licted with all manner of diseases, been healed in their
houses, on their streets, and in their synagogs; had not devils been
cast out and their foul utterances been silenced by His word; and had
not the dead been raised, and all by Him whom they now importuned for a
sign? They would have some surpassing wonder wrought, to satisfy
curiosity, or perhaps to afford them further excuse for action against
Him--they wanted signs to waste on their lust.[601] Small wonder, that
"he sighed deeply in his spirit" when such demands were made.[602] To
the scribes and Pharisees who had shown such inattention to His words,
He replied: "An evil and adulterous generation[603] seeketh after a
sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the
prophet Jonas."

The sign of Jonas (or Jonah) was that for three days he had been in the
belly of the fish and then had been restored to liberty; so would the
Son of Man be immured in the tomb, after which He would rise again. That
was the only sign He would give them, and by that would they stand
condemned. Against them and their generation would the men of Nineveh
rise in judgment, for they, wicked as they were, had repented at the
preaching of Jonas; and behold a greater than Jonas was among them.[604]
The queen of Sheba would rise in judgment against them, for she had
journeyed far to avail herself of Solomon's wisdom; and behold a greater
than Solomon stood before them.[605]

Then, reverting to the matter of unclean and evil spirits, in connection
with which they had spread the accusation that He was one of the devil's
own, He told them, that when a demon is cast out, he tries after a
season of loneliness to return to the house or body from which he had
been expelled; and, finding that house in order, sweet and clean since
his filthy self had been forced to vacate it, he calls other spirits
more wicked than himself, and they take possession of the man, and make
his state worse than it was at first.[606] In this weird example is
typified the condition of those who have received the truth, and thereby
have been freed from the unclean influences of error and sin, so that in
mind and spirit and body they are as a house swept and garnished and set
in cleanly order, but who afterward renounce the good, open their souls
to the demons of falsehood and deceit, and become more corrupt than
before. "Even so," declared the Lord, "shall it be also unto this wicked
generation."

Though the