we have no means of determining. Probably it was one of those wild, uninhabited places which abounded near the Jordan. It is sufficient for our purpose, that the place was a desert, a solitude, howling with wild beasts, and so a fit place for dejection of mind, and the attacks of the adversary.

5. But how came Jesus into this place of temptation? Matthew says, that he was led up by the Spirit (ὑπὸ τοῦ Πνεύματος). Mark says, the Spirit driveth him (zò IIveõμa avròv izßáhλ); and Luke again, that he was led by the Spirit (v to reipari). What Spirit do the sacred writers mean? Certainly, the Holy Spirit. For the record says, that, being full of the Holy Ghost, or Holy Spirit (Ivεvuaros άziov), he was led by the Spirit (IIrevμaros), that is, the same Spirit with which he was filled. The words of Luke, avtor izpuhket, the Spirit driveth him, mean nothing more than that he was borne away by the powerful urgency of the Spirit within him. The IIvɛvua here is not the evil Spirit, for the word never refers in Scripture to the evil Spirit, unless when connected with some qualifying word to indicate it. Nor need we be stumbled at the idea that the Spirit of God should lead the Son of God into temptation. Christ came expressly to destroy the works of the devil. Under the tempter and arch enemy of man, the first Adam had fallen and ruined us all; the second Adam must contend with and overcome the same, or human re covery would be impossible. Christ, the captain of our salvation, must be made perfect through suffering, must be able to succor the tempted through experience of temptation, must bruise the serpent's head. It was, then, a part of God's plan, that his Son should come into conflict with the prince of evil, and get the mastery of him. He must, therefore, be exposed to his temptations, and to his temptations in the severest forms.

6. But how is it possible that a perfectly holy being should be tempted? The question is readily answered, when we under stand the meaning of the word πειράζω, from which πειρασθῆναι and negutóμeros are derived, signifying to make trial of, to try. God tempted or tried Abraham; wicked men tempt or try God; they are also tempted or tried by their own lusts; in other words, men are placed under powerful inducements to do evil, as they sometimes place God under powerful inducements to punish them. Christ was led into the wilderness that he might feel the full influence of the most powerful inducements to do wrong, VOL. XI. No. 41.

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and, as our example and Saviour, resist them, maintain his integrity and manifest his incorruptible virtue. It is, indeed, said, that God tempteth no man; that is, he never lays before men motives to evil that he may lead them into sin, while he does place them in circumstances of affliction, trial and inducement to wrong, that, by opportunities of overcoming evil, they may manifest their loyalty to him and be confirmed in it.

The mind is made up at once for all. The urgency

Now, with this idea of temptation, we have only to remember that our Saviour, though Divine, was perfectly human; that he had human feelings, appetites and susceptibilities, and we shall see that temptation is possible even to a sinless nature. Suppose a holy human being famishing with hunger; suppose that his sufferings are so great, as has sometimes been the case with starving persons, that he is ready to tear the flesh from his own body. Now place before him a table loaded with food. His desire for it is unavoidable and inexpressible. But God says, touch it not. Nature insists on snatching a loaf. But duty says, No. Here are the most imperious appetites, the most powerful inducements. But it is possible to conceive of a person who says, No; I'll suffer, I'll starve, I'll die, but I will not disobey God. The inclination to eat is almost irresistible, but there is not the slightest disposition to disobey God. Reason sits upon its throne and exercises its power of choice. once, decidedly, unwaveringly, and of nature to eat is almost infinite. But the true man within the man says, No! He says it instantly, he says it cheerfully, without the least murmur or disposition to murmur. While it is almost naturally impossible to refrain, it is really morally impossible to eat, under the circumstances supposed. We may say, therefore, of our Saviour, that, as a man, in case of extreme hunger, he must desire food, and, as a free agent, power to gratify forbidden desires, but, as a holy being, who prefers death to evil, he cannot do this wickedness and sin against God. There are also mental as well as physical susceptibilities which belong to human nature as such. And it is conceivable that a person might have strong natural desires for some forbidden object or attainment, beyond and above the province of mere animal appetite, and that the indulgence or immediate denial of these desires should make the difference in a given instance between sin and holiness. If this be true, a holy being, independent of bodily organization, might be subjected to temptation.

7. By what agency was Jesus tempted? vrò rov diaßólov, says Matthew; ὑπὸ τοῦ Σατανᾶ, says Mark; ὑπὸ τοῦ διαβόλου, says Luke. This is not the place to discuss the question of the existence of evil spirits. But a few words on the subject seem necessary. No man can deny that God has created other orders of rational beings besides men; or that some of those orders have fallen; or that a purely spiritual being can have influence over human minds. The New Testament teaches the existence of angels and devils. It teaches this almost as plainly as it teaches the existence of God. It would require nearly as much violence to language, if we should interpret the Scriptures so as to exclude from them the recognition of good and evil spirits, as it would to exclude the recognition of God. Man, in his original state, and in his true nature, before the apostasy, is never represented as originally evil; it comes to him first from without. There is an outward force which holds sway over humanity, and which must be destroyed. Man fell being tempted by the serpent, elsewhere called, that old serpent, the devil. The first prediction concerning the Messiah is, that he, the seed of the woman, should bruise the serpent's head. When Christ came, he recognized the existence of devils, and assumed to cast them out. He spoke of an individual as their leader, whom he called the devil, and the prince of this world; and of his associates, as the angels of the devil, as devils, and the powers of darkness.

This individual, a mighty, mysterious, fallen intelligence, not, however, omniscient nor omnipotent, the head of a great organized opposition to God, the arch foe of man and the prince of evil, is the agent by whom Jesus is tempted. Some, indeed, have supposed the occurrences under consideration to be a mere representation of a conflict on the part of Christ with impersonal evil. But there is hardly more reason for supposing that what is here called the devil is impersonal, than to suppose that what is here called Jesus is impersonal. The principle of interpretation which would remove the evil agent, as an agent, from the record, would remove our Saviour himself from the record, as an agent. The only thing which can be distorted, on exegetical grounds, into an argument for supposing that the temptation is anything other than a narrative of facts, is the use of the preposition by Luke before to IIvεvuari, which might allow us to say that Jesus was led in the Spirit, instead of saying, as one translation does, that he was led by the Spirit. But that this

preposition often signifies by, no one acquainted with the New Testament Greek will deny. Matthew and Mark, moreover, use the preposition vzó instead of ir, and vnó never signifies in, but under, through and by, either of which definitions would require the sense given in our translation. Besides, the same passage which says that he was led up by (vzó) the Spirit, says that he was tempted by (vzó) the devil. If we should say he was led up in the Spirit, then, to be consistent, we must say that he was led up in the devil.

The whole of Farmer's argument (with the exception just considered), that the temptation is a vision, bases itself on mere aesthetic grounds, which a proper explanation of the passage removes. To the idea, then, that the narrative is a vision, myth, parable, representation, we have only to say that there is no evidence of it whatever. On exegetical grounds, we can no. more explain away the reality of the temptation than we can explain away the reality of the Saviour's baptism, his agony in the garden, or even his crucifixion.

8. General explanation. As the narrative, taken literally, is supposed by some to involve absurdities and suppositions shocking to the feelings, and dishonorable to Christ,' we must now proceed to the explanation of it. The main objections to the most literal interpretation, then, are the bodily presence of the tempter, and the Saviour suffering himself to be thus taken from place to place by him, when he knew who this being was, and knew his object. But what reason is there for supposing a bodily presence? The prince of evil is a spirit; if he comes in his true nature, he comes as a spirit. Besides, Christ was tempted in all respects as we are, and we are not tempted by Satan in his bodily presence but by his evil suggestions. It does not appear that he ever presented himself in human form on any other occasion, why should he have departed from his custom, in the Saviour's case? Moreover, his hope of success must have depended upon his concealing his true character.

But, supposing only a spiritual presence, it is said the Saviour must have known, at once, both the tempter and his designs, and have refused all converse with him. But this proceeds on the

1 Such as that Christ was led about from place to place by Satan in bodily form, followed Satan wherever the prince of evil was disposed to go with him, and, without resistance, was even carried through the air and placed on the top of the temple by him.

supposition that Jesus, as a man, knew all things, a sentiment which the Scripture expressly contradicts. He was once an infant and had only an intelligence. He grew in knowledge as he grew in stature; and in full maturity, he said of one event, of that day and that hour knoweth no man, not even the Son. That he was Divine as well as human, and that, when he called his Divine nature into exercise, he was omniscient by the power of it, no orthodox Christian will deny. But that he was also human, and that as such his faculties were subject to human limitations, every reader of the New Testament confesses. Speaking of him as Divine, no doubt God dwelt in him, and was one with him; but speaking of him as human, it is equally true that there were times when he confessed his weakness, and the imperfection of his knowledge. Is it necessary to suppose, that he enjoyed the full consciousness of his Deity and had all his Divine attributes in exercise, during a series of temptations by which God was fitting him to succor the tempted? We shall the more readily answer this question, if we consider what occurred towards the close of his ministry. During the crucifixion, he was bereft for a time of all consciousness of God's presence, and in this state of mind was subjected, there is reason to believe, anew to temptation. Luke says, at the close of the scene in the wilderness, that the devil departed from him for a season, plainly indicating that his attacks would be renewed at some future period. Christ said to his disciples, on the night of betrayal, the prince of this world cometh and has nothing in me. A few hours afterward, and after the agony in the garden, he says to the officers who came to arrest him, now is your hour and the power of darkness; and Paul, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, says, that, when he offered up prayers and supplications with strong cryings and tears, he was heard in that he feared. Putting these things together, it is manifest that our Saviour was subjected to a temptation at the close of his ministry, addressed to his fears, and, from the fact that he exclaimed, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me," we infer that during the struggle he was unsustained by any conscious presence of his Deity. The natural inference, therefore, is, that, in the temptations which took place at the commencement of his ministry, he acted only in his human nature, without the knowledge or the power which belonged to his Divine nature, and without other supports than those which a human being derives from God.