The zeal which devoured Jesus was surely a zeal for the house of that God to whom Solomon had prayed, '_Lord, wilt thou in very deed dwell upon earth?_' It was for the house of that God whom kings and prophets had worshipped between the cherubim. But which of these had dared to use the language which He used? Which of them had ever said, 'It is the house of _my Father_'? It was a _new_ name,--a wonderful and awful name. And yet the whole force of the testimony which Christ bore for the old building--for the house in which their fathers worshipped--lay in this name. If that house was not to be a house of merchandise--if it was ever to be that again which holy men had believed and found it to be--this new name must remove its debasement, this new revelation must restore its greatness. No other could suffice to undo the hypocrisy of the priests, because that hypocrisy came from their thinking that the house was theirs--from not believing that there was any relation between themselves and Him to whom they offered their worship and their sacrifices. If there was a man who could call it 'my Father's house,' heaven and earth were not at the distance they thought and hoped,--their Judge was very near. On the other hand, no revelation but this could have brought the outer court once more into union with the inner court, could have made both parts of the house of God. For the reason why the people traded in that court, and felt they had no business anywhere else, was that they had no belief that God cared for them, or that there was any fellowship between them and Him, except through those priests who were the barriers to all fellowship. If Jesus of Nazareth, the poor man, one of them, could say, 'It is my Father's house,' the publican might feel then,--even the Gentile might feel afterwards,--that there was a house for him; not a place for selling sheep and oxen, and changing money, but a refuge from the weariness of merchandise, from the haggling and lying of the world, in the presence and heart of a Friend who giveth to all liberally, of One who is altogether righteous and true.