Christian experience teaches us that in overcoming the world we are not to renounce it, to cast it from us, to say we will have no commerce with it, and so insulate ourselves from our weak, sinful brothers on the glass tripod of exclusiveness, but on the contrary teaches us to use it, to go out boldly amid its facts and forces, its sins and vices, its blind instincts and brute powers, and, by mastering and subduing them, turn them into right channels and make them the servants of high immortal ends. We must use it as the thrifty farmer uses his marshy land, ditch it and drain it, redeem it from frogs and lizards and festering pools, and prepare it for the sweet clover and the joysome lark. The scholar is at a discount among us; we advantage from having mastered and consumed have come to regard him as something that is as it were the condition or obstruction that made and not grown, and to look upon his before concealed the existence of such fact from accomplishments as we do those of the him. ropedancer or circus-rider, as having no root in himself, but a mere outside or acquired skill, purchased at the expense of his general strength, and which a few pounds of native talent, well grounded in bone and muscle, in an emergency that requires ability instead of craft, would surpass by all odds. Of the human parrot and liplearned this is true, but to the genuine scholar, whose knowledge is organized faculty, and whose memory is a bank and not a miser's chest, it has no application. The learned man of all others should be the wise man, the brave man, the strong man, the hopeful man, who can shame difficulties and look disaster out of countenance, who can see through the surface and show of things, and in the crash of events, when the ignorant and short-sighted quake and cower like supple dogs stand up firm and undaunted, a pillar of fire and a front of strength to guide and support. Let the scholar do his own thinking, and put handles to his ideas, and he will redeem his credit. The man who amasses a fortune by honest industry and enterprise is an example for him to follow. His wealth is a measure of his strength, and if he be not sordid and avaricious, every dollar is representative of his inward worth; he is indeed great by reason of what he has overcome. Our landlady refuses to buy her coffee ground; says it is stronger if she grinds it herself, a fact which none of us are disposed to deny. Let the scholar imitate her example, and depend upon his own private will to crack the vexed kernels of science and philosophy and not upon the patent leverage of any body else. Obstacles, we repeat again, are tools if we know how to use them. See how the farmer does it: the rock in his meadow he breaks up into materials for a fence, and so is benefited not only in having the obstruction removed from his field, but in having a wall which it contributed to build for the protection of that field. So a man who successfully resists a temptation or overcomes an evil habit is benefited not only negatively by having avoided the baleful consequences to which the indulgence of the temptation or continuance of the evil habit would have rendered him obnoxious, but is benefited positively by the very circumstance of having over. come such evil habit or temptation. So, also, a man who makes a new discovery in science not only reaps an advantage by the enlargement thus given to his mental vision and the new forces put in his hands, but derives a far greater The true Christian will not give the road to Satan, will not tremble and look abashed at his approach, will not shun the village blasphemer or scoffing infidel, but, in the terrible might and beauty of a conscious superiority, confront them boldly and cheerfully and make them feel by his words and looks their own littleness and meanness, and give them a glimpse of that ocean of being and power into which his soul is an inlet, and from which they are so far removed. It is only your weak, cowardly sentimentalist that walks on stilts through the world, and fears lest he be contaminated by contact with his fellowmen. What we have said of the Christian in connection with the vices and misguided forces of the world is equally true of the mind by itself. Our animal faculties and instincts, whose promptings and tendencies are evil, are not to be eradicated, crushed, or neutralized, but are to be subdued, governed, harmonized, disciplined, and, under the control of the intellect and the moral intuitions, be made subservient to higher ends and purposes. For this were they created, not to lead but to follow, not to be the master but the servant, and in keeping the relation thus established we are strong by the whole might of our nature. BE ALWAYS READY. NOTHING is so terrible as death to those who are strongly attached to life. To what purpose is the happiest life if by a wise and Christian course it does not conduct us to a happy death? Why do we so cling to life? It is that we do not desire the kingdom of heaven and the glories of a future world. The true way to be ready for the last hour is to employ the present hour well, and ever to expect the final one. EDITOR'S REPOSITORY. Scripture Cabinet. THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST IN THE WILDERNESS." Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil." Matt. iv, 1. [Instead of our ordinary preparation for this department, we give the following elaborate discussion of our Lord's temptation from Dr. Nast's forthcoming Commentary, translated from the German by Professor William D. Godman, of the North-Western University:] No human eye and ear heard and saw what came to pass in the wilderness. The precious experiences of that vicarious struggle were afterward communicated to the disciples, either by an especial revelation or, which is more probable, orally by our Lord himself. If there were need of an outward confirmation of our inward assurance that this mysterious transaction had an important reference to our salvation, that confirmation might be found in the fact that it is related by three of the evangelists, and by two of them minutely. In proportion as we recognize the practical import of this subject do we desire a scientific apprehension of it as part of the great scheme of redemption. Its moment in the spiritual life is the warrant for its interest in theology. Two difficulties, however, of a theological nature have been urged. It is objected, 1. That it must have been impossible for the Son of God to sin; that, therefore, the temptation could have had no reality. 2. That if we admit the reality of the temptation, and consequently the possibility of sin in Jesus, we can no longer ascribe to him an absolute sinlessness; for temptation, it is asserted, implies of necessity an incitement to evil, and incitement a minimum of evil itself. Let us begin our investigation with a consideration of the second objection, which Dr. Ullman meets thus: "Temptation is all that which has the tendency to lead a free being away from the good and unto the evil. That which tempts may either lie in the free being himself as unlawful lust and inclination-this kind of temptation, of which James i, 14, discourses, presupposes a germ of evil in the inner nature of the man, and, of course, is not predicable of Jesus-or it may come from the outer world, as a motive to action presenting itself from without. ceptible of temptation, because in his absolute perfection lies the unconditioned necessity of goodness; but a created moral agent may be tempted, and, therefore, even Jesus in so far as he has become participant of human nature. Accordingly, 'Jesus was, in all points, tempted like as we are God is unsus is said, . yet without sin; that is, he was tempted just as any The other question, whether we must not attribute The abstract possibility of consenting to temptation was connected, however, at the outset with the perfect certainty that this consenting would not take place, because God, by virtue of his ability to foresee the self-determinations of a free being, foresaw that his Son, as man, would, with human freedom, without sin, withstand all temptations. For the precise reason that he intended the redemption of sinful man did he send his Son into the world-of whom he knew that his conflict with the power of darkness would end in victory. Since this subject is of practical importance and yet belongs to the most difficult problems of theology, we subjoin the pertinent utterances of three distinguished German theologians. Ullman says: "The plan of redemption ordained of God, aforetime prepared for execution through thousands of years and through thousands more designed to work out its results, could not fail of its end. Yet this must have happened, if we suppose that he who was appointed Redeemer might himself fall away from God through sin. In this view it becomes a wholly-inadmissible, yea, fearful thought, that Jesus could have actually sinned. Thereby the plan of God would have been frustrated, and the pure center of light for the world and history would have been extinguished. It appears, indeed, to be a necessity, intrinsic and wrought into the moral order of the world, that Jesus should not sin. In him, however, necessity and freedom coincide. He could not be otherwise, but at the same time he would not be otherwise than sinless. With perfect freedom, in submission and self-renunciation, he conformed to that higher necessity which was fulfilling itself in his manifestation. Both necessity and freedom must be so associated in our conception that neither shall invalidate the other. The necessity of a goodness thus perfect is one always free and voluntary; the freedom is one not doubtfully choosing and vacillating, but firmly and victoriously directed to the good. But even this higher freedom does not absolutely exclude the possibility of evil. As human, it does not pass over purely into the divine necessity; there is a possibility of evil, but it is only external, abstract, simply cogitable-eine blosse denkbarkeit. So the possibility of evil exists, but is never realized. Like a mathematical quantity evolved in calculation, which is not actually used, it is every moment eliminated by that which is higher, the consciousness of God and the pure love of the divine, so that it never acquires a real, practical-praktisch-significance." Still more explicitly does the pious Steudel express himself-holding up, however, the side of freedom more than that of necessity: "Although it lies in the conception of Christ as Redeemer, that he did not actuate the possibility of sin, yet he is the sinless one only in so far as he had the ability-möglichkeit-to sin. He could not be Redeemer if he sinned, therefore sin in him is not to be conceived. But the conception of the Redeemer was only to be realized through one who while he could sin yet did not. Christ, as one to whom sinning was absolutely impossible, would not be man; the human nature in him would be nothing else than appearance; he would have continued to subsist in his divine nature. he emptied himself, which emptying consisted in entering into the conditions of human nature, and his object in doing so could not have been to present humanity as a nature inaccessible to evil, but as one able freely to keep itself pure from evil, and thereby to secure the possibility of its purification from evil.” But Gess, though he contemplates our Redeemer in no other light than the Logos having become man, upholds the side of human freedom perhaps too strongly, and that of the divine necessity too feebly, when he says: "How could Jesus be an example to us who, in the course of this earthly life, must decide for God's will amid the pressure of the world's temptation, if his will were decided through an ante mundane determination, through the eternal submersion of the Logos and the Father? and if, therefore, his self-determinations, within his earthly life, were but the natural and necessary working of the antemundane determination? The free disobedience of Adam has brought us into the state of sin; and only the free obedience of the second Adam could place us in the state of righteous- | ness. Romans i, 19. The first Adam renounced the inwrought drawing of his nature toward his Creator and Father, although God put him upon the easy probation, that he should deny his natural appetite for the alluring and mysterious fruit of one among the trees, out of love to God and honor for his word. In the second Adam, as the Son of God, was a drawing of nature toward the Father of an essentially higher kind than in the first Adam, who was only a soul created in the image of God. But the thirtythree years' probation of the second Adam through the world of sin, in the midst of the sorest conflicts of sorrow, was infinitely more severe than that of the first Adam; yet the second Adam never denying and drawing toward the Father, renounced always and only the nature-will even for the un-nature of death and of being forsaken by his Father. The first Adam was not willing to learn obedience, though he was only a man: the second Adam, though God's son, was ready to learn obedience even unto death. The sinless development of Jesus thus came to pass through a free self-determination for the will of God revealed in his inner self; through a free yielding to the powerful drawing of his eternal Spirit-Hebrews ix, 14-toward God; through a free renunciation, hatred, and giving unto death of those life-impulses of his outer nature which came into conflict with that will of God according to which Jesus should take his way through want and dishonor from men, nay, more, through the inner feeling of being forsaken by God." There is another question of too much moment to be passed unanswered: In what way have we to conceive the approach of Satan? Or, What was the status of the tempter himself? This question has been variously answered. In order to explain the mysterious "how" of the forthcoming Satan, commentators, particularly the rationalists, have fallen into hazardous expositions. Some hold this account to be a parable, in which Jesus made known to his disciples a universal truth. But how obscurely must we think Jesus to have spoken if the apostles could have mistaken a parable for history! Matthew, certainly, was well skilled in distinguishing parabolic from narrative relation; and, accordingly, when Jesus spoke in parables, the fact is always expressly stated by this evangelist. Besides, as a parable, this account would have an unusual aspect, and such as is no where else assumed. When Christ speaks parabolically of himself, e. g. Luke xix, he always presents himself under the guise of another person. Here, however, he himself would be personally introduced into the parable, and Satan would be the parabolic person; besides, by this explanation, the significance of the temptation for Jesus would be entirely lost. Others represent the temptation as a vision. The temptations are conceived as presenting themselves to the Lord in a state of ecstasy, as pictures of the imagination floating before his soul. But would the Lord have imparted to the evangelists a mere vision in the form of a historical narrative? Moreover, in an ecstasy the temptations, except the third, could have been no real temptations from without. And, then, how unworthy of his character is the conception that the second Adam, only in a vision or ecstasy, not in a wakeful, reflective condition, should have resisted the temptations of Satan! It is, therefore, manifest that the temptation of Jesus was something real and objective. Yet even here opinions diverge. Some would understand by Satan a Pharisee who approached Jesus with proposals suited to the carnal expectations of the Messiah. But in this supposition it is no more apparent than before how the Lord could clothe such an event in such a form. And, withal, this rationalistic explanation is so contrary to the common principles of interpretation that it was abandoned, till lately Lange revived it in the following form: "We can not assume that Satan became incarnated, nor that he appeared as a specter, when he approached the Son of God with his temptation. We can, therefore, conceive of the temptation in no other way than through the medium of historical relations. The kingdom of Satan was represented by the perverse principles of the Jewish hierarchy, and that the Synedrium just at that time looked for a Messiah after their mind, we are expressly informed in the Gospel of John. That deputation which was sent from Jerusalem to catechise John the Baptist respecting the Messiah, according to the data of the evangelists, must have returned to Jerusalem at the very time when the forty days of Christ's abode in the wilderness came to a close. May we not suppose that the Baptist, who had just been divinely assured of Jesus' messiahship, would feel it his duty to give to the deputation of the Synedrium, who had inquired of him concerning the Messiah, some definite directions where they could find him, after he had told them that the Messiah had already appeared in their midst? He knew Jesus had gone to the wilderness; those men from Jerusalem could very easily find him on their return, and after hearing the testimony of John we may suppose they were very anxious to see him. How natural, then, to suppose that Jesus met them just as he was on the point of leaving the wilderness, and that they proposed to him their messianic programme! No less strange should it appear to us, that Christ related this fact to his disciples in the form he did; for he called Peter also 'Satan,' when that disciple wished to lead him away from the path which the Father had prescribed for him. Why might, therefore, the historical temptation, brought about by official proposals of the Jewish hierarchy, not properly be called a direct temptation of Satan?" Ullmann, and other German expositors, recognize VOL. XX.-16 in Satan nothing else than the false idea of the Messiah which had been formed in the minds of the cotemporaries of Jesus, and which his pure messianic spirit repulsed with perfect decision and without hesitation. This false idea of the Messiah, it is said, originated with Satan, and must have presented itself to Jesus when he was on the point of coming forward as the Messiah. Since to his mind the precise end for which the Father had sent him into the world. stood clearly defined, so, with equal clearness, must have been revealed in his thought that which stood opposed to this determination. All this, and his unconditional rejection of whatever did not agree with his destination, did Jesus impart to his disciples under the form of an outward occurrence. It is said that Jesus represented in a similar manner an inner experience as an outward phenomenon when he said, "I beheld Satan, as lightning, fall from heaven." The objection to Ullman's explanation is, that it does too much violence to the text, and makes the history too nearly like a parable, although the temptation, in this view, is a reality. Others, although they hold fast to Satan as a tempting personality, admit, notwithstanding, no outward, visible appearance of Satan. They say: Since the prince of darkness is a spirit, so the opinion that his assault upon Jesus was of a purely-spiritual nature is not contradictory to the text, and is on the whole more probable. Christ must have been tempted in all things like as we are. But, to us, Satan does not appear in bodily form, but tempts us through the insinuation of evil thoughts. To this opinion it has been objected that, if the temptation of Jesus proceeded only spiritually it could not be clearly distinguished from one through his own thought, arising out of his own heart; and, therefore, either the reality of the temptation or the sinlessness of Jesus would be endangered. But this objection is not well grounded; for if we consider the words of the temptation, as thoughts thrust in by Satan, the temptation comes upon Jesus from without as really as if Satan in corporeal presence had spoken the words. To this apprehension of the case the only valid objection is that the words, "the devil taketh... and setteth him," appear too constrained. Dr. Stearns explains the suggestions in this theory in the following manner: "With reference to the first suggestion, to change the stones to bread, the Redeemer, in a moment, recognized it as a temptation, and repulsed it instantaneously, because such an act would have manifested distrust in God, who had supported him during the forty days' fast, and impatience under afflictions which he should endure till God should be pleased to release him. In the second temptation we have to distinguish between the going to Jerusalem and the mounting the pinnacle of the Temple, on the one side, and the challenge to throw himself down, on the other side. The former, as well as the latter, appears to have been a suggestion of Satan, for it is said, 'The devil taketh him.' But the former had nothing wrong in itself, and the Redeemer might not have recognized it as coming from the tempter. Many weighty reasons might have inclined him to go to Jerusalem and to ascend the Temple. These reasons, though pressing upon him from without, he might not, as man, be able to distinguish from his own thoughts; he might hold them for his own and follow them as innocent. So soon, however, as the thought to throw himself down, in order to astonish the multitude by a miracle, and to support himself in doing it on the promises of the Scriptures-so soon as this thought presented itself, instantly the Redeemer discerned that this proposal, involving in itself the greatest presumption, came from the devil, and, therefore, he definitively and decisively rejected it. So, in the last instance, it could not be sinful to ascend a mountain in order to view the surrounding countries. When Luke says, 'the devil showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time,' we can not understand it as if, from this mountain, all the several kingdoms of the world were visible to the bodily eye. It must, then, have been through a working of Satan upon the imagination of Jesus. That Satan was permitted to hold before the soul of Jesus a picture of fancy, they also must admit who maintain a visible appearance of Satan. This opinion is totally different from the attempt to resolve the whole narrative into a vision. The soul of Jesus was not defiled by the picture before his imagination, nor does the temptation thereby lose any of its significance. So soon, however, as came the proposal to receive all the kingdoms as a gift at the hands of Satan, then the Savior hesitated not a moment to repel the ignominious and blasphemous proffer with the words, 'Get thee behind me, Satan."" There remains but one other view, and that is to assume an outward embodied appearance of Satan standing before Christ. Ebrard holds the latter, and remarks as follows: "It pertains to the dignity of Jesus that the prince of this world should appear to him without a mask; neither as a deceptive juggler, nor as a specter, nor as an angel of light, but in the shape of the fallen angel-prince. How this shape was constituted I know not, and it were foolish to desire to know. Only this much can be determined: 1. That it was no goat-footed caricature of a beast, derived from Germanic heathenism, but a shape analogous to the body of man, since all angels have appeared to men in a shape analogous to the human; and, 2. That all the seductiveness of Belial as well as all the terribleness of the depravity of Satan-the former enticing, the latter threatening in case of the failure of the enticement-was manifested in his appearance before Christ. If Jesus, according to this view, appears as being bodily in the power of Satan, this is no more offensive than that, at a later period, in voluntary humiliation, he should be in the power of the children of Belial. The spirit of the Father "drove" him into the wilderness in order patiently, quietly to receive the temptation. In becoming tempted he was entirely passive, but so much the more active in refusing to be led astray." In order fully to understand the temptation we must keep our eye on its christological significance. In the three temptations Satan presents to the soul of Jesus the picture of a carnal, Jewish Messiah, who wins for himself and his own, not through serving and sorrow, the glory which only, after a perfect victory, should resplendently break forth, but, relying upon his miraculous endowments and the letter of the messianic promises, begins his kingdom in external might and splendor, and, in order to success, must overthrow the princes of this world. But the very antithesis of this was the condition and the work of the true Redeemer. The contrast is elegantly set forth by Dr. Krummacher, in his sermon on the temptation of Christ, of which the following are the main points: Compare the situation of our Lord with that of our first parents before the fall. There is the garden of Eden; here the gloomy desert. There are the trees lovely to behold, with fruit inviting to the taste; here are thorns and thistles, the harvest from the sowing of sin. There are perfect enjoyment and delicious substance of every kind; here is want in the greatest extreme. There is the eternal Father walking in the garden; here Satan is unfettered on the plain. There, forsooth, is temptation, as well as here; yea, there, as here, a "hath God said." But there is the prostration of the tempted; here, the victory of the assaulted. There is the down-coming of the curse upon the earth; here is the expulsion of the curse, and the bringing back of the blessing. Forty days and forty nights did the Savior spend, as did Moses on Mount Sinai, without food and drink, in unbroken meditation and prayer. Then, at the last, and doubtless with excruciating hunger, that weakness of his human nature, which of itself is sinless, asserted itself. This condition furnished Satan a tangible point for his first temptation. In the full power of his individual personality advances the prince of darkness against the "Light of the world," and begins his temptation of that being, after the manner of the first temptation in Paradise. His "art thou" is nothing else than a disguised "hath God said," alluding to the voice from heaven at the baptism. It involves the demand that he should prove himself to be the Son of God. "Show it, if thou art the Son of God. To a being of thy dignity it is not fitting to be in want and to suffer hunger. Make use of the power conferred on thee and help thyself. Why wilt thou languish? Spare thyself for thy great work, for the good of thyself and thy miserable people; employ thy miraculous energy and begin thy work of the world's transformation. Every thing waits thereon. Show thyself greater than Moses. Change the stones into bread, the thorns into vines, the thistles into fig-trees. Expel want, and sighing, and tears from the earth; and in order that the world may know who has appeared in thee, give order to the blasted Paradise that it bloom again." The devil would persuade Jesus to become a world benefactor according to the flesh, in order to set up his kingdom, not with the garland of thorns, but with the crown of royalty. The Lord, without condescending to answer directly the question whether he was the Son of God, referred the devil to the manna given the people of Israel in the wilderness-Deut. viii, 3-to which Satan himself had alluded, and gives him to understand that himself had not come into the world for personal enjoyment, but to suffer want as long as it should please God, who was not in need of the natural means in order to furnish him support. At the same time this answer implies the truth: "I came to prepare for the languishing people, in the way of humiliation, another and a more real bread than thou |