^^RYOFPfi/AfCf^ 
 
 "^f OG/CAL SE»\^ 
 
THE 
 
 TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF 
 OUR LORD 
 
 BY THE LATE 
 
 NORMAN ^MACLEOD, D.D. 
 
 STRAHAN & CO. 
 56, LUDGATE HILL, LONDON 
 
 1873 
 
LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BY VIRTUE AND CO., 
 
 CITY ROAD. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Tempter . ... i 
 
 II. 
 
 Why our Lord was tempted 39 
 
 III. 
 The First TEMPTATiaN -75 
 
 IV. 
 
 The Second Temptation 115 
 
 V. 
 
 The Third Temptation 158 
 
I. 
 
 THE TEMPTER 
 
 " Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of 
 the devil." — Matt. iv. i. 
 
 T WISH to offer a few thoughts on the 
 Temptation of our Lord, as a contribution 
 to the practical study of this deeply interest- 
 ing portion of the Gospel history. 
 
 In what light are we to consider this trans- 
 action ? Was it a trial of principle which 
 addressed itself to our Lord from within, 
 through his conceptive faculty presenting 
 
 B 
 
2 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 certain possibilities of wrong-doing, involving 
 temptation to evil, which, however, would not 
 itself be evil unless yielded to by the will ? 
 Can we account for this dread occurrence by 
 any such inward thoughts or suggestions, 
 coming from the soul of the pure and sinless 
 Jesus, and these too being such a source of 
 suffering to Him ; or by the theory of a vision 
 created by his imagination ; or by accepting 
 the narrative as a parable or myth, symbolical 
 of the operation of the principle of evil in the 
 soul of man ? 
 
 Instead of these and other theories, I be- 
 lieve the temptation to have been historically 
 true ; * and that the suggestions to evil were 
 
 * I refer with pleasure to the authority of the lamented Dean 
 Alford, who, in his notes on the passage, says — " The whole is 
 
THE TEMPTER. 
 
 put before Christ by an evil person whose 
 will had chosen to be guided by evil. This 
 is certainly the impression which the narra- 
 tive conveys. It is recorded by three of the 
 Evangelists, but omitted by St. John, not, I 
 think, because his Gospel was intended more 
 especially to reveal the Divine Son of God, 
 and therefore One who was not liable to 
 temptation, but because it is supplementary 
 to the other Gospels, and does not therefore 
 repeat events which they have sufficiently 
 narrated. St. Mark does not give any de- 
 tailed account of the Temptation. He simply 
 and briefly records the mere fact, and that in 
 terms which leave no doubt that he recog- 
 
 undoubtedly an objective historical narrative, recording an 
 actual conflict between our Redeemer and the power of evil." 
 
4 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 nised it as a real transaction. He says, " He 
 was in the wilderness forty days tempted of 
 Satan, and was with the wild beasts, and the 
 angels ministered unto Him." The "wilder- 
 ness " and the " wild beasts " are thus not 
 alluded to as things more real than " Satan '* 
 and the " angels." It must be remembered, 
 too, that whatever impressions were received 
 by the Evangelists regarding the Temptation 
 must have been conveyed to them by Christ 
 Himself; for there were no spectators of that 
 mysterious scene, nor did any eye besides 
 his own discern what was taking place, not 
 only in the Wilderness, but in the unseen 
 world. The story must either have been 
 told substantially to them as we have it, or 
 have been fabricated by themselves, and 
 
THE TEMPTER. 
 
 embodied among the events of the life of 
 our Lord — a supposition at variance not 
 merely with the lowest notion of their divine 
 inspiration, but with belief in their being 
 possessed of common honesty. To all this 
 evidence of the historical reality of the 
 narrative — and very much more might be 
 adduced — we must add the entire harmony 
 subsisting between it and other momentous 
 events of the past and subsequent history of 
 the kingdom of God, which I will endeavour 
 to point out as we proceed. 
 
 Meantime I shall confine myself to an 
 investigation regarding the existence of the 
 Tempter. 
 
 That any such wicked spirit as the devil is 
 
6 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 represented to be, should exist in the universe 
 of God, I frankly admit to be indeed a great 
 mystery, and one which it may be impossible 
 at present to explain. But for myself, I can- 
 not see it to be a greater mystery than the 
 existence of wicked persons in this redeemed 
 world of light, of life, of glory. I can indeed 
 conceive of beings, inhabiting a world into 
 which no evil had ever entered, who, through 
 faith and obedience, possessed such a know- 
 ledge of God and of the glory of his character 
 and purposes, as to make it difficult for them 
 to imagine how any responsible or rational 
 beings elsewhere who had heard of the same 
 living God, should not share their feelings 
 of reverential awe and profound admiration 
 towards Him ; and whose scepticism, accord- 
 
THE TEMPTER. 
 
 ingly, if they had any, would not be as to 
 the possible existence elsewhere of others 
 like-minded, but of persons anywhere who 
 could be differently minded from themselves. 
 But that we, in a world like this, in which 
 every one who has ever existed, but One, has 
 been a sinner ; in which temptation is rife ; in 
 which vice often so triumphs over virtue as 
 to make some question the supremacy of law 
 and government in the universe ; — a world 
 where iniquity runs riot, and genius fails to 
 exhaust itself in ever creating new and hor- 
 rible forms of it ; — that the inhabitants, I say, 
 of such a world as this should be sceptical, 
 not as to the existence of good angels or of 
 holy persons in any other sphere, but as to 
 the possible existence of personalities as 
 
5 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 wicked even as themselves, seems to me to 
 imply a degree of moral blindness almost 
 sufficient of itself to suggest the existence of 
 a wicked Tempter to account for it. 
 
 But after all conjectures on the subject are 
 exhausted, we must fall back upon authentic 
 information, if there be any such, as to the 
 existence of a personal evil spirit ; — just as 
 we seek information from the honest and 
 competent traveller regarding the existence 
 and character of the inhabitants of some dis- 
 tant island, or of some hitherto unknown por- 
 tion of the globe, which he alone has visited. 
 Now it is a remarkable fact that our chief 
 sources of information regarding the existence 
 of the devil are the Gospel narratives, includ- 
 ing not only the teaching of Jesus Christ Him- 
 
THE TEMPTER. 
 
 self, but also of the Apostles who spoke in his 
 name. Not in the Old Testament do we hear 
 most about Satan. It is not indeed silent 
 regarding his existence, for he appears in 
 the very first record of the history of man ; 
 and there are several indications in other 
 portions of it, as in the Book of Job, proving a 
 knowledge of and current belief in his being. 
 But yet the fact remains, that to Jesus and 
 his Apostles we owe the principal part of our 
 knowledge of the devil and his work. And 
 here let me say that it is impossible to ac- 
 count for this on the supposition of a personal 
 evil spirit being the creation, as many allege 
 it to be, of a dark and therefore superstitious 
 age. It is quite true that a rude and bar- 
 barous people, contending, as such a people 
 
lO THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 must ever do, with such adverse powers of 
 nature as hunger and thirst, storm and dark- 
 ness, disease and death, are likely to attribute 
 all these to some present and unseen power 
 opposed to man's happiness. And hence the 
 demon-worship and ** religion " of fear which 
 has everywhere existed, and the offering up 
 of human sacrifices, as in the case of some 
 of the aboriginal tribes in India and in 
 various other places, who seek thus to 
 appease wrath by satisfying the love of 
 suffering attributed to the deity of hate, 
 whom they consequently fear and worship. 
 
 But if such a prince of darkness be the 
 creation only of persons living in darkness 
 — if such an object of fear from without be 
 nothing but the personification of supersti- 
 
THE TEMPTER. TI 
 
 tious fear within — why is there so little said 
 about the devil in the Old Testament, and in 
 those early and comparatively ignorant and 
 dark ages ? How is it, on this supposition, 
 that our knowledge of the wicked one comes, 
 as I have said, from those to whom we owe 
 all our highest knowledge of the character of 
 God and of spiritual religion ; whose mission 
 was one of love, to deliver men from the 
 bondage of ignorance, "the power of dark- 
 ness," and from the " fear which hath tor- 
 ment?" Why is it that the Apostle John — 
 of all the Apostles ! — so eminently spiritual 
 in his teaching, so eminently the apostle 
 of love, should allude so frequently to the 
 evil one, and be the author of the book 
 of Revelation, which, whatever may be its 
 
12 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 meaning, assumes from first to last the 
 existence and mighty power of the devil ? 
 All this can be accounted for on the sup- 
 position only that there is such a being, 
 whom it was not for man's good, however, to 
 have more clearly revealed to him, until the 
 time came when there was also revealed the 
 Lord of light, of life, and of peace, who came 
 to destroy his works, and to furnish us with 
 weapons by which we can resist and " over- 
 come the wicked one." 
 
 The earliest fact recorded by three of the 
 (| Evangelists is this one of the temptation of our 
 Lord by the devil. Our Lord Himself, in all his 
 teaching, declares the existence, agency, and 
 power of the devil : — as when He tells us, for 
 example, that he " was the enemy that sowed 
 
THE TEMPTER. 13 
 
 the tares ;" that the tares " are the children of 
 the wicked one ;" that " the devil takes the 
 good seed of the word out of the heart," &c. We 
 must add, moreover, his testimony regarding 
 the influence of wicked spirits in connection 
 with demoniacal possessions. For whatever 
 be the history of those mysterious forms of 
 suffering, it can hardly be questioned that 
 Jesus Christ, in speaking of and dealing with 
 them, gives us the impression that He was 
 not coming in contact with mere forms of 
 physical or moral disease, but with wicked 
 personal spirits, with whom He held most 
 significant conversations, and who were driven 
 out of wretched sufferers, in one case, at least, 
 entering by his permission into other bodies. 
 Quite in harmony with this is the history of 
 
14 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 these demons having — but only after the 
 ij temptation — confessed Him as the "Son of 
 God." For example, in the fourth chapter of 
 St. Luke, which records the temptation of our 
 Lord, we have the two following narratives : 
 — "And in the synagogue there was a man 
 which had a spirit of an unclean devil, and 
 cried out with a loud voice, saying, Let us 
 alone ; what have we to do with thee, thou 
 ^^ Jesus of Nazareth ? art thou come to destroy 
 us ? I know thee who thou art ; the Holy 
 One of God." "And devils also came out 
 of many, crying out, and saying. Thou art 
 Christ, the Son of God. And He, rebuking 
 them, suffered them not to speak : for they 
 knew that He was Christ." And the life of 
 Christ on earth is described as being that of 
 
THE TEMPTER. 15 
 
 1^ 
 
 one who '* went about doing good, and healing 
 all that were oppressed of the devil." 
 
 If we pass from the testimony of Jesus to the 
 other records of the New Testament, we have 
 
 the same evidence continued. In the book of 
 
 » 
 
 Acts, which has been called the Gospel of the 
 Spirit, dealing, as it chiefly does, with the 
 work of the Holy Ghost in the church after 
 Pentecost, there are many references to the 
 existence and power of the devil. When 
 the Christian church was being organised, 
 "Satan" is said to have "filled the heart of \\ 
 Ananias to lie." The work of an Apostle is 
 described as turning the people ^-'from the 
 power of Satan to God." In all the Epistles 
 too there are constant references to the same 
 wicked one. He is called "the god of this 
 
l6 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD, 
 
 _ * 
 
 world," " the prince of darkness," " the liar 
 and murderer from the beginning," our " ad- 
 versary the devil," &c. St. John says, " He 
 that committeth sin is of the devil ; for the 
 devil sinneth from the beginning. For this 
 purpose the Son of God was manifested, that 
 he might destroy the works of the devil ;" 
 and he speaks of young men who were strong, 
 and had therefore " overcome ' the wicked 
 one." In the book of Revelation, which 
 professes, amongst other things, to deliver 
 messages to the churches from Jesus Christ, 
 Smyrna is called a " synagogue of Satan," 
 and Pergamos, " Satan's seat," " where Satan 
 dwelleth." It is said of him there, " Behold, 
 the devil shall cast some of you into prison, 
 that ye may be tried ; and ye shall have 
 
THE TEMPTER. I7 
 
 tribulation ten days : be thou faithful unto 
 death, and I will give thee a crown of life." 
 And the millennium is ushered in by the 
 "binding of the dragon, that old serpent 
 which is the devil and Satan." And thus 
 revelation begins and ends with the recogni- 
 tion of his existence, wickedness, and power. 
 
 Now, the Bible professes to reveal facts, 
 not to create them. It reveals them as the 
 telescope reveals things otherwise unseen — 
 as the existence, for example, of a distant 
 foe. We may reject the testimony of Scrip- 
 ture, and by some process explain away 
 all the grounds of our faith in the exist- 
 ence of the devil ; but we do not thereby 
 get quit of what is just as awful. All that 
 is earthly, sensual, and devilish in human 
 
 C 
 
l8 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 nature ; all the evil which our conscience 
 cannot but condemn ; all the evil which is 
 from without and manifested through the 
 senses — the spiritual wickedness of malice, 
 envy, jealousy, lying, selfishness, and hatred 
 to God and man — all these would still remain 
 as facts in human history. Bible or no 
 Bible, devil or no devil, sin exists in every 
 form, in every city and village, among every 
 class, blinding us, hardening us, and making 
 " the king's sons embrace dunghills.'* Nay, 
 it does not lessen, but rather increases the 
 mystery of evil, and makes us more hopeless 
 of our deliverance from it, to deny the exist- 
 ence of a wicked tempter from without us, 
 though working in us, an alien to man, an 
 enemy who hath done, and still does this 
 
THE TEMPTER. I9 
 
 injury to us. To account for evil by an 
 inherent wickedness in human nature — a 
 taint natural to it and incurable — a doom 
 under which we must lie — is surely not more 
 in harmony with experience, with our hopes 
 of ultimate good, than the existence of a 
 personal evil spirit, who tempts to evil, and 
 seeks to destroy our souls as surely as he 
 sought to destroy that of Jesus ! 
 
 But the silence of Scripture regarding 
 Satan is as remarkable as the information it 
 gives about him. Outside the Bible we have 
 descriptions of him conceived among a rude 
 people, in rude ages, and embodied in song 
 and legend, calculated not so much to in- 
 spire fear as to excite to laughter or con- 
 tempt, — descriptions in which the evil one is 
 
20 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 represented as a half wicked, half idiotic crea- 
 ture, the bugbear of peasants and of children, 
 with a certain amount also of playful cunning 
 and a sense of the ludicrous. We have also 
 creations of a higher and very different type, 
 like that of the fallen angel of Milton, the 
 grand personification of majestic power and 
 high intellect without love, choosing evil for 
 its good, and suffering the punishment of 
 ** everlasting fire;" or like that of the Me- 
 phistophiles of *' Faust," with his intellectual 
 wiles, bitter sarcasm, and mean falsehood, 
 communicating with lofty and unseen powers 
 of good and evil, and yet, if we may say it, 
 little better than an unprincipled rouL But 
 no such details are given in Scripture. Nor 
 does Revelation answer questions regarding 
 
THE TEMPTER. 2I 
 
 Satan which man's curiosity might naturally 
 prompt, such as : — What are the conditions 
 of his existence, the degree of his responsi- 
 bility, or the extent of his power ? In what 
 respect does he differ from human beings who 
 possess soul, spirit, and body ? What is his 
 past history ? How does he stand related to 
 the Son of God, " by whom all things were 
 created, visible and invisible?" When and 
 how did he fall ? By what thoughts and con- 
 ceptions was he induced to attempt to solve 
 the problem of life without God ? What dis- 
 plays have been made through vast ages of 
 the sparing mercy, forbearance, and goodness 
 of God towards him ? What is the nature of 
 his present sufferings, and what are the 
 motives which sustain his undying energy r 
 
22 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 What is his ultimate destiny ? Or again : — 
 What are demons or evil spirits ? What is 
 their origin, history, conditions of existence, 
 or their powers and capacities for good and 
 evil ? How do they now stand related to 
 Satan, to man, and to God ? What powers 
 have they ? How could such personalities 
 dwell in and speak through man r How 
 are they employed ? These and similar 
 questions are left as yet in the region of the 
 unknown. We may speculate about them, 
 and form opinions about them, which pos- 
 sibly may be in harmony w^ith fact ; but God 
 in his wisdom, as I have said, has seen meet 
 to withhold from us any such information 
 regarding them. He adjusts the light on 
 this as on other subjects to our eye, to meet 
 
THE TEMPTER. 
 
 23 
 
 the practical necessities of our journey ; to 
 save us on the one hand from superstitious 
 fear, and on the other from such ignorance 
 as might produce self-sufficient carelessness. 
 But surely all He has revealed is calculated 
 to inspire us with a sense of the solemnity of 
 life, to deepen our convictions of the dangers 
 of temptation, and to make us cling with 
 greater earnestness to Christ as our guide, 
 our defence, and only sure refuge and de- 
 liverer from evil. 
 
 Let me here remark that we are apt to fall 
 into two extremes regarding the power of 
 Satan — by either exaggerating it, or making 
 light of it. As to the first tendency : many 
 seem to me to invest him with nothing short 
 of the attributes of God, as if he were 
 
24 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 omniscient and omnipotent; cognizant, like 
 the Almighty, of the condition of every heart, 
 " searching and trying the reins of the chil- 
 dren of men," and at the same time suggest- 
 ing every evil thought tip every human b^ing ! 
 
 Now, whatever power Satan as a wicked 
 spirit may possess, still let us never forget 
 that his power is limited. 
 
 It is limited, in the first place, by the fact 
 that he is a mere creature. As a creature, 
 therefore, he can never possess any of the 
 prerogatives of Deity. "Whatever knowledge 
 he may have, wherever his presence may be, 
 in whatever way he may act, in these, and 
 in all other respects, he is still a mere crea- 
 ture, limited in every faculty and in every 
 power as truly as a child is. 
 
THE TEMPTER. 25 
 
 Secondly, his power is limited by the pro- I 
 •vidence of God. He is infinitely more under 
 God's inspection and control — and no doubt 
 under that of the holy angels also — than the 
 villain who is thoroughly known to and con- 
 stantly watched by the best and most power- 
 ful government on earth. The Lord knows 
 when and how to keep back his wicked hand ; 
 to arrest his wicked actions; to frustrate all 
 his wicked plans; to banish him into dark- 
 ness, and to say to him, " Hitherto shalt thou 
 come, but no farther." There are laws which 
 govern moral as well as physical storms. He 
 is an independent power, no doubt, in so far 
 as any personal spirit is so, inasmuch as he 
 has a will, and therefore can do that which is 
 against the will of God, as every act of a 
 
26 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 sinful will is. But he is not therefore an 
 irresponsible power, nor can he ever change 
 or defy God's eternal laws by which he is 
 bound. Nor is he an uncontrollable power, 
 but is under the government of Jesus Christ, 
 to whom as Mediator all power is now given. 
 Although he is essentially evil, the Lord will 
 yet so control him, while permitting him to 
 do his worst, as to make him the occasion of 
 good. He can make the power of this enemy 
 the occasion of training his own soldiers to 
 endure hardness, and to become valiant in 
 fight; and He can make the very darkness of 
 his kingdom the occasion for displaying with 
 rhore brightness the glory of his own king- 
 dom of righteousness, peace, and joy ; and 
 He can make the very selfishness of the evil 
 
THE TEMPTER. 27 
 
 one the occasion of revealing his own glory of 
 love and of self-sacrifice both in Himself and 
 in the history of those who by grace share 
 the same spirit. Whatever, therefore, the 
 power of Satan may be, God's power alone 
 is supreme; whatever his hatred may be to 
 the cause of righteousness, God's love for it 
 is infinitely greater ; however subtle his wiles 
 may be, God's wisdom is infinitely deeper. 
 God and God alone, whose name is Love, is 
 the one ground for the existence, the one 
 security for the stability of the universe, the 
 one hope for the triumph of right over wrong. 
 Thus in everything and at all times, "greater 
 is He that is for us than he that is against us." 
 " The Lord reigneth ; let the earth rejoice ! " 
 "The Lord reigneth ; let the people tremble!" 
 
 / 
 
28 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 Again, Satan's power is limited by man's 
 will. This will he cannot force by the might 
 of all the powers of darkness. He may tempt 
 it, try to persuade it, bribe it, threaten it, lie 
 to it, and exhaust every means to gain its 
 consent, but so long as the " I will " or the 
 ** I will not '' commands the fortress and 
 refuses to yield to Satan, that fortress is 
 impregnable ! *' Resist the devil, and he will 
 
 i flee from you " — whoever thou art ! 
 
 Finally, his power is limited by the fact of 
 his wickedness. The eye of a spirit which 
 loves not the spiritual becomes blind to its 
 existence. The memory of a past holy affec- 
 tion cannot itself reproduce it : it becomes a 
 fact remembered only as belonging to the 
 past, but not therefore a possession for the 
 
THE TEMPTER. 29 
 
 present. What we cease to love in spiritual j 
 things we cease to understand. Thus it is 
 that unless a man is born again, and his 
 spiritual eye is opened, "he cannot see the 
 kingdom of God." *' The natural man re- 
 ceiveth not the things of the Spirit, for they 
 are foolishness to him, neither can he know 
 them, because they are spiritually discerned." 
 The evil eye, if I may so speak, sees only in 
 the dark. There Satan is at home, and quite 
 understands the forces which direct and the 
 things which attract those who, like him- 
 self, " prefer darkness to light." But the 
 kingdom of God, because of its brightness, 
 blinds him, so that it is practically to him 
 "a land of darkness, as darkness itself; and 
 of the shadow of death, without any order. 
 
 Y 
 
30 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 and where the light is as darkness " His 
 greatest puzzle, therefore, is a man who loves 
 God. He cannot comprehend, or, as w^e say, 
 make out such a consecrated soul, which sees 
 and rejoices in the glory of God, and is sub- 
 ject to his holy laws, freely choosing to be 
 governed by them, beholding God Himself 
 in their moral beauty and righteousness. To 
 such a mystery of iniquity as Satan, great 
 indeed must be the "mystery of godliness," 
 especially when that is revealed in God mani- 
 fest in the flesh ! Thus is the wicked one 
 limited in his power, because bound in chains 
 of darkness, the moral chains of his own dark 
 will and malignant passions — chains more 
 heavy and binding than those which all the 
 power of earth could forge from the iron of 
 
THE TEMPTER. 31 
 
 the everlasting hills. It is thus, too, that 
 even in this world the worst persons, though 
 not yet devilish, may become so saturated 
 with vice as almost to lose the capacity of 
 believing in good, and are therefore always 
 disposed to ridicule it as a pretence or hypo- 
 crisy, and the effect of mere circumstances. 
 Such persons attribute the difference between 
 themselves and others to natural tempe- 
 rament, or education, or anything rather 
 than an essential difference of character or 
 a different deliberate choice of the will. 
 Of the reality of invincible principle in any 
 one, and of the love of right as right, and 
 of God as God, they are sceptical, and assume 
 that every man has his price, by which he 
 could be purchased, did they only know him 
 
S2 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 or it. Their judgment regarding good men is 
 truly set forth in the picture of Satan in the 
 \^ Book of Job, where he is represented as 
 having no faith in the existence of any 
 genuine or unselfish love to God for his own 
 sake, but only for what He gives. " Put 
 forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and 
 his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy face." 
 Hence it is, too, that no greater mistakes 
 are made, no more unwise plans adopted, no 
 greater folly perpetrated, than by a wicked 
 spirit in the pursuit of evil or self-gratifica- 
 tion in defiance of the claims of righteous- 
 ness. For sin is confusion ; it is a " false 
 nature, and not in the harmony of things." 
 Starting with false means for a false end, 
 it mistakes the road ; and after pursuing it 
 
THE TEMPTER. 33 
 
 without a chart through mists of error, it ends 
 where it began, in falsehood and a sense of 
 bitter disappointment and failure. Whatever, 
 therefore, the power of Satan is, we may be 
 assured that there is no one more frequently 
 perplexed, or no being who makes more 
 gross mistakes. His most cunningly-devised 
 schemes ever prove the very means of his 
 being in the end baffled and overcome when 
 met by the simplicity of truth and righteous- 
 ness. 
 
 But if for these and other reasons we ought 
 not to exaggerate the power of Satan, so 
 let us beware of underrating it. We dare 
 not treat the teaching of Christ and his 
 Apostles as if they encouraged gross super- 
 stition and narrated childish dreams ; for 
 
 D 
 
34 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 assuredly to them the Church owes its belief 
 regarding Satan. If this be indeed a fact 
 resting on divine authority, and if he who 
 tempted our Lord has now such power on 
 earth as warrants his being called the " god 
 I of this world," and is still, in some way or 
 other, man's '* tempter," " adversary," and 
 ** accuser," " working in the children of dis- 
 obedience ; " — if it be a fact that " we wrestle 
 not with flesh and blood only, but with prin- 
 cipalities and powers," surely then it becomes 
 us to act in conformity with such a solemn 
 revelation, and to " put on the whole armour 
 of God," that we " may be able to stand in 
 the evil day." If there be " wiles of the devil " 
 with reference to ourselves, ought we to dis- 
 believe them or to " resist " them r If there 
 
THE TEMPTER. 35 
 
 be " snares," ought we not to avoid them ? If 
 there be "devices," dare we be "ignorant" of 
 them ? If he " goes about as a roaring lion 
 seeking whom he may devour," does it be- 
 come us to despise the warning, or " to be 
 sober and vigilant?" It is not necessary for 
 us, or the Lord would have given us the in- 
 formation, to know when Satan is present or 
 hoWy or in what circumstances he may tempt 
 us, or to attempt to distinguish between what 
 may be suggested — although resisted — by the 
 evil in ourselves, and what may come to us 
 directly or indirectly from Satan or his angels, 
 or his many agents seen and unseen. Enough 
 to know, for all practical purposes, the facts 
 revealed about him as our foe, and of our 
 dangers from evil without as well as from 
 
36 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 within, in order to induce us to avail ourselves 
 of the only means of defence, deliverance, 
 and final victory by holding fast our confi- 
 dence in God and in the richness of his 
 grace ; by walking circumspectly, seeing the 
 days are full of evil ; by watching unto prayer ; 
 by being humble and meek ; by abiding in 
 Christ as our life, and following Him as our 
 light ; and by ever yielding ourselves to the 
 Holy Spirit of God, who alone is always 
 with us and in us. 
 
 If instead of this we despise the teaching 
 and warning of our Lord and his Apostles, 
 and assume that we are better informed than 
 they were regarding man's dangers and man's 
 enemies, and that our religion is more spi- 
 ritual, more rational, more *' liberal," more in 
 
THE TEMPTER. 37 
 
 accordance with the truth and reality of 
 things, than theirs was, we may do so ; but 
 it is at our own peril. And our peril is not 
 small if, by wilful ignorance or daring pre- 
 sumption, we become thus entangled in the 
 very net which Satan has spread for us, and 
 fall into the very pit which he has dug 
 for us ! 
 
 I conclude this paper in words, which I 
 adopt as my own, spoken by one who will 
 not be charged with an acceptance of mere 
 traditional beliefs or of conventionalisms : — 
 '* I cannot conceal my conviction, the result 
 of my own experience, that your minds will 
 be in a simpler, healthier state, that you will 
 win a real victory over some of the most 
 plausible conventionalisms of this age, that 
 
38 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 you will grasp the truths you have more 
 firmly, and be readier to receive any you have 
 not yet apprehended, when you have courage 
 to say, * We do verily believe that we have 
 a world, a flesh, and A devil to fight with/''* 
 
 * Maurice's " Theological Essays," p. 54. 
 
II. 
 
 WHY OUR LORD WAS TEMPTED. 
 
 " Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted 
 of the devil." — Matt, iv, i. 
 
 'T^HE baptism of our Lord, and the tempta- 
 tion which immediately succeeded it, 
 marked a new era in his life. Hitherto that 
 life had indeed been a wonderful one, though 
 not such as was likely to attract much notice 
 from the world. Thirty years before, angels, 
 with a great hallelujah chorus of " Glory to " 
 God!" had announced his birth to the shep- 
 
40 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 herds as they watched their flocks at mid- 
 night on the silent hills ; and the magi 
 had come from the East, presenting to Him 
 tribute as a King. Then followed the mas- 
 sacre of Bethlehem, the flight of the Holy 
 Family to Egypt, their return, and the quiet, 
 unobtrusive life at Nazareth. Years pass, 
 and nothing breaks in upon the ordinary up- 
 bringing of a Jewish child by pious parents, 
 save the scene in the temple when He was 
 twelve years of age, and when "all who heard 
 him were astonished at his understanding 
 and answers," — but at nothing more. Nearly 
 twenty years more pass, and the eye of man 
 could discern in Christ only a carpenter's son, 
 occupying a humble workman's place, labour- 
 ing conscientiously at his daily employment, 
 
WHY OUR LORD WAS TEMPTED. 4I 
 
 attending the synagogue, and performing all 
 his public and private duties as a true Israel- 
 ite ; for " He was made under the law," and 
 obeyed its precepts, moral and ceremonial. 
 We need hardly remark, however, that this 
 period was not lost to Himself or to the 
 world. As a true man, He was acquiring ex- 
 perience of those conditions of the humanity 
 in which He lived, — of the joys and sorrows, 
 the struggles and trials, the lights and 
 shadows, which make up the sum of its 
 ordinary life. He was daily trained, by the 
 habit of holy obedience, to do his Father's 
 will in everything, and in what are called 
 small as well as in what are called great 
 things. The tree in winter, when all is so 
 dead and still in the frosty calm, when not 
 
42 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 a leaf hangs from a branch, and no sign of 
 life is apparent in a single twig, is yet quietly 
 laying up a strength which will enable it to 
 brave many a storm, and bring forth its 
 blossom and fruit in due time. And so it 
 was with the man Christ Jesus, whose spirit 
 was silently built up and perfected in Na- 
 zareth by all the manifold appliances, from 
 within and from without, of God's wise and 
 loving education. Sweet thoughts refreshed 
 his heart like dew ; touches of sunlight 
 quickened his spiritual life ; sombre shadows 
 of thoughtful sorrow brooded over Him from 
 all He saw and knew ; storms and tempests, 
 too, such as ever sweep across life's desert, 
 shook his being, but did not move it from the 
 rock of ages. In one word, this soul, 
 
WHY OUR LORD WAS TEMPTED. 43 
 
 originally holy, harmless, and undefiled, was 
 made loftier, deeper, wider, grander, by the 
 experience which He gained every day as a 
 man ; so that this uneventful period stands 
 intimately connected with the solemn mo- 
 ment in his history when He is led by the 
 Spirit to be tempted. For now He must 
 pass from being known only as the son of 
 Mary, the brother of James and Joses, the 
 citizen of Nazareth, the pious Israelite, to his 
 work as the great Messiah. 
 
 The fulness of time thus came when the |, 
 Spirit led him from Nazareth to the Jordan 
 to be baptized. John was then the great 
 preacher in Judea, and was acknowledged as 
 a prophet. Men of every rank attended his 
 ministry. Even Herod feared him, and was 
 
44 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 influenced by him. Multitudes followed him. 
 But the Baptist, with the truth, humility, and 
 self-sacrifice of a genuine messenger sent 
 from God, joyfully confessed that he himself 
 was not the light, and that he only directed 
 men's eyes to it ; that he was not the Christ, 
 but only one who prepared the way for Him. 
 He proclaimed the divine dignity of Jesus ; 
 acknowledged that he was unworthy as a 
 servant to loose the very latchets of his shoes. 
 With noble self-denying love he rejoiced in 
 confessing that " He must increase, and I must 
 decrease." He pointed Jesus out as the Lamb 
 of God who was to take away the sin of the 
 world. " Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to 
 Jordan unto John, to be baptized of him. But 
 John forbade him, saying, I have need to be 
 
WHY OUR LORD WAS TEMPTED. 45 
 
 M 
 
 baptized of thee, and comest thou to me ? And 
 Jesus answering said unto him, Suffer it to be 
 so now : for thus it becometh us to fulfil all 
 righteousness : then he suffered him. And 
 Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straight 
 way out of the water : and, lo, the heavens 
 were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit 
 of God descending like a dove, and lighting 
 upon him : and, lo, a voice from heaven, say- 
 ing. This is my beloved Son, in whom I am 
 well pleased. Then was Jesus led up of the '' 
 Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of 
 the devil." 
 
 Admitting that we are ignorant of many of 
 the reasons for the occurrence of such a great 
 event in God's kingdom as the temptation of 
 our Lord, yet there are several circum • 
 
46 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 Stances which in themselves throw much 
 light upon this remarkable event. 
 
 Let us consider some of these. 
 
 It surely need not surprise us that Jesus, 
 as a responsible being, should be sub- 
 jected to temptation. The wonder w^ould 
 have been his exemption from this kind of 
 trial. No member of the human race has 
 been so exempted, from Adam, made pure 
 and holy, after God's image, down through 
 all his descendants. The angels have been, 
 and possibly still are, tempted — how it is un- 
 necessary at present to speculate — and some 
 of them have yielded to temptation, for they 
 " kept not their first estate." 
 
 And if all created and responsible beings 
 have, as far as we know, been thus tried, 
 
WHY OUR LORD WAS TEMPTED. 47 
 
 from Gabriel, it may be, before the throne to 
 Lazarus before the rich man's door; and if 
 there is not one soldier in the army of the 
 Lord of Hosts whose courage, steadfastness, 
 and endurance have not been thus proved ; 
 and if there is not one bright and radiant 
 spirit rejoicing before God who has not evi- 
 denced in such a way as puts it beyond a 
 doubt that he prefers God to all other persons 
 and things ; does it seem strange that Jesus 
 of Nazareth, the Son of Man, should have 
 been subjected also to a trial which would 
 prove his obedi-ence, and be the occasion of 
 giving glory to God ? 
 
 Before further considering the special rea- 
 sons why He of all men should be subjected 
 
48 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 to temptation, one or two preliminary points 
 demand our notice. 
 
 The first is, that Jesus was led by the Spirit 
 to be tempted, and did not Himself enter into 
 temptation. Now this was characteristic of 
 his whole life, and an instance of the prin 
 ciple by which He was always guided, and 
 from which He never swerved. It is expressed 
 in the words, " I come to do Thy will, O 
 God ! " The one desire, we might venture to 
 call it the passionate desire of his spirit, was, 
 " Father, glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son also 
 may glorify Thee !" But with the confidence 
 and obedience of a Son He ever left it to the 
 Holy Spirit of wisdom— of whom Jesus said, 
 " He will glorify me " — to determine and 
 arrange the outward circumstances or forms 
 
WHY OUR LORD WAS TEMPTED. 49 
 
 in which He the Son should glorify the Father 
 and do his will. His race of obedience Jesus 
 would always run, but He left it to God to 
 choose the course, so to speak, whether long 
 or short, rough or smooth, along steep and 
 dizzy heights, or through roaring floods. 
 And now it pleased the Spirit to lead the 
 Son into the wilderness, there to be tempted 
 of the devil, and there to glorify the Father ; 
 and the Son meekly followed. 
 
 Again, He was led into the wilderness. 
 What wilderness we are not informed. Pro- 
 bably it was the desert of Judea. This is a 
 most dreary and desolate region. I have 
 trod the awful solitudes of the ice world in 
 the recesses of the higher Alps, have seen 
 the waste of the desert sand, have traversed 
 
 E 
 
50 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 apparently boundless and empty plains, and 
 have experienced the loneliness of the dark 
 Highland moors and inland lakes, abandoned 
 to the spirit of solitude, with no blade of grass, 
 nor song of bird, nor hum of bee to give life 
 to their rocky shores and overhanging preci- 
 pices ; but never have I seen any spot on 
 earth which so impressed my imagination 
 with all that was wild, desolate, and weird 
 as the desert gorges and broken uplands 
 which connect the Dead Sea with Jerusalem. 
 It looked to me verily as 
 
 " A waste land where no one comes, 
 Or had come since the making of the world." 
 
 To this wilderness Jesus was led to be tempted 
 of the devil ; and He was there " with the 
 wild beasts," and fasted for forty days. 
 
WHY OUR LORD WAS TEMPTED. 51 
 
 Once more, he was led to be tempted tni- 
 medtafely after his baptism^ so that these two 
 events are connected not merely in the order 
 of time, but also in the order of God's wise 
 and holy providence. A t his bapt ism God's 
 Spirit wa s giv en Him without measure, and 
 He was endowed with all the gifts necessary 
 for the accomplishing of his mighty work. 
 It is to begin this great mediatorial work He 
 is led by the Spirit of wisdom into the wilder- 
 ness. A voice from God the Father declared, 
 " This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well 
 pleased;" and now as a Son He is to glorify 
 his Father. The Baptist, moreover, had de- 
 clared Him to be the Lamb of God which was 
 to take away the sins of the world ; and now 
 He is led to suffer in soul, spirit, and body. 
 
52 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 We are now better prepared to consider 
 more in detail the reasons why our Lord was 
 led to be tempted. 
 w I . He was tempted in order that the reality 
 and glory of his Sonship might be made mani- 
 fest. His Sonship is the chief corner stone 
 on which the whole temple is reared. Those 
 who are called to build upon it the house in 
 which they hope to dwell for ever, must needs 
 know how strong it is, and how able to bear 
 the superstructure on which the Church perils 
 its eternal existence ! Its strength and en- 
 durance will therefore be evidenced by trial. 
 Here is the Saviour who has come to glorify 
 the righteous law of love and holy obedience 
 towards God, witnessing in his own life to 
 the reality of faith in God, as being trust- 
 
WHY OUR LORD WAS TEMPTED. 53 
 
 worthy in all circumstances, even the most 
 trying possible. Here is one man, at least, 
 who comes to show what true loyalty to the 
 King, and what true filial affection to the 
 Father are — one man who is to shine forth 
 amidst universal darkness as the true light 
 of life ! From eternity that Divine Son had 
 ever been the object of his Father's love, a 
 love which he returned with heart, soul, 
 and strength. He had, moreover, " created 
 all things," and therefore had created man 
 after his own image, in order that man 
 should share his own character and blessed- 
 ness, by being, like Himself, a true son to 
 the Father. But man fell by seeking to 
 become a God to himself. Now the Divine 
 
 Son becomes manifest in humanity. '* God 
 
54 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 sent his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh ; " 
 and in the flesh He will reveal what true 
 Sonship is, what it is to love, and obey, and 
 rejoice in the Father. He will reveal in 
 humanity what humanity was created for, 
 and what it is capable of becoming so as to 
 fulfil its chief end — that of glorifying God 
 and enjoying Him for ever. And the reality 
 of this Sonship — the beauty and excellency 
 of that with which God was well pleased, 
 and which alone, in the nature of things, 
 can please Him as the Father — all this 
 will be proved and made manifest by trial. 
 Evil in its most powerful and subtle forms 
 will be permitted to assail Him in circum- 
 stances the most trying, that so it may be 
 made manifest to all intelligent beings how 
 
WHY .OUR LORD WAS TEMPTED. 55 
 
 He was tempted like any of his brethren, yet 
 " without sin." No one will be able to say 
 of Him that He was like an exotic, so pro- 
 tected from every chilling blast that He could 
 not but become fair and beautiful, yet that He 
 lacked the strength and capacity to endure 
 the ungenial climate, the unkindly soil, and 
 the adverse circumstances of this rough and 
 stormy world. The tender plant was carried 
 to the wilderness, and subjected to such a trial 
 as would destroy any life but that divine life 
 which it possessed. This the temptation mani- 
 fested and developed and strengthened until 
 it became a plant of renown whose leaves 
 are for the healing of the nations. " Ye have 
 heard of the patience of Job." But should 
 we have ever heard of it, unless Job had 
 
56 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 been tried, and his patience proved, and his 
 faith in God thus made manifest ? 
 
 2. Jesus was led to be tempted that as the 
 second Adam he might redeem vtan from the 
 evil to which he was subjected by the fall of 
 the first Adam. That we have '* all sinned 
 and come short of the glory of God/' and 
 that our nature has imbibed a deadly poison, 
 and is prone to evil, are facts to which con- 
 science and history alike testify. How deep 
 and deadly our disease is, how like a foul 
 leprosy it has touched our whole being, we 
 never can fully understand here. We are too 
 sinful to know how sinful we are. Revelation 
 not only confirms the truth that this evil is 
 in us, it also gives us the history of its 
 origin in the overthrow of our first parents 
 
WHY OUR LORD WAS TEMPTED. 57 
 
 by the devil. But how is the evil to be 
 cured ? How are we to be delivered from 
 guilt and sin and rescued from the power of 
 the evil one r By Jesus Christ only, who has 
 come as the second Head of our race ! He 
 was a true man, his nature being essentially 
 the same as ours, bone of our bone, and flesh 
 of our flesh, horn a brother, yet — blessed be 
 God! — "without sin/' He came in "the 
 likeness of sinful flesh ; " but his flesh was 
 not sinful. It was " a holy thing," because 
 " conceived of the Holy Ghost,'' as well as 
 " born of a woman." This Jesus will prove 
 that sin is an alien thing to human nature as 
 created by God — that it originated in a power 
 without — that " an enemy had done this." As 
 man He will meet Satan, and as man over- 
 
58 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 come him, and glorify God in that same 
 nature which had dishonoured Him, and thus 
 atone for the evil done, by presenting to God, 
 as the head of the race, the living sacrifice, 
 well -pleasing unto Him, of a perfect Son, 
 and therefore a perfect Brother. By so doing 
 Jesus will also obtain power by which He 
 can deliver from the enemy every man who 
 w411 trust Him, and will accept of his life, 
 and be like-minded with Himself, and will 
 make him more than conqueror — and that too 
 by the same simple but omnipotent weapons of 
 faith and love by which He Himself overcame 
 the wicked one. But can this Jesus overcome 
 Satan ? This will be seen ! A battle will be 
 fought, not with carnal weapons but spiritual, 
 not between omnipotent force and creature 
 
WHY OUR LORD WAS TEMPTED. 59 
 
 force, but between right and wrong, between 
 the creature choosing God and obeying God 
 and the creature opposing God and choosing 
 self, between the head and representative of 
 good everywhere and the head and representa- 
 tive of evil everywhere ; and if the Righteous 
 Head gain the victory through the might of 
 divine principle, He will be able to say to us, 
 " Greater is he that is for you than all who 
 are against you/' *' Be of good cheer, I have 
 overcome the w^orld." "The prince of this 
 world hath been cast out." 
 
 3. Jesus was tempted that, as our Deli- 
 verer, He might become experimefitally ac- 
 quainted with the evil of sin ^ with the character 
 and power of the tempter, and with all our 
 spiritual trials. When we remember that 
 
6o THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 Satan is man's greatest, most constant, most 
 subtle, and most dangerous enemy, surely we 
 see it to have been a most wise thing, as it 
 was a most merciful one for us, that Jesus, 
 our brother man, like a second David, should 
 encounter this enemy, and submit to be tried 
 by all his most cunning wiles ; that He should 
 learn from his own experience all his most 
 masterly plans of battle, and measure the 
 strength and sharpness of his most powerful 
 weapons ; that during forty days his very soul 
 should descend, as it were, into hell, so that, 
 " He Himself having suffered being thus 
 tempted" to the uttermost limits of the pos- 
 sible. He might acquire such a knowledge of 
 evil as would enable Him the better *' to suc- 
 cour those who are tempted." We are now 
 
WHY OUR LORD WAS TEMPTED. 6l 
 
 assured, for our strength and comfort, that 
 " we have not an High Priest who cannot 
 be touched with a feeling of our infirmities, 
 but was in all points tempted like as we are, 
 yet without sin," and knows, therefore, our 
 need, and how best to supply it. 
 \/ 4. The temptation of our Lord was a chief 
 eleme7it in his sufferings for us as our Mediator. 
 I do not say that the Spirit of God led Him 
 to be tempted in order that He should suffer 
 merely for the sake of suffering; for God 
 cannot possibly love suffering as such. He 
 can love it only as a condition for obtaining, 
 or as the necessary result of manifesting, that 
 moral good and glory which alone He loves. 
 Suffering, however great, when resulting from 
 acts of wilful and persistent wickedness, we 
 
62 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 may pity, but cannot admire. We attach no 
 value, for their own sakes, to the mere suffer- 
 ing unto death which even the patriot or 
 martyr may endure in the defence of his 
 country or of truth, but only as these afford 
 the most powerful and touching evidence of 
 the self-sacrifice and nobility of character 
 which endured all in order to attain such 
 grand and worthy ends. It is thus we watch 
 with breathless admiration the brave man 
 who plunges into the fire and smoke of battle, 
 not because of the wounds which he may 
 receive, or the risk of death which he runs, 
 but because of the love of duty which in- 
 spires him in spite of suffering. Viewed in 
 this light the sufferings of Jesus were most 
 precious in the eyes of God. Every drop of 
 
WHY OUR LORD WAS TEMPTED. 63 
 
 his blood was as it were the brightest gem 
 which earth contained, and every groan which 
 rent his heart was the grandest music ever 
 heard by the angels in heaven, for these re- 
 vealed what He Himself was. It thus " became 
 Him, of whom and by whom are all things, 
 to make the Captain of our salvation perfect 
 through sufferings." He came to taste death 
 for every man ; and can we conceive any taste 
 of death, except his last cup on the cross, more 
 awful and terrible to his soul than this of which 
 He partook when in contact with the liar and 
 murderer, the enemy of all righteousness, for 
 forty days in the wilderness ! Let it be 
 remembered, too, that Jesus, from the perfec- 
 tion of his character, had a perfect knowledge 
 of evil. The darkness of sin cannot compre- 
 
64 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 hend the light of holiness, although the light 
 of holiness pierces and reveals the darkness 
 of sin. Hate and falsehood are blind to 
 the nature and excellence of love and truth, 
 although love and truth perceive the nature 
 and vileness of hate and falsehood. Thus 
 Jesus could not but see, with his pure spiritual 
 eye, the awful vision of sin, take in all its 
 magnitude, measure its lowest depths as re- 
 vealed in temptation, and suffer from it ac- 
 cordingly. And if we dare hazard anything 
 like conjecture on so awful a subject, might 
 not the mere spectacle of the wicked one add- 
 ing to his long career of persistent crime, 
 begun on earth by the destruction of the first 
 Adam, and continued with all the fierceness 
 of a roaring lion until this last hour of his life, 
 
WHY OUR LORD WAS TEMPTED. 65 
 
 when he reaches almost the utmost limits of 
 hate in his determination to destroy for ever 
 the kingdom of God on earth — might not the 
 horror of such a spectacle have been the 
 piore terrible to our Lord when it was 
 mingled with the knowledge of a time when 
 this being was created bright and holy, and 
 rejoiced in the light and love of a Father's 
 home r To a human heart the sight of a lost ^ 
 prodigal is sad ; but oh what is the bitterness v 
 and agony if in that face, stamped with the 
 curse of every vice and passion, we trace the 
 lineaments of a long-lost brother ! 
 
 When we consider these moral results to be 
 gained by the temptation of Jesus, apart from 
 others which might be suggested, we surely 
 
 F 
 
1/ 
 
 66 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 see sufficient reason why the wise and holy- 
 Spirit of God should have led Him to the 
 wilderness. 
 
 In all this transaction, moreover, we have 
 an illustration of that great mystery of evil, 
 which, without its ceasing to be evil, is yet 
 compelled to glorify God. Even sin will not 
 be permitted to run waste in the universe. 
 Hateful and detestable though it be, God will 
 make it subserve the cause of righteousness, 
 and the wrath of Satan, as well as of man, 
 will be made to praise Him. Satan of his 
 own free will shall be permitted to tempt Job, 
 or to tempt Jesus ; but out of all the conse- 
 quences of his malice and hatred, good will 
 come by the overruling providence and grace 
 of God. And this is true of the temptation of 
 
WHY OUR LORD WAS TEMPTED. 67 
 
 the whole race ; for though a blot and a curse, 
 it nevertheless has been made the occasion of 
 giving to redeemed men such a knowledge 
 and education as shall make them, probably, 
 the most wonderful beings in the whole 
 universe in the range of their moral experi- 
 ence and the grandeur of their character. 
 Like old and tried soldiers who have sur- 
 vived a long and terrible war, in which 
 many cowards have deserted and fled, the 
 veterans of the Church of Christ, who have 
 come out of great tribulation, and washed 
 their robes and made them white in the 
 blood of the Lamb, and who have been 
 more than conquerors through Him who 
 loved them, will, perhaps, be the noblest 
 specimens of courage and of discipline amidst 
 
68 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 the armies of the living God and the hosts of 
 heaven. 
 
 One other question here presents itself for 
 solution. Why, it has been asked, was our 
 Lord led into temptation, when from his very- 
 nature it was impossible for Him to fall ? 
 
 Now much of this apparent difficulty turns 
 upon the ambiguity of the words — Jesus could 
 not sin. We may affirm, for instance, of a 
 man whose tongue is paralysed, that he can- 
 not lie by speaking lying words, because that 
 is physically impossible ; we may affirm the 
 same thing of a noble and truthful character 
 — like Paul or John — because it is morally 
 impossible. On the other hand, we may 
 assert that it is possible for the best man 
 
WHY OUR LORD WAS TEMPTED. 69 
 
 on earth to lie, or steal, or murder, because 
 it is not absolutely impossible for him to 
 do so. Now, in one sense it was impossible 
 for Jesus to sin — not physically impossible, 
 for He had powers to act as He chose, but 
 because from his nature it was morally impos- 
 sible for Him to choose anything but what 
 was right. He could not because He would 
 not. The possibility of his sinning, if He chose , 
 to do so, the absence of any power from with- \ 
 out compelling his will to choose the right, is 
 as certain as that He was a real person. To 
 deny this is to lose sight altogether of the 
 reality of his humanity, absolutely to hinder ^ 
 us from receiving any good from his life, and 
 practically to deny that He was tempted in 
 all Doints like as we are. No doubt the actual 
 
70 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 result, viz., that of Christ resisting the tempter, 
 was as morally certain as though He had no 
 power to sin. But a moral result is a very dif- 
 ferent thing in kind from a physical result. 
 We attach praise or blame to the one, but 
 none to the other. I do not praise an animal 
 for following its instincts, or a machine for 
 accomplishing its work, or the stars for mov- 
 ing in their courses ; because I do not recog- 
 nise a will and consequent responsibility in 
 animal or mechanical forces. For the same 
 reason I do not attach moral value to the out- 
 ward acts of the pickpocket or housebreaker 
 when in prison. But when I praise and 
 admire ^hat is right in a creature, I thereby 
 recognise a will which might have acted 
 otherwise, but could not from its love of right. 
 
WHY OUR LORD WAS TEMPTED. 71 
 
 Accordingly, my admiration of a moral being 
 increases with his absolute freedom from sin. 
 The more I perceive how impossible it is for 
 him to lie, how alien his whole soul is from 
 all sympathy with the mean, the vile, the un- 
 just, the selfish, the more I admire him. And 
 hence we often express our high estimate of a 
 person by saying that we believe he could not; 
 do an unkind thing or a selfish thing, just as ' 
 we express our estimate of a bad person by 
 saying that he could not speak the truth, or 
 act with straightforward honesty. In both 
 cases we recognise the power by which they 
 are respectively controlled to be from within 
 — -Jn theirjarills. And thus it was with Jesus. 
 As a man, and because He was as man 
 necessarily fallible, He could have lost his 
 
72 
 
 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 faith in God, and ceased to obey. But, on the 
 other hand, as a holy man, with no sin or sin- 
 fulness in his nature, " holy, harmless, unde- 
 filedj.and separate from sinners," He so loved 
 God and trusted Him, had such a real heart- 
 felt delight in Him, that it was impossible for 
 Him to sin. Yet this impossibility no more 
 made the temptations less real than a bribe 
 suited to all the desires of human nature 
 would make the temptation to betray his 
 country less real to the true and loyal man, 
 whom it would nevertheless no more move 
 from duty than it could prevent the earth 
 from moving in order and beauty round the 
 sun. The first Adam was without sin, and 
 perfectly pure and holy, yet he was tempted 
 and fell. In one word, in the reality of 
 
WHY OUR LORD WAS TEMPTED. 73 
 
 Christ's humanity, and not, as some have 
 dared to assert, in the reality of his having " a 
 body oi fallen humanity," lay the possibility 
 of his being open to temptation. And that 
 humanity was as real as his Divinity. He 
 took upon Him the nature of the seed of 
 Abraham. Every feeling and affection, every 
 passion and desire -belonged to Him as man, 
 but were regulated according to the propor- 
 tion and order of God's beautiful kingdom. 
 Every nerve which vibrates in the human 
 frame, every hidden power which thrills the 
 heart, and fills the eye, which gnaws with 
 hunger, and tortures with thirst, were in his 
 body as in ours. Fatigue could weary his 
 limbs, and close his eyelids, and render the 
 weight of the cross unbearable. Dwelling in 
 
74 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 a wilderness, the fainting, the watching, and 
 the wild beasts, were as real to Him as to us ; 
 and infinitely more real to Him than they 
 could have been to us, because of his holiness, 
 were the sins which He beheld, the horror of 
 the temptations which He listened to, and the 
 spiritual agony which He endured during 
 those days of trial from the worst being in the 
 universe of God ! . 
 
III. 
 
 THE FIRST TEMPTATION. 
 
 '■ Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted 
 of the devil." — Matt. iv. i — 5. 
 
 /^^UR Lord began his great work as the 
 Messiah by a fast of forty days. Moses 
 as representing the Law, and the great pro- 
 phet Elijah, had each inaugurated a crisis in 
 the history of the kingdom of God by fasting 
 for a like period. And we cannot forget how 
 these three sufferers and conquerors appeared 
 together in glory on the mount of transfigura- 
 
76 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 tion, when God, as our Lord was about to 
 enter on the last great trial and manifestation 
 of his Sonship, revealed in his baptism by 
 blood on the cross, again testified, "This is 
 my beloved Son/' 
 
 We are too ignorant of the power of man's 
 spirit to subdue or triumph over the body, 
 to affirm that such fasts were necessarily 
 miraculous.* But these were certainly con- 
 nected spiritually with seasons of great trial, 
 as preparatory to the discharge of those 
 duties requiring the greatest courage and 
 
 * As to the number forty, which so often occurs in the Old 
 Testament in connection ^^^th remarkable events, such as the 
 forty days during which Moses and Elijah fasted ; the forty years 
 in the wilderness ; the forty days during which Moses inter- 
 ceded, &c., Archbishop Trench notices that " everywhere it is 
 the number or signature of penalty, affliction, confession, or the 
 punishment of sin." 
 
THE FIRST TEMPTATION. 77 
 
 endurance, the strongest faith in God, and 
 the most complete resignation to his will. 
 And in every age of the Church the holiest 
 men have in their experience found how 
 bodily fasting in secret before God, as a 
 remembrancer of sin, and in connection spe- 
 cially with its confession in prayer, has been 
 found most helpful in bracing the soul for 
 beginning any great work requiring faith and 
 patience. 
 
 St. Mark seems to state that our Lord was 
 tempted in some form or other, during the 
 whole of those forty days. But whether He 
 was or not, the three temptations of which 
 we have an account appear to have taken 
 place immediately after, or towards the end 
 of his fast, when the ecstasy of high and 
 
78 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 holy communion was over, which, while it 
 lasted, might without irreverence be de- 
 scribed as 
 
 " That blessed mood 
 In which the affections gently lead us on — 
 Until the breath of this corporeal frame, 
 And even the motion of our human blood, 
 Almost suspended, we are laid asleep 
 In body, and become a living soul." 
 
 Then it was that Satan came to Him. He 
 knew that Jesus was the Son of God; but 
 what did this imply ? He might still ques- 
 tion whether sin was so absolutely alien to 
 the nature of Jesus as to make temptation 
 necessarily a failure. He knew from expe- 
 rience that personalities created pure and 
 holy enough to be termed " sons of God " had 
 sinned and fallen. He himself was one of 
 
THE FIRST TEMPTATION. 79 
 
 these, yet he " abode not in the truth." The 
 first man, Adam, was called " son of God ; " 
 yet he too had sinned, and all his descend- 
 ants, without one exception. Arguing from 
 such an awful experience as this, and know- 
 ing certainly that Jesus was a real man, 
 and in all things made like his brethren, 
 nay, that his very fasting, hunger, weariness, 
 and prayers, testified to the reality of his 
 humanity — there was surely in this undoubted 
 fact alone a sufficient ground to induce the 
 wicked one to tempt our Lord to evil, in the 
 hope that He would form no exception to the 
 universal apostasy of his race. 
 
 We should also keep in mind that the in- 
 variable object of all Satan's temptations, 
 whatever be their variable form, is to destroy 
 
8o THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 true religion iii the souly by destroying that 
 which is its sum and substance, or its very 
 essence — love to God^ implying a true spiritual 
 knowledge of his character ; a filial confidence 
 in the righteousness of all the arrangements 
 of his providence ; an unswerving faith in the 
 truth of all his promises ; and a deliberate 
 choosing of his will as being always righteous. 
 So long as such love to God exists all is well, 
 because all is right in the soul ; but once that 
 love is lost, all is lost. The desire to shake, 
 therefore, the perfect confidence of Jesus as 
 a Son, in God as his Father, prompted and 
 guided every subtle attack of the Evil One. 
 
 Satan came to Him and said, " If thou be 
 the Son of God, command these stones to be 
 made bread." 
 
THE FIRST TEMPTATION. 8l 
 
 Now this *'ii" has special reference to the 
 declaration made at his baptism, "This is my 
 beloved Son." He who is a liar from the be- 
 ginning insinuates that this voice spoke not 
 the truth. 1/ — why if? Had not God said 
 it ? But Satan professes to doubt the fact, in 
 order to tempt Christ to disbelieve it. His 
 object is to shake Chrisfs co7ifidence in the 
 fatherly character of God ; and he makes the 
 circtimstances in which Christ is placed the 
 occasion for darkening his soul with a doubt, 
 which, if entertained, would soon involve Him 
 in murky gloom. " A Son ! " as if he had 
 said, " a Son of God ! and here in this wilder- 
 ness, without even a friend, and fainting with 
 hunger ! It cannot be — no such Father would 
 thus treat a child." And then the wicked 
 
82 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 one, having cast this seed of doubt into the 
 heart, at once suggests, as a legitimate exer- 
 cise of the power which He must possess, and 
 be doubtless free to use as the Son of God, 
 that He should submit no longer to his Father, 
 but command the stones to be made bread. 
 The Tempter, as it were, said, " Come, thou 
 hast power ; use it according to thine own 
 will. Submit no longer to the cruel provi- 
 dence of God. Command bread. It is right 
 and reasonable that it should be so. Wait no 
 longer on thy Father, who cannot or will not 
 help thee ! " We see then, that the first tempta- 
 tion was intended to shake the faith of our 
 Lord in the love of his Father, because of the 
 outward trying circumstances in which He was 
 placed. 
 
THE FIRST TEMPTATION. 83 
 
 It was thus in Eden the tempter endea- 
 voured, alas too successfully! to shake the faith 
 of our first parents by an argument derived 
 from the alleged restrictions of God's provi- 
 dence upon their enjoyments. *^ Yea, hath God 
 said. Ye shall not eat of all the trees of the 
 garden ?" With what cunning is the doubt in- 
 sinuated ! What God had so liberally given is 
 not mentioned. A veil is drawn over all his 
 rich and exuberant bounties ; and the tempter 
 selects the one solitary restriction as the true 
 exponent of God's feelings towards man. 
 " What ! has He actually denied you this tree ? 
 Has He said thou shalt 7tot ? If so, is this kind ? 
 Is it generous ? Is it like a Father ? Trust Him 
 not then ! but trust me. I am thy true friend. 
 Eat, therefore, I say, of the tree, and live.'* 
 

 84 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 This, too, was the first temptation addressed 
 to "the Church in the wilderness." "And 
 the whole congregation of the children of 
 Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron in 
 the wilderness : and the children of Israel 
 said unto them, Would to God we had died 
 by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, 
 whe7z we sat by the flesh pots, and whe7i we did 
 eat bread to the full; for ye have brought us 
 forth into this wilderness, to kill this whole 
 assembly with hunger." 
 
 Need I farther point out how this tempta- 
 tion has been repeated from generation to 
 generation ? It is perhaps the most common, 
 ~- the universal form of attack w^ith which the 
 ^ enemy has assailed the soul of man, this 
 of making him lose confidence in the father- 
 
THE FIRST TEMPTATION. 85 
 
 hood of God, because of the wilderness, the 
 
 hunger, and the physical sufferings into which 
 God has brought him in his pro\-idence ; and 
 to make him rebel against the "thou shalt 
 not " with reference to the restrictions He lays 
 upon man)^ things we might naturally desire. 
 Such a temptation more than any other per- 
 haps appeals to man in his lower nature in 
 the form of " the lust of the flesh, and the lust 
 of the eyes," and to his necessities and wants 
 as a creature. In suffering especially, it 
 opens a wide door for doubt and suspicion to 
 enter regarding the good-will and love of 
 God, whose power to supply these wants is 
 unquestionable. 
 
 We have in Scripture many illustrations of 
 this form of temptation. The case of Job is 
 
SG THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 one. Satan's assumption regarding Job was, 
 A, that he served God only for what God gave 
 him — that he had no love to God himself or 
 confidence in Him as his Father — that, as a 
 servant, he loved only his wages, and, as a 
 man, only the portion of goods assigned to 
 him. "Take these gifts away," alleged the 
 accuser, " lead him into a wilderness, leave 
 him alone and solitary there, and he will 
 curse thee to thy face ! " We know the glo- 
 rious result ! — ^how, when everything which he 
 possessed as a creature — money, family, health 
 — were removed, his faith in God triumphed 
 over all, enabling him to say, *'The Lord 
 gave, and the Lord hath taken away ; blessed 
 be the name of the Lord." " Though He slay 
 me, yet will I trust in Him." 
 
THE FIRST TEMPTATION. 87 
 
 After the destruction of Jerusalem, the 
 prophet Jeremiah told the remnant of the ^> 
 people to remain in the land under God's pro- 
 tection ; but they preferred going to Eg}^pt. 
 As he had anticipated, they there gave them- 
 selves up to heathen lusts and idolatries. 
 The prophet addressed to them a letter of 
 solemn admonition and warning. Their reply 
 is recorded : " Then all the men which knew 
 that their wives had burned incense unto 
 other gods, and all the women that stood by, 
 a great multitude, even all the people that 
 dwelt in the land of Egypt, in Pathros, 
 answered Jeremiah, saying, As for the word 
 that thou hast spoken unto us in the name of 
 the Lord, we will not hearken unto thee. But 
 we will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth 
 
88 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 forth out of our own mouth, to burn incense 
 unto the queen of heaven, and to pour out 
 drink-offerings unto her, as we have done, we, 
 and our fathers, our kings, and our princes, in 
 the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jeru- 
 salem : for then had we plenty of victuals, a7id 
 were well, and saw no evil. But since we left 
 off to burn incense to the queen of heaven, 
 and to pour out drink-offerings unto her, we 
 have wanted all things, and have been con- 
 sumed by the sword and by the famine." 
 (Jer. xliv. 15 — 18.) We see how they fell 
 into the snare of this temptation, and for- 
 sook God, because while doing his will 
 they had suffered from physical calamities ; 
 and how, like their fathers, they preferred 
 Egypt and sin, with its flesh pots and plenty 
 
THE FIRST TEMPTATION. 89 
 
 of victuals, to the service of God, when it 
 involved trial. 
 
 But why multiply illustrations of this form 
 of temptation ? What has been the history of 
 the Church of Christ but a history of those 
 who have been, like their Lord, in the wil- 
 derness, subjected to every kind of physical 
 trial, from hunger and thirst, and from men 
 more cruel than wild beasts ? '* They had 
 trial of cruel mockings and scourgings ; yea, 
 moreover, of bonds and imprisonment. They 
 were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were 
 tempted, and were slain with the sword, and 
 wandered in deserts and in mountains, and 
 in dens and caves of the earth." Yet all held 
 fast their confidence in God. And was not 
 St. Paul a truly noble specimen of a man. 
 
90 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 in the midst of " perils in the wilderness," 
 with no certain dwelling-place, in fastings 
 oft, in nakedness and cold, and fighting with 
 wild beasts ? But in the spirit of his Master, 
 he held fast his confidence in his Father, 
 casting all his care on Him, as one who 
 cared for him. O let us not be ignorant of 
 the devices of the enemy ! — for now, as ever, 
 he assails Christians with this fiery dart. He 
 assails them w^hen, in the providence of God, 
 they are made to suffer from bodily want ; 
 from the pains of hunger and nakedness ; 
 from struggles with temporal difficulties ; 
 from seeing those dearer to them than life 
 share such sufferings ; from captivity day 
 and night, through long, long years ; from 
 exile among strangers ; from grievous bodily 
 
THE FIRST TEMPTATION. QI 
 
 pain, incurable by human skill ; from the loss 
 of all that was most attractive and beautiful 
 on earth ; or from being held back as by 
 chains of iron from attaining some very dear 
 object. He assails them, too, in times of dark- 
 ness and depression, when the soul cries out 
 from the depths, as David did when he said, 
 *' In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust : let me 
 never be put to confusion. Deliver me in thy 
 righteousness, and cause me to escape : in- 
 cline thine ear unto me, and save me. Be thou 
 my strong habitation, whereunto I may con- 
 tinually resort : thou hast given commandment 
 to save me ; for thou art my rock and my 
 fortress. Deliver me, O my God, out of the 
 hand of the wicked, out of the hand of the 
 unrighteous and cruel man." These are some 
 
92 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR. LORD. 
 
 of the wildernesses into which many children 
 of God are led. And this is the temptation 
 which the old serpent hisses into their ears, 
 "//"thou be the son of God;" "7/ God be thy 
 Father — how is it thus?" O dread if! "If 
 He were thy Father He could by a single 
 word bring relief, and dispel the cloud, and 
 bestow the blessing. But He does not. Is 
 He thy Father, then ? Does He love thee ? 
 and canst thou love Him and trust Him ? 
 Thou dost well to be angry ! If, then. He 
 does not give as thou wiliest, get thou as thou 
 canst!" Blessed be God that his Son, in whom 
 He was well pleased, suffered hunger, and lone- 
 liness, and deepest anguish in the wilderness ! 
 He who was rich, yet for our sakes became 
 poor. He took upon Him the form of a ser- 
 
THE FIRST TEMPTATION. 93 
 
 vant, and endured the cross, and despised 
 the shame ; and having been tempted, He is 
 able to deliver those who are tempted. He 
 has exposed the enemy's attacks by receiving 
 them, and shown us the weapons by which 
 we are to overcome. What said the Lord ? 
 ** It is written, Man shall not live by bread 
 alone, but by every word that proceedeth out 
 of the mouth of God.'' 
 
 Let us consider this reply, and learn how 
 fitted it is to meet and to overcome the sug- 
 gestions of the evil one. 
 
 We observe that our Lord here speaks as 
 the Son of man, not as the divine eternal 
 Son of God. He speaks as a member of the 
 human family — as a brother for his brethren. 
 The sword He uses in the combat is not one 
 
94 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 suited merely for a giant's hand, or to be 
 wielded only by supernatural power, but it is 
 such as may be used by a child, nay, it can 
 be used only by one who has the child's spirit 
 of true sonship. And hence we see indicated 
 in our Lord's reply a principle which, if acted 
 upon by us, will prove a sufficient defence 
 against the wiles of the adversary. 
 
 * 
 
 The tempter professed — as he always does 
 to the tempted — to have our Lord's interest at 
 heart. Evil does not seek admission into the 
 heart as evil, but as good ; not as an adverse 
 but as a friendly power. Satan can thus 
 transform himself into an angel of light, and 
 would have himself recognised as one who 
 sympathised with Christ's sufferings — and 
 who, pitying this Son so ill-used by his 
 
THE FIRST TEMPTATION. 95 
 
 Father, desired to give Him that life and hap- 
 piness in outward things which were so cruelly 
 denied him. As if he had said, " It could not 
 surely be that one so great was to die, one 
 who through the exercise of his own power 
 could command the means of life ! Must such 
 life be maintained at all hazards ? But what 
 means of life were in this wilderness ! Nothing 
 but fasting and the pains of hunger! Ye 
 shall not surely die ; commandy therefore, these 
 stones to be made bread and live." 
 
 Of a truth life is the most precious pos- 
 session. For life the living God hath created 
 us, and to enjoy life is our blessed inherit- 
 ance. But what kind of life ? Is it a mere 
 physical life ? If so, it is true man lives by 
 bread alone. As an animal with a bodily 
 
g6 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 frame, and craving appetites, and pressing 
 wants, and sensitive nerves, man has indeed 
 to do with the outward world, and with 
 outward circumstances, and with all that can 
 affect him through his physical frame. And 
 our Father who hath so made us, and who 
 knows that frame, provides for those wants 
 in subordination to higher ones, and gives 
 us all things richly to enjoy. But man is 
 more than body. He is soul — he is spirit. 
 He himself as a person is greater than all 
 mere things. And therefore man, the immortal 
 responsible being, man made after God's 
 image — man the son of God, and heir of God, 
 and joint heir with Christ, does not live by 
 bread alone, but by every word that pro- 
 ceedeth out of the mouth of God. 
 
THE FIRST TEMPTATION. 97 
 
 Our Lord's reply, to see its force, requires 
 a little further thought. *' Every word which 
 proceedeth out of the mouth of God'' is a 
 Hebrew phrase to express "everything that 
 God appoints " or " arranges," and is a por- 
 tion also of the written " Word " of God. 
 What a deep and significant truth is this ! It 
 is the full recognition of God's Fatherhood. 
 It assumes that every appointment of God is 
 wise and loving ; and asserts accordingly that 
 a man's life, that which is his genuine and 
 abiding life and happiness, cannot consist in 
 opposmg such appointments of his Father, or 
 in trying to get free from them as from chains 
 and fetters ; but must consist in a meek 
 acquiescence in them, in meeting and sym-^ 
 pathising with a Fajther's will as revealed in 
 
 H 
 
98 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 them, and thus by the inner chemistry of 
 love converting them into food wherewith to 
 nourish the life of the spirit. Our Lord, 
 therefore, as a man, takes his stand upon a 
 principle so broad and comprehensive as to 
 include every possible appointment of God — 
 so that whatever the arrangements of his 
 wise and fatherly government may be — how- 
 ever varied, however trying to flesh and 
 blood, however mysterious and incomprehen- 
 sible with reference to his universal plan, yet 
 as that plan is perfect in every part, each 
 person may rely with unbounded confidence 
 on God, knowing that he shall, out of all, 
 receive life more abundantly to his spirit, 
 provided only he will first as a son seek true 
 life in the love of God Himself. With such 
 
THE FIRST TEMPTATION. 99 
 
 life as this in God, the God of grace and of 
 providence, the Governor of the world, the 
 wise and loving Disposer of all things, no 
 man can ever be in any wilderness where life 
 cannot be found, for God Himself, our life, is 
 there ! The universe thus becomes an Eden 
 to his child ! God has so adjusted all circum- 
 stances with reference to him as a well-beloved 
 son in Christ, that all things appointed Tiiust 
 prove the means of perfecting his higher nature, 
 enabling him to bring forth more fruit to his 
 glory. For love to God in the soul, by its 
 own divine chemistry, eliminates the means 
 of nourishing its life out of all things ; like a 
 living plant which gathers strength and beauty 
 from all its varied surroundings — from dark- 
 ness and light, from storm and calm, from 
 
lOO THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 cold and heat, from drought and moisture, 
 from the solid earth, and from the viewless 
 air. But the soul which loses its life becomes 
 like a dead plant when the very same things 
 which formerly worked together for its good, 
 now work together to turn it into corruption ! 
 
 This principle — so elevating and sublime, 
 so heavenly, yet of such practical power for 
 us while dealing with earthly things — is often 
 depicted in Scripture ; as when it is said, " A 
 man's life consisteth not in the abundance 
 of the things which he possesseth;" "All 
 things work together for good to them that 
 love God;" "All things are yours; and ye 
 are Christ's, and Christ is God's." 
 
 And we find the same principle illustrated 
 in history, and in the lives of good men. 
 
THE FIRST TEMPTATION. lOI 
 
 Job learned the lesson of living by faith in 
 God alone when he said, " The Lord gave, 
 and the Lord hath taken away ; blessed be 
 the name of the Lord." David learned it 
 when he said, "There be many that say, 
 Who will show us any good ? Lord, lift 
 Thou up the light of Thy countenance upon 
 us ! Thou hast put gladness in my heart, 
 more than in the time their corn and their 
 wine increased." The prophet Habakkuk 
 learned it when he declared, "Although the 
 fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit 
 be in the vines ; the labour of the olive shall 
 fail, and the fields shall yield no meat ; the 
 flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there 
 shall be no herd in the stalls : yet I will re- 
 joice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my 
 
I02 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 __^ • 
 
 salvation." Hezekiah learned it when, after 
 recovering from the sickness which brought 
 him to the gates of death, he thus prayed to 
 God, "What shall I say? He hath both 
 spoken unto me, and Himself hath done it. 
 O Lord, hy these things men live, and in all 
 these things is the life of my spirit," 
 
 It was thus, too, that the songs of joy and 
 praise to God, which have never been silent 
 in Europe for eighteen centuries, began when 
 Paul and Silas sang praises at midnight in 
 the prison of Philippi, and all the prisoners 
 heard them, and ^'ten thousand times ten 
 thousand, and thousands of thousands," who 
 were once prisoners of sorrow and suffering, 
 have since joined them. And many a John, 
 banished in providence to his own lonely 
 
THE FIRST TEMPTATION. 103 
 
 Patmos, has shared the peace of the great 
 exile in spite of outward circumstances, 
 and felt that he was not alone, because 
 the Father was with him, and that he had 
 a companionship, and a bread to eat of the 
 wilderness, that the world knew not of nor 
 could understand ; and a living water to 
 drink of amidst the arid sands, and which 
 was in him, springing up unto everlasting 
 life. 
 
 And have not all who have thus trusted 
 God found it to be true in their own expe- 
 rience, that in all his appointments they 
 could find life ! "Whether He appointed them 
 a palace or a hovel, health or sickness, riches 
 or poverty, their living souls drew a better 
 health from all the varied outward vicissi- 
 
104 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 tudes of time ; they possessed a life which 
 was hid from the world with Christ in God. 
 Oh ! how many holy and happy ones have 
 thus learned of Christ : — the meek one dying 
 from slow decline ; the agonized one suf- 
 fering from excruciating pain ; the father 
 or mother bravely fighting life's battle in the 
 cold and bleak day ; the bereaved orphans 
 or widows, without relations, money, or 
 health ; this one with honourable ambition 
 never to be realised ; that other with the 
 object of a deep attachment, part of their very 
 being, buried in the grave, or in some way 
 gone, to them at least, for ever ; each and all 
 suffering, and walking in a darkness which 
 no light from earth could pierce — nothing left, 
 as it were, but God ! But God ? What w^as 
 
THE FIRST TEMPTATION. I05 
 
 this portion which was left ? Was it not all 
 that could fill and satisfy the soul ? And so 
 accordingly they found that He alone was 
 more than all persons and all things ; and 
 that to know Him was life eternal ; and that 
 verily man, as a Son, a beloved Son, did not 
 live by bread alone, but by all that his Father 
 appointed! 
 
 But what of the discontented and peevish, 
 the complainers against God and man, who 
 are kept quiet, only as mere animals are, by 
 being fed; whose whole life is in outward 
 things, — health, wealth, amusement, business, 
 pleasure, society, and the like, — who seem to 
 deny the very possibility of any one possess- 
 ing peace in God without these ; — who justify 
 impatience, discontent, despondency, wicked- 
 
£06 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 ness, or despair, if their wants are not supplied, 
 or their desires gratified ? What do all such 
 confess but that they believe with Satan that 
 man lives by bread alone, and alone by those 
 appointments of God which are agreeable to 
 flesh and blood ? I will not speak of the loss 
 which these may incur hereafter, but this loss 
 at least they must incur of their names being 
 blotted out from the roll of the noble army 
 of martyrs gathered from all lands and from 
 all ages ! This is a glory they can never 
 share. Let us beware then lest the adversary 
 get by this temptation the advantage over us ; 
 for it has induced multitudes to ruin soul and 
 body. It has led to many a suicide. How 
 often has the old serpent suggested this short 
 method of getting quit of the wilderness, and 
 
THE FIRST TEMPTATION. I07 
 
 the hunger, and the wild beasts, instead of 
 the soul being braced into a meek and cou- 
 rageous, manly submission to God's will ! 
 And so the precious talent of life has been 
 squandered — the grand opportunity of being 
 good in trying circumstances lost — the last 
 act being a testimony of cowardice and lost 
 faith in God, and in the loving wisdom of 
 his appointments. No doubt this terrible act 
 is generally the effect of temporary insanity — 
 an insanity that may be a mysterious inflic- 
 tion, through hereditary disease, for which the 
 poor sufferer is in no way responsible, any 
 more than for the delirium of fever. But may 
 not the condition of mind which produces 
 suicide be often traced to bad, or at least 
 thoughtless, habits, to culpable ignorance 
 
Io8 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 and want of thought, and to the neglect of 
 religious principle cultivated during previous 
 years ? The consequence is that when the 
 wilderness comes, and the hunger, and the 
 distress, and perplexity, and the thousand 
 things which give pain, no God is known, or 
 loved, or trusted ; and the mind wanting this 
 one light wanders in darkness, and without 
 this one hope falls into despair, and without 
 this one strength perishes in weakness ! We 
 must not think of the end only, but also of 
 those long-gathering and wilful causes which 
 may have produced it. Oh ! how many souls 
 would be saved from that habitual state of 
 spirit which ends at last in a diseased body, * 
 and a diseased mind, if they ceased from prac- 
 tical atheism, and cultivated a spirit of cheer- 
 
THE FIRST TEMPTATION. 109 
 
 ful, hopeful faith in God as their Father, and 
 perilled their soul upon the blessed principle 
 which the Man of Sorrows unfolded, and on 
 which He acted : — " Man does not live by 
 bread alone, but by every word that proceed- 
 eth out of the mouth of God," or by all God 
 appoints ! 
 
 And this want of faith in a living God has 
 also tempted many to escape from poverty by 
 dishonest means. They have not the moral , 
 courage to dare to be poor as Jesus Christ was, 
 and they refuse to dwell in a wilderness even 
 with God — but prefer a palace without Him, 
 even if built up with the wages of dishonesty 
 and sin. During a famine in Germany, some 
 who insisted on obtaining bread by violence 
 justified themselves, saying : " You know we 
 
no THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 must live." " I don't know that," said Luther 
 bravely, "but I know we must be honest." 
 
 How much wicked sentimentalism, too, has 
 been uttered with reference to young women 
 working for small wages, taking to evil ways 
 for their support, as if their difficulties justi- 
 fied them in becoming slaves to the devil 
 and his vilest agents in destroying themselves 
 and others ! Unless God provides them with 
 food in the wilderness, they may forsooth cast 
 off his authority and supply it in their own 
 way or in Satan's way! To speak thus is 
 no mercy, and manifests no real sympathy. 
 There is an immortal spirit in the heart which 
 cannot be satisfied with mere husks. Help 
 them we must as we best can, but tell them 
 we must that the wages of sin is death. 
 
^.pp /f ' CLCt l-f ti^ 
 
 THE FIRST TEMPTATION. HI 
 
 But it is impossible to enumerate the many 
 ways in which men try to turn stones into bread 
 by seeking to bring good out of evil, true food 
 to nourish their true life out of what cannot, 
 in the nature of things, produce it. Some- 
 times this is attempted in a gross form, by 
 dishonest practices, by false weights, by foul 
 and false adulterations, which are as great an 
 " abomination to the Lord," and in many 
 cases far greater, than are false doctrines ; 
 for the latter may be the product of a weak 
 mind, but the former must always come from 
 a wicked heart. All those plans and policies, 
 also, by which men seek to get supposed 
 good to themselves by doing injustice and 
 acting unfairly to others, and trampling them 
 down, from avarice or proud ambition, may 
 
112 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 be traced to the same devilish chemistry of 
 seeking to convert stones into bread. And 
 sharing the same mind and spirit essentially 
 are all those who would seek in spiritual 
 things to trick conscience, and to obtain the 
 bread of a true and therefore eternal life 
 (which can be found only by an intelligent 
 abiding faith in Christ, **the true bread of 
 life''), from the stones of forms, and ecclesi- 
 astical arrangements, and a faith, not in God, 
 but in the miracle of the Sacrament, and in 
 the magic powers of an assumed priesthood. 
 
 Good Lord ! deliver us from the lie of ex- 
 pecting any good but in the knowledge and 
 love of Thyself as revealed by Thyself, the 
 Father of our spirit, through Thy Holy Spirit 
 to our own spirit ; that as Christ our Lord 
 
THE FIRST TEMPTATION. II3 
 
 lived by knowing and loving Thee the Father, 
 his meat and drink being the doing of Thy 
 will, so we may live by Him, feed on Him, 
 eat his flesh, and drink his blood, by daily 
 partaking of his character through faith in 
 Him, and by daily yielding ourselves to do 
 his righteous will ! 
 
 Lastly, we should observe that Jesus, nei- 
 ther in the wilderness nor during his life, 
 ever used his supernatural powers to supply 
 any of his own wants or the wants of his 
 Apostles. This grand principle holds true 
 with reference to the exercise of the same 
 powers by every servant of God who pos- 
 sessed these, in any age of the world and in 
 any period of the history of the Church. 
 Such powers were never used for mere per- 
 
 I 
 
114 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 sonal or selfish purposes — never made the 
 means of escape from sufferings or duties im- 
 posed by God, but were in every case used 
 so as to advance, directly or indirectly, the 
 kingdom of God. From a holy and loving 
 God these powers came ; they revealed God ; 
 in God's name they were used ; and to God 
 they returned in the spiritual good which they 
 occasioned. Jesus, in refusing to command 
 the stones to be made bread, accepted and 
 lived out this principle, that " man does not 
 live by bread alone, but by every word that 
 proceedeth out of the mouth of God." 
 
IV. 
 
 THE SECOND TEMPTATION. 
 
 *' Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on 
 a pinnacle of the temple, and saith unto him. If thou be the Son of God, 
 cast thyself down : for it is written. He shall give his angels charge con- 
 cerning thee : and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time 
 thou dash thy foot against a stone. Jesus said unto him, It is written 
 again. Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." — Matt. iv. 5 — 7. 
 
 '^ I ^HE scene of the second temptation was 
 the pinnacle of the Temple ; probably 
 the spot described by Josephus as being" 
 " one of the most memorable works ever 
 seen, for whereas the valley was so deep and 
 precipitous that one could not bear to look 
 
Il6 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 down it, on the edge of this precipice Herod 
 raised the immense height of a tower, so 
 that if any one from the pinnacle of this 
 roof should look down to both the depths 
 at once, he would be seized with dizziness, 
 the sight not being able to reach the bottom 
 of the abyss." Making all allowance for the 
 exaggeration of the writer, we yet know, 
 from the late explorations at Jerusalem, 
 j that the Temple wall at the south - east 
 corner, overlooking the Valley of Jehosha- 
 phat, was itself of immense height, and 
 that any tower erected on its summit would 
 in some sense merit the above description. 
 Thither Satan led Jesus to be again tempted. 
 Why this pinnacle or tower of the Temple 
 was chosen by Satan for his renewed attack 
 
THE SECOND TEMPTATION. II7 
 
 Upon our Lord we may possibly be able 
 to discover as we proceed in our exposi- 
 tion. I would only here remark, that un- 
 less our Lord had been conducted to some 
 height from which it was possible literally 
 to cast himself down, the temptation would 
 lose its significance. On the other hand, 
 its subtle meaning becomes more apparent 
 from the fact of a height within the 
 Temple having been selected rather than 
 a rock or precipice in the wilderness. 
 
 How our Lord journeyed thither we are 
 not informed : probably as any ordinary 
 person would have done. Nor do we know 
 when the temptation took place — whether 
 when the courts of the Temple were crowded 
 with worshippers, or, what is more likely, 
 
Il8 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 beneath the silent stars of night, seeing that 
 the presence of man had nothing to do with 
 the conflict in the Temple any more than in 
 the wilderness. We may just add, that any 
 alleged difficulty as to how Jesus obtained 
 admission to such a place at all is very 
 trifling, when the nature of the transaction 
 and the persons engaged in it are recognised 
 as realities. 
 
 The ultimate object of this second temp- 
 tation, as of all the others, was to destroy, 
 as we have already remarked, Christ's spirit 
 of perfect Sonship, of perfect filial love, faith, 
 and obedience towards his Father. This object 
 was sought to be attained in the first temp- 
 tation by representing the outward circum- 
 stances in which He was placed by God as 
 
THE SECOND TEMPTATION. II9 
 
 inconsistent with a Father's love ; and such, 
 therefore, as he ought not to submit to. The 
 immediate object of the second temptation 
 was to destroy his faith in the reality of his 
 Father's presence and love, by inducing Him 
 to ** tempt the Lord his God," and therefore 
 to demand a sign as the ground of faith. 
 
 Yet it seems that he had another object 
 subordinate to this, which may be first noticed, 
 and that was the destructioji of our Lord' s bodily 
 life. It is evident that the work of redemption 
 never could have been accomplished had our 
 Lord been induced to destroy his own life. 
 But that the devil should attempt to induce 
 him to do this, or by any means to destroy 
 it himself, is in perfect harmony with his 
 character, he being not only "a liar," but 
 
I20 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 also " a murderer, from the beginning." It 
 is in harmony also with his policy, which 
 has been so consistent in every age of the 
 world, to destroy the chief witnesses for God. 
 Of " the destroyer " it may be truly said, 
 " Which of the ''prophets has he not slain ? " 
 His wish to cause our Lord's death even 
 at this early period of his history, by in- 
 ducing Him to cast himself down from the 
 pinnacle of the Temple, was in harmony 
 also with the cunning which concealed its 
 design by professing anxiety for the pre- 
 servation of Christ's life in the wilderness, 
 and urging Him to command the stones to 
 be made bread. 
 
 It is indeed a part of the mystery of 
 iniquity that any such power as this ** power 
 
THE SECOND TEMPTATION. 121 
 
 of death," however limited by the providence 
 of God, should, in any sense, belong to the 
 wicked one. But we must distinguish be- 
 tween constructive and destructive power ; 
 between, for example, the power of creating 
 any great work of art and of destroying it ; 
 the power of preserving life and of taking it 
 away ; the power of forming character and of 
 injuring it. The one has a purpose of good 
 in it, and demands patience, self-sacrifice, 
 and all that tends to ennoble its possessor ; 
 while the other demands only for its exer- 
 cise the absence of all good and the pos- 
 session of evil, and is strong in proportion as 
 it is wicked. Thus the power of good men 
 in proportion to their goodness is construc- 
 tive, but the power of bad men in proportion 
 
122 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 to their wickedness is destructive. The power 
 of God is therefore wholly constructive in re- 
 gard to the universe as a whole. Even when 
 He destroys, it is in order to build up in some 
 other form. On the other hand, the power 
 of Satan is wholly destructive, and only by 
 the higher power of God is it ever made an 
 occasion of good. The kingdom of God is 
 thus a kingdom of eternal progress ; a king- 
 dom of light, ever shining more and more 
 unto the perfect day ; a kingdom of life, ever 
 growing, and renewing itself as life eternal ; 
 a kingdom, too, where there is no waste, but 
 where every fragment is gathered up and 
 made to add to the ever-accumulating riches 
 of the universe. But the kingdom'of evil is 
 without order, without progress, except from 
 
THE SECOND TEMPTATION. I 23 
 
 death to death, without light, without life, 
 where nothing is saved, but all is wasted 
 and lost. That Satan, therefore, should have 
 " the power of death " is in keeping with all 
 we know of the kind of power which is pos- 
 sessed by the wicked alone. 
 
 But, while Satan desired, I believe, to de- 
 stroy Christ's life, he may have had doubts as 
 to how far he was able to accomplish his pur- 
 pose. It is true that the previous history of 
 Jesus had not revealed any power possessed 
 by Him for the preservation of his own life 
 different from that possessed by other men. 
 In the wilderness it was evident that He had 
 suffered like other men from fasting, and like 
 other men was an hungered. On the other 
 hand, merely to destroy Him, were that pos- 
 
124 1'HE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 sible, would have been a very small victory 
 in comparison with what was the one grand 
 aim of Satan's wicked ambition — victory 
 over his faith in God. Let that only be 
 achieved, and the casting of Himself down 
 would at once secure death to soul and body. 
 To accomplish this he now concentrates all 
 his energies and draws from all his resources. 
 Our Lord had expressed, in resisting the 
 first temptation, his confidence in God's word, 
 quoting from the Old Testament what ex- 
 pressed his own deepest convictions : — "It is 
 *^written," He said, "Man shall not live by 
 bread alone, but by every word that pro- 
 ceedeth out of the mouth of God." And He 
 maintained accordingly his life of Sonship by 
 abiding in the truth of God, meekly accepting 
 
THE SECOND TEMPTATION. 125 
 
 his fatherly and righteous will. Satan will 
 now adroitly avail himself of the same 
 weapon, and endeavour to wrest, so to speak, 
 from the hands of Christ, " the sword of the 
 Spirit, which is the word of God," and turn it 
 against Him. For Satan, too, is acquainted 
 with Scripture, and is able to quote it with 
 apparent aptness. If Jesus will reverence that 
 "Word," he will also profess to do so. Its 
 authority he will not question, but rather 
 employ it as the very means of opening the 
 heart of Jesus to unbelief. ^That we may per- 
 ceive more clearly the cunning device of the 
 adversary, let us read the whole psalm from 
 which Satan selects but one portion : — 
 
 ** He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall 
 abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the 
 
126 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress : my God ; in him will 
 I trust. Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the 
 fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee 
 with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust ; his 
 truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid 
 for the terror by night ; nor for the arrow that flieth by day ; 
 nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness ; nor for the 
 destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at 
 thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand ; but it shall not 
 come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and 
 see the reward of the wicked. Because thou hast made the 
 Lord which is my refuge, even the Most High, thy habitation ; 
 there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come 
 nigh thy dwelling. For he shall give his angels charge over 
 thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in 
 their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone. Thou shalt 
 tread upon the lion and adder : the young lion and the dragon 
 shalt thou trample under feet. Because he hath set his love 
 upon me, therefore will I deliver him : I will set him on high, 
 because he hath known my name. He shall call upon me, and 
 I will answer him : I will be with him in trouble ; I will dehver 
 him, and honour him. With long life will I satisfy him, and 
 shew him my salvation." (Psalm xci.) 
 
 One cannot help being impressed with the 
 
THE SECOND TEMPTATION. I27 
 
 daring effrontery and profound cunning of 
 Satan in quoting this psalm at such a time. 
 If there is one passage in the Word of God 
 which we might suppose he would avoid more 
 than another at such a crisis, it is this ; for 
 the whole psalm is full of promises to him 
 who has a childlike trust in God. It is not 
 strictly speaking a Messianic psalm, or one 
 prophetical of Christ, but yet it is specially 
 applicable to Him as one who alone mani- 
 fested in perfection that spirit of Sonship 
 which is here described. For the man of 
 faith in the psalm is one who dwells in holy 
 confidence in the secret place of God's own 
 presence and love, and thus abides under his 
 protecting shadow. He only is entitled to 
 sing a song of joy ; for God is his refuge 
 
128 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 and fortress, and will protect him from every 
 danger. His truth will be his buckler to cast 
 o£f the fiery darts of the wicked one. Night 
 and day he is safe ; and because he makes 
 the Lord his refuge and habitation, no evil 
 will come nigh him. And it is added, " For 
 He shall give his angels charge over thee, 
 to keep thee in all thy w^ays ; they shall bear 
 thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy 
 foot against a stone." And such a one is 
 loved by God, and knows God's Name, which 
 is Love. He shall tread upon the lion, and 
 trample the dragon or serpent under his feet. 
 He shall be exalted and set on high, his 
 prayer shall be answered, God will be with 
 him, deliver him in trouble, satisfy him with 
 long life, and he shall see his salvation. 
 
THE SECOND TEMPTATION. 129 
 
 It does seem strange indeed that Satan 
 should have entered into this holy ground 
 to fight for unbelief; that he should have 
 touched such a chord and awakened the 
 memory of such a song as this. While he 
 had no spiritual light, and no eye to perceive 
 its spiritual meaning, yet I doubt not the 
 psalm in its letter was one which was familiar 
 to him as a war song of faith in the armies 
 of the living God ; and he must have often 
 heard its triumphant notes in times of spiri- 
 tual combat, when the heart of the good 
 soldier became stronger in the faith breathed 
 by this holy strain. And who knows but 
 that during these forty days of trial he had 
 heard it uttered from the parched lips of this 
 Jesus of Nazareth, whose life was an embodi- 
 
 K 
 
130 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 ment of its truth ? But understanding it even 
 as a wicked mind could alone do, was there 
 no cunning in an attempt to turn this strong 
 position by a bold venture, by converting, if 
 possible, those very promises of protection 
 from danger, made to all who trust God, into 
 subtle arguments for tempting our Lord to do 
 the very reverse, and that, too, under the 
 appearance of an act of faith ? 
 
 It seems to me, also, that the letter of this 
 psalm, the peculiarity of the phraseology in 
 which trust in God is expressed, suggested to 
 Satan the cunning idea of leading Jesus to 
 the pinnacle of the Temple rather than to a 
 rock in the wilderness. The psalm, viewed 
 as Satan could alone view it in its letter and 
 not in its spirit, seemed to have been almost 
 
THE SECOND TEMPTATION. T31 
 
 .written for one who was specially placed 
 within the sacred courts of the Temple. In 
 a sense, that Temple was " the secret place of 
 the Almighty" — the holy place hidden from 
 human eyes, and the holiest of all, within 
 the " Holy City," and where to the Jews 
 God was peculiarly present. " They shall 
 pollute my secret places' says God, speaking 
 of the Temple, " for the robbers shall enter 
 into it and defile it." Here was the place in 
 which He had "put his name." Here was 
 the "holy hill of Zion," the very fortress of 
 God. Here, if anywhere, were the sheltering 
 and protecting wings, not of the cherubim, 
 but of the Almighty Himself. On what spot 
 of earth, then, according to this interpretation 
 suggested by the letter of the psalm, could 
 
132 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 any man who professed to trust God be more 
 safe than here ? Here, if anywhere, God will 
 fulfil his promise of being his protector and 
 deliverer, and give his angels charge over 
 him, so that even if he were to cast himself 
 down from the giddiest height he would be 
 saved from dashing his foot against a stone. 
 In such circumstances, so manifestly adapted 
 to the nature of the temptation, Satan says, 
 " Cast thyself down." 
 
 Satan would here represent Christ's cast- 
 ing Himself down under the promise of God's 
 protection as a proof of the reality of that 
 faith in God which He professed in the wilder- 
 ness, and which acknowledged that man lived 
 by every word proceeding from God's mouth, 
 or ** by all He appointed." Satan would also 
 
THE SECOND TEMPTATION. 133 
 
 make the insinuation — naturally so painful to 
 a simple trusting heart — that Christ's faith 
 was not real — that while it may have stood the 
 possible approach of death by famine, it could 
 not stand the certainty of death on the sup- 
 position .that God's word was either untrue or 
 that the Saviour did not believe it. Satan, as 
 it were, thus addressed Him : " Thou hast 
 declared thy faith in God, in his providence, 
 and in his word. If thy faith be real, prove 
 it ! God has declared in his written word 
 that He will protect to the utmost and deliver 
 from death all who put their trust in Him ; 
 nay, that He will give his very angels charge 
 over all such, lest in falling they should dash 
 their feet against a stone. These promises 
 are specially made to those who are placed 
 
134 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 where thou art now within the consecrated 
 precincts of his holy Temple, the secret place 
 of the Most High. If thou trustest thy Father, 
 then cast thyself down from this giddy height, 
 and thus prove the reality of thy faith and of 
 his truth." To this our Lord replied, "It is 
 written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord 
 thy God." 
 
 In this reply Jesus exposed the true nature 
 of the temptation. Let us see what it was. 
 We shall get some light upon this point by 
 referring to the second temptation in the 
 wilderness as recorded in the seventeenth 
 chapter of Exodus : — 
 
 *' And all the congregation of the children of Israel journeyed 
 from the wilderness of Sin, after their journeys, according to 
 the commandment of the Lord, and pitched in Rephidim : and 
 there was no water for the people to drink. "Wherefore the 
 
THE SECOND TEMPTATION. 135 
 
 people did chide with Moses, and said, Give us water that we 
 may drink. And Moses said unto them, Why chide ye with 
 me ? wherefore do ye tempt the Lord ? And the people 
 thirsted there for water ; and the people murmured against 
 Moses, and said. Wherefore is this that thou hast brought us 
 up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and oiu- cattle with 
 thirst ? And Moses cried unto the Lord, saying, What shall I 
 do unto this people ? they be almost ready to stone me. 
 And the Lord said unto Moses, Go on before the people, and 
 take with thee of the elders of Israel ; and thy rod, wherewith 
 thou smotest the river, take in thine hand, and go. Behold, I 
 will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb ; and thou 
 shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that 
 the people may drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the 
 elders of Israel. And he called the name of the place Massah, 
 and Meribah, because of the chiding of the children of 
 Israel." 
 
 Our Lord's reply is given in a quotation 
 from Deut. vi. i6, "Ye shall not tempt the 
 Lord thy God," and it is added there, " as ye 
 tempted him in Massah" — thus referring to 
 the above history, which became memorable 
 
136 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 as the record of a special " day of temptation 
 in the wilderness/* and gave to the water 
 the name of " the waters of temptation." 
 Now if we examine in the light of this nar- 
 rative the nature of the sin here called 
 " tempting " or " proving '* God, we have no 
 difficulty in understanding it. It is evident 
 that the children of Israel had lost faith in 
 God ; and they asked, accordingly, " Is God 
 among us or not?" The demand for water 
 was not merely to supply their physical 
 wants, but as a "sign" by which to prove 
 the presence of God, and so to justify faith 
 in Him. They practically said, " We cannot 
 trust God and his promises noWy whatever 
 He has been or done in the past ; we have 
 no evidence of his being with us, or of his 
 
THE SECOND TEMPTATION. 137 
 
 working in the present. We know not if 
 He be among us or not. But if He is present 
 with us, let Him prove it! And the proof 
 we ask, the sign which alone will convince 
 us, is this — let Him give water out of this 
 desert ! " They were worse even than wicked 
 King Ahaz, who, when offered a sign, refused, 
 saying, " I will not ask, neither 7vill I tempt 
 the Lord'' Such a trying or tempting of God 
 on the part of Israel was thus the result of 
 unbelief in his living presence. And this 
 no sign could restore, for faith in a sign or 
 wonder is not faith in God, nor can it of 
 itself restore such faith in any one who has 
 ceased to know and love. How can the 
 signature to a promise renew a faith lost 
 in the promiser ? It is to this lost faith the 
 
138 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews alludes 
 when quoting from the Psalms, " Harden 
 not your hearts, as in the day of provocation, 
 in the day of temptation in the wilderness ; 
 when your fathers tempted me^ proved me, and 
 saw my works forty years;'* adding, as a 
 warning against the same evil, "Take heed, 
 brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil 
 heart of unbelief, in departing from the living 
 God." 
 
 Let me here notice that in tempting the 
 children of Israel to this unbelief, Satan 
 seemed to have purposed not only the de- 
 struction of their spiritual life, but, as in the 
 corresponding case of our Lord, the destruc- 
 tion of their bodily life also. He may have 
 found in his experience that his power of in- 
 
THE SECOND TEMPTATION. I39 
 
 flicting physical death was in some degree 
 consequent on his triumph over spiritual life. 
 Be that as it may, we are struck by the fact 
 that it was immediately after this "day of 
 temptation in the wilderness " that Amalek 
 attacked Israel, and was overcome only 
 through the faith of Moses, who, in the spirit 
 of Christ, exercised filial confidence in God, 
 so that making the Lord his refuge, he did 
 not feel the arrow by day, and he and his 
 people whom he represented were safe while 
 thousands fell around them. Alas ! how 
 strange that, thirty-eight years afterwards, 
 when the same sin was repeated, Moses, 
 in anger at such rebellion, should have so 
 far lost his meek confidence in God as to 
 have spoken unadvisedly with his lips, and 
 
14© THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 to have called forth the solemn rebuke, 
 ** Because ye believed me not to sanctify me 
 before the eyes of the children of Israel, 
 therefore ye shall not bring this congregation 
 into the land which I have given them" 
 (Num. XX. 12). It was immediately after this 
 that Moses, in consequence of his sin, had to 
 ascend Mount Nebo to die ! 
 
 When Jesus, therefore, replied to Satan, 
 "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God," 
 He laid bare the real nature of this renewed 
 attack upon his faith as God's beloved Son, 
 and exposed the evil of the enemy, tearing 
 asunder all the false disguises by which he 
 would conceal his real designs. He showed 
 that what Satan proposed as the very evi- 
 dence of faith would have evidenced unbelief. 
 
THE SECOND TEMPTATION. I4I 
 
 For to cast himself down from the pinnacle 
 without any command from God, any call 
 of duty— but merely to afford proof, as it 
 were, of his faith in God and in the truth 
 of his promises— was virtually to " prove," to 
 **try" or to "tempt" the truthfulness and 
 love of God himself, by demanding super- 
 natural protection as a "sign." True love 
 does not thus test love, but rests and relies 
 upon it with unhesitating faith. To demand 
 proof of love is to doubt it, and to doubt 
 love is to disbelieve it. And so our Lord, 
 with the clear spiritual light of love, pierced 
 the darkness of the evil one as He replied, 
 " Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." 
 
 And thus our Lord, truly dwelling in the 
 secret presence of the Most High, yea, in 
 
142 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 the very heart of God Himself, and abiding 
 under his shadow, realised all the blessings 
 promised to such true faith. He was de- 
 livered from the snare of the fowler. No 
 evil befell Him. Ministering angels guarded 
 Him. He verily trod upon the lion and the 
 adder ! Because He set his love on God, 
 and had known his name, therefore God 
 delivered Him, and set Him on high — from 
 whence He could not be cast down ! He 
 called and was answered, and God was with 
 Him in trouble, and delivered Him, and 
 honoured Him, satisfied Him with long life 
 — even with Himself as life eternal— and 
 showed Him his salvation ' Such were and 
 ever will be the results of humble childlike 
 faith in the ever-present and ever-loving God ! 
 
THE SECOND TEMPTATION. 143 
 
 But let US for a moment look at this 
 Satanic temptation as it is revealed in the 
 history of the fall of man, for it seems to me 
 that we can detect some traces of the same 
 trail, however concealed, of the old serpent 
 in Eden. 
 
 God had promised life to our first parents 
 while abiding by faith in Himself; and this 
 promise necessarily involved spiritual death 
 as the consequence of disobedience. So 
 long, therefore, as they abode in the righ- 
 teous state towards God, for which they were 
 created by the Eternal Son, so long did they 
 possess a life which in its nature was a 
 life eternal ; but if they disobeyed they 
 must surely die. The tree of life was, I 
 believe, consecrated by God as an outward 
 
144 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 sign to Strengthen this faith in Himself; 
 and not only did the food it yielded sus- 
 tain life in the body, but, like a sacrament, 
 it was the sign and pledge of the love of 
 God, who sustained true life in the soul. 
 The devil, however, made our first parents 
 doubt the reality of God's word of promise 
 of life, and of his consequent threatening, 
 when he asked, ^^ Hath God said. Ye shall 
 not eat of every tree of the garden ? " To 
 this they replied, " We may eat of the fruit 
 of the trees of the garden : but of the fruit 
 of the tree which is in the midst of the 
 garden, God hath said. Ye shall not eat of 
 it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die." 
 Satan, the liar, contradicted that word, say- 
 ing, ** Ye shall not surely die," and suggested 
 
THE SECOND TEMPTATION. I45 
 
 the eating of the tree of the knowledge of 
 good and evil. This was done for the very 
 same reasons, as I apprehend them, which 
 induced him to tempt our Lord and the 
 children of Israel, — first to destroy the bodily 
 life of Adam and Eve, as Satan no doubt 
 hoped that the day they ate thereof they 
 would surely die ; and then to accomplish 
 at the same time what was of more impor- 
 tance, the destruction of their spiritual life, 
 by inducing them to test or deny the reality 
 of God's truth, instead of resting on it by 
 passive obedience ; as if he had said, " God 
 says you will die. Surely He never said 
 that ! It cannot be ! God knows very well 
 you will have a higher life. But if you 
 have any doubt, test God's truth and eat of 
 
 L 
 
146 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 the tree, and be convinced by experience." 
 They ate thereof, and sin and death entered 
 their souls. They would now willingly eat 
 of the tree of life, in order to obtain life from 
 the sign which they could get from the God 
 of life alone. But no sign could give life, or 
 restore lost faith, and so they were '* driven " 
 from it in judgment and in love, as from a 
 sacrament of death, to find life by a new and 
 living way. 
 
 This temptation is one which in various 
 forms has been repeated by Satan ever since. 
 The unbelieving Jews yielded to it in our 
 Saviour's time. "The Pharisees came forth 
 and began to question with Him, seeking of 
 Him a sign from heaven — tempting Him." 
 This craving for signs was a sorrow to our 
 
THE SECOND TEMPTATION. I47 
 
 Lord, for it evidenced want of faith in Him- 
 self: — " He sighed deeply in spirit and said, 
 Why doth this generation seek after a sign ? 
 Verily I say unto you that no sign will be 
 given to it." He complained of this, saying, 
 " Unless ye see signs and miracles ye will not 
 believe ! " He rebuked them, saying, " An 
 evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a 
 sign, and none will be given to it ! " Nor did 
 our Lord ever give any sign or wonder or 
 work any miracle which itself could convince 
 or convert those who had not " the truth " or 
 truthfulness in them, a condition necessary 
 for the miracle to operate as a means to be- 
 lieve in Himself as " the truth," and in His 
 mission from His Father. He Himself was 
 the light of life shining in the darkness, and 
 
148 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 those who did not wish or choose to see the 
 light could not have their eyes opened by 
 any mere ** sign " of its existence. And thus 
 it was that on the morning of the day of 
 his crucifixion He neither would work a 
 miracle nor speak a word even, to convince 
 or convert Herod, who longed to see Jesus, 
 and who now met him for the first and last 
 time. These would have been of no avail 
 if a greater wonder failed to convince — the 
 wonder of the silent and suffering Jesus. 
 On the other hand, faith, where real, how- 
 ever weak, w^as often strengthened and re- 
 warded by works of wonder which pictured 
 vividly to the outer eye some of the inex- 
 haustible spiritual riches of Him beheld with 
 the inner eye of the spirit. 
 
THE SECOND TEMPTATION. 149 
 
 St. Paul also complains of the same craving" 
 after signs in his day. " The Jews," he says, 
 "require a sign, and the Greeks seek after/ 
 wisdom ; " but the only sign and the only 
 wisdom or philosophy he would give them 
 was Christ and Him crucified, which would 
 be a stumbling-block to the Jews and foolish- 
 ness to the Greeks, " but unto them which 
 are called, both Jews and Greeks," was 
 "Christ the power of God and the wisdom 
 of God." 
 
 It is unnecessary to do more than indicate 
 the many ways in which men, even within 
 the Christian Church, from the beginning 
 until now, have manifested their unbelief in 
 God, by craving after some visible or con- 
 scious sign or token of God's presence and 
 
150 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 love, rather than by accepting God in the 
 Spirit and through faith in his Son. This 
 
 \has been the source of that dark and con- 
 
 l 
 
 5 fused world of dreams, of auguries, of magic, 
 
 and of witchcraft ; the " intruding into those 
 things which they had not seen," " departing 
 from the faith, and giving heed to seducing 
 spirits and doctrines of devils," all of which 
 have played so great a part in the darker 
 periods of human history, and all having as 
 their object more or less to obtain some sign 
 from the unseen to assure the presence and 
 secure the protection and favour of an almighty 
 God. In the same spirit, the priesthood have 
 put forth false claims to spiritual power, and 
 have professed to work wonders in the phy- 
 sical and moral world — by Sacraments, and a 
 
THE SECOND TEMPTATION. 151 
 
 whole machinery of a human and so-called 
 spiritual agency — to secure God for all who 
 trust in them^ or in what they alone minister 
 — God Himself being lost or concealed in 
 the crowd of signs which profess to reveal 
 Him ! Thus it has been from the miracles 
 of the middle ages down to the convulsions 
 and hysteria of the recurring seasons of 
 religious excitement, all of which have been 
 eagerly laid hold of and adduced as so many 
 special signs from heaven of God being 
 with this or that church or party, but not 
 being nigh to all who call upon Him in sin- 
 cerity and truth. 
 
 Very different has been the teaching of 
 God Himself, as He is revealed in the spirits 
 of men, in human history, and above all in 
 
152 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 Jesus Christ his Son. He, the only living 
 and true God, desires to be known, as not 
 only the Maker of all, but the Father of all, 
 the God of all flesh, the Father of our spirits, 
 to whose love every heart should respond, 
 whose glory every eye should behold, and 
 whose voice every ear should hear. How 
 intensely does the Psalmist realise this in 
 the 139th Psalm — the grandest song ever 
 written of the omnipresence of God our 
 Father! He cannot find words to express 
 his sense of God's nearness and tnnerness. 
 " O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known 
 me. Thou knowest my downsitting and 
 mine uprising ; thou understandest my 
 thought afar off. Thou compassest my 
 path and my lying down, and art acquainted 
 
THE SECOND TEMPTATION. 153 
 
 with all my ways. For there is not a word 
 in my tongue, but, lo, O Lord, thou knowest 
 it altogether. Thou hast beset me behind 
 and before, and laid thine hand upon me." 
 Very wonderful, too, is the teaching of St. 
 Paul, not to Jews or to Christians, or to the 
 ignorant only, but to the educated yet pagan 
 people of Athens. They had erected an 
 altar to " the unknown God," whom " they 
 ignorantly worshipped," but it is this God 
 he would have them know, and that because 
 He knew them, and was nearer their spirits 
 than was the atmosphere to their bodies. 
 This God, he said, the Maker of all men and 
 nations, had arranged the bounds of their 
 habitation, including all the circumstances 
 of their earthly life within and without, for 
 
154 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 the very purpose that they should seek Him 
 if haply they might find Him, though He 
 was not far from any one of them, "for in 
 Him we live, and move, and have our being." 
 Nay, heathen though they were, and ignorant 
 of God though they were. He was still their 
 Father, as certain also of their own poets 
 had said, " For we are His offspring." 
 
 It was by this simple faith in the presence 
 and love of His heavenly Father — revealed 
 indeed by a voice from heaven, but which 
 would have been meaningless unless God 
 had been revealed in His own Spirit — that 
 the beloved Son maintained His place in per- 
 fect peace and safety on the giddy pinnacle 
 of the Temple. 
 
 We are all called, as the children of God, 
 
°-f>( \^.^,.. , 
 
 THE SECOND TEMPTATION. 155 
 
 to exercise the same faith, and to possess the 
 same peace. Now as ever we have to be 
 warned, ** lest there should be in us an evil 
 heart of unbelief in departing from the living 
 God," and to be exhorted to *' hold fast our 
 confidence in Christ," if we are to be "par- 
 takers with Him " — partakers of His life and 
 joy. Now as ever we may be induced 
 through unbelief to question God's presence 
 and love, and to ask, " Is God among us or 
 not ? " and, instead of our opening the eye 
 to receive the ever-shining light, and the ear 
 to listen to the living word, and the heart 
 to receive the unchanging and all-sufficient 
 love, we may turn aside and become satisfied 
 with " holy things " instead of a holy God. 
 
 We may read the Bible, but as the record 
 
156 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 only of what God had once revealed to some 
 men, not of God now revealing himself to us 
 also through His Son and Spirit. The sacra- 
 ments may be received, but yet without faith 
 in the living God and in His gift to us of that 
 life eternal which is in His Son. And thus 
 steps intended to help us to higher things 
 become the means of our slothfully resting 
 on these steps, or, it may be, of our descend- 
 ing rather than of ascending by them. What 
 was intended to reveal God, practically con- 
 ceals Him. " Religion " may thus exist with- 
 out godliness, that is, without God. Oh ! how 
 long shall it be ere we know Him ! How long 
 ere we become little children, and lay our- 
 selves in the arms of Christ, assured that in 
 Him we have the true possession of all per- 
 
THE SECOND TEMPTATION. I57 
 
 sons and things, of all wisdom, righteousness, 
 sanctification, and redemption ! 
 
 Let us glorify God, then, as dear children, 
 — not by tempting Him, or asking " signs," 
 or questioning the reality of His presence 
 with us, — but by believing in Him, resting 
 on Him, enjoying Him, and acting in the 
 spirit of His beloved Son, our Saviour and 
 Brother ! Lord, keep us simple, and humble, 
 and believing ! and keep back Thy servant 
 from presumptuous sins ! When we stand 
 high, may we stand more by childlike faith 
 in Thee ; and may we trust when we cannot 
 trace, and abide in Thy love ! 
 
V. 
 
 THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 
 
 " Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and 
 showeth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them ; and 
 saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down 
 and worship me. Then saith Jesus unto him. Get thee hence, Satan': 
 for it is written. Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt 
 thou serve." — Matt. iv. 8—10. 
 
 ' I ^O meet his last temptation Jesus was led 
 up to a high mountain; but "whether 
 in the body or out of the body " it is difficult 
 to determine. While the spiritual meaning 
 of these temptations, and not the mode or 
 circumstances in which they occurred, con- 
 
ni*7^^^ -A**>^ 
 
 THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 159 
 
 stitutes their value to us, yet I see no ade- 
 quate reason for rejecting the impression 
 which the narrative naturally conveys, that 
 they were historically true in their outward 
 details as well as in their inner spirit. It is 
 assumed by many able critics that this one 
 must necessarily have taken place in a vision, 
 however objective and real the tempter and 
 his temptation were. Yet there is a presump- 
 tion against this from the fact, that it would 
 form an exception to every other event in 
 Christ's life as recorded in the Gospels. In 
 the history of God's supernatural dealings 
 with men belonging to every dispensation, 
 including patriarchs, prophets, apostles, nay, 
 the very heathen, we have " abundant revela- 
 tions " in divers manners — among others, 
 

 l6o THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 V by dreams and visions vivid as realities 
 seen in the light of common day ; but we 
 
 ■ have not one instance in the history of Jesus 
 of any " vision - intercourse " between His 
 spirit and the unseen world. 
 
 To w^hat high mountain Jesus was led by 
 the Spirit in order to endure this last terrible 
 conflict with the enemy we are not informed. 
 It may have been Hermon, which rears its 
 snowy peak ten thousand feet above " the 
 land," and where our Lord was afterwards 
 transfigured when Moses and Elias appeared 
 with Him in Glory, and where the same voice 
 was heard from heaven as at his baptism 
 again declaring, " This is my beloved Son." 
 Or it may have been Pisgah, from whose top 
 God showed to Moses the land of promise. 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. l6l 
 
 There would be a very peculiar significance 
 in this temptation, giving to it a deeper mean- 
 ing and interest, if it was this very land of 
 promise which Satan specially pointed out 
 to Christ, and whose kingdoms and glory he 
 selected as representing the kingdoms and 
 glory of that " world " which is discerned by 
 the senses, or is alone capable of being de- 
 sired and possessed by the spirit of evil. 
 
 But let us come to the temptation itself, 
 and consider the nature of this last most 
 subtle and overpowering attempt to shake 
 the faith of the Son of God in His Father, 
 and thus destroy His character and work as 
 the Messiah. 
 
 We hear no more of those words sug- 
 gestive of doubt regarding God as His Father, 
 
 M 
 
j62 the temptation of our lord. 
 
 ** If thou be the Son of God/' That point 
 Satan appears to. assume- as having been, for 
 the time at least, settled. Here is one whose 
 spirit of Sonship has, as yet, stood every trial ; 
 who has thus proved himself to be an excep- 
 tion to the whole human race, no member 
 of which had ever been so severely attacked. 
 
 But if Jesus is now recognised as being 
 verily "the Son of God," what did this imply? 
 Did the words, "This is my beloved Son," 
 heard at His baptism, receive from the temp- 
 tations such a meaning as could not be 
 attached to them in the ease of any other 
 son of man ? Did the memories of a long 
 past, the light of a day in Paradise whose sun 
 had set in darkness, recall to Satan the exist- 
 ence of such a " Son of God *' as he had never 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 163 
 
 seen in humanity? Could this be the seed 
 of the woman who was to bruise the head 
 of the serpent ? — the Son of David who was 
 to sit on His Father's throne to reign over the 
 house of Israel, and of whose kingdom there 
 was to be no end ? If so, then Satan, as " the 
 prince of this world," must meet this King 
 and measure His power with Him in a great 
 and decisive battle, and, if possible, destroy 
 both Him and His kingdom. 
 
 In this temptation, it will be observed that 
 there is not only a proposal made to our 
 Lord, as in the other temptations, but that 
 for the first time a reward also is promised, 
 a bribe offered, to induce the Saviour to 
 comply with the request to worship the devil. 
 In whatever form the enemy had previously 
 
164 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 come, he appears now to have thrown off all 
 disguise. 
 
 ** Fall down and worship me ! " The pro- 
 posal was an audacious one — one which 
 ought to revolt any rational being, and which 
 must have been abhorrent to a holy and obe- 
 dient Son of God. But is not every tempta- 
 tion to evil essentially of the same character, 
 whether men see it or not in its true light ? 
 And were we possessed of the Spirit of " the 
 Son," would not evil in any form always 
 appear to us as the one awful mystery of 
 falsehood to be condemned and loathed ? 
 When we look at this temptation in the 
 light of Christ, and from His point of view, 
 we see how utterly impossible it was for 
 Him to treat the proposal and the bribe in 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 165 
 
 any other way than He did. But, looking at 
 both these as a wicked spirit like Satan must 
 have looked, we can quite understand how he 
 might have believed himself sure of success. 
 He knew as a fact that what he now asked 
 this Son of man to do had been done by all 
 men and nations^ the most refined and culti- 
 vated, in every age ; and that the bribe he 
 offered, in its magnificence and splendour, 
 was such as never had been hitherto re- 
 sisted by mere human nature; and why 
 therefore suppose that this man would re- 
 ject it? Not, therefore, without hope, but 
 rather with unbounded confidence, did Satan 
 once more address himself to the poor, suffer- 
 ing Jesus of Nazareth, weak and famishing, 
 on the bleak mountain-top, worn in soul, 
 
l66 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 spirit, and body with the dread conflict of 
 farty days. 
 
 "Fall down and worship me 1" This was 
 a proposal to become an idolater, and so 
 recognise another person or power as being 
 superior, or at least equal to Jehovah, and 
 worthy of receiving the homage due to Him 
 only. What could have induced Satan to 
 make iti Was it because such idolatry is 
 personally pleasing to himself— to his pride 
 and love of power r Or was he influenced 
 simply by the demoniacal passion of hate, in 
 getting others to do that which he knew was 
 displeasing to God ? Or, finally, was idolatry 
 then, as now, desired by him only as the 
 means of alienating men from God, as the 
 first certain step in the progress of evil, which 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 167 
 
 secures the ultimate triumph of all sin and 
 crime r 
 
 Whatever Satan's motive may have been, 
 it is evident that idolatry^ in even its limited 
 sense of the worship of idols, has played a 
 dreadful part in the history of mankind. In 
 this the whole world has verily been guilty be- 
 fore God ! All mankind have conspired in not 
 liking to retain God in their knowledge, and 
 " in changing the glory of the uncorruptible 
 God into an image made like to corruptible 
 man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and 
 creeping things." And after all that has 
 been done for " the education of the world," 
 the dread fact remains, that at this moment 
 the majority of the human race are idol wor- 
 shippers. 
 
l68 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 One great object, we may observe in 
 passing, of the whole Jewish dispensation 
 was to educate men in the knowledge of the 
 only living and true God, and consequently 
 to abolish idolatry. Bible history begins 
 with this education. The facts of creation, 
 recorded in the first chapter of Genesis, all 
 bear upon the primal truth of religion — 
 that one living and true God is the only 
 object of worship, because He is the Maker 
 of all creatures and things in heaven and on 
 earth.. Hence He alone, and not anything 
 created by Him in heaven or on earth, was to 
 be worshipped. Man, it is also declared, was 
 made after God's image, and dominion was 
 given him over all other creatures on earth; and 
 if so, the inference is evident, that he was not 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 169 
 
 to worship an image of himself or bow down 
 before any creature. Again, the first com- 
 mandment forbids having any other God 
 before Jehovah, and the second forbids 
 idolatry in any form, and denounces punish- 
 ment to the third and fourth generation for 
 this iniquity. And such iniquity of fathers 
 it is declared would come down to succeed- 
 ing generations. This would be the natural 
 consequence of this kind of evil ; because 
 once the knowledge of God is lost through 
 idolatry, all piety and all morality are 
 thereby withered at their root, dried up at 
 their source. No wonder therefore that there 
 should be such constant and oft-repeated 
 warnings and threatenings against idolatry 
 in .every chapter of the Book of the Law of 
 
lyo THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 the Lord, along with all the minute and 
 manifold arrangements made to save the 
 nation from this crime. And yet how deep- 
 seated, how fierce was the passion for 
 idolatry, which at last blotted out Israel as 
 a nation from history, and from which Judah 
 was delivered only after terrible chastisements, 
 ending with the Babylonish captivity ! 
 
 This being so, the proposal of Satan was 
 quite in keeping not only with his character 
 and purposes, but warranted by his past suc- 
 cess in the world. It was one which, as we 
 have said, he had every reason to hope would 
 succeed with this man, as it had done with 
 every other, and that he himself should still be 
 acknowledged as god of this world, to whom 
 every knee should bow, and whom every 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. I7I 
 
 tongue should confess as Lord ! The idea is, 
 no doubt, dreadful ; yet it is one expressed in 
 the mysterious language of prophecy, when, 
 referring to some evil one, it is said, " Power 
 was given him over all kindred, tongues, and 
 nations ; and all that dwell on the earth shall 
 worship him, whose names are not written in 
 the Lamb's book of life," and who therefore 
 are not by choice sons of God. 
 
 But while Satan asked Jesus to fall down 
 and worship him, he did not make it a con- 
 dition of His doing so that He should not 
 worship Jehovah also — if he could ! Let 
 Him serve mammon first, but God also if He 
 desires or finds it possible to do so. This 
 is the very compromise which deluded souls 
 have so often attempted to make ! Thus did 
 
172 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 Aaron when he said, " To-morrow is a feast 
 I. to Jehovah," after having made the golden 
 calf! It is this false compromise — this con- 
 cealed refuge of lies — which was exposed by 
 our Lord, when He said, *'Thou shalt worship 
 the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou 
 serve/' 
 
 Let us now turn to the bribe offered by 
 Satan to induce our Lord to recognise his 
 supreme power and his claims to be indeed 
 the god of this world. His bribe is, the 
 kingdoms of this world and their glory. 
 
 What is meant by that "world" which 
 includes within it all the glory offered by 
 Satan ? Much misunderstanding exists upon 
 this point, which in every age has led to sin 
 and folly, both in thought and practice. 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 173 
 
 By some this expression '*the world" is ap- 
 plied to mere gross matter or body, and to 
 whatever is palpable to the senses. As such 
 it is looked upon as antagonistic to "the 
 spirit ; " and it is assumed accordingly that 
 to be spiritual there must be as much as 
 possible of a separation from the outward 
 and visible, and that battle must be done 
 with matter as with an enemy. This has 
 been the root of innumerable immoral and 
 superstitious practices. Others recognise by 
 " the world " what is " secular," as opposed 
 to what is " religious," or " ecclesiastical," 
 or to what is called " the Church." Hence 
 the dangerous and false line drawn between 
 God in "civilisation" and God in "Chris- 
 tianity," God in " the world " and God in 
 
174 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 "the Church ;*' between "worldly" duties and 
 what are called " religious " duties ; between 
 a code of morals for the laity, as belonging to 
 " the world/' and another for the clergy, as 
 belonging to " the Church ; " between a 
 man's life on ordinary days and ordinary 
 occasions, and on " holy " days and on 
 "holy" occasions, — with many consequences 
 
 most injurious to true religion and true Chris- 
 tianity, which cannot here be dwelt upon. 
 
 But " the world " is defined by the Apostle 
 John as including whatever is not " of the 
 Father." He says, "Love not the world, 
 neither the things that are in the world. If 
 any man love the world, the love of the Father 
 is not in him. For all that is in the world, 
 the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 175 
 
 and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is 
 of the world." Therefore ** the world " ex- 
 presses that state of things, or idea of life, 
 which is not '* of the Father," and which is 
 accepted therefore by those only in whom the 
 love of the Father is not. Conversely, what- 
 ever is " of the Father" is not of " the world," 
 but belongs to the kingdom of God. The 
 world so defined is not therefore " the world " 
 of nature, with all its glory ; nor " the world " 
 of art,, with all its ideal beauty of form and 
 colour : nor " the world " of social life, 
 with its personal friendship and sympathies; 
 nor " the world " of politics, of commerce, 
 of literature, of science ; nor other " worlds " 
 manifold in which we live as human beings. 
 And, not to multiply my illustrations, let me 
 
-«< 
 
 176 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 say as briefly as possible, that the world 
 which we must hate contains within it no 
 arrangement, no work, no enjoyment, ap- 
 pointed or ordained by God : for whatever 
 is of God may be received from Him, en- 
 joyed in Him, and returned to Him. And 
 I wish you to see this to help you to distin- 
 guish between " the world " in its Satanic 
 sense, and *' the world " in God's sense. The 
 " evil world," therefore, which we are to hate, 
 embraces whatever is opposed to the will of God. 
 It is not, therefore, the beauty of the eye, but 
 its lusts or evil desires ; it is not the enjoy- 
 ment of life, but its pride and folly ; it is not 
 even the pleasure of the senses, but unlawful 
 pleasure ; it is not eating and drinking, but 
 gluttony and drunkenness ; it is not marrying 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 177 
 
 or giving in marriage, but sensuality and 
 uncleanness ; it is not the mere world of 
 rank, or riches, or power, for these are of 
 God ; it is not buying and selling, planting 
 or building, the labour of the artisan in his 
 peaceful workshop, or of the soldier or sailor 
 on duty, — for all these are of the Father, 
 being conditions imposed by himself on 
 our present existence : it is not these, nor is 
 it any passion, power, or faculty, or anything 
 else which God has created or ordained ; 
 but it is, as I have said, the abuse or per- 
 version of these, or the using of them in 
 a way inconsistent with the purpose of God 
 in giving them, and contrary to His supreme, 
 holy, wise, and loving will. And thus a 
 man seeking to avail himself of any of 
 
 N 
 
lyS THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 God's gifts may, instead of doing so accord- 
 ing to the mind of the Giver, turn them to 
 the mere service of self without God, to 
 minister to his vanity, idleness, greed, am- 
 bition, or animal passions, in a lawless and 
 godless manner. " The world " is thus in 
 the heart of man. If the kingdom of God 
 be " within us," so may ** the world," or the 
 kingdom of Satan ; and that which is with- 
 out will belong to either as far as we are 
 concerned, just as that which is within does. 
 Accordingly, just as the heart of the true 
 child of God by the divine alchemy of its 
 life converts the wilderness and hunger into 
 a kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy, 
 and in God possesses all things ; so does 
 the heart of a prodigal child, through the 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. T79 
 
 Satanic alchemy of its own corrupt life, 
 convert " the kingdoms of the world and 
 their glory'* into its own poverty and death. 
 And so " the god of this world," when pos- 
 sessing these kingdoms and their glory 
 w^hich he showed to Christ, w^as neverthe- 
 less the greatest pauper in the universe, 
 while Jesus of Nazareth, who had no place 
 where to lay His head, was the Heir of God 
 and possessed all things ! 
 
 The bribe then which Satan offered to our / 
 Lord was life without God — life in self — in 
 the old man, in the lust of the flesh, the 
 lust of the eyes, and the pride of life ; bound- 
 less power, objects worthy of a grand ambi- 
 tion ; art, and the gratification of every wish ; 
 all that could gratify man in soul and body 
 
l8o THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 without the restrictions of duty and obedience 
 'to God. Such a bribe was verily in perfect 
 keeping with his character as the '* god of 
 this world," and also with the high value 
 which he now began to attach to this Son 
 of God, as one who was worth purchasing at 
 . . any price. 
 
 j But was not such an offer a transparent 
 
 falsehood, and one which could not deceive 
 the most simple and ignorant ? How could 
 Satan, it may be asked, how could any 
 creature, give the kingdoms of the world 
 to another when they were not his to be- 
 stow ? Satan was too subtle, however, to 
 assume his possession of this power by his 
 own right. Our Lord in resenting the first 
 temptation had asserted the supreme autho- 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. l8l 
 
 rity and wisdom of all God's appointments ; ^ 
 and now Satan declares that his power to 
 dispose of the kingdoms of the world and 
 their glory is according to God's appoint- 
 ment : **A11 this power will I give thee, and 
 the glory of them : for that is delivered unto /^ 
 me ; and to whomsoever I will I give it." 
 
 As regards this power of Satan, a striking 
 contrast exists between the material world 
 and the spiritual world \ or the world of 
 things and that of human personalities. In 
 t^^e one he is utterly powerless. Against the 
 will of God as expressed in the movement 
 of every star or beam of light, in the out- 
 burst of the hurricane, the growth of a 
 flower, or the formation of a drop of dew, 
 he can do no more than any intelligent 
 
l82 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 creature, whose sole power consists in yield- 
 ing obedience to God*s laws regulating 
 Nature. But in the far higher and nobler 
 world of personality it is different ; for this 
 implies will, and the awful power on the 
 part of its possessor to choose that which 
 may be against the will of God as certainly 
 as wrong is against right, and falsehood is 
 against truth. It is thus that Satan, with- 
 out having any power to change that world 
 "without" which is "of the Father," may 
 so change the world " within " the spirit of 
 man as to make the glory of the former 
 minister to the desires of the latter, and 
 make it the means of gratifying the lust of 
 the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the 
 pride of life. Who can limit the extent of 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 183 
 
 Satan's power within the kingdom of human 
 spirits devoid of principle, preferring dark- 
 ness to light, '* children of disobedience," 
 who are " led captive by Satan according to 
 his will ?" And what bribes may he not 
 be able to offer to such and by such ? It 
 may be mysterious, but it is nevertheless the f 
 fact, that the kingdoms of this world, with 
 all their power and glory, yea, all the 
 noblest gifts of God, have been possessed 
 by those who are described by the Apostle 
 as "children of the devil," and who have 
 practically acted as if they worshipped the 
 devil, received all they had from him, and 
 used it in his service. Have not multitudes 
 who never even professed to serve God, 
 but who gloried in their impiety and in 
 
184 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 their shame, possessed all which this world 
 could give without God? Has it not been 
 often said of such by those who knew and 
 loved God as their Father, "They are not 
 in trouble as other men ; neither are they 
 plagued like other men. Their eyes stand 
 out with fatness : they have more than heart 
 could wish. Behold, these are the ungodly, 
 who prosper in the world'; they increase in 
 riches?" While, on the other hand, many 
 a child of God has confessed, ** For all the 
 day long have I been plagued, and chastened 
 j^ every morning." We may ask, indeed, what 
 glory or power belonging to the kingdom 
 of this world has not been dedicated to the 
 cursed service of Satan ? Have not kings 
 fought and conquered, slain and tortured for 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 185 
 
 him, and laid all their power as an offering 
 at the footstool of his dark throne ? Have 
 not wealth and beauty, genius and wit, learn- 
 ing and literature, been made to fall down 
 and worship him ? Have not clergymen and 
 priests taught for him, and '' churches " 
 laboured for him, and statesmen governed for 
 him r Has not every son of man wasted his 
 portion of goods in the vile service of Satan ? 
 Surely, in a very true and awful sense, he 
 is the god' of this world, and has the power 
 of giving, to those who will fall down and 
 worship him, the- kingdoms of this world 
 with their power and glory ! 
 
 Moreover, when the devil said to our Lord, 
 " All this power will I give thee," what was 
 there in the visible condition of that world 
 
l86 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 to contradict his claim of power, or to make 
 his offer palpably impossible, or inconsistent 
 
 \\ with the acknowledged government of God r 
 What was the state of Rome and of its 
 
 ^^ mighty empire r If we read the Apostle Paul's 
 account of it as recorded in the beginning 
 of his Epistle to the Romans — an account 
 corroborated by every other authentic his- 
 tory — we learn how Satan was worshipped, 
 how idolatry reigned, how God was forgotten, 
 and all His glorious gifts perverted to the 
 basest passions of human nature. What 
 was the state of Greece ? Abounding 
 idolatry, and the solitary altar to the un- 
 known God, testified to the supremacy there 
 of the Prince of moral Darkness. And, 
 not to speak of other portions of the earth 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 187 
 
 sunk in deepest midnight gloom, what was 
 the moral condition of Judea even ? Where 
 were the signs in that favoured land, in 
 that temple of the whole earth, that chosen 
 spot, of any power greater than the power 
 of Satan ? What was the condition of the 
 rulers of the people, of the expounders of 
 the law, of the very priests at the altar, 
 of the Pharisees at their prayers, when the 
 Baptist had described them as the brood 
 of the old serpent, a very " generation of 
 vipers ? " Did not our Lord say of them, 
 ** Ye are of your father the devil, and the 
 lusts of your father ye will do ? " What was 
 the condition of Jerusalem, the city of the 
 great King, where he had placed his name ? 
 The cry of " Crucify Him ! crucify Him ! " 
 
l88 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 reveals its condition. And, finally, while the 
 idolatrous nations of the earth which served 
 Satan, and did not profess to worship God, 
 were the most powerful and influential, pos- 
 sessing all glory and riches, the only nation 
 upon earth which kept alive any knowledge 
 of the only living and true God was trodden 
 under foot by heathen rulers, and the sceptre 
 of earthly power had departed from Judah ! 
 
 It was in such circumstances that the 
 prince of this world lifted up his proud head 
 as he surveyed his kingdom of darkness, and 
 practically said, " All these will I give thee 
 if thou wilt fall down and worship me ! I 
 know that thou art promised a kingdom, even 
 the throne of thy father David, and this very 
 land which thou beholdest, as well as all the 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 189 
 
 kingdoms of the world. Thou shalt have these 
 with all their power and glory ! At this 
 moment the people are longing for a king, 
 and would gladly place thee upon the throne, 
 but thou canst not accomplish this without 
 me, for I am the god of this world, according / 
 to the appointment of thy Father. Behold, 
 accordingly, how the world acknowledges me, 
 and how all its glory and power are used in 
 my service ! But it knows not nor serves thy 
 Father. These rulers and priests do not His 
 will, but mine only ; as I lead they follow ; 
 as I speak they listen; and as I command 
 they obey ; my bread they eat, my kingdom 
 they advance ; Herod is mine, Pilate is mine, 
 the priests are mine, the people are mine ! 
 I alone, therefore, can give thee this throne, 
 
\ 
 
 190 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 and the kingdoms of the world. Only acknow- 
 ledge this fact by once falling down and wor- 
 shipping me ; be like all the world, and all the 
 world shall be thine ! " And thus the deceiver 
 would have blotted out Gethsemane and 
 Calvary from the world's history, belied the 
 promises of God, destroyed the hopes of the 
 Church, extinguished the Light of the World, 
 slain its Life, and buried it to rise no more ! 
 
 What will the sorely tempted and tried One 
 do — 'the humble man of Nazareth — the weak 
 Son of Mary, and the suffering Son of God ? 
 Shall He yield to the hoary veteran of evil, to 
 this mighty conqueror of the kingdoms of the 
 world ? Shall He for this joy set before Him 
 refuse the cross and avoid the shame ? Shall 
 He put aside the cup of agony, the sceptre of 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 191 
 
 derision, the crown of thorns, and, in their 
 stead, receive the cup of this world's joy, the 
 sceptre of mere earthly government, and be 
 crowned by Satan ? Shall He accept of life 
 without God, a life of self with all that 
 could gratify it, or shall He accept of God's 
 will, although it may bring Him to agony, to 
 the cross, and to the tomb ? On His reply 
 hangs the future history of the moral Uni- 
 verse ! Calm and peaceful was everything 
 around, and from earth to sky God's glory 
 shone as a Shekinah of love — shall all be 
 suddenly changed into blackest night and 
 eternal desolation ? Was there " silence in 
 heaven " half-an-hour ? And did principalities 
 and powers gaze in awful suspense upon the 
 scene, and mighty angels tremble for the 
 
192 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 honour of God's government, and every holy 
 creature wonder at the dispensation which 
 had perilled its existence on a weary Son of 
 man ? And did holy beings desire to sur- 
 round Him with their glittering legions, and 
 hurl the deceiver into the abyss from whence 
 he came ? But the heavens remain calm as at 
 creation's dawn, and exhibit no signs of con- 
 fusion or alarm ; the breeze whispers peace- 
 fully on the mountain-top, and the ocean's 
 waves gleam afar in bright sunshine. Fear not, 
 ye His angels who do His commandments, 
 listening to the voice of His word ! Fear not, 
 ye patriarchs and prophets who died in faith, 
 not having received the promises, yet seeing 
 all the glory that was to be ! The govern- 
 ment is laid, by unerring wisdom, upon the 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. I93 
 
 shoulders of One who is mighty in battle, 
 because mighty in meekness, in humility, in 
 the child- like faith that overcometh the world, 
 in the love that seeketh not her own, and 
 casteth out fear. It became "the Captain 
 of our salvation to be made perfect through 
 sufferings," and thus to " destroy the works of 
 the devil ; " and so there is heard from His 
 holy lips the majestic reply which banishes 
 the tempter — " Get thee behind me, Satan ; 
 for thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and 
 Him only shalt thou serve ! " 
 
 He thus spoke as a true Son, who glorified 
 His Father by faith and love. He spoke as a 
 true Priest, whose whole life was a self-sacri- \ 
 fice, a worship of the only living and true 
 God. He spoke as a true King, whose king- 
 
 O 
 
194 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 dom was not of this world, but in the hearts 
 of redeemed men ; and whose prayer to His 
 Father ever was, '^Thy kingdom come, thy 
 will be done on earth as it is done in heaven/' 
 These words, " Get thee behind me, Satan/' 
 were an epitome of the future history of the 
 world ; a prophecy of all the glory that 
 should be ; a light ushering in the brighter 
 'j day seen beyond the shadow of the cross. 
 As He uttered them, Satan was henceforth 
 doomed to depart from the weary and op- 
 pressed earth, and the Son of man to step 
 forth before him, ever advancing to take pos- 
 session of human spirits, and make all men 
 kings and priests, by enabling them through 
 faith in himself to worship the Lord their 
 God, and to ser\^e Him only. 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 195 
 
 These solemn and touching words being 
 uttered, it is added, " Satan left Him for a 
 season." But for a season only ! How and 
 when he returned we shall afterwards con- 
 sider, with other interesting questions con- 
 nected with these several temptations. 
 
 When Satan departed, we are told that 
 " angels ministered to Him ! " How soothing 
 the picture ! It is like the calm which suc- 
 ceeded the midnight tempest on the Sea of 
 Galilee, or like a flood of sunshine pouring 
 itself on a mountain-top after the dark thun- 
 der-storm with its loud peals and flashing 
 lightning, has passed away, leaving the sky 
 without a cloud in its depths of azure. 
 
 Angels '* ministered to Him !" These holy 
 ones who " minister to the heirs of salvation " 
 
196 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 now minister to their Saviour. They had 
 witnessed the mysterious scene, but they 
 could not take part in the war, for it was 
 one not between physical strength and weak- 
 ness, but between right and wrong, truth and 
 falsehood, love and hate, faith and unbelief. 
 But now that the battle has been fought, 
 and a complete victory for the first time on 
 earth achieved — now that the glory of the 
 Father and of the Son and of the Holy 
 Ghost has been manifested in a way never 
 before seen in the universe of God — these 
 unfallen angels who kept their first estate 
 were permitted to draw near the Man of Sor- 
 rows, whose every feeling was, in the depths 
 of His holy soul, torn with a sore anguish 
 which they could not, because not human 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 197 
 
 beings, fully comprehend, yet great was the 
 joy and reward of their loving and sympa- 
 thetic hearts in thus lavishing upon Him their 
 tender ministrations. 
 
 Angels " ministered to Him ! " The temp- 
 tation began in the wilderness, with the 
 companionship of wild beasts and of Satan, 
 but it ends amid the smiles and joys of minis- / 
 tering angels — a type of the whole work of 
 the Messiah, by which the world is redeemed 
 from a savage wilderness and a wicked 
 usurpation, and becomes a holy mountain 
 of the Lord, with Jesus as the object of 
 supreme love to a countless family of ador- 
 ing spirits — a type, too, of the life of every 
 child, in whose weakness the strength of 
 Christ is perfected, and who thereby holds 
 
198 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 fast his confidence to the end, and who may 
 begin his work on the earth as a son of 
 God baptized of the Spirit, amidst tempta- 
 tion and weariness and gloom, yet in the end 
 be more than conqueror, and receive the wel- 
 come of an innumerable company of angels ! 
 
 The essence of this temptation, as we 
 have seen, was to seek life without God, or 
 to lose faith in the absolute perfection and 
 sanctification of a godly life, the abuse of 
 things, according to the Satanic principle, 
 in the worship and service of self. Satan 
 spoke as the " prince of this world " — not as 
 the actual possessor or ruler of this physical 
 world, which does not, unless possibly* in 
 
 * Genesis viii. 21, 22. 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 199 
 
 its soil, bear the impress of sin or of the \ 
 footsteps of the destroyer, nor any trace of his 
 hands in any one thing, or in any law within 
 the limits of a creation as fair, orderly, and 
 perfect as w^hen its Creator pronounced it j 
 very good, and the sons of God shouted } 
 with joy. The whole earth is now, as it 
 was long ages before sin entered into it, 
 full of the glory of the Lord, and of His 
 only ! But Satan spoke as the representa- 
 tive and " ruler of the darkness of this world," 1 
 which exists only in the spirit of living 
 persons who love the darkness rather than 
 the light. He spoke as the god of that 
 ** world " which is " not of the Father," but 
 originates in the will of the creature ; whose 
 principle is self-will, independent of and con- 
 
200 THE TE1VIPTATI0N OF OUR LORD. 
 
 trary to the righteous will of God ; which, in- 
 I stead of seeking freedom and strength and 
 happiness in God, seeks all without Him ; 
 and which, instead of accepting and using 
 all the generous gifts bestowed by righteous 
 love for righteous ends, perverts and abuses 
 them in the service of self, making them 
 minister to the lust of the flesh, the lust of 
 the eye, and the pride of life, thereby mak- 
 ing their possessor poor and needy, blind 
 and naked — a miserable prodigal wasting 
 all his substance. The object of Satan was 
 to induce Jesus of Nazareth to accept this 
 kind of life, and to join in the universal 
 idolatry of individualism. He would thus 
 have destroyed Jesus as a true Son, whose 
 life was loving subjection to God the Father ; 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 20I 
 
 and as a true King, who possessed all things 
 because he thus possessed God in love ; and 
 as a true Priest, whose, glory was the sacrifice 
 of self, and the doing of his Father s will. 
 
 This third temptation — the last grand 
 assault, after long and terrible battles, on the 
 impregnable moral position of the Great 
 King — was a crisis in the warfare which 
 had been going on since creation, and which 
 will continue until Christ come again with 
 complete salvation. And it is deeply interest- 
 ing — confining ourselves to the contest waged 
 by Satan against the kingdom of Christ — to 
 watch his unremitting attempts to destroy 
 every visible sign of that kingdom on earth, 
 to put to death every true and illustrious sub- 
 ject of it, and upon its ruins to rear and esta- 
 
202 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 blish his own apostate kingdom of idolatry, 
 darkness, and death. His policy has been 
 the same in every age, and can be traced 
 along the whole history of the Church of 
 Christ. Let us glance at some of the leading 
 events in this world-campaign. 
 
 No sooner is Adam, holy and spotless, " the 
 son of God," crowned with glory and honour, 
 and made a king, than Satan, the enemy, 
 tempts and dethrones him ! The third temp- 
 tation in Eden was, " Ye shall be as gods." 
 This was an appeal to man, so fearfully and 
 wonderfully made after God's image. The 
 mere thought, or idea, of being as a god 
 could not be conceived of or entertained by 
 any being but one who was made God-like, 
 and whose end was to be like God. The 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 203 
 
 pride of individualism is atheistic, but is 
 nevertheless the perversion of a divine nature. 
 It is a king's son who dares to aspire to 
 the throne — or even to a throne — of an 
 independent kingdom. God's purpose in 
 regard to man was that he should reign 
 as a king for ever and ever, but only by 
 being a priest, and by sharing the spirit of 
 self-sacrifice which, I dare to affirm, although 
 the expression may be challenged, God Him- 
 self manifested when He **gave His Son," and 
 which the Son manifested when " He offered 
 up Himself." But man sought to obtain this 
 glory in Satan's way, and by what was a lie 
 and a contradiction to his own being. Eve was 
 tempted by the " lust of the flesh, the lust of 
 the eye, and the pride of life," for *' when she 
 
204 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 saw " — what ? and how ? — " that the tree 
 was good for food, and pleasant to the eye, 
 and a tree to be desired to make one wise, 
 she did eat, and gave also unto her husband 
 with her, and he did eat," and so the crown 
 fell from his brow ! In seeking self he lost 
 himself, and the king became a beggar ! The 
 cord of dependence on God, of obedience, 
 love, sonship, was thus snapped between 
 man and the Father — consequently^ between 
 man and man as brethren. The light being 
 extinguished which revealed the Father, there 
 was no light to reveal the brother. The 
 reign of God thus ceasing in the spirit of 
 man, the reign of self and of Satan, the liar 
 and the murderer, began. This was made 
 visible in the murder of Abel by his brother 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 205 
 
 Cain, and was soon so established over the 
 world, that after sixteen centuries one family 
 only was found righteous ; while all the king- 
 doms of the world, with its arts and manufac- 
 tures, its music and poetry, its family and social 
 life, fell down and worshipped Satan, and 
 accordingly was filled with " violence," and 
 all flesh became corrupt, and " the thoughts 
 of man's heart were evil, and only evil con- 
 tinually." God saved the earth from destruc- 
 tion by bringing a flood on the world of the 
 ungodly. So ended Satan's old kingdom 
 before the flood ! 
 
 Human history proceeds, centuries pass 
 on, mankind increases, and soon we see an 
 attempt on a great scale to form and mould a 
 nationality upon the devil's policy of pride 
 
206 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 and selfishness. Men wished to make to 
 themselves a name, and get for themselves 
 renown, and so they would commence a great 
 capital, and cement society by stone and 
 lime*! That scheme becomes Babel — confu- 
 sion — a scattermg and not a uniting. But 
 God's purpose was to unite men as sub- 
 jects of a very different kingdom, whose 
 bonds were to be moral and spiritual, whose 
 life would be faith in Himself; and accord- 
 ingly at that very time He calls Abraham, 
 in whom, or in whose descendants, by the pos- 
 session of His spirit, and who in this inner 
 and not merely by outward unity, all the na- 
 tions of the earth would be blessed. How 
 marvellously the great kings in this kingdom 
 are preserved, when Satan would cast them 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 207 
 
 down ; and how God in providence ever said, 
 " Touch not mine anointed, and do my pro- 
 phets no harm ! " See Noah in the ark ; 
 Abraham alone among his enemies ; Jacob 
 threatened by Esau ; Joseph in prison ; 
 Moses in the ark of bulrushes — and many 
 similar instances. 
 
 Years roll on — the panorama of history 
 moves past us. We see the kingdom of God 
 well-nigh crushed by the power under whose 
 protection it was increasing in numbers and 
 gathering in strength to possess the earth in 
 force. A great attempt is made by Satan to 
 destroy the hopes of the world through his 
 allies the Pharaohs. He will wear the people 
 out, and degrade them by slavery, or massa- 
 cre them in infancy, and set a very image of 
 
2o8 THE TEMPTATION -OF OUR LORD. 
 
 himself in proud rebellious self-reliance upon 
 the throne of Egypt. But the Church is 
 brought out of Egypt by a mighty hand, and 
 that event was the greatest in the history of 
 the two kingdoms since creation. What a mar- 
 vellous, visible struggle was it with plagues, 
 pestilence, darkness and death, magic and 
 magicians! Satan seemed to enter into 
 Pharaoh, and to possess him as with demo- 
 niac power, and to cry, in the agony of pride 
 or despair, "I will not let them go!" But 
 go they shall. The life of the world depends 
 on it. Moses, the type of Christ, in the 
 spirit of his great antitype, despised the 
 kingdoms of this world, and would not wor- 
 ship Satan or his idols. He preferred the 
 reproach of Christ to all the riches of Egypt, 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 209 
 
 and would not have life without God. In 
 the power of faith he led forth the Israelites ; 
 crossed the Red Sea, when again ocean waves 
 seemed to baptize the earth with new hope. 
 Then was there sung a song which was an 
 echo from the Rock of Ages, " the Song of 
 Moses and the Lamb/' to be sung again when 
 the last enemy is destroyed, " Thy right hand 
 hath become glorious in power. Thy right 
 hand, O Lord, hath dashed in pieces the enemy. 
 The Lord shall reign for ever and ever ! " 
 
 The combat continues. Satan tries to de- 
 stroy the people in the wilderness by seeking 
 to destroy their faith, and sometimes their 
 lives by his agents. But for their invisible 
 King, who ever preserves a seed to serve 
 Him, he would have succeeded. They fell 
 
 P 
 
210 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 before the very temptations which our Lord 
 resisted. They lost faith in God their Father 
 when suffering from hunger, and declared 
 that man did live by bread alone. They 
 tempted the Lord at Meribah, saying, " Is He 
 among us or not ? " and demanded a sign from 
 Moses. They also fell down and worshipped 
 Satan in abominable idolatries. Here, in 
 following out the analogy between the 
 temptations of Jesus as the Head of the race 
 and also of the Church, I must notice how the 
 third temptation on the Mount is one with 
 the third temptation of the Church in the 
 wilderness, as well as that of man, repre- 
 sented by Adam in Eden. After the day of 
 temptation at Meribah, which was parallel in 
 order of time and in its spirit to the second 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 211. 
 
 temptation on the pinnacle of the temple, , 
 there followed the great battle between ** the 
 Church in the wilderness " and the Amalek— 
 ites, who represented the kingdoms of " the 
 world/* Then it was that Moses ascended 
 the mountain, and overcame the enemy by 
 the prayer of faith, which was analogous to 
 the faith of Christ on the mountain when He 
 refused the offer of the kingdoms of this 
 world. But forty years afterwards there was 
 — according to the narrative in the Penta- 
 teuch — another day of temptation in which 
 Meribah was repeated at Kadesh (Num. 
 XX. 13). In this repetition of the second 
 temptation, the faith of Moses failed ! He 
 confesses the sin — ^he records its punishment :- 
 for he was forbid to establish God's kingdom 
 
212 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 in Canaan. Then again he ascends a moun- 
 tain — but to die ! 
 
 After " the day of temptation *' at the 
 second Meribah, analogous to the second 
 temptation of Jesus on the temple, there fol- 
 lowed the idolatry of the golden calf, or the 
 Egyptian bull, Apis — the practical worship of 
 Satan, the hrihe for doing which was, no 
 doubt, " the gratification of the lust of the 
 flesh,'' in connection with this worship, as it 
 is with all idolatrous worship in every land 
 and in all history, Aaron, indeed, in his 
 moral weakness, yet with inner love to God, 
 wished to make a compromise, and to spirit- 
 ualise it according to its original idea as a 
 symbol of the Creator ; and he said, accord- 
 ingly, *' We have a feast of Jehovah to-morrow; 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 213 
 
 let US make to ourselves a calf/* Now while 
 there were but three temptations of our Lord, 
 and three great temptations of Israel, one vice 
 in spirit and essence, there is this difference 
 between them — that the second temptation in 
 the wilderness was twice repeated, and the 
 third three times repeated. There were the 
 temptations at the Meribahs corresponding 
 in their essence to the second temptation 
 of our Lord; and in addition to these, and 
 following them, were three others corre- 
 sponding to the third temptation of Christ. 
 Of these last there were three temptations 
 in the wilderness. First, the attack by the 
 Amalekites, representing the kingdoms of the 
 world and their endeavour to destroy the 
 representations of the kingdom of God ; there 
 
214 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 was, after that, the idolatry of the golden calf, 
 with its vile lusts ; and finally the vain attempt 
 on the part of Balaam to destroy Israel, and 
 to aid the idolatrous kingdoms of the heathen, 
 and also to destroy God's people by idolatry, 
 accompanied by the old bribes of the lust of 
 the flesh. Thus the more Satan was resolved, 
 the more fierce he became, and the more ha 
 renewed his attacks in the forms which had 
 hitherto been found by him to be the most 
 successful. In the last of these attacks there 
 was, to him, a mysterious failure. Balaam 
 was compelled to acknowledge the coming of 
 God's kingdom when he said, "There shall 
 come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre out 
 of Israel," " Out of Jacob shall come He 
 that shall have dominion." But he succeeded 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 215 
 
 nevertheless in causing Israel to sin, and but 
 for the grace of the great King and His love to 
 the world, the false man would have succeeded 
 in destroying the kingdom of Israel by his 
 vile policy — which was the suggestion of Satan 
 through the women of Moab. This miserable 
 and wicked prophet who had light, but not 
 life, was soon slain with the sword, which, in 
 awful and stern but loving righteousness, was 
 unsheathed to punish Israel, and save the 
 kingdom of God from being utterly over- 
 thrown by the world. 
 
 But let us proceed with the history of the 
 kingdom of God as represented by Israel. 
 When the people came to the borders of 
 Canaan, and were about to take possession 
 of the land promised centuries before to 
 
2l6 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 Abraham and his descendants as the place in 
 which the nation was to be trained and the 
 world prepared for the advent of the great 
 King, we trace the same policy of Satan in 
 the attempt ma<ie to terrify the people by the 
 report brought by the spies regarding the 
 number of the idolatrous inhabitants, their 
 great size and strength, and the impregnable 
 character of their cities. But for God's help- 
 ing hand and overruling providence, the 
 attempt would have succeeded. All the 
 tribes united in one great conspiracy to re- 
 turn to Egypt, and to reverse the Exodus. 
 Four men only maintained their faith in God 
 — Caleb, Joshua, Aaron, and Moses — and 
 these four lonely men are surrounded by a 
 fierce multitude determined to stone them to 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 217 
 
 death. What would the history of the world 
 have been had Satan succeeded in extin- 
 guishing these four lights — in destroying 
 these four witnesses for the living Grod, and 
 ending the history of Israel in the 
 heathendom of Egypt ? What a crisis that 
 movement was in the contest between light 
 and darkness, truth and falsehood, the 
 righteous God and the god of this world ! 
 It was then, when all seemed lost, that God 
 Himself came to the rescue, and His light 
 flashed from the tabernacle — and Moses fell 
 on his face and cried to God to forgive the 
 rebellious people ; and his intercessions were 
 heard, and the promise made, even in this 
 the darkest and most hopeless hour in 
 history : *^ As surely as I Itve, my glory shall 
 
2l8 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 fill the earth ! " It was God, not man, who 
 uttered these words at such a 4:ime ! (Num. 
 xiii., xiv.) 
 
 What, again, was the history of this king- 
 dom from and during the period it was 
 visibly established in Canaan ? What but a 
 constant — alas ! too often successful — struggle 
 through the influence and the power, the 
 threats and the bribes of the kingdoms of 
 the heathen within and around Judea, to 
 alienate the nation from its allegiance to 
 their King, to weaken and destroy them by 
 unbelief, to tempt them by the lust of the eye, 
 the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life, to 
 become sensual and idolatrous ; in one word, 
 to fall down and worship the devil, or perish ? 
 How often do we hear him saying, *'Who 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 219 
 
 are they among all the gods of these lands 
 that have delivered their land out of my hand, 
 that Jehovah should deliver Jerusalem out of 
 my hand ?" How sunk was God's kingdom in 
 the time of the judges — these witnesses for the 
 Invisible King ! How Satan triumphed over 
 Saul, and well-nigh destroyed David, simple 
 yet grand in his allegiance ; and made sad 
 havoc with Solomon, who, for the kingdoms 
 and their glory, fell down, for a time at least, 
 and worshipped him, until the kingdom was 
 divided, and the devil's worship set up by ten 
 tribes at Samaria for two hundred and forty 
 years, and the temple of Jerusalem itself 
 was polluted by idolatry and all wicked- 
 ness ! 
 
 There were noble testimonies for God ever 
 
220 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 and anon borne by His representatives — as by- 
 Asa, at the battle of Mareshah (2 Chron. xiv. 
 g — 12); Jehoshaphat at the great battle of 
 Berachah (2 Chron. xx. i — 30). But so des~ 
 perate did things become in Israel that Elijah 
 cried out, " I only am left ! " And at last the 
 kingdom of darkness seems to cover the 
 earth, when the nation is carried back to 
 Satan's stronghold in Babylon, Jerusalem 
 and the temple destroyed, and the public 
 worship of Jehovah no longer recognised in 
 any kingdom or nation on earth ! Satan 
 reigns ! In Babylon he renews his old 
 Egyptian policy, and hopes to annihilate 
 the hated people of God. The roaring lion 
 going about seeking whom he may devour 
 will cast Daniel into a lion's den, and the 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 221 
 
 three young men into the fiery furnace. Nay, 
 he will attempt the grand scheme, through 
 Haman the Agagite, of massacring the whole 
 nation. But in vain. " Fear not, O worm 
 Jacob ! thy King is glorious in the midst of 
 thee." Israel is preserved, for the word of the 
 Lord hath spoken it ; and they return to Zion, 
 with songs of everlasting joy, and they rear 
 the second temple, whose glory was to excel 
 the first, because He who was the true '^ desire 
 of all nations " was to come to it. 
 
 Centuries pass on. A great King has 
 been promised and long expected, even by 
 the Gentile nations. Daniel had heralded 
 Messiah the Prince, and indicated the day 
 of His coming. That glorious day at last 
 dawns in the fulness of time. Gabriel 
 
222 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 announces to the meek and lowly virgin that 
 she "shall bring forth a Son, who shall be 
 called the Son of the Most High," to whom 
 the Lord His God shall "give the throne of 
 His father David/* who shall "reign over the 
 house of Jacob for ever, and of whose king- 
 dom there shall be no end." Suddenly, to 
 the wonder and alarm of Satan, a multitude 
 of the heavenly host gather round the earth, 
 and sing loud hallelujahs of glory to God 
 in the highest, of peace on earth, and good- 
 will to men, as they proclaim the birth of 
 a Saviour in the city of David. The Magi 
 from the East, instructed by the prophecies 
 of the great Persian Governor Daniel, come, 
 seeking the King, in order to do Him homage. 
 Satan is alarmed, and seeks through Herod 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 223 
 
 and his men of war to kill the child ; but the 
 child escapes, and for a while there is deep 
 repose. No miracle of power is seen, no 
 voice of authority is heard, for Jesus the 
 King grows up silently as "a tender plant" 
 among the mountains of Galilee. But sud- 
 denly the Baptist appears in the wilderness. 
 The nation is roused. John speaks of the 
 kingdom being at hand. Jesus is baptized, 
 and the declaration, " Behold the Lamb of 
 God," follows the heavenly testimony, " This 
 is my beloved Son ! '* Immediately when thus 
 inaugurated into the ministerial office, He is 
 led into the wilderness. The temptation 
 and the victory followed, and then through 
 His whole after-life did Jesus manifest those 
 glorious principles which He had witnessed 
 
224 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 to in His conflict with Satan. He was in a 
 wilderness, and had no place where to lay 
 His head, but He never tempted God, but 
 trusted Him as a little child. He showed His 
 power as King by casting out devils, who — as 
 if they had heard from Satan the tidings — 
 confessed that He was the Son of God. The 
 very first sermon which He preached was the 
 fruit of His victory, for as a King He pro- 
 claimed deliverance to the captives. 
 
 During the last hours of our Lord's life on 
 earth, Satan was revealed by Him whose 
 eye pierces the darkness which would con- 
 ceal its "prince." When our Lord an- 
 nounced, in that great and momentous crisis 
 of human history, that " Satan desired to sift 
 as wheat " those to whom was given the 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 225 
 
 mighty talent of carrying out His purposes 
 in regard to humanity ; that " Satan had en- 
 tered into the heart of Judas Iscariot;" and 
 when He described that time as "the hour 
 and power of darkness f He surely spoke in 
 harmony with all we are told of this personal 
 " enemy," this " wicked one ; " and not as if 
 merely personifying the evil principle in man. 
 When therefore the transactions of these 
 hours are seen in the light of this fact of 
 Satan's presence, and of a blind, because 
 wicked, spirit of hate and malice, they receive 
 a still deeper meaning than we ordinarily 
 attach to them. For Satan appears to have 
 come upon the awful scene, not so much to 
 tempt as to torment; or, if we dare so to 
 speak, not to repeat temptations, which he 
 
 Q 
 
226 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 had in despair given up, but rather with the 
 malice of a fiend to turn all in which the Lord 
 had professed His faith, and all that He had 
 refused to be and do, into the bitter irony of 
 hate. For example : — Had He rejoiced in 
 being a Son of God ? If so, where, now, 
 w^ere His brethren ? Was He not deserted 
 and left alone ? Had He then failed in train- 
 ing any to recognise and return His love, 
 and to share His love to God ? "Behold thy 
 * brethren ! ' — they all forsake thee and fly, 
 and one kisses thee and sells thy life, not 
 for the kingdoms of the world, but for thirty 
 pieces of silver] Canst thou still be a son 
 and brother to those who thus hate thee ? 
 Curse them and die ! " Again, had He in the 
 wilderness confessed His trust in God and in 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 227 
 
 all His appointments r But now that He is 
 
 nailed to the cross, the taunt is heard, " He 
 
 trusted in God i Let Him deliver Him now, 
 
 seeing He delighted in Him ; for He said, I 
 
 am the Son of God ! " On the temple He 
 
 would not cast Himself down, or seek any 
 
 " sign " from heaven to strengthen a faith 
 
 which needed it not. — " If He be the King 
 
 of Israel, let Him now come down from the 
 
 Cross, and we will believe Him. He trusted 
 
 in God : let Him deliver Him now, if He 
 
 will have Him : for He said, I am the Son of 
 
 God." Thou wouldst not cast thyself down 
 
 there in faith, thou ca^ist not come down 
 
 now that others may believe ! " Had He 
 
 refused to be made a king in the devil's 
 
 way, and only accepts of kingship in God's 
 
228 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 way, by being a Son and a Priest? — "So 
 be it ! thou shalt be a King, but the cross 
 shall be thy throne, and the thorns thy crown ! 
 Behold the little thou hast won from thy 
 Father, * Jesus of Nazareth, King of the 
 Jews ! ' '* But this blessed Jesus overcame 
 every temptation, and every taunt by the 
 strength of His faith and the omnipotence 
 of His meekness and love. His love of man 
 and of His very enemies survives all their 
 hate, and the perfect Brother offers up the 
 prayer, " Father, forgive them, they know 
 not what they do ! " The love of the perfect 
 Son burns brightly to the last and shines 
 elsewhere when it ceases to shine here in 
 the loud cry, " Father ! into thy hands I 
 commit my spirit ;" — for " He did not hide 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 229 
 
 His face from Him, but when He cried unto 
 Him He heard ! " 
 
 Thus did Jesus exemplify during His whole 
 life the principles which He had asserted 
 at His temptation, and which were, until He 
 died, constantly assailed by the enemy of 
 mankind. He was but anticipating the grand 
 result, when speaking the day before He 
 died, of how when lifted up He would draw 
 all men unto Him (John xii. 20 — 33), He said 
 with triumphant joy, " Now is the judgment 
 of this world, now shall the prince of this 
 world be cast out!" 
 
 The cross was followed by the tomb ; and 
 probably Satan believed that all was now 
 over with the King, and that He was secure 
 under the power of death in the sealed grave 
 
230 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 and with the heathen guard watching by it. 
 But, O horror ! " very early " in the morning 
 of a new day in the world's history, the 
 tomb is burst asunder — the Conqueror rises 
 with the glorious greeting to the Universe, 
 "All hail!" He leads captivity captive. 
 He remains forty days on earth speaking 
 the things pertaining to the kingdom of God. 
 He ascends blessing the earth. The ear of 
 faith hears the cry, "Open, ye everlasting 
 gates, that the King of Glory may come 
 in." All power is given to Him in heaven 
 and earth for his Church. He establishes 
 " a kingdom which cannot be moved," and 
 against which "the gates of hell cannot 
 prevail." 
 
 The great battle on the Mount between 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 231 
 
 the kingdoms of this world and the king- 
 dom of our Lord is still continued, and all 
 believers are called to share in it. Satan 
 has plied, and does ply still, the same kind 
 of temptations. He has tried to shake the 
 allegiance of the Church in God the Father, 
 by means of outward trials and persecutions. 
 He has tried to tempt her from simple trust 
 in God's promises, and to demand signs and 
 lying wonders in answer to the unbelieving 
 question, ** Is God among us or not?" He 
 has bribed the Church with earthly power, 
 and riches, and glory, with the idolatry of 
 persons, of symbols, of forms, of organiza- 
 tions, of sacraments, and of ** religions," in 
 which God Himself is not the all in all ! 
 Whatever be the true interpretation of the 
 
232 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 Book of Revelation, it is singularly attrac- 
 tive to those uninstructed even in its deeper 
 meaning, as a wonderful picture of this 
 gigantic world- struggle between right and 
 wrong. Amidst the mysteries of clouds 
 and darkness, earthquakes and storms, 
 famines and pestilences — amidst the con- 
 fusion of hurrying armies and burning cities, 
 we hear the clang of loud trumpets, the 
 cries of rage and despair mingling with 
 the shouts of ecstatic victory. Ever and 
 anon we catch glimpses in "the current of 
 the heady fight" of the respective leaders 
 of the opposing forces. The one is called 
 "Apollyon the Destroyer" — "the angel of 
 the bottomless pit"— "the dragon"— "the 
 old serpent"— "the devil." The other is a 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 233 
 
 glorious Conqueror, who "in righteousness 
 makes war," — He is ** the faithful and true 
 Witness." His "vesture is dipped in blood." 
 Over that robe of royal purple and the sign 
 of priestly suffering — a name is written, 
 which is "King of Kings and Lord of 
 Lords." Sometimes the tide of battle seems 
 to the eye of the uninformed spectator to 
 rush so strongly against the right, that the 
 weary cry is heard, "Lord, how long?" 
 "The world follows the beast," and is de- 
 ceived by his " miracles and lying wonders " 
 — until at last the battle so gains on the 
 side of righteousness, and the enemy is so 
 driven back beyond hope of rallying, and 
 the devil and his angels so cast down, that, 
 as on the day of Egypt's overthrow, a jubilee 
 
234 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 hymn of praise swells to heaven — " The 
 kingdoms of this world have become the king- 
 doms of our Lord and of His Anointed^ and 
 He shall reign for ever and ever/' "We 
 give Thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, 
 which art and wast and art to come, because 
 Thou hast taken to Thee Thy great power 
 and reigned." "Thou art holy, and all 
 nations shall worship Thee; for Thy judg- 
 ments are manifest/* 
 
 "Then cometh the end!" When? The 
 Lord alone knows! But after Satan has 
 done his worst, and the reality of truth 
 and righteousness in man by the grace of 
 God has been proved by every test, and 
 strengthened and confirmed for evermore, 
 there comes at last the period which is the 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 235 
 
 culminating point of the world's eventful 
 history and the Redeemer's long-anticipated 
 perfect joy, when He shall have put all 
 His enemies under His feet, and begun 
 that universal reign of righteousness, peace, 
 and joy in the Holy Ghost :— and then, as 
 if to connect the latter-day glory with the 
 temptations of the olden time, there appears 
 in the calm heavens from which the clouds 
 of war have passed away and all storms are 
 for ever hushed into unbroken peace, a high 
 mountain, from whence we behold a vision 
 of the kingdom of God realised on earth, such 
 as may have passed before the eye of the 
 Man of Sorrows when in faith He said, 
 "Get thee behind me, Satan." "And He 
 said unto me, It is done! I am Alpha 
 
236 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 and Omega, the beginning and the end. 
 He who overcometh shall inherit all things^ 
 and I will be his God, and he shall be 
 my son. And He carried me in the spirit 
 to a great and high mountain^ and showed 
 me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, de- 
 scending out of heaven, from God, having the 
 glory of God. And I saw no temple therein, 
 for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb 
 are the temple of it. And the nations of 
 those who are saved shall walk in the light of 
 it, and the kings of the earth shall bring their 
 glory and their honour into it. And there 
 shall be no curse, but the throne of God and 
 of the Lamb shall be in it. And his servants 
 shall worship Him ! " Glorious and blissful 
 vision ! 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 237 
 
 But would it have been thus if Jesus, for 
 the immediate possession of the kingdoms of 
 the world and their glory, had done honour to 
 their prince — had taken the crown Satan 
 offered, and refused the cup His Father gave ? 
 Where now are those earthly kingdoms ? — 
 where now the glory which they then, or ever 
 possessed ? Where is the glory of Egypt ? 
 It is recorded in her tombs : her idols have 
 fallen, her temples are in ruins ! Where is 
 Babylon, once Satan's chief city of crime and 
 splendour ? It hath " become heaps " and 
 pools of water, " an astonishment, and a 
 hissing, without an inhabitant ! " Where is 
 Greece — learned, artistic, eloquent philo- 
 sophic Greece ? And where is old Rome, 
 the mistress of the world ? And where will 
 
238 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 Rome as she now is be, if she falls down as 
 an idolater in order to obtain the kingdoms 
 of the world and their glory ? Judea, too, is 
 trodden down by hostile oppressors. Her 
 crown is in the dust. All have passed away ! 
 Ah ! what a mirage, what a lie, was that world 
 which Satan the deceiver and the liar offered 
 when he said, " All these will I give thee if 
 thou wilt fall down and worship me ! " Verily 
 the world passeth away, and the lust thereof, 
 but he who does the will of God abideth for 
 ever! The kingdom of Satan on earth is 
 doomed to perish, but that kingdom whose 
 glory is the priestly service and worship of 
 the living God, and of Him only, is esta- 
 blished in the souls of redeemed men, and 
 " cannot be moved," but must remain during 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 239 
 
 the endless life of its adorable King ; " His 
 name shall endure for ever : His name shall 
 be continued as long as the sun : and "men 
 shall be blessed in Him : all nations shall call 
 him blessed. Blessed be the Lord God, the 
 God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous 
 things. And blessed be His glorious name 
 for ever; and let the whole earth be filled 
 with His glory ; Amen, and Amen." 
 
 Before concluding these thoughts on the 
 Temptation of our Lord, I would suggest a 
 few practical lessons to be learned from the 
 whole narrative. 
 
 I. Temptation itself is not evil. Tempta- 
 tion to evil is evil in the tempter, but not 
 necessarily evil to the tempted. Our life here 
 
240 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 will not be understood if we see it as a period 
 oi probation only, during which God, as our 
 Judge, is settling between us and Him the 
 one question merely of faith or no faith in 
 Christ by a series of proofs applied to our 
 inner and outer life. We must see it also, 
 or much more, as a period of education, in 
 which He, as our Father and Teacher, is 
 training and disciplining each of us, as 
 disciples, in a way adapted to our individual 
 case. Temptation is thus permitted to play 
 a part, and do its work in this earthly 
 school. Whether it will build up or destroy 
 our character must be determined by the 
 fact of our willingness to be " taught of 
 God,'' to " learn of Christ," and to be " sub- 
 ject to the Father of our spirits, and live," 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 24I 
 
 or to remain in the narrow and false circle 
 of self-confidence, self-dependence, and self- 
 will. Temptation to evil is not, therefore, a 
 waste power in the universe, even when the 
 tempter is the devil. Through the Divine 
 Spirit in the tempted, it is made an occasion 
 of highest good, though still itself remain- 
 ing evil, and nothing but evil, in the 
 wicked tempter. Temptation may awaken 
 and quicken in us a deep sense of our own 
 weakness, and thus cast us on God as our 
 only refuge and strength ; it may, by its 
 constant recurrence, induce ys to abide in 
 God, and to feel more and more the neces- 
 sity of the Holy Spirit abiding in us, and 
 also make the atoning and intercessory work, 
 and loving presence, and watchful care, and 
 
 R 
 
242 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 personal experience of Jesus, and His vic- 
 tory over Satan, more profoundly precious 
 to our souls. Finally, it may indirectly 
 glorify God in being the occasion of re- 
 vealing, by means of our faith, obedience, 
 patience, meekness, courage, and perfect 
 peace, the reality and efficacy of the grace 
 of God working in us ; and the reality also 
 of His love, which can so attract the heart 
 and fill the spirit as to make us rise above, 
 and reject all the bribes of the lust of the 
 flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of 
 life, esteeming them as refuse when com- 
 pared with life in God. In one word, tempta- 
 tion to evil may but prove fire to separate 
 the dross from the gold, and may, in its 
 results, at once evidence our faith, strengthen 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 243 
 
 our faith, and reward our faith. Accordingly, 
 as Jesus was tempted at the moment when He 
 was declared to be the Son of God, and as 
 His temptation was the occasion of His glori- 
 fying God as a Father, so may it be with 
 every son whom He loveth. It is thus that 
 His chastisement will make us " partakers 
 of His holiness;" and though "not for the 
 present joyous, but grievous," will ** after- 
 wards work out the peaceable fruits of 
 righteousness in those who are exercised 
 thereby." We might therefore address all 
 who are in any way tried by evil : 
 " Brethren, count it all joy when ye fall 
 into divers temptations; knowing this, that 
 he trying of your faith worketh patience. 
 But let patience have her perfect work. 
 
244 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting 
 nothing. If any of you lack wisdom, let 
 him ask of God, that giveth to all men 
 liberally, and upbraideth not ; and it shall 
 be given him." And again : " Blessed is 
 the man that endureth temptation : for when 
 he is tried, he shall receive the crown of 
 life, which the Lord hath promised to them 
 that love Him." 
 
 2. Another lesson is taught us by the 
 manner in which our Lord resisted these 
 several temptations. He always appealed to 
 the Word of God. " It is written " was His 
 repeated affirmation. The reverent man- 
 ner in which our Lord habitually referred to 
 the Old Testament Scriptures cannot fail to 
 convey to us the impression of His having 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 245 
 
 recognised them as possessing an authority 
 independent of Him, but which He rejoiced 
 to corroborate in the most solemn moments 
 of His life. Whatever errors we may presume 
 to have discovered in them, not a trace of 
 any such discovery appears in the teaching 
 of Christ, nor does He ever speak as if He 
 did not accept them in their integrity, as if 
 they were not in harmony with all His teach- 
 ing, and sufficient for Him and all His pur- 
 poses. Among His fullest and most solemn 
 recognitions of the Old Testament was that 
 given after His death, and on the great day 
 of His Resurredtofiy when He ** opened up 
 the Scriptures " to his disciples while walking 
 along the road to Emmaus, until '* their hearts 
 burnt within them." Then it was that, 
 
246 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 "beginning at Moses, and all the Prophets, 
 He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures 
 the things concerning Himself;** and on 
 that same evening, He told them in an upper 
 room of Jerusalem, as He had often done 
 before — " that all things must be fulfilled 
 which were written in the law of Moses, and 
 in the Prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning 
 Him." 
 
 In the same spirit of reverence and faith 
 He also quoted from these Scriptures in that 
 momentous crisis of His life when, entering 
 on His public ministry and full of the Holy 
 Spirit, He was tempted by Satan. These 
 facts convey to us not only the lesson, which 
 many people much need to learn, of reverence 
 for writings which were held in such esteem 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 247 
 
 by " the best and holiest man who ever 
 lived," as all allow our Lord to have been, 
 and by the Divine Son of God who is " the 
 Truth," as Christians believe Him to be ; but 
 the special lesson that when tempted we 
 should avail ourselves of "the sword of the 
 Spirit, which is the Word of God." The 
 more we know ourselves, and the subtle 
 forms in which temptations come — the more 
 shall we see the wisdom of having God's 
 clear command, ^'Thou shalt not," to fall 
 back upon, and on these to take our stand 
 as in an impregnable fortress. This does not 
 imply that we must thus fall back upon mere 
 authority onlyy without seeing its righteous- 
 ness or its reasonableness. But it is a great 
 strength and blessing to have authority on 
 
248 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 which we may fall back first. The fact 
 that this does not necessarily require any 
 process of argument or reasoning, but is 
 such as a child may act upon, constitutes its 
 safeguard. For it would be often at the 
 moment of temptation a great danger to be 
 obliged to have recourse to mere argument. 
 When forced to adopt in our defence our pre- 
 sent feelings, or the conclusions of our intel- 
 lect, or scraps of knowledge from observation 
 and experience, or what seems a clever 
 policy, then indeed we may be soon over- 
 thrown by an enemy far more subtle than 
 ourselves. This danger is greatest when 
 sinful desires within are ready to betray us 
 into the hands of the enemy, and are dis- 
 posed to listen to the guile of his fair and 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 249 
 
 corrupting speeches and false promises ; and 
 when faith is weak and the pleasures of sin 
 present, and the consequences of wrong-doing 
 remote. But when, on the other hand, we 
 can shut our ears to every argument, however 
 plausible, and to every " way of putting " the 
 temptation, however specious, and refuse all 
 further parley, through faith in some clear 
 authoritative declaration of our loving Father 
 who knoweth our frame, and of our wise 
 Teacher who will ever guide us in a path 
 of righteousness, safety, and peace, then shall 
 we be able to say, " ' It is written ! ' — I ask no 
 more ! — * Get thee behind me, Satan ! * " 
 
 But although the teaching of his children 
 by a wise earthly father, or of ourselves by 
 our Father in heaven, begins with authority. 
 
250 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 it does not necessarily end there. Our 
 Teacher, while demanding implicit faith in 
 what He says because He says it, and implicit 
 obedience because He commands it, does not 
 forbid us, but rather invites and commands 
 us to see the truth as true for ourselves, and 
 to perceive with our own consciences the 
 wisdom and righteousness of the Authority 
 which says, " Thou shalt not ! *' until we are 
 able to reply, not only in the spirit of ** blind 
 obedience," " Amen, I shall not " — ^^but in the 
 spirit of a loving choice, " Amen, I will not." 
 It was thus Christ declared that He did not 
 call His disciples servants — who were to obey 
 mere authority — hut friends, who would obey 
 because sympathizing with the righteousness 
 of the authority — "for the servant knoweth 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 251 
 
 not what his Lord doeth ; but I have called 
 you friends, for all things that I have heard 
 of my Father I have made known unto you." 
 Accordingly, while it is our privilege when 
 tempted to fall back with unreserved confi- 
 dence upon God's Word when it gives us 
 light, by command, by warning, by promise, 
 or by threat, yet it is a higher privilege still 
 to penetrate into the righteous principle in- 
 volved in that authority, so that we should 
 obey not as "servants" only, but also as 
 " friends " who recognise the truth for them- 
 selves which they first received on the mere 
 authority of the truth-speaker. Oh, how 
 earnest should we be that instead of the 
 shocking irreverence for God's holy Word 
 which abounds, and the gross and shameful 
 
252 THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. 
 
 ignorance of it which exists among profess- 
 ing Christians, and the bold self-confidence 
 in which many glory, who have but a few 
 sayings or opinions of society to guide them 
 amidst the temptations of the world, we 
 should let "the Word of God dwell in us 
 richly in all wisdom," that so we " may be 
 thoroughly furnished unto good works." 
 
 " Finally, my brethren, be strong in the 
 Lord, and in the power of His might. Put 
 on the whole armour of God, that ye may 
 be able to stand against the wiles of the 
 devil. For we wrestle^ not against flesh and 
 blood, but against principalities, against 
 powers, against the rulers of the darkness of 
 this world, against spiritual wickedness in 
 high places. Wherefore take unto you the 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 253 
 
 whole armour of God, that ye may be able to 
 withstand in the evil day, and having done 
 all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your 
 loins girt about with truth, and having on 
 the breastplate of righteousness : and your 
 feet shod with the preparation of the gospel 
 of peace ; above all, taking the shield of 
 faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench 
 all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take 
 the helmet of salvation, and the sword of 
 the Spirit, which is the Word of God : pray- 
 ing always with all prayer and supplication 
 in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all 
 perseverance and supplication for all saints.'* 
 Amen! 
 
 THE END. 
 
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