Collect. his sake as well as for your own to a baptism of resurrection and immortal life? Grant, O Lord, that as we are baptized into the death of thy blessed Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, so by continual mortifying our corrupt affections we may be buried with him; and that through the grave, and gate of death, we may pass to our joyful resurrection; for his merits, who died, and was buried, and rose again for us, thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. THE TEMPTATION OF JESUS CHRIST. MATTHEW iv, 1-11; MARK i, 12, 13; LUKE iv, 1–13. I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. Genesis iii, 15. XXI. THE TEMPTATION OF JESUS CHRIST. MATTHEW iv, 1-11; MARK i, 12, 13; LUKE iv, 1-13. "Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the Reality of the Temptation. wilderness to be tempted of the devil." Such are Matt. iv, 1. the words with which the first evangelist introduces his account of the temptation of Jesus Christ. An incredible statement, surely! For was not Jesus Christ absolutely holy, and, therefore, absolutely beyond the reach of temptation? Moreover, was he not Divine; and can Divinity be tempted? Such are some of the difficulties which press upon us when we read the story of the temptation. And so we come to think of Jesus as a kind of phantom Christ, tempted only in appear ance. Nevertheless, we must believe the story. For, first, it is made possible by the fact that Jesus was a man, and therefore finite; and temptation is inseparable from finiteness. The very fact that there are limits is also the fact which permits and invites transgression of those limits. Where there Rom. iv, 15. is no law, there is no transgression. The very fact of finiteship involves all possibilities of evil. This James i, 13. Luke i, 35. Temptation not necessa Gen. iii, 1-6. is the reason why God can not be tempted: being infinite, occupying all space and all time, there are no limits for him to transcend. Not so was it with his incarnate Son. Jesus Christ was a veritable man, and, as such, finite, and therefore open to temptation. Moreover, although he was conceived by the Holy Ghost, and therefore Divinely generated, yet he was also born of sinful woman, and therefore inherited human nature under disabled conditions; so that, like any one of us, he was accessible to temptation. So far, then, from its having been impossible that he should be tempted, we must believe that he was tempted, even though no scripture had asserted it. And scripture does most expressly assert it. Nothing can be more explicit than the language of the evangelists in narrating the story of the temptation. If we doubt here, we may doubt anywhere, even in the matter of the incarnation itself. Yet in all this was no sin. For we must dis rily Sinful. tinguish between temptation as assault and temptation as conquest. There is no sin in the mere fact of being tempted. Eve was not to blame for the presence of Satan in Eden; nor was she to blame for the fact that the forbidden tree seemed desirable: her blame began when, instead of instantly repelling the tempter, she began to dally with him, and allow herself to look with longing on the tree. Jesus was not to blame for the presence of Satan in the wildnerness; nor for the fact that there was force in Satan's suggestion that he should satisfy his hunger by using his miraculous power to turn stones into bread. Had he allowed Matt. iv, 1-4. |