John 2

1. AND the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus 2, 3 was there. And both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage. And when 4 they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine. Jesus saith 5 unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come. His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it. 6 And there were set there six water-pots of stone, after the manner of the purifying 7 of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece. Jesus saith unto them, Fill the 8 water-pots with water. And they filled them up to the brim. And he saith unto them, 9 Draw out now, and bare unto the governor of the feast. And they bare it. When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was, (but the servants which drew the water knew,) the governor of the feast called the 10 bridegroom, and saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now. 11 This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him.

WE need not wonder to find the Lord of life at that festival; for he came to sanctify all life—its times of joy, as its times of sorrow; and all experience tells us that it is times of gladness which especi- ally need such a sanctifying power, such a presence of the Lord. In times of sorrow, the sense of God’s presence comes more naturally out: in these it is in danger to be forgotten. And the gracious Lord has sympathy with all needs—with the finer as well as the commoner needs of our life. For all the grace and beauty and courtesy of life are taken account of in Christianity, as well as life’s sterner realities; and the spirit of Christ, in himself and in his disciples, does not slight or despise those any more than these. T.

He consecrates marriage, and the sympathies which lead to marriage. He stamps his image on human joys, human connections, human relationships. He pronounces that they are more than human; the means whereby God’s presence comes to us; the types and shadows whereby higher and deeper relation- ships become possible to us. For it is through our human affections that the soul first learns to feel that its destiny is divine. Never does a man know the force that is in him till some mighty affection or grief has humanized the soul. It is by an earthly relationship that God has typified to us and helped us to conceive the only true espousal, the marriage of the soul to her Lord. F. W. R.

And this miracle may be taken as the sign and symbol of all which Christ is evermore doing in the world, ennobling all that he touches, making saints out of sinners, angels out of men, and in the end heaven out of earth, a new paradise of God out of the old wilderness of the world. T.

JESUS had now commenced his career. Disciples had attached themselves to this new Master, and his claim must necessarily be accompanied by the signs and wonders which were to ratify the appearance of the Messiah. Yet even his miraculous powers had nothing of the imposing, appalling, or public char- acter looked for by those who expected an appeal to their senses and passions, their terror and hope, not to the more tranquil emotions of gratitude and love. H. M.

He that made the first marriage in Paradise, be- stows his first miracle upon a Galilean marriage. He that was the Author of matrimony and sancti- fied it, doth, by his holy presence, honor the resem- blance of his eternal union with his Church. Bp. H.

1. Cana of Galilee. Two places claim to be the ancient Cana of Galilee: the one nine miles north of Nazareth, the other four miles northeast. The latter, now Kefr Kana, seems to have rightful claim, according to the notices of Josephus, the N. T. references, and the site itself, at the crossing of two great roads—from Nazareth to Capernaum and from Sepphoris to Tiberias. Yet the former site has equally qualified and more numerous supporters. J. G. B. (See map, page 50.)

2. There is every reason to suppose that Joseph was now dead; the last mention of him occurs on the occasion of the Lord’s visit as a child to the temple; he had died probably between that time and Christ’s open undertaking of his ministry. T.

3. She looked for the hour when he should reveal himself in his glory, as Messiah, before the eyes of all men. But Christ, although he held all purely human feelings sacred, yet demanded that “man should deny father and mother” when the cause of God required it. He had now to apply this principle to his own mother. N.

4. How solemnly yet how tenderly he reminds his mother that earthly relations must now give place to heavenly, and that the times and seasons in which the Eternal Son is to display his true nature are not to be hastened, even by the longings of maternal love! The Lord’s manifestation, however, takes place, the miracle is performed, and its immediate effect is to confirm the faith of the five disciples, who now appear before us as the first-fruits of the ingathering of the Church. In his answer our Lord here addresses her as woman, and not mother—a term which, though marking all respect, and subsequently used by our Lord in a last display of tenderness and love, still seems to indicate the now changed relation between the Messiah and Mary of Nazareth. E.—Her Son’s hour had nearly come: but it was necessary now, at once, forever, for that Son to show to her that henceforth he was not Jesus the Son of Mary, but the Christ the Son of God; that as regarded his great work and mission, as regarded his eternal being, the significance of the beautiful relationship had passed away. F.

He has waited quietly those thirty years, without a single trial of that superhuman strength which lay in him, content to bide till the set-time came. And now he waits, even as to the performance of his first miracle, till the right and foreseen hour for its performance has arrived. As to this and every act of his power, as to this and every incident of his life, he could tell when the hour had not come, and when it had. He who at this marriage feast could say to Mary, “Mine hour is not yet come,” could say to the Omniscient in the upper chamber at Jerusalem, “Father, the hour is come, glorify thy Son.” Mapped out before his foreseeing eye in all its times, places, events, issues, lay the whole of his earthly life and ministry. H.—Not till the wine is wholly exhausted will his time arrive; as yet it was only failing: then will be the time to act, when, by its complete failure, manifest to all, the miracle will be above suspicion. Otherwise, in Augustine’s words, he might seem rather to mingle elements than to change them. When all other help fails, then and not till then has Christ’s “hour” come. T.

5. A marvellously beautiful speech this is of Mary’s. She bowed with entire submission to the Lord’s reproof. But, at the same time, she has described something in the Lord’s answer on which her faith lays hold; she believes that the hour which was not yet come might perhaps come very shortly; and she believes so confidently that it will come, that she at once hastens to put the servants in readiness for the Lord. “Mary catches at the little unobtrusive word, not yet, and with great penetration infers from it, then it will come!” But when the Lord saw her faith, then his hour was really come! The faith of the humbled Mary is the precious link connecting the denial and the fulfilment of her petitions. R. B.

6. Water, under the law, was symbolical; denoting the means of inward purity, that is, of justification and holiness: its antitype or substance, the sacrifice of Christ and the influence of the Spirit. Other vessels might have been chosen, and the presence of the water was not essential to the performance of the miracle; but the miracle would in that case have been robbed of its significance. The vessels are filled and the water changed, to suggest that for the carnal washings of the law we are to have His blood. J. A.

7-10. We may contrast this his readiness to aid others with the strictness with which he refused to come to the help of his own extremest needs. He who made wine out of water might have made bread out of stones. But he will do nothing at the suggestion of Satan, though all at the suggestion of love. T.—The thing was done, but in no very striking way, nor in a way calculated to reveal his Messianic glory to all eyes. N.—Everything so occurs as to exclude any semblance of collusion. They were water-jars, not wine-vessels; there in accordance with the customs of the Jews in the matter of washing; the quantity they contained was enormous; they were empty, so that the servants who knew what liquid they had poured in, were themselves witnesses of the reality of the miracle. T.—As regards the great quantity, we need only suppose that the guests drank so much as was ordinary and proper, during the days of the marriage festival. What remained would be a seasonable nuptial present, and would perpetuate the impression of the power of Christ. J. G. B.

What a veiling of the hand and power of the operator! Ordering it so that what came to the guests appeared to come through the ordinary channel, without word or touch, aught said or done, in obedience to an inward volition of the Lord, the water hidden in the vessels is changed instantaneously into wine. There was the same dignified ease and simplicity, the same absence of ostentation about all Christ’s miracles, proper to him who used not a delegated but an intrinsic power. H.—There, on the lake, the raging element hears the voice of its Creator, and becomes completely calm; here the tasteless element of water complies with the will of its Creator, and becomes sweet wine. R. B.—He who here made wine in the six waterpots is no other than he who every year makes it in the vine. As in this instance the water which the servants poured out of the pitchers became, by the power of the Lord, wine, so likewise, through his power every year, the water which the clouds drop down from the skies is in the vine converted into wine. Aug.

9. We are not justified in inferring that the water was changed into manufactured wine; but that, by his direct agency, he imparted to it powers capable of producing the same effects; that he intensified (so to speak) the powers of water into those of wine. N.—Whether among the Jews, and in our Saviour’s day, there was a wine that contained no alcohol, is hard to be determined, although in regard to the significance of the Hebrew yayin, and the Greek oinos, there can be but little doubt. These words simply meant the liquid that came from pressing the grape. There is no evidence of any further idea associated with it. It was not fermenting fluid, but grape-juice. This, it was well known, grew stronger with age. It was at first pleasant and nourishing, then exhilarating, and at last intoxicating. In the Bible, the first use is commended, the second mentioned without disapprobation or approval, the third in all cases condemned. T. L.—That Christ thus sanctioned the use of wine in a country where the population were proverbially temperate, leaves the question open of the propriety of Christian men using their liberty in this direction in a country like ours, where drinking is a national curse, and where even the moderate use of what intoxicates only too often causes “a brother to offend,” “for whom Christ died.” If he died for such a weak one, Christians may well afford to give up wine, etc., for him. G.—Let no table be spread to which he who graced the marriage feast at Cana could not be invited; let no pleasure be indulged in which could not live in the light of his countenance. Let his presence and blessing be with us and upon us wherever we go and however we are engaged; and is the way not open by which the miracle of Cana may, in spirit, be repeated daily still, and the water of every earthly enjoyment turned into the very wine of heaven? H.

11. It was not his power, however, but his glory, that Jesus showed forth in the miracle. What made him glorious was, that, like his Father, he ministered to the wants of men. Had they not needed the wine, not for the sake of whatever show of his power would he have made it. The concurrence of man’s need and his love made it possible for that glory to shine forth. McD.—God’s glory is at work in the growth and ripening of the grape, and in the process by which its juice passes into wine. It is not more glory, but only glory more manifested, when water at his bidding passes into wine. Miracles have only done their work when they teach us the glory and the awfulness that surrounds our common life. God was as much, nay more, in the daily life and love of Christ, than he was in Christ’s miracles. The miracle only made the hidden glory visible. The extraordinary only proved that the ordinary was divine. That was the very object of the miracle. It was done to manifest forth his glory. And if, instead of rousing men to see the real glory of Christ in his other life, the miracle merely fastened men’s attention on itself, and made them think that the only glory which is divine is to be found in what is wonderful and uncommon, then the whole intention of the miracle was lost. F. W. R.

1-11. The world does indeed give its best and fairest at the beginning, its “good wine” first, but has only baser substitutes at the last. “When men have well drunk,” when their spiritual palate is blunted, then it puts upon them what it would not have dared to offer at the first—coarser pleasures, viler enjoyments, the swine’s husks. But it is otherwise with the guests of Christ, the heavenly bridegroom. He ever reserves for them whom he has bidden “the good wine” unto the last. In the words of the most eloquent of our divines, “Every sin smiles in the first address, and carries light in the face and honey in the lip; but wheh we ‘have well drunk,’ then comes ’that which is worse,’ a whip with six strings, fears and terrors of conscience, and shame and displeasure, and a caitiff disposition, and diffidence in the day of death. But when, after the manner of purifying of the Christians, we fill our water-pots with water, watering our couch with our tears, and moistening our cheeks with the perpetual distillations of repentance, then Christ turns our water into wine, first penitents and then communicants—first waters of sorrow and then the wine of the chalice; for Jesus keeps the best wine to the last, not only because of the direct reservation of the highest joys till the nearer approaches of glory, but also because our relishes are higher after a long fruition than at the first essays, such being the nature of grace, that it increases in relish as it does in fruition, every part of grace being new duty and new reward” (J. Taylor). T.—There is a marriage, whereto we are invited; yea, wherein we are already interested, not as the guests only, but as the bride; in which there shall be no want of the wine of gladness. It is marvel if, in these earthly banquets, there be not some lack. “In thy presence, O Saviour, there is fulness of joy, and at thy right hand are pleasures for evermore. Blessed are they that are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” Ep. II.

Section 19.—At the First Passover, expels Profaners of the Temple.

Jerusalem.

12. AFTER this he went down to Capernaum, he, and his mother, and his brethren, and his disciples; and they continued there not many days.

13,14. And the Jews’ passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and found in the temple those that sold oxen, and sheep, and doves, and the changers of money, sitting: and when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables; and said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence, make not my Father’s house an house of merchandise. And his disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.

18. Then answered the Jews, and said unto him, What sign shewest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things? Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? But he spake of the temple of his body. When therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them: and they believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus had said.

23. Now when he was in Jerusalem at the passover, in the feast day, many believed in

24 his name, when they saw the miracles which he did. But Jesus did not commit himself

25 unto them, because he knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of man: for he knew what was in man.

PEOPLE began to show enthusiasm for him. But Jesus did not trust himself unto them, “for he knew what was in man.” He knew that the flatterers of to-day would be the accusers of to-morrow. Nathanael stood before him. He had scarcely spoken a word; but at once unhesitatingly, to Nathanael’s own astonishment, “Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile!” There came to him a young man with vast possessions: a single sentence, an exaggerated epithet, an excited manner, revealed his character. Enthusiastic and amiable, Jesus loved him; capable of obedience, on life’s sunshine and prosperity, ay, and capable of aspiration after something more than mere obedience, but not of sacrifice. Jesus tested him to the quick, and the young man failed. He did not try to call him back, for he knew what was in him and what was not. He read through Zaccheus when he climbed into the sycamore-tree, despised by the people as a publican, really a son of Abraham; through Judas, with his benevolent saying about the selling of alabaster-box for the poor, and his false kiss; through the zeal of the man who in a fit of enthusiasm offered to go with him whithersoever he would. He read through the Pharisees, and his whole being shuddered with the recoil of utter and irreconcilable aversion. It was as if his bosom was some mysterious mirror on which all that came near him left a sullied or unsullied surface, detecting themselves by every breath. F. W. R.

THE city was then in its noonday glory, and ranked among the most splendid in the world. It was the metropolis, not only of Palestine, but also of the millions of Jews dispersed throughout the world, who were continually bringing and sending the richest gifts to the temple. The treasury was always full to overflowing. Herod employed this wealth in rebuilding the temple and embellishing it with such works of art as the law did not expressly forbid. It was a marvellous structure. With its stupendous outer wall, the lofty “Gate Beautiful,” wrought of Corinthian brass, its pillared cloisters, its outer and inner courts, its central edifice, the temple proper, covered with gold and blazing like an earthly sun—the whole was the wonder of the world, and the Israelite’s peculiar pride and joy. Thither the tribes went up thrice a year to worship. But at the Passover feast, the city, paved with marble and built in a style of corresponding magnificence, was thronged with a “multitude which no man could number.” It is computed that this feast drew together, in addition to the permanent population, not less than a million of human beings. Arabia, Parthia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, Gaul, and Spain—every part of the world sent up caravans of pilgrims to the holy and beautiful city, all wearing the costumes and speaking the dialects of the several countries from which they came. Z. E.

13. That Christ should begin his public ministry at Jerusalem was equally in accordance with the fitness of the case, and with the expectations raised by prophecy: “Jehovah, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple.” Nor was there any reason so suitable for his appearance there as the feast of Passover, which presented the most striking type of him, and at which the Jews were gathered, not only from all the land, but from the countries of the Dispersion. S.—By way of Capernaum our Lord now pays his first public visit to Jerusalem at the feast of the Passover, and as his first public act, he proceeds to the temple. Here he found the traders changing the Roman denarius and Grecian drachma for the Jewish shekel, and all these for coins of a lower denomination. The first only were received by the Roman collectors, and the last only at the temple treasury. Here also were sold the victims used in the Jewish worship. All this business was transacted within the precincts of the temple, and involved an unseemly union of things secular and sacred. The whole was conducted, moreover, in a spirit of grasping, godless gain, little less guilty than theft. Our Lord, therefore, took occasion to rebuke both evils, and at the same time to indicate one purpose of his coming. He appeared to purify the house of God, and to free it from earthly defilement. This object he symbolized both now at the commencement of his ministry, and afterward at its close, by the act of purifying the court of the outer sanctuary. J. A.

14. There, in the actual court of the Gentiles, were penned whole flocks of sheep and oxen, while the drovers and pilgrims stood bartering and bargaining around them. There were the men with their great wicker cages filled with doves, and under the shadow of the arcades, formed by quadruple rows of Corinthian columns, sat the money-changers with their tables covered with piles of various small coins. And this was the entrance-court to the Temple of the Most High! The court which was a witness that that house should be a house of prayer for all nations had been degraded into a place which, for foulness, was more like shambles, and for bustling commerce more like a densely-crowded bazaar; while the lowing of oxen, the bleating of sheep, the Babel of many languages, the huckstering and wrangling, and the clinking of money and of balances (perhaps not always just), might be heard in the adjoining courts, disturbing the chant of the Levites and the prayers of priests! F.

15. The transition from private to public life was spontaneous on his part. The first thought, the matured purpose, and the decisive act, were all entirely his own. He came forth of his own accord—he assumed a public position, and was not compelled, or even invited, or even encouraged, to accept it. His own purpose regulated all his movements throughout. Neither the popular feeling, nor even the wishes of his disciples, nor the current of events, were suffered to govern him, for he repeatedly acted in the face of them all. His own idea from the first was supreme, and his life was a determined realization of that idea, in spite of every opposing force. A selfish spirit had consumed the heart of all true goodness, not only as between man and his God, but as between man and man. Jesus proclaimed the sacredness, dignity, and beauty of moral excellence, and that, without this, there could be no greatness and no worth. The age in its express lineaments at that time, in its ignorance, formalism, pride, hypocrisy, and impurity, he held up to itself. For the time, he was an incarnate conscience to the nation, performing that office which each man owed to himself, but would not discharge. Y.—The scourge of the Lord, which is raised against the profaners of the temple, smites rather into the heart of the sinful people; and Chrysostom says with truth: “Christ proves himself to be the good Physician, by striking at the roots of Israel’s malady; for the temple was in the system of the body politic the vital organ, which nourished it if it was sound, but poisoned it if it was corrupted.” R. B.

16. My Father’s house. How close the resemblance of these remarkable words to L. 2: 49; the same consciousness of intrinsic relation to the temple—as the seat of his Father’s most august worship, and so the symbol of all that is due to him on earth—dictating both speeches. Only, when but a youth with no authority, he was simply “a Son in his own house:” now he was “a Son over his own house” (Heb. 3: 6), the proper Representative, and in flesh “the Heir,” of his Father’s rights. B.

18. It was wholly in keeping with his office to act as Jesus had done. As his Father’s house, the temple was supremely under his care; and he only exercised his rights and duties as the Messiah, in cleansing it as he did. It was a sign and commencement of the spiritual cleansing he came to inaugurate: a note struck which disclosed the character of his future work. Zechariah (14: 21) had said that in the days of the Messiah “the trader would no more be in the house of Jehovah,” and thus even the prophets, whom the nation honored, seemed to indorse his act. G.—It was with no expectation of putting an end to the desecration of the holy place that Jesus acted. It was meant to be a public proclamation of his Sonship to God: an open assertion and exercise of his authority as sustaining this relation; a protest in his Father’s name against the conduct of the priesthood in permitting this desecration of the holy place. What else could the priesthood who had charge of the temple understand than that here was claimed a jurisdiction superior to their own? What else than that here was one who claimed a relationship to God as his Father, and a right over the temple as his Father’s house, which none but One could claim? Entering into no argument with him as to the rightness or wrongness of what he had done, they proceeded upon the assumption that he was bound to give to them some proof of his carrying a divine commission, and they say to him, “What sign showest thou unto us, seeing thou doest these things?” H.—The Jews did not question his right to perform such an act, provided he was a true prophet. They only demanded some sign of his authority. This Jesus gave in his mighty works wrought at the same Passover (verse 23); works which drew from Nicodemus, a Pharisee and a member of the Sanhedrim, the admission that he was “a teacher come from God.” R.

It is a great mistake to think of Jesus with the head uncovered. As the priests in the temple, and worshippers at prayer, had their heads covered, so no one went with the head bare in common life. Indeed, apart from religious reverence, the fierce sun of Palestine makes exposure of the head impossible. Christ’s dress was that of a rabbi, for his seamless robe illustrates Abarbanel’s remark that the robe of a rabbi of Palestine had no seam in it. Ursinus says that the dress of a rabbi was a tunic, without sleeves, which reached to the knees, and had no other openings than for the head and arms.

19. He answered them as their rabbis were wont to do, with an enigmatical sentence, which he left them to unriddle as they could. G.—Destroy this temple. It is difficult, if not impossible, for us to enter into the feelings of an ancient Israelite in regard to the temple at Jerusalem. To him, that structure was the best of all terrestrial things. It was at once the citadel of his commonwealth and the sanctuary of his Church. To this spot his face was turned in devotion, wherever he might wander on the earth’s surface. Its walls contained all that he held most splendid in ceremonial and most sacred in mystery. In some sense it was the centre, not of Palestine only, but of the world, for his Lord had said, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations.” Its pomps and praises, the volume of its harmonies both vocal and instrumental, its bleeding and smoking propitiations, its odorous clouds of incense, its ablutions and sprinklings, its throngs of exalted worshippers, its festive processions, and its inaccessible mysterious shrine, all conspired to give it a hold on his admiration and his affections, such as no other material structure ever gained over human hearts. J. W. A.—Destroy this temple!—the temple on which a king preëminent for his wealth and magnificence had lavished his most splendid resources, and thereby almost reconciled the Jews to an intolerable tyranny; the temple for the construction of which one thousand wagons had been required, and ten thousand workmen enrolled, and a thousand priests in sacerdotal vestments employed to lay the stones which the workmen had already hewn; the temple which was a marvel to the world for its colossal substructions of marble, its costly mosaics, its fragrant woods, its glittering roofs, the golden vine with its hanging clusters sculptured over the entrance door, the embroidered vails, enwoven with flowers of purple, the profuse magnificence of its silver, gold, and precious stones. It had been already forty-six years in building, and was yet far from finished; and this unknown Galilean youth bade them destroy it, and he would raise it in three days! Such was the literal and evidently false construction which they chose to put upon his words, though the recorded practice of their own great prophets might have shown them that a mystery lay hidden in this sign which he gave. How ineffaceable was the impression produced by the words is best proved by the fact that more than three years afterward it was this, more than all his other discourses, which his accusers and false witnesses tried to pervert into a constructive evidence of guilt. F.

20. Forty and six years.** These may be reckoned from B. C. 17, when the temple of Herod was begun, till A. D. 28, when these words were spoken. The more sacred interior part of the interior sanctuary was finished in eighteen months, the worship never being interrupted. The vast surroundings took eight years, and, though additions continued to be made for at least eighty years longer, it was sufficiently completed to be dedicated by Herod with the ancient pomp. A. P. S. (Read Section 178.)—Was this temple in building. In saying so, they have left to us one of the few fixed and certain data upon which we can determine the year when the public ministry of our Lord began. We know that the building, or rather rebuilding, of the temple was commenced by Herod in the eighteenth year of his reign; that is—speaking according to the Roman method of counting their years, from the foundation of Rome—during the year that began in the spring of 734, and ended in that of 735. Forty-six years from this would bring us to the year 780–781. Historical statements and astronomical calculations conspire to prove that it must have been between the 13th March and the 4th April in the year 750 that Herod died. Thirty years forward from that time brings us to the year 780, when our Lord’s ministry began. H.

21,22,24,25. John is distinguished from the other evangelists by commenting on the facts which he relates. His gospel is not only an inspired history of Christ, but also an inspired commentary on that history. W.

21. Temple of his body—in which was enshrined the glory of the eternal Word. By its resurrection the true temple of God upon earth was reared up, of which the stone one was but a shadow; so that the allusion is not quite exclusively to himself, but takes in that temple of which he is the foundation and all believers are the “living stones.” B.—Hitherto there had been but one temple of the true God, the temple in which he then stood—the temple which symbolized, and had once at least, as the Jews believed, enshrined that Shechinah, or cloud of glory, which was the living witness to God’s presence in the world. But now the Spirit of God abode in a temple not made with hands, even in the sacred body of the Son of God made flesh. F.—The history of his life and of his work is linked to this earliest utterance. The magnificent temple he that day cleansed was soon to be destroyed, mainly through the guilt of those who sought so fanatically to preserve it, with all its abuses. But, even before it rose in flames from the torch of the Roman soldier, or fell stone from stone before his tools, another temple, far more wonderful, had risen silently in the spirits of men, to take its place—a temple pure and eternal, which he had now dimly foreshadowed, at this first moment of his public career. Yet even the Church was in no such high sense the temple of God as the mysterious person of Jesus himself—the holiest tabernacle of God among men ever vouchsafed—the true Shechinah—the visible Incarnation of the Divine.

22. After the crucifixion and the resurrection, the exact fulfilment of his words in these two great events struck the imagination of the disciples more than any other meaning they might have. G.—This sign of the temple destroyed in Christ’s death, and raised up again in his resurrection, only conduced to the salvation of those who—like the disciples—believed the Scriptures, those who in faith were built as living stones into the New Testament temple. When exactly three years after the time of this Passover feast the “three days” were fulfilled, and when thus the light of fulfilment illuminated the obscurity of this prediction of Christ’s, then the disciples believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had said. They then perceived the mysterious connection which even in the Old Testament was established between the temple at Jerusalem and the temple of Jesus’ body. The Epistle to the Hebrews, in particular, is an expression of this insight. R. B.

23–25. With such an old-prophet-like first appearance, followed up as it was by acts of miraculous power, equal in character and greatness to the examples elsewhere recorded in the gospels, it is no wonder to learn that many believed on him. Yet he received no one into the circle of his closer personal following from those thus impressed. No scribe or rabbi, no wealthy citizen, not even a common townsman of Jerusalem, was called to follow him. “He did not trust himself to them,” nor honor any of them with the confidence he had shown in some of his Galilean disciples. He knew men’s hearts. He could see that they were willing to honor him as a human king, and that only from his wonderful works and miracles; and they unmistakably expected a human kingdom at his hands. Such men would be no counsellors, helpers, or servants in founding and spreading the kingdom of truth. Nor did he relax this caution at any future time, for though he gained many friends in Judea, as we discover incidentally, he surrounded himself with Galileans to the end of his life. G.—What is contained in the expression, he did not commit, or confide himself to them, we shall learn in the next Bible study, when we shall listen to the discourse in which the Lord confided himself to Nicodemus. R. B.

14–22. The temple and the kingdom of God are identical in Judaism and in Christianity: there, in a form particular and typical; here, in a form corresponding to its essence, and intended for all men and all ages. As Christ is conscious that the desecrated and ruined temple will be raised up by him in greater splendor, he acts upon this consciousness, as reformer of the old temple, in the very beginning of those labors which are to lay the foundation of the new and spiritual one. But what a glance into futurity was required in him thus to foretell not only the ruin of the temple by the guilt of the Jews—the dissolution of their worship being necessarily identified therewith—but also the erection of the spiritual edifice that was to take its place; to predict in himself the mightiest achievement in the history of humanity, at a time when but a few apparently insignificant men had joined him! N.

Section 20.—Discourse with Nicodemus.

Jerusalem.