In following the life of Christ so far as we have any materials, we
have found one main characteristic to be patience—a resolute waiting
on God’s mind. I have asked you to test, in every way you can,
whether this kind of patience does not constitute the highest ideal
we can form of human conduct, is not in fact the noblest type of true
manliness. Pursue the same method as to the isolated section of that
life, the temptation, which I readily admit has much in it that we
cannot understand. But take the story simply as you find it (which
is the only honest method, unless you pass it by altogether, which
would be cowardly) and see whether you can detect any weakness, any
flaw in the perfect manliness of Christ under the strain of which it
speaks—whether he does not here also realize for us the most perfect
type of manliness in times of solitary and critical trial. Spare no
pains, suppress no doubt, only be honest with the story, and with your
own conscience.
There is scarcely any life of first-rate importance to the world in
which we do not find a crisis corresponding to this, but the nearest
parallel must be sought amongst those men, the greatest of all kind,
who have founded or recast one of the great religions of the world. Of
these (if we except the greatest of all, Moses) Mohammed is the only
one of whose call we know enough to speak. Whatever we may think of him
and the religion he founded, we shall all probably admit that he was
at any rate a man of the rarest courage. In his case too it is only at
the end of long and solitary vigils in the desert that the vision comes
which seals him for his work. The silver roll is unfolded before his
eyes, and he who holds it bids him read therein the decree of God, and
tells him, “Thou art the prophet of God, and I his angel.”
He is unmanned by the vision, and flies trembling to his wife, whose
brave and loving counsel, and those of his friends and first disciples,
scarcely keep him from despair and suicide.
I would not press the parallel further than to remark that Christ came
out of the temptation with no human aid, having trod the wine-press
alone, serene and resolute from that moment for the work to which God
had called him.