IV.

THE TEMPTATION.

MATTHEW iv. 1-11.

THE fate of the world is always turning upon incidents. Side issues swallow up main issues, and then, having become themselves main issues, are in turn swallowed up by new side issues, and thus the stream of history makes its devious way. The partial awakening of the Jewish people to a consciousness of their supreme duty and opportunity under the preaching of John the Baptist incidentally waked up the self-consciousness of Jesus of Nazareth, and henceforth he, rather than the nation, becomes of prime interest. Heeding the voice of one whom he saw to be a true prophet, doing what seemed to him to be the duty of a loyal Jew, preparing to play whatever part might be assigned him in the coming crisis of the kingdom, and already suspecting that he was to be the chief instrument through whom the kingdom of God was to come, he had, in the performance of that simple and apparently artificial duty of submitting to baptism, suddenly arrived at the most startling conviction as to who he was.

Heretofore, though he may have pondered the problem whether he was not the Messiah, it need not have led him to think about his own greatness or littleness. He may easily have been content with the common Jewish notion that the coming of this kingdom was to be an event purely miraculous, and that the messianic instrument was to be a mere tool in the hands of divine power. In accordance with this idea, he could wait in unreflecting humility and patience, cherishing the sublime and comforting consciousness of divine fatherhood, but omitting to draw from it any adequate inferences concerning his own sonship, and what sonship meant in his case. But the baptismal principle of the great prophet was that each man should take upon himself personal responsibility for his share in the coming event, the sinful by repenting, and those who needed no repentance by setting their faces toward the bringing in of the kingdom in whatever way they were able. The story was that Jesus was the only candidate that came who did not strike the prophet as needing repentance; and so absorbed had that preacher been with the fact that turning from sin was the main thing, that he was unwilling to baptize Jesus until the latter himself suggested the true interpretation of his own principle. The baptism of Jesus had put an end to the period of passive waiting, and opened to his mind the question what he should do. But the first part of

that question was who he really was, and what were his resources. He must take account of himself. There suddenly bloomed out the thought, whose germ we find in his mind many years earlier, that he was the Son of God, and hence not a mere instrument to be worked by divine power. And when this idea made union with the other nascent thought, that he was the Jewish Messiah, there came to him the most remarkable consciousness of his own greatness and the most overwhelming sense of his own responsibility. No other man ever thought himself so great without being manifestly insane; yet no other man has ever so impressed the world with his sanity. Matthew Arnold names his sanity as his prime characteristic. Nothing so surely makes a man appear absurd as to overestimate himself. No one ever put his self-estimate higher than Jesus, yet he never appears absurd. This would seem to indicate that his estimate is correct.

As a Jew, Jesus believed that the Jewish Messiah was to occupy the crowning point of human history. When Jesus thought of his being the Messiah, he thought of occupying that point. But there is no evidence that, until the moment of his baptism, that idea carried with it any answer to the question whether he was to hold that supreme place by virtue of inherent greatness, or simply as a messenger arbitrarily chosen regardless of personal fitness. The latter was more in accordance

with the current Jewish notion. Now the question was being pressed by the terms of his baptism, and the answer came in what was to him a voice from his Father. It is of much importance what that answer was.

Which of these alternatives shall stand to us for truth will depend, if we ever come to have a rational faith or unfaith, upon whether we agree or not with Jesus' estimate of himself. He thought, whether mistakenly or not this is not the place to say, that the Jewish Messiah was to hold the supreme place in history, that he was to be that Messiah, and that he was no mere messenger, but the Son of God; and hence that his greatness, while purely relative and derivative, as a son's must be, was his own, and was real in quality and unmeasured in quantity. If anything like this is what Jesus meant when he called himself the Son of God, and if he arrived at the idea in any such way as has been described, is it such an incredible or incomprehensible conception as it is sometimes made out to be? The author of the Fourth Gospel has reported what purport to be and seem to be genuine sayings of Jesus expressing this double sense of subordination and of independence. "The Son can do nothing of himself;" and yet, "As the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself; and hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man," the crowning personage in human history.

And now, at the very point where the Gospel narratives agree with the nature of the case in declaring that Jesus came to the distinct consciousness of his sonship, they again agree with the nature of the case in declaring that he came face to face with a series of awful temptations.

We need not undertake to decide exactly how much of this story of the temptation is strict fact, and how much pictorial coloring. The literal accuracy of the account is no longer affirmed, nor the existence in it of a solid kernel of fact any longer denied. The original information must have come from Jesus himself. It is easy to imagine why he should have given such confidences to his disciples. He made free with them in many ways, and always craved their sympathy. Temptations of the same class were always coming up anew, and leading them to ask of him a letting down of the high standard he had set. He must show them that these matters had been settled once for all, and were no longer open questions.

It was the custom of Jesus throughout his ministry to assume that he had met and conquered Satan. The disciples would understand such an assumption in a rather crude and materialistic way, and would almost certainly ask him for an account of the contest. Although it was to himself a most genuine experience, he could tell about it only in pictorial language; and they would inevitably construe it more literally than he meant it. Partly