Monday, Hat of 11711ran (April 3).—When the Lord visited the temple yesterday, he was not so absorbed by the excitin,g scenes as to be indifferent to the honour of his Father's house. With Mes sianic dignity he cast a scrutinising look round about upon all things' (Mark xi. It), and took his measures for the morrow. But on his way to the city in the morning, he was attracted by the foliage of one of the fig-trees of Bethphage ; and, being hungry no doubt from the long vigil of the night, he approached it in search of fruit. But in vain I The tree, although so precocious in leaves, was fruitless. Fit but sad emblem of the city and nation ! He had in an earlier part of his ministry strikingly pictured the unfruitfulness of the people in the parable of the barren fig-tree (Luke xiii. 6-9). The three years' forbearance and the prolonged probation then vouchsafed were now exhausted. The time for judgment was come. The sentence, suspended in the parable some months before, novv fallz, upon the useless tree before him ; and in the spint and power of Messiah—such as he had as serted yesterday when demanding the use of the colt (Matt. xxi. 3), and would again display this very day in the Temple, and yet again on Thurs day on requesting the accommodation of the Pass over-chamber (Matt. xxvi. 18)—he pronounces the fatal doom, which before to-morrow's sun we shall see accomplished. On his arrival at the Temple, his indignant zeal at the desecration of its holy precincts was kindled, just as it had been at the outset of his ministry three years before (comp. Matt. xxi. 12, etc. with John ii. 14, etc. : on the two cleansings of the Temple, as the opinion of most of the commentators, ancient and modern ; see Alford, and especially Meyer, in loci's, and Ellicott, Lectures, p. 122, n. 3). The holy Baptist, among Messiah's attributes, symbolised his judicial and veformatory power by making him wield a fan in his hand' (Matt. iii. 12). How signal was his dis play of this authority, when he purged the courts and purlieus of the Temple of these purveyors and their traffic, who in the godless pursuit of their gain had reduced God's house of prayer to thc condition of a den of thieves ! This is not the first time we have traced in the meek and lowly Saviour the grandeur of a righteous indignation, and the exercise of a sinless though withering vengeance against the hypocrite and the wordling (comp. his
many denunciations [termini] against Pharisaism, and his message to Herod Antipas, with his cleans ings of the Temple). This moral power, in action, is no less Messianic than his vast prerogative of miraculous agency. But how utterly alien were the minds of even the most educated classes of the Jews from the true view of Messiah is strikingly shewn by the invariable hostility wherewith those classes pursued Christ after every manifestation of his theocratic power. The present instance is no exception, The chief priests and the scribes, and the chief of the people, sought to destroy him,' after his expulsion of the traders and his angry rebuke of their sin. It is true they were as yet powerless. The popularity of Jesus still shielded him from the machinations of the few. But St. Luke, to whom we owe this infomiation, mentions in this passage (xix. 47), for the first time, some new allies of the priestly party (ol npairot Nadi)). His words are remarkable and emphatic. We must bear them in mind, for they will afford us some clue to the astonishing ebb of that tide of public favour, which up to this moment and later still sustains the Lord in his great career. The treble combination mentioned by the evangelist avails nothing as yet to arrest Messiah's progress through this wonderful week, 'for all the people hung upon his lips' (ONo.Os 7Ap iirrasbEercpeAaro czbra cbadnev), being exceedingly struck with the mode and matter of his teaching, as St. Mark informs us (1Zorki7a