Christ’s whole life on earth was the assertion and example of true
manliness—the setting forth in living act and word what man is meant
to be, and how he should carry himself in this world of God’s—one long
campaign, in which “the temptation” stands out as the first great
battle and victory. The story has depths in it which we can never
fathom, but also clear, sharp lessons which he who runs may read, and
no man can master too thoroughly. We must follow him reverently into
the wilderness, where he flies from the crowds who are pressing to the
Baptist, and who to-morrow will be thronging around him, if he goes
back among them, after what the Baptist has said about him to-day.
Day after day in the wilderness the struggle goes on in his heart. He
is faint from insufficient food in those solitudes, and with bodily
weakness the doubts grow in strength and persistence, and the tempter
is always at his side, soliciting him to end them once for all, by one
act of self-assertion. All those questionings and misgivings as to his
origin and mission which we have pictured to ourselves as haunting
him ever since his first visit to Jerusalem, are now, as it were,
focussed. There are mocking voices whispering again as of old, but more
scornfully and keenly in his ear, “Are you really the Messiah, the Son
of God, so long looked for? What more proof have you to go upon than
you have had for these many years, during which you have been living
as a poor peasant in a Galilean village? The word of this wild man
of the wilderness? He is your own cousin, and a powerful preacher no
doubt, but a wayward, wilful man, clad and fed like a madman, who has
been nursing mad fancies from his boyhood, away from the holy city,
the centre of national life and learning. This sign of a descending
dove, and a voice which no one has heard but yourself? Such signs come
to many—are never wanting when men are ready to deceive themselves—and
each man’s fancy gives them a different meaning. But the words, and the
sign, and the voice, you say, only meet a conviction which has been
growing these thirty years in your own heart and conscience? Well,
then, at least for the sake of others if not for your own sake, put
this conviction to the proof, here, at once, and make sure yourself,
before you go forth and deceive poor men, your brethren, to their ruin.
You are famishing here in the wilderness. This, at least, cannot be
what God intends for his Son, who is to redeem the world. Exercise
some control over the meanest part of your Father’s kingdom. Command
these stones to become bread, and see whether they will obey you.
Cast yourself down from this height. If you are what you think, your
Father’s angels will bear you up. Then, after they have borne you up,
you may go on with some reasonable assurance that your claim is not a
mere delusion, and that you will not be leading these poor men whom you
call your brethren to misery and destruction.”
And when neither long fasting and weakness, or natural doubt, distrust,
impatience, or the most subtle suggestions of the tempter, can
move his simple trust in his Father, or wring from him one act of
self-assertion, the enemy changes front and the assault comes from
another quarter. “You may be right,” the voices seemed now to be
saying; “You may not be deceived, or dreaming, when you claim to be the
Son of God, sent to redeem this fair world, which is now spread out
before you in all its glory. That may be your origin, and that your
work. But, living as you have done till now in a remote corner of a
despised province, you have no experience or knowledge of the methods
or powers which sway men, and establish and maintain these kingdoms
of the world, the glory of which you are beholding. These methods and
powers have been in use in your Father’s world, if it be his, ever
since man has known good from evil. You have only to say the word,
and you may use and control these methods and powers as you please.
By their aid you may possibly ‘see of the travail of your soul and be
satisfied;’ without them you will redeem nothing but perhaps a man
here and there—without them you will postpone instead of hastening
the coming of your Father’s kingdom, to the sorrow and ruin of many
generations, and will die a foiled and lonely man, crushed by the very
forces you have refused to use for your Father’s service. If they were
wholly evil, wholly unfit for the fulfillment of any purpose of his,
would he have left them in command of his world till this day? It is
only through them that the world can be subdued. Your time is short,
and you have already wasted much of it, standing shivering on the
brink, and letting the years slip by in that cottage at Nazareth. The
wisest of your ancestors acknowledged and used them, and spread His
kingdom from the river to the Great Sea. Why should you reject them?”
This, very roughly and inadequately stated, is some shadow of the
utmost part, or skirt as it were, of the trial-crisis, lasting forty
days, through which Christ passed from his private to his public
career. For forty days the struggle lasted before he could finally
realize and accept his mission with all that it implied. At the end of
that time he has fairly mastered and beaten down every doubt as to his
call, every tempting suggestion to assert himself, or to accept or use
any aid in establishing his Father’s kingdom which does not clearly
bear his Father’s stamp and seal on the face of it. In the strength of
this victory he returns from the desert, to take up the burden which
has been laid on him, and to set up God’s kingdom in the world by the
methods which he has learned of God himself—and by no other.