The Life Of Jesus Christ In Its Historical Connexion

DURING the feast of the Passover Jesus appeared at Jerusalem in his prophetic calling, and accredited it by miracles. [262] On visiting the Temple, he found its worship disturbed by disorders which desecrated the holy place -- a picture of the general secularization of the Theocracy. [263]

For the convenience of the Jews from a distance who wished to offer sacrifices, booths had been erected in the Temple-court, in which every thing necessary for the purpose was kept for sale, and moneychangers were also allowed to take their stand there; but, as might have been expected from the existing corruption of the Jewish people, many foul abuses had grown up. The merchants and brokers made every thing subservient to their avarice, and their noisy huckstering was a great disturbance to the worship of the Temple.

It was Christ's calling to combat the corruptions of the secularized Theocracy, and to predict the judgments of God against them. And as the general desecration of all that was holy was imaged in these profane doings at the Temple, he first manifested against them his holy anger. Threatening the traders with a scourge of small cords, he drove them out of the Temple; and said to those who sold doves, "Take these things hence; make not my Father's house a house of merchandise." [264]

These words are not only applicable to the special case, but also contain a severe reproof of that carnal tendency which debases God's house into a merchant's exchange. The lifting up of the scourge could not have been in token of physical force, for -- apart from Christ's character -- what was one man against so many? It could only be a symbolical sign -- a sign of the judgments of God that were so soon to fall upon those who had corrupted the Theocracy. [265]

There was no miracle, in the proper sense, wrought here, but a proof of the confident Divine power with which he influenced the minds of men; an example of the direct impression of Divinity, of the power of the manifestation of the Holy One as a punisher, in rousing the slumbering conscience. Origen, who found many difficulties in this narrative, [266] and was inclined to regard it as ideal and symbolical, thought that if it were to be received as history [267] the miracle would be greater than the change of water into wine, or, indeed, any other of Christ's deeds; as in this case he would not have had to act upon inert and lifeless matter, but upon living beings capable of resistance. But, on the contrary, no miracle, in the proper sense, was wrought, precisely because Christ had to operate upon men, endowed, it is true, with a will capable of resisting, but also with susceptibilities that had to yield to the moral and religious force of an immediate Divine impression, and with conscience, that slumbering consciousness of God which man can never wholly abnegate, and which may be roused by a commanding holy power, in a way that is not to be calculated. There are many things in history that must be regarded as myths by minds that judge only by the standard of every-day reality.