CHAPTER IV.

1 THEN was JESUS led away into the wilderness by the spirit to be tempted1 of the devil. 2 And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, He afterwards hungered.

3 And when the tempter came to Him, he said, Say that these stones be made bread. 4 But He, answering, said, It is written,2 man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that goeth forth through the mouth of God.

5 Then the devil taketh him into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle [a wing] of the temple; 6 And saith unto Him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down for it is written,

That 'He shall give his angels charge concerning thee; And in [their] hands they shall bear thee up,

Lest any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.

7 JESUS said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.*

8 Again the devil taketh him to an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; 9 And saith unto Him, All these things will I give thee, if Thou wilt fall down and worship me. 10 Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, satan; for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve." 11 Then the devil leaveth him, and behold, angels came and ministered unto him.

12 But when Jesus had heard that John was delivered" up [into custody], He returned into Galilee; 13 And leaving Nazareth, He came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is upon the sea-coast, in the borders of Zabulon and Nephthalim; 14 That it might be fulfilled which was declared by Esaias, the prophet, saying,

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15 The land of Zabulon, and the land of Nephthalim, The way of the sea,

Beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles.

16 The people which sat in darkness, saw great light;

and to them that sat in the region and shadow of death, light is sprung up. 17 From that time JESUS began to preach, and to say, Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

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18 And JESUS, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishers. 19 And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. 20 And they straightway left their nets and followed him. 21 And going on from thence, He saw other two brethren, James, the [son] of Zebedee, and John his brother, in the ship with Zebedee their father, mending their nets; and he called them. 22 And they straightway leaving the ship and their father, followed him.

23 And JESUS went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every malady in the people. 24 And the report of Him went forth into all Syria; and they brought to him all the distempered, that were beset with divers diseases and torments, and those that were possessed with demons, and those that were Lunatic, and those that had the palsy; and He healed them.

25 And there followed him many multitudes from Galilee, and Decapolis, and Jerusalem, and Judea, and beyond Jordan.

1 Mark i. 12.

Luke iv. 1. 2 Deut. viii. 3. 3 Psalm xci. 11. 4 Deut. vi. 16. Deut. vi. 13-x. 20. 6 Mark 1. 14. Luke iii. 20. 7 Isaiah ix. 1. 8 Mark i. 15. 9 Mark i. 16, 17.

NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

WILDERNESS (v. 1).-See note to chap. iii. 6.

DEVIL and SATAN.-In his notes to this chapter, the late venerable and Rev. J. Clowes furnishes two beautiful illustrations upon the heavenly and infernal marriage, to which he repeatedly returns in various other parts of his translations. In verse 10, on the words 'Get thee hence, Satan,' he observes," It is remarkable, that on this chapter the tempter is called by two distinct names- the devil, and

satan (for in verses 1, 5, 8, 11, he is called the devil, and in v. 10, satan), of which distinction no satisfactory account can be given, except from the internal sense, which requires that the two distinct principles of evil and the false, should be discriminated, since they are the opposites of good and truth; and form what Swedenborg properly terms, the infernal marriage, in like manner as the conjunction between good and truth forms the heavenly marriage. This, therefore, is one among the numerous proofs, that the word is written throughout with a view to such marriage."

Of the heavenly marriage, he supplies the following example. "Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in the synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and malady, &c." "This passage affords another striking proof that the sacred Scriptures are written with reference to the heavenly marriage of good and truth, as above noted, and were intended to express it, for the term teaching has reference more to the doctrine of truth, as the term preaching has to the doctrine of good; and in like manner the terms malady and disease have a distinct reference to the disorders of life, occasioned by the opposites to truth and good, that is, by falses and evils. And if each term had not this distinct reference, the mention of both would be needless tautology. The whole passage at the same time supplies a remarkable instance of the connection of the sense of several seemingly unconnected expressions into one sense, by which mode of speaking and writing, the Word of God is evidently distinguished from every other book: for when mention is made of the three distinct acts of teaching, of preaching, and of healing, they appear in the letter, or literal sense, as three separate acts, unconnected with each other; whereas, in the spirit, or spiritual sense, though distinct, they unite in one; teaching having respect to the illumination of the understanding by TRUTH; preaching, to the reformation and purification of the will of GOOD; and healing, to the joint effect of both in removing the falses and evils of the natural man or mind."

To this may be added, the necessity for a true translation of the sacred text, which is irrefragably set forth in the comment on verse 25. " In our common version of the New Testament (says Mr. Clowes), what is here rendered 'there

followed him MANY multitudes, is called great; but the original term is polloi, which literally has reference to number, and denotes MANY; whereas, great is expressed by megas. But there is yet another reason why the expression many ought to be here adopted in preference to great, and that is, because of the internal sense of each expression. Many being constantly applied in reference to truth, because truth is more a subject of number; and great, being applied in reference to good, because good is not so much a subject of number as of quality."

TEMPTATIONS IN THE WILDERNESS (v. 1).-We have all to be tried. Not without trials can the evils lodged in us by birth be cast out. Our life is compassed round with necessity, yet is the meaning of life itself, no other than freedom. Still we have a warfare, and in the beginning especially it will be a hard fought battle. For the Scripture precept, work out your Salvation with fear and trembling,' is but the outer voice of that which is prophetically inscribed within us, and leaves us no rest night or day, till it be obeyed. Nothing seems more certain, than that the Son of Man, the Word of Divine Truth, when it first prophetically stirs within us, should hurry us by the spirit into the wilderness, and there fronting the tempter, do battle with him, defiantly setting him at nought, until he yield and fly. Name it either way, whether in the natural desert of rocks and sands, or in the populous desert of selfishness and baseness, to such temptations are we all called, and well for us that it is so. Our wilderness is the world in an atheistic century, and our forty days of suffering, and of fasting, are long years of trial against the world, the flesh, and the devil. But by fighting against our evils, with our souls kept in dependence on our Saviour, we shall at length obtain the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

FASTED FORTY DAYS (v. 2).—Inasmuch as a wilderness is representative of a state of temptation, and forty, whether years or days, denote the entire duration thereof, therefore the temptations of the Lord endured from childhood to the passion of the cross, are described by the forty days' temptation in the wilderness. Not that the Lord was in the wilderness specifically for forty days, and at the end of that

period was subjected to the temptations of the devil, but that throughout his whole life, even to its conclusion, the dreadful passion of the cross, the Lord, by temptations, admitted into the humanity which he had from the mother, subdued all the powers of evil, or of hell, and at the same time glorified His humanity. These temptations endured by the Lord, are described in the aggregate, under the terms forty days and forty nights in the wilderness. The reason why more is not written in the Evangelists concerning those temptations is, because more was not revealed about them, nevertheless in the Prophets and in the Psalms, they are described at large (See N.J.D. 201. A.E. 730, 1.189).

FASTING (v. 2).-Food for the mind is of two kinds, heavenly and infernal. The former is appropriated from the Lord by the regenerate; the latter from hell by the unregenerate. Both, in the most general sense of the word spiritual, may be called spiritual food. The heavenly food is suited to the appetite of the angelic spirit, and the infernal food to that of the evil spirit, and also the spirit of man, while he loves evil, for it is the love that hungers for its corresponding food.

The evil man loathes the 'heavenly manna,' and feeds on the 'serpent's food,' the evil and the false.

The good man fasts, or voluntarily abstains from the food, which the natural man lusts after: the food and drink which is hungered and thirsted after by the unrenewed affections of the loves of self and the world; and he gratefully feeds upon that meat which endureth into everlasting life.' But in states of temptation, he fasts by compulsion, not choice, from the food which alone is delightful to him, and he then mourns the defect of goodness and truth, under which for the time he is called to suffer.*

It is this involuntary fasting from good, which is denoted by the fasting for forty days and nights of Moses, Elijah, and the Lord. But it is voluntary fasting from evil, which is signified by the words in Isaiah (lviii. 6, 7, 8), and which is declared to be a fast acceptable to the Lord. For to do

*Peace, indeed, is the eating time of whatever is best in our informations; it is the spiritual world of the satisfactions of conviviality. On the other hand, the time of trial is the time of fasting, and it is only afterward that we are again an hungered (Wilkinson on the Human Body, p. 165).