III. CHAP. Overpowered the sullen obstinacy of men engaged in a gainful traffic, sanctioned by ancient usage. The same profound veneration for the Temple, which took such implacable offence at the subsequent language of Jesus, would look with unallayed admiration on the zeal for "the Father's House," which would not brook the intrusion of worldly pursuits, or profane noises within its hallowed gates. Expect ations raised by ; Of itself, then, this act of Jesus might not amount to the assumption of authority over the this event. Temple of God: it was, perhaps, no more than a courageous zealot for the law might have done* ; but, combined with the former mysterious rumours about his character and his miraculous powers, it invested him at once in the awful character of one, in whose person might appear the longdesired, the long-expected Messiah. The multitude eagerly throng around him, and demand some supernatural sign of his divine mission. The establishment of the Law had been accompanied, according to the universal belief, with the most terrific demonstrations of Almighty power - the rocking of the earth, the blazing of the mountain. Would the restoration of the Theocracy in more ample power, and more enduring majesty, be unattended with the same appalling wonders? The splendid images in the highly figurative writings of the Prophets, the traditions, among the mass of the *Legally only the magistrate (i. e. the Sanhedrin), or a Prophet, could rectify abuses in the Temple of God. A Prophet must show his commission by some miracle or prediction. Grotius and Whitby. III. people equally authoritative, had prepared them to CHAP. expect the coming of the Messiah to be announced by the obedient elements. It would have been difficult, by the most signal convulsions of nature, to have come up to their high-wrought expectations. Private acts of benevolence to individuals, preternatural cures of diseases, or the restoration of disordered faculties, fell far beneath the notions of men, blind, perhaps, to the moral beauty of such actions. They required public, if we may so speak, national miracles, and those of the most stupendous nature. To their demand, Jesus calmly answered by an obscure and somewhat oracular allusion to the remote event of his own resurrection, the one great "sign" of Christianity, to which it is remarkable that Christ constantly refers, when required to ratify his mission by some public miracle.* The gesture, by which he probably confined his meaning to the temple of his body, which though destroyed, was to be raised up again in three days, was seen, indeed, by his disciples, yet, even by them, but imperfectly understood; by the people in general his language seemed plainly to imply the possible destruction of the Temple. An appalling thought, and feebly counterbalanced by the assertion of his power to rebuild it in three days! This misapprehended speech struck on the most sensitive chord in the high-strung religious temperament of the Jewish people. Their national pride, their national existence, were identified with * Compare Matt. xii. 40. CHAP. III. of the Jews for the Temple. the inviolability of the Temple. Their passionate and zealous fanaticism on this point can scarcely Reverence be understood but after the profound study of their history. In older times, the sad and loathsome death of Antiochus Epiphanes, in more recent, the fate of Crassus, perishing amid the thirsty sands of the desert, and of Pompey, with his headless trunk exposed to the outrages of the basest of mankind on the strand of Egypt, had been construed into manifest visitations of the Almighty, in revenge for the plunder and profanation of his Temple. Their later history is full of the same spirit; and even in the horrible scenes of the fatal siege by Titus, this indelible passion survived all feelings of nature or of humanity: the fall of the Temple was like the bursting of the heart of the nation. From the period at which Herod the Great had begun to restore the dilapidated work of Zorobabel, forty-six years had elapsed, and still the magnificence of the king, or the wealth and devotion of the principal among the people, had found some new work on which to expend those incalculable riches, which, from these sources, the tribute of the whole nation, and the donations of the pious, continued to pour into the Temple treasury. And this was the building of which Jesus, as he was understood, could calmly contemplate the fall, and daringly promise the immediate restoration. To their indignant murmurs, Jesus, pectations it should seem, made no reply. The explanation would, perhaps, have necessarily led to a more distinct prediction of his own death and resurrec Their ex disap pointed. III. tion, than it was yet expedient to make, especially CHAP. on so public a scene. But how deeply this mistaken speech sunk into the popular mind, may be estimated, from its being adduced as the most serious charge against Jesus at his trial; and the bitterest scorn, with which he was followed to his crucifixion, exhausted itself in a fierce and sarcastic allusion to this supposed assertion of power. Still, although with the exasperated multitude the growing veneration of Jesus might be checked by this misapprehended speech, a more profound impression had been made among some of the more thinking part of the community. Already one, if not more members, of the Sanhedrin, began to look upon him with interest, perhaps with a secret inclination to espouse his doctrines. That Nicode one, named Nicodemus, determined to satisfy him- mus. self by a personal interview, as to the character and pretensions of the new Teacher.* Nicodemus had hitherto been connected with the Pharisaic party, and he dreaded the jealousy of that powerful sect, who, though not yet in declared hostility against Jesus, watched, no doubt, his motions with secret aversion; for they could not but perceive that he made no advances towards them, and treated with open disregard their minute and austere observance of the literal and traditionary law, their principles of separation from the "unclean" part of the community, and their distinctive dress and deportment. The popular and accessible demeanour of Jesus showed at once that he * John, iii. 1. 21. III. CHAP. had nothing in common with the spirit of this predominant religious faction. Nicodemus, therefore, chooses the dead of the night to obtain his secret interview with Jesus; he salutes him with a title, that of rabbi, assumed by none but those who were at once qualified and authorised to teach in public; and he recognises at once his divine mission, as avouched by his wonderful works. But, with astonishment almost overpowering, the Jewish ruler hears the explanation of the first principles of the new religion. When the heathen proselyte was admitted into Judaism, he was considered to be endowed with new life: he was separated from all his former connections; he was born again to higher hopes, to more extended knowledge, to a more splendid destiny. But now, even the Jew of the most unimpeachable descent from Abraham, the Jew of the highest estimation, so as to have been chosen into the court of Sanhedrin, and who had maintained the strictest obedience to the law, in order to become a member of the new community, required a change no less complete. He was to pass through the ceremony emblematic of moral purification. To him, as to the most unclean of strangers, baptism was to be the mark of his initiation into the new faith; and a secret internal transmutation was to take place by divine agency in his heart, which was to communicate a new principle of moral life. * A gentile proselyted, and a slave set free, is as a child new born; he must know no more of his kindred. Maimonides. Lightfoot. Harm. Ev. This notion of a second moral birth is by no means uncommon in the East. The Sanscrit name of a Brahmin is dwija, the twice born. Bopp. Gloss. Sanscr. |