know, built a beautiful house, or temple, for God's worship at Jerusalem. And when the Temple was finished, Solomon put the ark of the covenant into it, and Solomon and all the people went into the temple and worshipped, while the priests offered sacrifices to God, and the singers and those who played on instruments of music praised God, saying, "He is good, for His mercy endureth for ever." Solomon gave thanks to God, and prayed to Him, and made supplication for the people. He asked God to make them love and obey Him. He called the Temple God's "resting-place," and by and by the glory of the Lord filled the house.

Now Solomon's beautiful Temple was afterwards pulled down and destroyed by the heathen people, whom God allowed to conquer the Israelites, because they worshipped idols and were rebellious. and disobedient; but another Temple had been built instead of it, in which sacrifices were offered up to God, and Jerusalem was still the Holy City; and here in Jerusalem lived most of the men who taught the people about the things of God.

In Jerusalem, then, Jesus would do some of His mighty works, and here He would begin to preach

to the people. When the people of Jerusalem saw His miracles and heard His holy words, would they not believe Him to be the Saviour promised by God and spoken of by the prophets? Would they not rejoice, like Nathanael, that they had found Him who had come to be their Saviour? Would they not repeat the words of Nathanael, and say to Jesus, "Thou art the Son of God, Thou art the King of Israel," or would they turn away from Him and despise Him?

The Gospel story tells you all through how kindly and gently Jesus spoke to them, and how He tried to make them understand that He had come to save them and to do the will of His Heavenly Father. It tells you, besides, how cruelly Jesus was hated and persecuted, until at last He was taken by wicked hands and nailed to the cross.

CHAPTER XII.

Jesus drives out of the Temple the buyers and sellers, and the sheep and oxen.-Jesus and the Jews.— They ask Jesus for a sign from heaven.-The answer of Jesus.

Read St. John ii. 13-25.

HAVE told you that Jesus went up to
Jerusalem with His disciples to the feast.

of the Passover, and I said that in the Holy City Jerusalem He began to speak to the people, and to show Himself to them as the mighty Son of God.

What was the first thing Jesus did at Jerusalem? He went to His Father's house-to the beautiful Temple. What did He see there? He saw that a large outside court of the Temple was used for a kind of market-place, in which were sheep and oxen, and buyers and sellers. When Jesus saw this he made a whip, and drove out all these buyers and sellers, and their sheep and oxen, and said to them, "Take these things hence;

make not My Father's house a house of merchandise, a place in which to buy and sell.”

We are not told in the Gospel that anyone refused to go, though Jesus was a stranger and a Galilean. Ah! these guilty men hastened away to hide themselves from the wrath of the Son of God. They did not know that He was the Son of God, but they trembled at His look and fled from Him.

In this way Jesus fulfilled the saying of the prophet Malachi, "The Lord shall suddenly come to His Temple."

Would the rulers understand, then, that Jesus was the Messiah? Would they hasten to welcome Him, and to make Him their King? No; they did not want a Saviour who would tell them of their sins and save them from the anger of God. They thought themselves good and wise, and that they needed not to be taught. They thought that Jesus was the son of Joseph, the carpenter of Nazareth, and they despised Him. They wanted a Saviour who should be grand and great; who would conquer their enemies and make a great nation of the Jews. The rulers were displeased that Jesus dared to cast out of the Temple the

things that they had allowed to be there; and He had done it without their leave. They had not sent Him. Who then had sent. Him? "If He says God sent Him, what wonderful thing will He do that we may believe Him? If He says no one sent Him, we can punish Him." This, we may suppose, is what the rulers said to each other; so they asked Jesus to show them a sign,* to do some wonderful thing, a miracle of their own choosing. Jesus knew that these men did not wish to find out the truth, so He answered them by a difficult saying, a kind of riddle that they could not understand. He said, "Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will raise it up."t The Jews thought that Jesus spoke of God's beautiful Temple in Jerusalem, and they said to Him, "Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt Thou rear it up in three days?" +

A man's body is sometimes called a house, or temple, because his spirit dwells in it, and Jesus meant the temple of His Body. This temple the + St. John ii. 19.

* St. John ii. 18.

St. John ii. 20.