What we have here is a well-authenticated violation of the principle of non-resistance--and why not accept it as such? The episode is chiefly remarkable in the life of the Nazarene, not for anything which it teaches in itself, but for its inconsistency with the rest of his career. Never at any other time, so far as we know, did he precipitate riot or himself assault his enemies. But this time he did--this time he failed to live up to the inordinately exacting demands of his own gospel of brotherhood. Nor is the circumstance at all difficult to understand! Jesus came to Jerusalem tired, worn, hunted. He knew that he walked straight into the arms of his enemies, and undoubtedly therefore straight to his own death. Weary, desperate, confused, he came to the temple to pray--and here, right before the altars of his God, were the money-changers--here in the sacred places, the type and symbol of that commercialized religion which he most abhorred, and which he knew was certain in the end to destroy him. What wonder that a mighty flood of anger surged up in his soul, and for the moment overwhelmed him. In short, the weary Jesus was so irritated by the unexpected (?) sight of the traders, that he threw to the winds not only his principles, but the dictates of the most ordinary prudence, giving his enemies not only their desired opportunity, but provoking the issue at just the point where he himself had been betrayed into the violation of his own teaching. Verily, great is the insight of the modern psychologist. To the observer of the phenomena of petulance an incident like the cleansing of the temple is "easy to understand." The scientific imagination required is easily attained. One acquires it by observing the irritability of tired children. How needless, then, to inform oneself as to the historical conditions which made this great symbolic act of the Galilean prophet full of meaning to every patriot Jew that witnessed it. How needless to raise the question why every one of our four evangelists should report the act and give it the prominence they do. For our evangelists record it reluctantly, minimizing its political significance and its insurrectionary flavor. They naturally disliked to give color of justice to Pilate's judicial murder, and to Jewish denunciations of the new religion as a rebellion against established authority.