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' [1824] 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.'
The Feast of the Passover commenced on the 15th Nisan, dating it, of course, from the 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. [1825] 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 equally 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. [1826] 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 glance 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.