preceding evening. But before that - before the slaying of the Paschal Lamb, on the

afternoon of the 14th Nisan - the visitor to the Temple would mark something peculiar.3

On the evening of the 13th Nisan, with which the 14th, or 'preparation-day,' commenced,

the head of each household would, with lighted candle and in solemn silence, search out

all leaven in his house, prefacing his search with solemn thanksgiving and appeal to God,

and closing it by an eq ually solemn declaration that he had accomplished it, so far as

within his knowledge, and disavowing responsibility for what lay beyond it. And as the

worshippers went to the Temple, they would see prominently exposed, on a bench in one

of the porches, two desecrated cakes of some thank offering, indicating that it was still

lawful to eat of that which was leavened. At ten, or at latest eleven o'clock, one of those

cakes was removed, and then they knew that it was no longer lawful to eat of it. At

twelve o'clock the second cake was removed, and this was the signal for solemnly

burning all the leaven that had been gathered. Was it on the eve of the 14th, when each

head of a house sought for and put aside the leaven, or else as the people watched these

two cakes, and then the removal of the last of them, which marked that all leaven was to

be 'purged out,' that Jesus, in real fulfilment of its national meaning, 'cleansed' the

Temple of its leaven?

We can only suggest the question. But the 'cleansing of the Temple' undoubtedly

preceded the actual festive Paschal week.4 To those who were in Jerusalem it was a week

such as had never been before, a week when 'they saw the signs which He did,' and when,

stirred by a strange impulse, 'they believed in His Name' as the Messiah. 'A milk- faith,' as

Luther pithily calls it, which fed on, and required for its sustenance, 'signs.' And like a

vision it passed with the thing seen. Not a faith to which the sign was only the fingerpost,

but a faith of which the sign, not the thing signified, was the substance; a faith which

dazzled the mental sight, but reached not down to the heart. And Jesus, Who with heart-

searching gla nce saw what was in man, Who needed not any to tell Him, but with

immediateness knew all, did not commit Himself to them. They were not like His first

Galilean disciples, true of heart and in heart. The Messiah Whom these found, and He

Whom those saw, met different conceptions. The faith of the Jerusalem sign-seers would

not have compassed what the Galileans experienced; it would not have understood nor

endured, had He committed Himself to them. And yet He did, in wondrous love,

condescend and speak to them in the only language they could understand, in that of

'signs.' Nor was it all in vain.

Unrecorded as these miracles are - because the words they spoke were not recorded on

many hearts - it was not only here and there, by this or that miracle, that their power was

felt. Their grand general effect was, to make the more spiritually minded and thoughtful

feel that Jesus was indeed 'a teacher come from God.' In thinking of the miracles of Jesus,

and generally of the miraculous in the New Test ament, we are too apt to overlook the

principal consideration in the matter. We regard it from our present circumstances, not