sanhedr., fol. xliii. 1; Aboth as one of the three richest men in Jeru- Rab. Nathan, cap. 6; Tract. Gittin, salem, living at the time of the destruc- fol. lvi. 1, etc.

tion of Jerusalem, being then among i