since from Satan not even the smallest semblance of any of his ruinous gifts can be gained except by suffering the soul to do allegiance to him, the answer to all his temptations is the answer of Christ, "Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.

"1

Thus was Christ victorious, through that self-renunciation through which only can victory be won. And the moments of such honest struggle crowned with victory are the very sweetest and happiest that the life of man can give. They are full of an elevation and a delight which can only be described in language borrowed from the imagery of heaven.

"Then the devil leaveth Him"-St. Luke adds, "till a fitting opportunity "-" and, behold, angels came and ministered unto Him." 2

1 Deut. vi. 13. This being one of St. Matthew's "cyclic" quotations agrees mainly with the LXX. [except προσκυνήσεις for φοβηθήσῃ and μόνῳ, for the LXX. variations are here, no doubt, altered in the Alex. MS. from the N. T.], and is not close to the Hebrew; but his "peculiar " quotations are usually from the Hebrew, and differ from the LXX. (See Westcott, Introd., p. 211.) It is remarkable that our Lord's three answers are all from Deut. vi. and viii.

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2 The reader will be glad to see, in connection with this subject, some of the remarks of Ullmann, who has studied it more profoundly, and written on it more beautifully, than any other theologian. "The positive temptations of Jesus," he says, were not confined to that particular point of time when they assailed Him with concentrated force. But still more frequently in after life was He called to endure temptation of the other kind the temptation of suffering, and this culminated on two occasions, viz., in the conflict of Gethsemane, and in that moment of agony on the cross when He cried, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?'” (Sinlessness of Jesus, E. Tr., p. 140.) He had already remarked (p. 128) that man is exposed in two ways to the possibility and seductive power of evil. On the one hand he may be drawn to actual sin by enticements; and, on the other hand, he may be turned aside from good by threatened as well as by inflicted suffering. The former may be termed positive, the latter negative, temptation." "Jesus was tempted in all points—that is, He was tempted in the only two possible ways specified above. On the one

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SINLESS THOUGH TEMPTED.

139

hand, allurements were presented which, if successful, would have led Him to actual sin; and, on the other hand, He was beset by sufferings which might have turned Him aside from the divine path of duty. These temptations, moreover, occurred both on great occasions and in minute particulars, under the most varied circumstances, from the beginning to the end of His earthly course. But in the midst of them all His spiritual energy and His love to God remained pure and unimpaired” (id. p. 30).

Ewald, in his Die drei Ersten Evangelien, regarding the Temptation from the point of view of public work, makes the three temptations correspond severally to the tendencies to (i.) unscrupulousness, (ii.) rash confidence, (iii.) unhallowed personal ambitions.

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CHAPTER X.

THE FIRST APOSTLES.

Nisi habuisset et in vultu quiddam oculisque sidereum nunquam eum statim secuti fuissent Apostoli, nec qui ad comprehendendum eum venerant corruissent."-JER. Ep. lxv.

VICTORIOUS Over that concentrated temptation, safe from the fiery ordeal, the Saviour left the wilderness and returned to the fords of Jordan.1

1 It is well known that "Bethania" (~, A, B, C, &c.), not "Bethabara," is the true reading of John i. 28; it was altered by Origen (who admits that it was the reading of nearly all the MSS.) on very insufficient grounds, viz., that no Bethany on the Jordan was known, and that there was said to be (deíkvvolai dè λéyovoi) a Bethabara, where John was said to have baptised. Origen is, however, supported by Cureton's Syriac. The two names (7, "house of passage," and ", "house of ship," or ferryboats) have much the same meaning (see 2 Sam. xv. 23, Heb.). Mr. Grove thinks that Bethabara may be identical with Beth-barah, the fords secured by the Ephraimites (Judg. vii. 24), or with Beth-nimrah (Numb. xxxii. 36). This latter answers to the description, being close to the region round about Jordan, the Ciccar of the O. T., the oasis of Jericho. In some edd. of the LXX. this is actually written Bŋ0aßpá (Bibl. Dict. i. 204). Mr. Monro ingeniously suggests that Origen (like his copyists) may have confused Bethabara with Betharaba (Josh. xviii. 22) which was in the Jordan valley. After careful attention, I see no grounds whatever for agreeing with Caspari (Chron. Geogr. Einl. 277), and others who place this Bethania at Tellanihje, on the upper Jordan, to the north-east of the Sea of Gennesareth. The reasons for the traditional scene of the baptism, near Jericho, and therefore within easy reach of Jerusalem, seem far more convincing. [The Bethany on the Mount of Olives has another derivation; it was usually derived from "", "house of unripe dates; " but after the valuable letter of Dr. Deutsch, published by Mr. W. H. Dixon in his Holy Land (ii. 217), this conjecture of Lightfoot's must remain at least doubtful.]

THE FOURTH GOSPEL.

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The Synoptical Gospels, which dwell mainly on the ministry in Galilee, and date its active commencement from the imprisonment of John, omit all record of the intermediate events, and only mention our Lord's retirement to Nazareth. It is to the fourth Evangelist that we owe the beautiful narrative of the days which immediately ensued upon the temptation. The Judæan ministry is brought by him into the first prominence.2

1 Matt. iv. 12 (åvexwpnoev, “ withdrew"); Mark i. 14; Luke iv. 14. Throughout this book it will be seen that I accept unhesitatingly the genuineness of St. John's Gospel. It would be of course impossible, and is no part of my purpose, to enter fully into the controversy about it; and it is the more needless, because in many books of easy access (I may mention, among others, Professor Westcott's Introd. to the Study of the Gospels, and Hist. of the Canon of the New Testament, and Mr. Sanday's Authorship of the Fourth Gospel) the main arguments which seem decisive in favour of its genuineness may be studied by any one. The other side is powerfully argued by Mr. Tayler in his Fourth Gospel. All that I need here say (referring especially to what Professor Westcott has written on the subject), is, that there is external evidence for its authenticity in the allusions to or traces of the influence of this Gospel in Ignatius and Polycarp; and later in the second century, of Justin Martyr, Tatian, Theophilus, &c. Papias does not indeed mention it, which is a circumstance difficult to account for; but according to Eusebius (Hist. Ecc. iii. 39), he "made use of testimonies" out of the First Epistles, and few will separate the question of the genuineness of the Epistles from that of the genuineness of the Gospel. The very slightness of the Second and Third Epistles is almost a convincing proof of their authenticity, since no one could have dreamed of forging them. The early admission of the Fourth Gospel into the canon both of the East and West, and the acknowledgment of it even by heretics, are additional arguments in its favour. Dr. Lightfoot also notices the further fact that soon after the middle of the second century divergent readings of a striking kind occur in St. John's Gospel, as for instance, povoyevns beds and 8 μovoyevǹs vids ” (i. 18), and this leads us to the conclusion "that the text has already a history, and that the Gospel therefore cannot have been very recent" (On Revision, p. 20). But if the external evidence, though less decisive than we could have desired, is not inadequate, the internal evidence, derived not only from its entire scope, but also from numberless minute and incidental particulars, is simply overwhelming; and the improbabilities involved in the hypothesis of forgery are so immense, that it is hardly too much to say that we should have recognised in the Gospel the authorship of St. John, even if it had come down to us

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He seems to have made a point of relating nothing of which he had not been a personal witness, and there are some few indications that he was bound to Jerusalem by peculiar relations. By station St. John was a fisherman, and it is not impossible that, as the fish of the Lake of Galilee were sent in large quantities to Jerusalem, he may have lived there at certain seasons in connection. with the employment of his father and his brother, who, as the owners of their own boat and the masters of hired servants, evidently occupied a position of some importance. Be that as it may, it is St. John alone who narrates to us the first call of the earliest Apostles,

anonymously, or under some other name. The Hebraic colouring of the style; the traces of distinctly Judaic training and conceptions (i. 45; iv. 22); the naïve faithfulness in admitting facts which might seem to tell most powerfully against the writer's belief (vii. 5); the minute topographical and personal allusions and reminiscences (vi. 10, 19, 23; x. 22, 23; xi. 1, 44, 54; xxi. 2); the faint traces that the writer had been a disciple of John the Baptist, whose title he alone omits (i. 15; iii. 23, 25); the vivid freshness of the style throughout, as, for instance, in the account of the blind man, and of the Last Supper-so wholly unlike a philosopheme, and so clearly written ad narrandum, not ad probandum (ch. ix., xiii.); the preservation of the remarkable fact that Jesus was first tried before Annas (xviii. 13, 19-24), and the correction of the current tradition as to the time of the Last Supper (xiii. 1; xviii. 28);-these are but a few of numberless internal evidences which bring additional confirmation to the conviction inspired by the character and contents of this great Gospel. They have left no doubt on the minds of many profound and competent scholars, and no one can easily make light of evidence which has satisfied such a philologian as Ewald, and, for twelve editions of his book, satisfied even such a critic as Renan. It is my sincere belief that the difficulties of accepting the Gospel are mainly superficial, and that they are infinitely less formidable than those involved in its rejection. Mr. Sanday has treated the question with great impartiality; and in his volume many of the points touched upon in this note are developed with much force and skill.

1 John xix. 27; xviii. 16. Perhaps this explains the fact that James was not with his brother John as a disciple of the Baptist. Andrew, on finding Christ, immediately sought out his brother Simon. John could not do so, for his brother was in Galilee, and was not called till some time subsequently.