Accordingly, what spectacle is it which the passage I am considering brings before us? The spectacle of no appalling crime, of none of those hideous and revolting acts which we know from the Jewish historian were perpetrated at the time, and in which the religious sect of the day had its full share. It is a spectacle which had become familiar to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, which every Pharisee had continually before his eyes when he went into the Temple to pray,--most glaringly, it is probable, during the most sacred festivals. Within, the priests offered the regular sacrifices; without, in another part of the house, there was a market for sheep and oxen; there were seats for the money-dealer. The practice was so regular, so sanctioned by prescription, that no one thought anything of it. The pious Jew was no more scandalized by it than the pious Englishman is scandalized by reading an advertisement for the sale of a living. If we have distinctions which satisfy our consciences between the disposing of an actual cure of souls and of the right to endow another with such a cure,--if a line, sometimes invisible to the naked eye, separates the sin of Simony from deeds which laymen may lawfully do, and by which clergymen may lawfully benefit,--the people of Jerusalem had distinctions just as recognised, quite as capable of being defended in argument. The _holy_ place might not be approached by any profane feet; that was sacred indeed to the Lord. But the outer court--why might not that be left for ordinary traffic? Perhaps the separation of the priests from the mere throng of worshippers--above all, from the Gentile who might be found among them--was better marked by the concession of this privilege. At all events, it was a privilege guaranteed by usage to the trader. If it was disturbed, would he not probably become disgusted with his country's sanctuary altogether? Might he not betake himself to some Roman temple,--to a worship which was more associated with amusement, if not with business?
I do not know that this calculation was altogether a wrong one. I do not suppose that if the Sanhedrim had chosen or had been permitted by its masters to prohibit these markets, any moral benefit would have been gained for the nation. For what had made the Temple holy and dear to any Jew of that day or of former days? Not its situation, not its having been built by the wise king, not its having been restored after the captivity, not the goodly stones with which Herod had adorned it. No! but the sense of an invisible glory; the belief that God--whom no man had seen at any time--had been pleased to meet His people there. Could any Jewish laws restore this conviction when it had departed? Could regulations to protect a certain enclosure from pollution give rise to anything, except despicable subterfuges, except the vilest hypocrisy, when the only ground and warrant for these regulations was forgotten, when those who would have made them as little confessed the Divine presence as those whom they would have excluded. For this--this was the secret of the Jewish desecration of the Temple. The priests who ministered at the inner shrine did not, for the most part, believe in the Divine presence more than the people who sold sheep and oxen without. A trade was going on in both places. There it was a traffic with God; here it was a traffic among men. The awe of One who dwelt with them, who revealed Himself to them, whose righteousness was their strength, had been exchanged for the fear of One who might call them to account for their treacheries to each other if they withheld their customary and toilsome services from Him.