But there were those who beheld, and heard His words, and did in some measure

understand them. Even before Jesus had spoken to the Temple -officials, His disciples, as

silently they watched Him, saw an old Scripture-saying kindled into light by the halo of

His glory. It was that of the suffering, self- forgetful, God-dedicated Servant of Jehovah,

as His figure stood out against the Old Testament sky, realising in a hostile world only

this, as the deepest element of His being and calling: entire inward and outward

consecration to God, a burnt-offering, such as Isaac would have been. Within their minds

sprang up unbidden, as when the light of the Urim and Thummim fell on the letter graven

on the precious stones of the High-Priest's breastplate, those words of old: 'The zeal of

Thine house eateth me up.'1 Thus, even in those days of their early learning, Jesus

purging the Temple in view of a hostile rulership was the full realisation of that picture,

which must be prophetic, since no mere man ever bore those lineaments: that of the ideal

Nazarite, whom the zeal of God's house was consuming. And then long afterwards, after

His Passion and Death, after those dark days of loneliness and doubt, after the misty

dawn of the first recognition, this word, which He had spoken to the rulers at the first,

came to them, with all the convincing power of prediction fulfilled b y fact, as an assured

conviction, which in its strong grasp held not only the past, but the present, because the

present is ever the fulfilment of the past: 'When therefore He was risen from the dead, His

disciples remembered that He had said this unto the m; and they believed the Scripture,

and the word which Jesus had said.'

Again, as we think of the meaning of His refusing 'a sign' to the rulers of Israel - or rather

think of the only 'sign' which He did give them - we see nothing incompatible with it in

the fact that, at the same feast, He did many 'signs'2 in sight of the people. For it was only

the rulers who had entered on that conflict, of which, from the character and aims of the

two parties engaged, the beginning involved the terrible end as its logical sequence. In

presence of such a foe only one 'sign' could be given: that of reading their inmost hearts,

and in them their real motives and final action, and again of setting forth His own final

triumph - a predictive description, a 'no sign' that was, and is, a sign to all time. But

neither challenge nor hostile demand for a sign had been addressed to Him by the people.

Indeed even at the last, when incited by their rulers, and blindly following them, 'they

knew not what they did.' And it was to them that Jesus now, on the morning of His Work,

spoke by 'signs.'