More clear perhaps then, to the ear, and with nigher voice and more plain, But still the same Teacher Divine, speaking to us again and again. "Thou shalt keep him in perfect peace"-runs the prophet's message—" whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he trusteth in Thee": and that is just the message for all who, in times of unsettlement like ours, are disposed to grow fearful, and to lose heart, because there is change in the air, and the old pilotstars of faith seem failing from the sky. Stay your mind on the living Master Himself, and trust in Him, Who is evermore the same, and you need not disturb yourself about what men speak of as the perils of Religion. So long as you turn to Christ in temptation and are strengthened; so long as you find in Christ a continual rebuke of evil, a continual summons to good; so long as in trying to act on His principles and to follow in His steps you know yourself to be rising above your lower nature, and becoming humbler and more serviceable; so long, in fact, as you have assurance in yourself that Christ is with you, what need have you to be distressed at the babble of the multitude and the conflicts of the schools? You also may say, "I know Him whom I have believed," and in that "knowledge" you may rest in peace. 'God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will we not fear, though the earth do change, and though the mountains be moved in the hearts of the seas; though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. . . . The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge." XV THE TEMPTATION OF CHRIST1 AND JESUS, FULL OF THE HOLY SPIRIT, RETURNED FROM THE JORDAN, AND WAS LED BY THE SPIRIT IN THe wilderness DURING FORTY DAYS, BEING TEMPTED OF THE DEVIL.-St. Luke iv. 1. THE author of the Epistle to the Hebrews states with notable emphasis that our Saviour's temptations were in no respect different from those by which we are assailed; and he builds on this identity of trial the comfortable assurance of Christ's sympathy with We are, therefore, authorised to make our temptations the key to the understanding of His, and to seek in our own experience the commentary on the story of His Life. us. If it be asked whether the record of Christ's temptation be miraculous, the answer cannot be doubtful. Temptation in His case was as natural and as supernatural as in ours;-natural, for the 1 Preached on Passion Sunday, March 29, 1903, in St. Margaret's, Westminster. |