These two things follow: faith gives absolute power in prayer, but it is also its moral condition. None other than this is faith; and none other than faith - absolute, simple, trustful - gives glory to God, or has the promise. This is, so to speak, the New Testament application of the first Table of the Law, summed up in the Thou shalt love the Lord thy God.' But there is yet another moral condition of prayer closely connected with the first - a New Testament application of the second Table of the Law, summed up in the Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.' If the first moral condition was God-ward, the second is man-ward; if the first bound us to faith, the second binds us to charity, while hope, the expectancy of answered prayer, is the link connecting the two. Prayer, unlimited in its possibilities, stands midway between heaven and earth; with one hand it reaches up to heaven, with the other down to earth; in it, faith prepares to receive, what charity is ready to dispense. He who so prays believes in God and loves man; such prayer is not selfish, self-seeking, self-conscious; least of all, is it compatible with mindfulness of wrongs, or an unforgiving spirit. This, then, is the second condition of prayer, and not only of such all-prevailing prayer, but even of personal acceptance in prayer. We can, therefore, have no doubt that St. Mark correctly reports in this connection this as the condition which the Lord attaches to acceptance, that we previously put away all uncharitableness. [5093] [5094] We remember, that the promise had a special application to the Apostles and early disciples; we also remember, how difficult to them was the thought of full forgiveness of offenders and persecutors; [5095] and again, how great the temptation to avenge wrongs and to wield miraculous power in the vindication of their authority. [5096] In these circumstances Peter and his fellow-disciples, when assured of the unlimited power of the prayer of faith, required all the more to be both reminded and warned of this as its second moral condition: the need of hearty forgiveness, if they had aught against any.
From this digression we return to the events of that second day in Passion-week (the Monday), which began with the symbolic judgment on the leafy, barren fig-tree. The same symbolism of judgment was to be immediately set forth still more clearly, and that in the Temple itself. On the previous afternoon, when Christ had come to it, the services were probably over, and the Sanctuary comparatively empty of worshippers and of those who there carried on their traffic. When treating of the first cleansing of the Temple, at the beginning of Christ's Ministry, sufficient has been said to explain the character and mode of that nefarious traffic, the profits of which went to the leaders of the priesthood, as also how popular indignation was roused alike against this trade and the traders. We need not here recall the words of Christ; Jewish authorities sufficiently describe, in even stronger terms, this transformation of the House of Prayer' into a den of robbers.' [5097] If, when beginning to do the business' of His Father, and for the first time publicly presenting Himself with Messianic claim, it was fitting He should take such authority, and first cleanse the Temple' of the nefarious intruders who, under the guise of being God's chief priests, made His House one of traffic, much more was this appropriate now, at the close of His Work, when, as King, He had entered His City, and publicly claimed authority. At the first it had been for teaching and warning, now it was in symbolic judgment; what and as He then began, that and so He now finished. Accordingly, as we compare the words, and even some of the acts, of the first cleansing' with those accompanying and explaining the second, we find the latter, we shall not say, much more severe, but bearing a different character - that of final judicial sentence. [5098]