Page:Jesus of Nazareth the story of His life simply told (1917).djvu/155

 by putting Him to death, they went to Pilate and asked for soldiers to guard the sepulchre where He was buried until the third day, because He had said He would rise again. Of His disciples too we are told that "when He was risen again from the dead they remembered that He had said this, and they believed the word that Jesus had said." It was our Lord's custom to teach by means of figures and parables, because He knew that we all like a story, and that lessons in this form are more easily and pleasantly learned.

The purifying of the Temple Court was not the only proof of His Divine Power which our Blessed Lord gave at this Pasch, "for many believed in Him seeing the signs which He did."

A sign is something we see which makes known to us something we do not see. A high temperature is a sign of fever; smoke, of a fire. We might have thought that the wonderful deed of power in clearing the Temple would have been taken by the Jews as a sign that our Lord was some holy one of God, perhaps the Holy One whom all men were expecting. John the Baptist had told them that He was in the midst of them, and had pointed out our Blessed Lord as the Lamb of God. A Voice from Heaven at His Baptism had declared Him to be the Son of God. We should have thought that when a Man appeared showing "signs" there would have been rejoicing from one end of the land to the other, and that all men would be saying:

"Here, perhaps, is the Messiah!"

Some did believe in Him "seeing the signs which He did." But others, as we have seen, came round Him asking in a carping spirit: "What sign dost Thou show unto us?" They were always asking for signs and always shutting their eyes to those which God gave