and the Bathkôl, which to the dull unpurged ear was but an inarticulate thunder, spake in the voice of God to the ears of John-"This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."

1 On the Bathkôl, see Gfrörer, Jahrh. d. Heils, i. 253, seqq.; Otho, Lex. Rabb. s. v. The term was sometimes applied to voices from heaven, sometimes to sounds repeated by natural echo, sometimes to chance words overruled to providential significance (Etheridge, Hebr., Literat., p. 39). The Apocryphal Gospels add that a fire was kindled in Jordan (J. Mart. c. Tryph. 88; Hofmann, p. 299).

CHAPTER IX.

THE TEMPTATION.

Ideo tentatus est Christus, ne vincatur a Tentatore Christianus."AUG. in Ps. lx.

His human spirit filled with overpowering emotions, Jesus sought for retirement, to be alone with God, and once more to think over His mighty work. From the waters of the Jordan He was led-according to the more intense and picturesque expression of St. Mark, He was "driven "--by the Spirit into the wilderness.1

A tradition, said to be no older than the time of the Crusades, fixes the scene of the temptation at a mountain to the east of Jericho, which from this circumstance has received the name of Quarantania. Naked and arid like a mountain of malediction, rising precipitously from a scorched and desert plain, and looking over the

1 Cf. Rom. viii. 14; Ezek. iii. 14; Mark i. 12, тò пveûμα ékßáλλei avtò eis Tǹv čonuov. St. John, perhaps, among other reasons which are unknown to us, from his general desire to narrate nothing of which he had not been an eye-witness, omits the narrative of the temptation, which clearly followed immediately after the baptism. Unless a charge of dishonesty be deliberately maintained, and an adequate reason for such dishonesty assigned, it is clearly unfair to say that a fact is wilfully suppressed simply because it is not narrated.-It seems probable that on the last day of the temptation came the deputation to John from the priests and Levites, and on the following day Christ returned from the desert, and was saluted by the Baptist as the Lamb of God.

sluggish, bituminous waters of the Sodomitic sea-thus offering a sharp contrast to the smiling softness of the Mountain of Beatitudes and the limpid crystal of the Lake of Gennesareth-imagination has seen in it a fit place to be the haunt of evil influences 1-a place where, in the language of the prophets, the owls dwell and the satyrs dance.

And here Jesus, according to that graphic and pathetic touch of the second Evangelist, "was with the wild beasts." They did not harm Him. "Thou shalt tread upon the lion and the adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.” So had the voice of olden promise spoken; 2 and in Christ, as in so many of His children, the promise was fulfilled. Those whose timid faith shrinks from all semblance of the miraculous, need find nothing to alarm them here. It is not a natural thing that the wild creatures should attack with ferocity, or fly in terror from, their master man. A poet has sung of a tropical isle that

"Nor save for pity was it hard to take

The helpless life, so wild that it was tame."

The terror or the fury of animals, though continued by hereditary instinct, was begun by cruel and wanton aggression; and historical instances are not wanting in which both have been overcome by the sweetness, the

1 Bab. Erubhin, f. 19, 1 a; Isa. xiii. 21, 22; xxxiv. 14. The Rabbis said that there were three mouths of Gehenna-in the Desert (Numb. xvi. 33), in the sea (Jonah ii. 3), and at Jerusalem (Isa. xxxi. 9). Cf. 4 Mace. xviii., οὐ διέφθειρέ με λυμεὼν ἐρημίας, φθορεὺς ἐν πεδίῳ. Azazel (Lev. xvi. 10, Heb.) was a demon of "dry places" (cf. Matt. xii. 43). (Lightfoot, Hor. Hebr.; Keim, i. 638.)-Milton's description (Par. Reg. iii. 242), probably derived from some authentic source, "would almost seem to have been penned on the spot." (Porter, Palestine, i. 185.)

2 Ps. xci. 13.

(Job v. 23).

"The beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee"

ப

IN THE WILDERNESS.

121

There seems to be no

majesty, the gentleness of man. adequate reason for rejecting the unanimous belief of the early centuries that the wild beasts of the Thebaid moved freely and harmlessly among the saintly eremites, and that even the wildest living creatures were tame and gentle to St. Francis of Assisi. Who has not known people whose presence does not scare the birds, and who can approach, without danger, the most savage dog? We may well believe that the mere human spell of a living and sinless personality would go far to keep the Saviour from danger. Through the catacombs and on other ancient monuments of early Christians, He is often represented as Orpheus charming the animals with his song. All that was true and beautiful in the old legends found its fulfilment in Him, and was but a symbol of His life and work.

And He was in the wilderness forty days. The number occurs again and again in Scripture, and always in connection with the facts of temptation or retribution. It is clearly a sacred and representative number, and independently of other associations, it was for forty days that Moses had stayed on Sinai, and Elijah in the wilderness. In moments of intense excitement and overwhelming thought the ordinary needs of the body seem to be modified, or even for a time superseded; and unless we are to understand St. Luke's words, "He did eat nothing," as being absolutely literal, we might suppose that Jesus found all that was necessary for His bare sustenance in such scant fruits as the desert might afford;1 but however that may be and it is a

1 The Jewish hermit Banus lived for years on the spontaneous growth of this very desert (Jos. Vit. 2). The noтeúσas of St. Matthew does not necessarily imply an absolute fast.

question of little importance-at the end of the time He hungered. And this was the tempter's moment. The whole period had been one of moral and spiritual tension.1 During such high hours of excitement men will sustain, without succumbing, an almost incredible amount of labour, and soldiers will fight through a long day's battle unconscious or oblivious of their wounds. But when the enthusiasm is spent, when the exaltation dies when the fire burns low, when Nature, weary away, and overstrained, reasserts her rights—in a word, when a mighty reaction sets in leaving the man suffering, spiritless, exhausted-then is the hour of extreme danger, and that has been, in many a fatal instance, the moment in which a man has fallen a victim to insidious allurement or bold assault. It was at such a moment that the great battle of our Lord against the powers of evil was fought and won.

The struggle was, as is evident, intensely real. Into the exact external nature of the temptation it seems at once superfluous and irreverent to enter-superfluous, because it is a question in which any absolute decision is for us impossible; irreverent, because the Evangelists could only have heard it from the lips of Jesus, or of those to whom He communicated it, and our Lord could only have narrated it in the form which conveys at once the truest impression and the most instructive lessons. Almost every different expositor has had a different view as to the agency employed, and the objective or subjective reality of the entire event. From Origen down

1 Luke iv. 2, "Being forty days tempted of the devil."

2 Very few writers in the present day will regard the story of the temptation as a narrative of objective facts. Even Lange gives the story a natural turn, and supposes that the tempter may have acted through the intervention of human agency. Not only Hase and Weisse, but even