'It is not for you to know the times and seasons which the Father hath put in his own power.'[1]
So, too, with the use of prophecy and of the Old Testament generally. A very small experience of Jewish exegesis will convince us that, in the disciples, their catching at the letter of the Scriptures, and mistaking this play with words for serious argument, was nothing extraordinary. The extraordinary thing is that Jesus, even in the report of these critics, uses Scripture in a totally different manner; he wields it as an instrument of which he truly possesses the use. Either he puts prophecy into act, and by the startling point thus made he engages the popular imagination on his side, makes the popular familiarity with prophecy serve him; as when he rides into Jerusalem on an ass, or clears the Temple of buyers and sellers. Or else he applies Scripture in what is called 'a superior spirit,' to make it yield to narrow-minded hearers a lesson of wisdom; as, for instance, to rebuke a superstitious observance of the Sabbath he employs the incident of David's taking the shewbread. His reporters, in short, are the servants of the Scripture-letter, Jesus is its master; and it is from the very men who were servants to it themselves, that we learn that he was master of it. How signal, therefore, must this mastery have been! how eminently and strikingly different from the treatment known and practised by the disciples themselves!
Finally, for the reporters of Jesus the rule was, undoubtedly, that men 'believed on Jesus when they saw the miracles which he did.'[2] Miracles were in these reporters' eyes, beyond question, the evidence of the Christian religion. And yet these same reporters indicate another and a totally different evidence offered for the Christian religion by Jesus Christ himself. Every one that heareth
