world was ready for this enterprise at that period. True, we think of the ultimate benefits to after ages from some open and unqualified stand by Jesus himself in this matter. We may say the same of ultimate benefits that would seemingly have ensued, had he led the way by his own example in relaxing the exactness and rigor of the Levitical law; since, only a few years after his death, the Church was thrown into convulsions by the pertinacity with which the Jewish converts maintained the universal and perpetual obligation of the Mosaic ceremonial.

The truth is, Jesus was the broad-day teacher of the immediate sphere which he himself occupied. It was enough for him to consult his own position, and leave it to those who should come after him to consult theirs by applying the principles of the gospel to actual life as the proper occasions should arise.

And where, at this moment, would his position be in relation to that vast moral enterprise which is now struggling for success, and which only asks of every individual some little sacrifice of personal indulgence on the altar of humanity? Who but must admit that we learn nothing more clearly and forcibly from him than the duty of generous self-denial and self-sacrifice, whenever they may be necessary for the cause of benevolence and righteousness?

Few virtues have a perfect objective sameness, an unvarying identity of form, in all situations and in all ages of the world. It is only the spirit of goodness which is of unchanging obligation. The progress of society will always be requiring new modes of Christian action. The gospel tree is full of buds. They are not all unfolded at once. They were not so in the time of our Lord. What is innocent to-day may be criminal to-morrow, through a change of circumstances which will preserve the principle while it modifies the application. The same benevolence which once converted water into wine might display itself at the present moment by an opposite transformation. The spirit of Jesus is to look always to the highest good.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE TRADERS IN THE TEMPLE.

FROM Cana, Jesus went down to Capernaum, and thence to Jerusalem. This was the commencement of his public ministry in the Jewish metropolis. His first act after his arrival was a pointed expression of his displeasure at a gross profanation of the temple which he found permitted by the Jewish rulers. One court had been converted into a market-place. He was no precisian. He was soon to exasperate a bigoted veneration for this very edifice by taking the noble stand, that the true worshipper must worship the Father in spirit and in truth, and that acceptable devotion was confined neither to Jerusalem nor to Gerizim. Still, he did not repudiate all sacred associations with times and places. It was a disgusting spectacle to him to see the secular uses to which a portion of the Jewish sanctuary was given up. With their ideas, the authors of this indecency were guilty of a flagrant sin. "Take these things hence," he said to them;

"make not my Father's house an house of merchandise." He partially executed the work of removal with his own hands, and by this act seems to have impressed the beholders as assuming to himself a striking prerogative of the Messiah. "What sign showest thou unto us," they demanded, "seeing that thou doest these things?" Perhaps they remembered the prediction in Malachi, which speaks of the Messenger of the Covenant as coming suddenly to the temple and purifying it like it like a refiner's fire. It is probably difficult for us to appreciate the effect which this act of his had upon the Jewish spectators, accustomed, as they were, to associate power with command, and deed with word, in their conception of a prophet. Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord; and Moses took the calf which the Israelites had made and burnt it in the fire.

Jesus is related to have done the same thing again towards the close of his ministry. Some have regarded the account of the repetition of this act as an error in the history. But why? Suppose the history had informed us that no occasion for a repetition ever occurred. Should we not have heard how unlikely it was that the Jewish rulers should ever have changed their practice from any regard to the rebukes of Jesus? On the other hand, suppose the profanation had continued, and we had been

told he never evinced displeasure a second time. Would this have been thought a consistency? We have a plain coincidence in the story as it is; and, in fact, each purification presents particulars peculiar to itself, and just such as were appropriate to it. In the first, we are informed that Jesus found in the temple oxen and sheep; the sacred court was used as a barnyard, the most offensive part of the profanation. In the second, no beasts are mentioned. So it seems there had been a partial correction of the sacrilege. In the first, Jesus employed a scourge of small cords to expel the sheep and the oxen, probably by a gentle waving of the implement, to most animals usually so formidable, and likewise so far conformed to the type of the ancient prophet as to overturn the tables of the money-changers,-contenting himself with a calm remonstrance to the minor offenders who were present only with their doves:-"Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of merchandise." But when called a second time to show his sense of this profanation of the sacred precincts, he casts out the buyers and sellers, overturns not only the tables of the moneychangers, but also the seats of those that sold doves, and addresses them all indiscriminately in these sharp and pointed terms:-"It is written, My house shall be called the house

6