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assumption of the authority implied by the act of cleansing immediately preceding. The mere circumstance of teaching subsequently, if it had not been preceded by that, was not sufficient to have produced this indignation; especially so far as to have made them seek to destroy him on the spot, had they not been restrained by the fear of the people. Nor is it any objection that St. Luke prefixes no note of time, which might have determined the act of cleansing to the morning of the eleventh of Nisan : for his Gospel, in this part, is strikingly distinguished by that anecdotal character, which as we observed elsewherem, was more or less peculiar to all the Evangelists: in consequence whereof, it is plain that he intended to relate not the transactions of every successive day, as in full or as of successive days, but only in part-only as those of distinct days. Thus, between xix. 29. and xix. 44, he comprehends whatsoever he designed to relate of the events of the tenth of Nisan-between xix. 45. and the end of the chapter, all that he would say of the eleventh-between xx. 1. and xxi. 38, all that he would say of the twelfth. Nor can the peculiarity of this structure be better illustrated, than by the idiomatic preface to the events of this last day itself: And it came to pass on one of those days". He speaks of this day as something uncertain, indefinite, unconnected with what goes before; yet he knew it to be, and intended it to be understood as the day consecutive on the close of events in the preceding chapter.

Fifthly, the question, openly put to our Saviour on the morning of the Wednesday in Passion-week, respects the usurpation, as it implies, of authority either then or the day before. St. Mark's account of this question is: By what authority doest thou these things? m Dissertation iii. Vol. i. 237, 238.

n Ch. xx. 1.

o Ch. xi. 28.

and who gave thee this authority that thou shouldest do these things? Now before this, according to the same account, our Lord was merely walking in the temple he had not therefore yet begun even to teach, though that might have been construed into the unjust assumption of authority in question; nor was he performing miracles. It follows then, that the question must be understood reflexively; not of what he was doing exactly on that day or at that time, but of what he had done the day before, and when he cleansed the temple. Once, at the beginning of his ministry, a similar act was performed by him, and followed substantially by a similar question P: What sign dost thou shew us, that thou doest these things? which was virtually to ask by what authority he did those things. For none but a Prophet of acknowledged dignity, none, perhaps, at this period of Jewish history but the Messiah himself, could lay claim to, or exert as his own, such a jurisdiction as this; and by asserting his right to this our Lord virtually asserted himself to be the Messiah. At the beginning of his ministry the Jews, as yet ignorant of the nature or of the grounds of his pretensions, might well ask by what authority he did such things; and at its close, when they had long made up their minds not to acknowledge them, they might just as naturally do the same. Why then we may ask, did not the Sanhedrim put this demand on the Tuesday, the day after the first cleansing, instead of deferring it until the Wednesday, the day after the second? If there was but one cleansing, and that on the Tuesday, their conduct admits of explanation. The question might have been concerted on the evening of the Tuesday, and preferred on the morning of the Wednesday; and this part of our Lord's conduct, by being probably the least

p John ii. 18.

acceptable to all who had an interest in the maintenance of the abuse, if not to the people universally, furnished, perhaps, the best and readiest handle against him of any.

Sixthly, when it is considered that our Lord attended the Passover three times, and other feasts, in the course of his ministry, at least twice; that his daily resort, on these occasions, was to the temple; that the profanation of the outer court was of long standing, and certainly in existence three years before the present time, yet nevertheless that he took upon himself to repress it only twice; between which instances there is this remarkable coincidence, that the first was at the very commencement, the second at the very conclusion of his ministry: we may justly infer that he had sufficient reasons for repressing it only twice, and that the particular seasons, when he did so, were the best which could be chosen for the purpose. This purpose, I think, was to avow himself the Messiah as publicly as possible and not the less significantly, because by an action and not a declaration. The propriety of such an avowal, at the outset of his ministry, is undeniable; and a little reflection will shew that it would be equally well timed at its close. It could not prematurely endanger his safety then; and it could as little accelerate his death now. But we know not what it might have done at any intermediate period. The same prudential motive, which, for a year and six months, kept him away from Jerusalem altogether, would perhaps have restrained him, if he had been on the spot, from any such act as this.

Now the correspondency between the beginning and the end of his ministry, and the use or design of the same action with respect to each; cannot be otherwise preserved than by supposing it performed the same num

ber of times at each. If he cleansed the temple only once then, he would naturally cleanse it only once now if a single assertion of authority was sufficient for the end in view at that time, a single assertion might suffice for the same end at this. St. Mark's περιβλεψάμενος πάντα... ἐξῆλθε would scarcely be intelligible, if it did not imply that something ensued from that examination on another day, which had not followed on that; that in short it was a scrutiny of the state of things at the time, preparatory to some correction of them on the morrow. Our Lord had no object in this first visit, except to fulfil the legal equity by presenting himself before God; and it was more in unison with the meekness, which eminently became the spiritual Antitype of the legal emblem, in which capacity he both presented himself, and was about to suffer, that he should not perform such an act precisely at that time and on that occasion. This reason would not operate on the 'morrow; he would then be free to assert what authority he pleased: and the very purposes of his ministry from that time forward, both to impress all with a proper respect for his character, and to remove every obstruction in the way of the resort to his teaching, might actually require it.

Seventhly, admitting the fact of an Anticipation in St. Matthew, we may yet advance some reasons to account for it.

I. There is nothing in this part of his narrative which would not be strictly true, if referred to the following day. Jesus entered into the temple of God on this occasion; he did so on the next: he cast out those who were buying and selling; he must have done the same again in the morning, even if he had done it already the evening before. The whole account consequently may be strictly parenthetic.

II. If we except the incident respecting the fig-tree, which happened before the arrival in the temple, there is nothing recorded of the events of the eleventh of Nisan even by St. Mark, whose account is the most particular of any, but this act of cleansing the temple; and by St. Matthew there is nothing recorded at all. Yet, as our Lord came to the temple early, and did not leave it again until late, he must have passed a whole day there. It follows then, that during an entire day's continuance in the temple there was no one transaction, except the act of cleansing the temple, which any of the Evangelists considered sufficiently memorable to deserve express mention. Compare this silence, and the inference thence deducible, with the number, the variety, and the circumstantial detail of particulars recorded on the following day; and it may be considered not improbable that the peculiar tranquillity of the day before was due to the awe inspired by this act of cleansing itself.

If then this particular transaction, as it stands in St. Matthew, does not belong to the eleventh of Nisan, we possess from him no account of the events of that day (at least within the temple) whatever. Admitting therefore that it may be an irregularity, still we may explain the irregularity if it relates to the only event on the Tuesday in Passion-week, which he thought it necessary to record. With his usual attention to conciseness in the merely historical portions of his narrative, he has joined it to the account of the transactions on the Monday; but he has joined it in such a manner, as by no means to imply a strict order of sequence in the course of events. It would be an additional motive to the Anticipation, that this act, whensoever it took place, happened as Jesus came into the temple; it was the first thing done either that evening, or on the

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