as much a part of his discoursings as are any of his instructions. But these are not to be credited, we are told, any more than what a Moses or a Paul may have uttered. That is Christ himself must also be brought to the bar of this criticism, that it may there be settled what of his words are Gospel and what is not. So that even the Son of God is treated scarcely more respectfully than are mere human prophets and apostles. This shows us

The folly of attempting to divide that which is naturally indivisible. The Bible is so. It is one revelation, woven together with a wondrous variety of texture and hue, but with a yet more wondrous unity of design and execution. It is a Titanic arch, built upward from each side with precious marbles of divers qualities and veinings, from heaven's own quarries, culminating far up on high in glorious symmetry and strength, where Christ, the keystone, locks the massive structure in eternal rest, and crowns it with divinest grace. It cannot be tampered with. It is incapable of reconstruction. It cannot be built down to a smaller model. To attempt this is to tumble it into a mass of ruins. See where it ends. A selfconceited superiority of spiritual insight decides that Moses is too old, that Samuel, David, Isaiah, are too provincial, to teach the nineteenth century God's will; that Paul, and Peter, and John were competent for nothing higher than to report what Jesus may have spoken for human enlightenment, but could lay no claim that is valid to our credence as guides to salvation. We look to our Bible, then, and find its goodly volume reduced to a few chapters of Christ's much-praised sentences. These indeed are "spirit and life." But as these words are studied, they are found to embrace the most direct statements of the lasting validity of the Old Testament; and prospectively announce the divine legation of the apostles to teach mankind the loftiest, most interior truths. What now must be done? Believe Christ and accept his vouching of his forerunners' and his followers' inspiration? Not at all; but divide Christ, too, as the rest of the Bible has been rent asunder; cut his seamless coat in pieces; take some of his words and label them God's truth; take others just as authentic, and mark them supersti

tion, ignorance, falsehood. Do we over-state? Wise men can

answer.

A true sympathy with Christ will receive all his teachings, and with them the unabridged, unmutilated word of God. It feels submissively the force of his interrogation to the unbelieving Jews: "And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me?" It bows to his solemn declaration as final: "To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice." It cannot spare any part of that holy book which he loved to read, to ponder, as his Father's word, when a man like us. Did these venerable pages minister to his human comfort and development? That were enough to endear them forever to our hearts, if we are his friends. If he needed their succors, so do we. If he honored their agency as an aid to man's education and salvation, so should we. Did his apos

tles nourish and guide the churches by knowledge of spiritual things derived from their ascended Lord? Then they must be our counsellors as well, if we would not endanger the separation of our souls, our life, from the common centre of life. A genuine religious tendency never wished to make the Bible shorter or smaller than Christ made it. Rather would it that more of those disclosures of truth and duty and Christian experience might have been recorded, so that it could yet more rejoice in finding greater spoil. What gain to our mental as well as moral culture would it be, if thousands of shelves-full of our current literature were emptied to make room for the inspired narrative of those "many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written." But the canon is closed and sealed. It cannot be strange that they should guard it with sleepless watch, who hear the voice of this same Chief Witness saying of it all, not less than of its closing section: "If any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book." He who testifieth thus is the Lord Jesus; and he cometh quickly.

ARTICLE VI.

OUR LORD'S THIRD TEMPTATION.

THOUGH all revealed truth is precious to the Church, there are times when it turns with peculiar interest to certain portions of it. During the last fifty years, the doctrine of the Deity of Christ has necessarily held a leading place in its thoughts and discussions. Those who have defended it have also held firmly to his proper humanity, but they have naturally if not necessarily given to this side of the truth less prominence than belongs to it in a perfectly balanced system. There are indications that this neglect is being felt and that Christian experience is turning with new longing to the human sympathies of its divine Lord. With these we are brought into close contact in considering his Temptations.

When the apostle would urge us to confidence in approaching the throne of grace, he sets before us the fact that our intercessor there can sympathize with us, inasmuch as he has been tempted as we are. If this could not be said, the chief thing would be wanting to assure us that his nature was really one with ours.

In examining this subject, the thing of chief importance is to ascertain the facts which the Scriptures set forth concerning the temptations of our Lord, while the theories by which these are explained are of minor consequence. In our last number, we gave a general view of this passage in our Lord's history. We recur to it again, to present, with as little repetition as possible, some additional thoughts and inquiries. That it was real there can be no doubt. It is not enough either to justify the language of the inspired narrative, or to satisfy our wants, to suppose that some unusual vision passed before him representing a temptation. It must have been an actual trial of his virtue of his obedience to the divine will. His obedience is made an essential part of his work as mediator; but nowhere except in the closing scenes of his life was his obedience more conspicuous than in his temptations. Though we may suppose him to have met with these all through his earthly life, yet the only

account which we have of his being tempted is that which describes the assaults of the devil upon him in the wilderness.

In coming to a circumstantial examination of that account, we must first decide, what is essential to temptation. To this we answer, there must be an appeal to a desire in itself right, but which, in the circumstances, it would be wrong to gratify; and, a probability of obtaining the object desired by wrong doing. This last point is too evident to need argument. That which there is no probability of obtaining cannot be a motive to action. But if, with the probability of obtaining the desired object, an appeal is made to a desire in itself right, but which, in the circumstances, it would be wrong to yield to, we have all that is essential to temptation. This, it is true, is not all that is generally implied in it, in the case of sinful beings, for there is usually, if not always, some degree of wrong desire awakened. But that is not essential to the idea of temptation. To illustrate it is not wrong for a hungry man to desire food. But this right desire may be the occasion of his being tempted. In the extremity of his hunger, he may see a neighbor pass by with a loaf of bread which he knows he can gain possession of only by theft. The desire for bread, for that bread, is a lawful desire, but the least desire to get it in such a way would be sinful. The knowledge that it can be so obtained constitutes the temptation to the crime.

But suppose him to be so perfectly virtuous that the temptation does not for an instant awaken the least desire to yield to it. Virtue is so settled a habit of his mind that he shrinks from the sin by which alone the bread can be obtained as an evil vastly greater than any suffering which he can endure from the want of it. So not a breath of wrong desire moves in his soul. He does not repine because he cannot or dare not sin. Rather it is a joy to him to repel at once the temptation and to choose and abide by the right. There is no sin in such a case. It implies no wrong that he is tempted. Instead, there is virtue of a higher kind than if he had not been subjected to this trial of his constancy.

Such was the temptation of our Saviour. He had human appetites and human desires, so far as they can exist without sin. He was subject to hunger and fatigue. Food was pleas

ant to him when hungry and rest when weary. He had human affections and was susceptible of human joys and sorrows, of pleasure and aversion, of hope and fear and anxiety as we are. He could enjoy the innocent and tranquil pleasures of life, and had a human shrinking from suffering and death. In short, he had all the susceptibilities that are essential to humanity. To have these is no sin, but to yield to them when duty forbids is sin. To love pleasure rather than suffering is no sin, but to choose pleasure when duty calls us to suffer is sin.

Let us now examine the three temptations of Christ, with these evident truths in mind; bestowing our chief attention, however, on the last. It is easy to understand what were the first two, as recorded by Matthew. He was first assailed by the tempter through his hunger. The simple desire to satisfy his hunger, however strong that desire may have been, was not sinful. But he had an appointed time of fasting to fulfil. A desire to be freed from this duty would have been sin. But no such desire was awakened. Hungry and faint as he was, he yet could say with perfect promptness and cheerfulness, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God."

The second temptation was, an appeal to his desire to be recognized as the Messiah. It would have been a joy to him to be thus recognized. It was a grief to him that he came to his own and his own received him not. It was a part of the burden which he bore that he was despised and rejected of men. But the Jews sought a sign from him. They asked him to work miracles which should accord with their ideas of what the Messiah ought to do. The tempter suggested that to cast himself from a pinnacle of the temple might induce them to receive him as the Messiah. The suggestion was a plausible one, looked at from a merely human stand-point. The performance of some such unmeaning, foolish freak would have gratified the love of the marvellous in the minds of the people far more than did his benign works of feeding the hungry, healing the sick, and raising the dead. But had he thereby secured their recognition of him, his triumph would not only have been a barren one, but would have been gained at the sacrifice of truth. It would have been by substituting a juggler's trick for the moral evi