t
scrupulously scoured, but the inside was filled with the products of
rapacity and the material for luxurious excess. When religion had become
of such a sort, even missionary activity became an actual damage, for the
converts were turned into fanatical sticklers on trifles. In all this we
can see him striking out for a kind of religion that would result in
righteous conduct and have social value.

_Have we had any experience of religion which obscured duty to us? Have we
had any experience of religion which revealed duty to us?_

Fifth Day: Religious Wonders and Social Realities

And the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and trying him asked him to
show them a sign from heaven. But he answered and said unto them,
When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the
heaven is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather to-day:
for the heaven is red and lowering. Ye know how to discern the
face of the heaven; but ye cannot discern the signs of the times.
An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there
shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of Jonah. And he left
them, and departed.--Matt. 16:1-4.

This demand for a miracle pursued Jesus all through his teaching activity.
He settled with it on principle in his desert temptation; he would not
leap from the pinnacles of the temple, or do anything to turn his work
into a holy circus. But the demand followed him to his death: "If thou art
the Son of God, come down from the cross." A good, stunning miracle seemed
a short cut to faith, the most convincing way of furnishing proof of his
divine mission. Also, it would be mighty interesting. But he never catered
to the demand. His power was only for the relief of suffering. He tried to
keep his acts of healing private. In this passage he advised his opponents
to use their intellect in more useful directions than stargazing for signs
from heaven. They were weather-wise. Let them read the signs of the times.
Storms were brewing on the horizon. Forty years later Titus destroyed
Jerusalem and broke the back of the Jewish nation. The prophetic mind of
Jesus saw it coming (Luke 19:41-44).

If they had accepted his teaching of peace instead of getting intoxicated
by the visions of revolutionary apocalypticism, the doom might have been
averted. He was trying to bring their feet to the ground, turn their mind
to realities, and make their religion socially effic