CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Mark 1:10. Straightway.—εὐθέως. Mark’s constant use of this word of transition shows how full his heart was of his subject. It would appeal to the prompt, energetic spirit of his Roman readers. He (i.e. Jesus) saw.—The Baptism over, He was engaged in prayer (Luke 3:21), and then the vision was vouchsafed. The heavens opened.—Rending. Same word used of rending of veil of temple and rocks at the Crucifixion (Matthew 27:51). The Spirit like a dove descending.—This was seen also by the Baptist (John 1:32-33), and was the sign by which he recognised in Jesus the Lamb of God. It was His solemn inauguration as the Messiah (Acts 10:38). A dove.—Fit emblem of His gentle rule.
Mark 1:11. A voice from heaven.—Heard again at the Transfiguration (Mark 9:7), and in the temple court (John 12:28). In whom I am well pleased.—In whom I decreed for good, the “good” being man’s redemption purposed by God in Christ from all eternity. In Mark 1:10-11, we behold all Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity working together to accomplish man’s salvation.
Mark 1:12. The Spirit driveth Him.—The human soul of Jesus, which shrank from the cup in Gethsemane, would naturally shrink also from close contact with the prince of evil. But, abhorrent as such an encounter was to His pure and holy nature, it could not be avoided. Nay, it must needs be the first act of His official life. The Second Adam must triumph where the first Adam fell.
Mark 1:13. With the wild beasts.—Far from human habitation and companionship. Nothing was wanting to complete the loneliness of our Divine Champion in His first combat with the enemy of souls. The angels ministered.—Doubtless both to His bodily and spiritual wants. “He who would not turn stones into bread was now fed; He who would not call upon angels to uphold Him in rash confidence was now sustained by them; He who demanded worship for God alone received homage from these servants of God.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Mark 1:9-13
(PARALLELS: Matthew 3:13 to Matthew 4:11; Luke 3:21 to Luke 4:13; John 1:29-42.)
Christ’s preparation for ministry—“The beginning of the gospel” advances here another stage. “The Coming One” has come. The Son of God takes His place in history as Son of Man, and proceeds to “fulfil all righteousness,” identifying Himself in every possible way with the race He has come to redeem and save.
I. Christ is prepared for ministry by baptism.—
1. He was about thirty years of age at the time (Luke 3:23)—the age at which the Levites entered upon their work (Numbers 4:3). Hitherto—with the exception of an occasional visit to the capital—His life had been passed in seclusion at Nazareth, the Scriptures His daily study, the deep problems of human sin and misery His constant thought. Now He prepares to stand forth as the Champion of humanity by confessing their sins and expressing their repentance.
2. The place—on the eastern bank of the Jordan, near Jericho—to which Jesus came from Nazareth to be baptised was full of historic memories, carrying the mind back to the greatest of the judges, and one of the greatest of the prophets. There the Israelites crossed the Jordan dryshod, and entered with Joshua the promised land (Joshua 3); there Elijah, accompanied by Elisha, smote the stream with his mantle and opened a passage through its rapid waters (2 Kings 2:8).
3. But why should Jesus submit to the baptism of John? If we could answer this question fully, we should be well on the way to solve the mystery of the Incarnation. We can only dimly perceive some of the motives for this amazing condescension.
(1) Although the Sinless One, Christ was baptised with the baptism of repentance, because He chose—for us men and for our salvation—to be reckoned amongst sinners as if He were one Himself, and to receive the outward sign of the cleansing away of that evil and defiling thing in which He had no part.
(2) Although John’s superior in nature, Christ received baptism from him as if He had been inferior in office, for He was now dedicating Himself to His great work as the Second Adam and New Head of the race.
(3) Although King, Messiah, and not merely a subject in the heavenly kingdom, it was yet fit that He should be anointed for His own place in that kingdom; and who was so fit to perform that office as he who had prepared the way before Him?
(4) Moreover, by Himself receiving baptism, He “sanctified water to the mystical washing away of sin.” This was the beginning of that sacramental system which naturally flows from, and is the extension of, the Incarnation. Hitherto baptism had been but a sign, a figure, an emblem; henceforth it was to be a means, a channel, for the conveyance of Divine grace: hitherto God had been conceived of as far away in heaven; now He was to be regarded as having come down to make His abode amongst men.
4. Here, for a brief moment, the veil was drawn aside which shrouds the mystery of the Holy Trinity. The voice of God the Father is heard from heaven, God the Holy Spirit is seen descending through the opened heaven to earth, and God the Son is incarnate on earth in the likeness of our humanity, as the link between it and heaven.
II. Christ is prepared for ministry by temptation.—
1. A special interest belongs to this chapter of Christ’s life, because the narrative can only have been derived from His own lips, no human eye having witnessed His contest with the powers of evil.
2. From the waters of baptism He proceeds at once into the fires of temptation. This was no accident in His life, but part of the Divine plan for His equipment as our Representative and Head. Just when Satan’s fury was at its height—the heavenly attestation of Christ’s Sonship ringing in his ears—the Holy Spirit urges Jesus forward to the battle. Both the combatants realise that it is a matter of life and death—that if Satan be worsted now, it is the beginning of the end of his rule over men. He lays his plans accordingly, with the utmost skill and craft.
3. The scene of the encounter, if tradition may be trusted, was the wilderness of Jericho, the Quarantania of later days; a region full of rocks and caverns, to which hermits have often resorted, and whither pious pilgrims still wend their way, believing that a vivid realisation of their Saviour’s victory will be helpful to themselves. Some suppose, however, that Christ was carried by the Spirit into the more distant desert of Arabia, to the place where Moses and Elijah had fasted and held communion with God (Exodus 34:28; 1 Kings 19:8-18), and where afterwards St. Paul passed a season of seclusion and prayer (Galatians 1:17).
4. How far was it possible for Christ to be tempted? The following answer, condensed mainly from Dr. Liddon’s Divinity of our Lord, may help to place this matter in a true light.
(1) We must here distinguish between (a) direct temptation to moral evil, i.e. an appeal to a capacity of self-will which might be quickened into active disobedience to the will of God; and (b) what may be termed indirect temptation, i.e. an appeal to instincts per se innocent, as belonging to man in his unfallen state, which can make obedience wear the form of a painful effort or sacrifice.
(2) Jesus was—(a) Emmanuel (Matthew 1:23), Himself God the Saviour; (b) Son of God (Luke 1:35), implying a pre-existent superhuman personality in Him.
(3) This union of the Divine and human natures in Christ was not fatal to the perfection of either. But it was inconsistent with the presence of anything in Christ’s manhood that could contradict the essence of the perfect moral Being, i.e. the holiness of God. If He could have sinned, the Incarnation would have been a phantom. The sharpest arrows of the tempter struck Him, but, like darts lighting upon a hard polished surface, they glanced aside. Moreover, as it would seem, the personal union of the two natures in Christ involved, at least, the sight of the Beatific Vision by His humanity; and if we cannot conceive of the blessed as sinning while they worship around the throne, much less can we conceive it in One in whom “dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.”
(4) But the union of Christ’s manhood with His Godhead did not exempt it from simple human instincts, such as, e.g., a shrinking from bodily pain. See Hooker, E. P., Luke 1:48. Upon Christ’s human will in its inchoate or rudimentary stage of desire, uninformed by reason, an approaching trial might so far act as a temptation, as, e.g., to produce a wish that obedience might be compatible with escape from suffering. But it could not produce, even for one moment, any wish to be free from the law of obedience itself.
(5) Questions: (a) Is this statement consistent with Hebrews 2:17; Hebrews 4:15; Hebrews 5:7? Yes: see Hebrews 7:26; 1 John 3:5. Scripture denies the existence, not merely of any sinful thinking or acting, but of any ultimate roots and sources of sin, of any propensities or inclinations, however latent and rudimentary, towards sin, in Christ. When therefore Scripture speaks of His perfect assimilation to us, it must be understood of physical and mental pain in all their forms, not of any moral assimilation. (b) Is this account consistent with the exigencies of Christ’s redemptive work? Certainly. He is not less truly representative of our race, because in Him it has recovered its perfection. His victory is none the less real and precious, because, morally speaking, it was inevitable. Nay, He could not have been the Sinless Victim, offered freely for a sinful world (1 Peter 3:18), unless He had been thus superior to the moral infirmities of His brethren. (c) Does not such an account impair the full form of Christ’s example? We gain in the perfection of the moral Ideal thus placed before us, to say nothing of the perfection of the Mediator between God and man, more than we can lose in moral vigour, upon discovering that His obedience was wrought out in a nature unlike our own in the one point of absolute purity. (d) But does not such an account reflect upon Christ’s moral greatness, and practically deny His moral liberty? No. The highest liberty does not imply the moral capacity of doing wrong. God is the one perfectly free Being; yet God cannot sin. The real temptation of a sinless Christ is not less precious to us than the temptation of a Christ who could have sinned would be. It forms a much truer and more perfect contrast to the failure of our first parent. It occupies a chief place in that long series of acts of condescension which begins with the Nativity and ends on the Cross. It is a lesson for all times as to the true method of resisting the tempter. Finally, it is the source of that strength whereby all later victories over Satan have been won: Christ, the Sinless One, has conquered the enemy in His sin-stained members.
Lessons.—
1. Seasons of special grace are often succeeded by seasons of special difficulty and trial; therefore, “be not high-minded, but fear.”
2. Solitude and separation from the world are no more free from spiritual danger than a state of intercourse with one’s fellow-men.
3. While ever praying, “Lead us not into temptation,” and being careful not to run into it of one’s own accord, the Christian must remember that when he is tempted it is his duty to fight, and by God’s grace overcome.
4. Christ fought the battle, and gained the victory, with the very weapons that are in the hands of all Christians; and He now waits to succour all them that are tempted.
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Mark 1:9. The Jordan, says Dr. Otts, has so many peculiarities that it cannot be compared with any other river on the face of the globe. It is the one sacred river of Scripture—the only one. It has never been navigated, and it empties itself into a sea that has never had a port. It springs out of the snows that rest upon the lofty tops of the heaven-aspiring mountains, and it rushes madly through its narrow and ever-descending valley until it empties itself in a sea that is far below the level of all other seas. It is full of life, but after running its short career it suddenly dies away in the lap of death. At its sources, and for a long way down its course, its waters are as clear as crystal; and flashing in the sunbeams, they look like a flowing stream of molten silver; but before losing itself in the sea of death, its waters become muddy, as if filled with the filth of earth. Flowing into a sea in which no life can live, and which its unceasing flow never fills, it is a fit symbol of human life, ever descending and becoming corrupt, and finally plunging into the gulf of death which swallows up all streams flowing into it, and is never filled. In this stream was Jesus baptised, symbolising the glorious fact that He has entered the stream of our human life to redeem our souls from the sea of death into which all human life flows.
Mark 1:9-10. The baptism of our Lord.—
1. By His own conduct and example Christ here teaches us to “fulfil all righteousness.” He would have us ready and eager in our work for God—doing not as little but as much as we possibly can, determined to exceed rather than fall short.
2. By His own submission to baptism at the commencement of His ministry, He teaches us that this is the manner in which we also must begin to be His disciples.
3. As it was on His coming up out of the water that the Holy Spirit descended upon Him, so He teaches us to believe that in the sacrament of regeneration the babe baptised with water is baptised also with the Holy Spirit, who then cleanses the soul and makes it partaker of a new, even a Divine nature, by incorporation in the body of which Christ is the Head.
Christ’s baptism an epoch in His own consciousness.—We must not imagine that every day was the same to Christ, or Christ the same on every day. He had His great moments, as we have. We call the supreme moment when the soul awakens to God, and the man realises manhood, conversion. What this experience signifies to us, the moment symbolised by the baptism signified to Jesus, only with a difference in degree which His pre-eminence alone can measure. It marked His awakening to all that was involved in Messiahship; and such an awakening could not come without utmost tumult of spirit—tumult that only the solitude and struggle of tht wilderness could calm. The outward expresses the inward change. Before this moment no miracle; after it the miracles begin and go on multiplying. Before it no speech, no claim of extraordinary mission, only Divine and golden silence; after it the teaching with authority, the founding of the kingdom, the creating of the world’s light. Before it the carpenter of Nazareth, the son of Joseph and Mary, doing, in beautiful meekness, the common duties of the common day; after it the Christ of God, the Revealer of the Father, the Life and the Light of men. Now He who became so different to others had first become as different to Himself. What was soon to be revealed to the world was then made manifest to His own soul.—A. M. Fairbairn, D. D.
Mark 1:10. The Holy Ghost at the baptism of our Lord.—In pictures of Christ’s baptism one sees Jesus standing in the shallow water of the river, John from a shell or vessel pouring water on His head, and the Dove hovering over Him. The impression conveyed is that the Holy Ghost descended from heaven and lighted upon Christ during the performance of the rite, corresponding to, and a visible token of, the regenerating influence of the Spirit in Christian baptism. Yet the language of the Gospels gives no support to this idea. They all agree that the descent of the Spirit occurred after Jesus had been baptised, and when He had come up out of the river. St. Luke adds that the Holy Ghost assumed a bodily form, and that it was while Christ prayed that the descent took place. We may account for the general mistake in the artistic representation of this transaction by the prevailing notion which from primitive times has connected the Holy Spirit with the grace of baptism, and which saw in the details of the baptism of Christ a plain proof of this connexion. Of course there is a great truth in this idea, but it is not necessarily conveyed by the fact of Christ’s baptism; and if we hold this truth, we derive our belief from other sources, and not from this incident properly regarded. The general opinion is given, e.g., by Hilary: the Dove settles on the head of Jesus, in order that we might know that at our own baptism the Holy Spirit descends on us, and that we are bedewed with the unction of celestial glory, and are made the sons of God by adoption in Christ. But Jesus did not come to John’s baptism that He might receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. John’s baptism did not impart grace. It was merely a formal ceremony, witnessing to the inward desire and striving of the heart. The water was a sign, and nothing more; it carried no inward and spiritual grace. Had the Holy Ghost descended as is represented in popular pictures, it would have indicated that what is true of Christian baptism was also true of John’s rite; and this we know is not the case. The baptism of John was from heaven; it was a preparation for entrance into the new kingdom; emptying Himself of, or voluntarily obscuring, His Divinity, Jesus constrained John to perform the initiatory rite, thus fulfilling all righteousness. His private life, so to speak, ended in Jordan; the consecration to His mission was to follow. So issuing from the river, He stopped upon its bank, and prayed, and the Holy Spirit descended from heaven in a bodily shape, and rested upon Him, and the heavenly voice proclaimed Him Son of God, in whom the Father was well pleased. Thus was He announced as Messiah; thus did He receive the fulness of the Spirit for His Messianic work; thus by the unction of the Spirit was He consecrated Messiah-King. One naturally sees here a lesson concerning the Christian ministry. Not natural endowments, not the ordinary grace that accompanies baptism, equip a man to exercise the office of minister in the Church of God, but the special gift of the Holy Ghost bestowed and received for this end. I would submit a further thought concerning the spiritual life and well-being of individual Christians. As Christ was not prepared and commissioned for His work without the additional effusion of the Holy Ghost, so the Christian needs the added gifts of the Spirit to fit him for his duty as the servant of Christ. If we look to the early records of the Church, we find that apostolic teachers were not satisfied with leaving to their converts only the grace which they obtained by baptism; they supplemented this by conferring upon them further good things. A practical comment on our passage in the Gospel is afforded by a transaction mentioned in Acts 19:2-6. Surely they are not to be contemned who see here a cogent argument for the practice of confirmation. To fit the neophyte for the battle of life, to enable him to play his part as Christ’s faithful soldier and servant, he needs a fresh outpouring of the Spirit with His sevenfold gifts.—W. J. Deane, M. A.
Christ comes in the strength of gentleness.—Through the ages Christ’s strength has been the strength of gentleness, and His coming has been like that of Noah’s dove with the olive branch in its beak, and the tidings of an abated flood and of a safe home on its return. The ascetic preacher of repentance was strong to shake and purge men’s hearts by terror; but the stronger Son comes to conquer by meekness, and reign by the omnipotence of love. The beginning of the gospel was the anticipation and the proclamation of strength like the eagle’s, swift of flight, and powerful to strike and destroy. The gospel, when it became a fact, and not a hope, was found in the meek Jesus, with the Dove of God, the gentle Spirit, which is mightier than all, nestling in His heart, and uttering soft notes of invitation through His lips.—A. Maclaren, D. D.
The Holy Spirit came as a dove,—a gentle, joyous creature, with no bitterness of gall, no fierceness of bite, no violence of rending claws; loving human houses, associating within one home; nurturing their young together; when they fly abroad, hanging in their flight side by side; leading their life in mutual intercourse; giving in concord the kiss of peace with the bill; in every way fulfilling the law of unanimity. This is the singleness of heart that ought to be in the Church; this is the habit of love that must be obtained.—Cyprian.
Mark 1:12-13. Lessons.—
1. We in entering upon our Christian vocation ought so to behave ourselves as Christ did in entering upon His mediatorial office. He retreated from the world, and by that retreat He virtually declared that He had nothing to do with the world. Those therefore who are called to the preaching of the gospel, or to any other the like duty, are by this example taught to wean themselves from the things of this world, and to renounce whatever may hinder them from the performance of that duty, to which they are called.
2. Christ willingly follows whither the Spirit leads Him; and what His Father commands Him that He undertakes with all alacrity: we in the like manner ought cheerfully in all things to comply with God’s will and pleasure; nothing ought to deter us from a steady performance of our duty; nor hunger, nor thirst, nor deserts, nor devils ought to be terrible to us, whilst we are safe under the conduct of Christ and His Spirit.
3. Christ soon after He was baptised was led into the wilderness to be tempted. After we have listed ourselves amongst Christ’s soldiers, we must not expect to be idle, but must prepare ourselves for battle. Christ armed Himself against the assaults of the devil by fasting; this armour He Himself did not want, but He therefore put it on, that we might learn how to arm ourselves against our spritual enemies.—Bishop Smalridge.
Mark 1:13. Jesus was tempted.—
I. That He might sympathise with us in our trials, and assist us in our times of need.—The mariner who has once been cast on an inhospitable shore hastens with greater ardour to the relief of a shipwrecked crew than the callous inhabitant of the land who has never known the dangers of the deep. The orphan knows best how to mourn with his friend the loss of a parent; the bereaved parent most tenderly sympathises in the death of a brother’s child. As we feel in ourselves, so we judge of others; and it is a consolation to us, not only that our Saviour was of the same nature and constitution as ourselves, but that hardships, miseries, and temptations of the same kind were suffered by Him, and in a manner more severe than human nature is generally called to endure. We trust that He has learned to sympathise with us, and that His sympathy will teach Him to relieve.
II. That we might learn from His example how to resist temptation and to conquer.—The only weapon that He used was the sword of the Spirit, the word of God, which is equally available for us to wield. It furnishes us with the plainest directions for holiness of life, and the most powerful motives to obey them; it shows us clearly the pitfalls in our path, and how to avoid them; it animates us with visions of heavenly things, and wondrous promises to such as overcome.
III. That we might be convinced that this is God’s appointed path to perfection.—God has had one Son without sin, but no son without temptation. Christ’s trial consisted in the invitation to accept a lower ideal than the highest, to be content with a dazzling carnal glory instead of winning His way through divinely appointed sufferings to eternal renown. He was shown how He might turn out of the steep and stony path of sacrifice into the smooth and easy road of earthly pomp and grandeur—how with the world’s weapons He might win the victory. But He sternly and emphatically refused to entertain the tempter’s suggestion; and His refusal is a clarion call to us to remain loyal to our better selves, to trust implicitly the high convictions of our souls, to take up the cross and in it find the crown. It is not he that shirks the battle, but “he that endureth to the end,” who shall be “saved”: i.e. completely emancipated from all evil around and within, and presented faultless—unimpeached—before the throne.
Three prominent points in our Lord’s temptation.—
1. The relation of the supernatural to the natural in Himself; or, on the other side, His relation to God as His ideal human Song of Song of Solomon 2. The relation of God to the supernatural in His person, and the official in His mission.
3. The nature of the kingdom He had come to found, and the agencies by which it was to live and extend.—A. M. Fairbairn, D. D.
Jesus the representative Man.—Jesus is here the representative Man, the Source and Head of the new humanity, the Founder of the kingdom that is to be. When He triumphs, it triumphs. When He is victorious, all are victorious that live in and by Him. And His victory, as it was for humanity, was by humanity. The supernatural energies that were in Him He did not use for Himself. In our nature, as in our name, He stood, fought, conquered. How perfectly, then, is He qualified to be at once our Saviour and Example!—Ibid.
Christ with wild beasts and angels.—
I. The companionship of the wild beasts.—
1. Not only a graphic indication that the place was wild and desolate, but also a reminder of the dominion over the lower creatures given originally to man, and doubtless exercised by our first parents unfearing and unfeared.
2. Nor can we doubt that the fiercest denizens of the wilds would become tame and gentle in the presence of “the Second Adam, the Lord from heaven”—the dumb animals rebuking the madness of all who recognise Him not!
II. The ministrations of the angels.—
1. The connexion between the three worlds—Earth, Heaven, Hell—is closer than we think.
2. Let the thought of our invisible friends banish all fear of our spiritual foes.
Christ manifested as Monarch of all.—
1. Of hell’s minions, whose assaults He triumphantly repels.
2. Of earth’s fiercest inhabitants, whose wild passions are subdued in His presence.
3. Of heaven’s angels, whose delight it is to minister to Him.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 1
Mark 1:9-11. Christ the rainbow of the new covenant.—The baptism of our Saviour stands us under the gospel, instead of the same comfort, which the rainbow afforded unto the old world. The rainbow is a reflexion of the sunbeams in a watery cloud, and was ordained as a sign of pacification (Genesis 9:13) that God’s anger should no more strive with man. Such a rainbow was Jesus Christ (Revelation 4:3). Look upon Him, not standing majestically in a cloud above, but wading, like a humble servant, into the waters of Jordan beneath; look upon Him, how He sanctifies that element, which was once a means to drown the world, and now is made a means to save it; look upon Him in that posture, as a rainbow in the water, and you may read God’s sure covenant with His whole Church, that His anger is pacified in His well-beloved Son, and that He will be gracious with His inheritance (John 1:29; Ephesians 2:14; 1 Peter 3:21).—Bishop Hacket.
A further revelation of the Godhead.—There are some of our ancient cathedrals, such as York and Lincoln, crowned with triple towers; yet when seen afar off in the blue distance, only a single mass of building can be discerned; but when advancing on our journey nearer, we nerceive that there are towers, though perhaps we cannot clearly trace their form or number—but when we arrive yet closer, we can see and admire the grand central tower, and the two western campaniles in all their grace and majesty. So the old world was taught first to recognise the Unity of God; then as the ages passed away the Second and the Third Persons of the Trinity were revealed; and at last in the fulness of time we behold the glory of the Most Sacred Trinity made manifest to men! When the Incarnate Redeemer went down into Jordan, the heavenly light of the Divine Spirit descended “as a dove,” whilst the Father’s voice proclaimed His almighty sanction!
Mark 1:9. The fellowship of penitence.—A strange thing happened a few years ago in an American court of justice. A young man was asked if he had aught to say why the extreme penalty should not be passed upon him. At that moment a grey-haired man, his face furrowed with sorrow, stepped into the prisoner’s box unhindered, placed his hand affectionately upon the culprit’s shoulder, and said, “Your honour, we have nothing to say. The verdict which has been found against us is just. We have only to ask for mercy.” “We”!—there was nothing against the old father; yet in that moment he lost himself, and identified his very being with that of his wayward boy. So in His baptism Christ pushes His way to a place beside us, lays His hand upon the sinner’s shoulder, and bears the shame and sorrow with him.
Mark 1:12-13. Quarantania.—This wilderness has been identified, by the voice of tradition, in the Greek and Latin Churches, as that wild and lonely region between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea, called in modern geography Quarantania. It is an extensive plateau, elevated to a considerable height above the plain of Jericho and the west bank of the Jordan; and hence the literal accuracy of the expression in St. Matthew, that Jesus was “led up” into the wilderness. Travellers have described it as a barren, sterile waste of painful whiteness, shut in on the west by a ridge of grey limestone hills, moulded into every conceivable shape; while on the east the view is closed by the gigantic wall of the Moab mountains, appearing very near at hand, but in reality a long way off, the deception being caused by the nature of the intervening ground, which possesses no marked features, no difference of colour on which to fix the eye for the purpose of forming an estimate of distance. Over this vast expanse of upland country there are signs of vegetation only in two or three places, where winter torrents have scooped out a channel for themselves, and stimulate year after year into brief existence narrow strips of verdure along their banks. The monotony of the landscape and the uniformity of its colouring are varied only when the glaring afternoon sun projects the shadows of the ghostly rocks across the plain, or, at rare intervals, when a snowy cloud, that seems as if born of the hills themselves, sails across the deep-blue sky and casts down on the desolate scene the cool, dark mantle of its shade. A more dreary and lonely scene it is impossible to imagine.—H. Macmillan, D.D.
Great temptations.—The story of the Temptation is peculiar, but not wholly unique. It is not without its parallel in human experience, not without its analogue in literature and history. The great heroes whom the world reveres have passed through similar experiences of test and trial. Thus, in the legends of the East, there is brought to us the story of the temptation of Buddha on that night when all the powers of evil gathered around about him to assail him by violence or to entice him by wiles.
“Nor knoweth one,
Not even the wisest, how those fiends of hell
Battled that night to keep the truth from Buddh:
Sometimes with terrors of the tempest, blasts
Of demon-armies clouding all the wind
With thunder, and with blinding lightning flung
In jagged javelins of purple wrath
From splitting skies; sometimes with wiles and words
Fair-sounding, ’mid hushed leaves and softened airs
From shapes of witching beauty; wanton songs,
Whispers of love; sometimes with royal allures
Of proffered rule; sometimes with mocking doubts,
Making truth vain.”
So, in the mythology of Greece, we have the story of the temptation of Hercules. Pleasure comes to him in wanton but bewitching form, and bids him follow her, and promises him the cup of pleasure and that he shall drink of it. She will strew his path with flowers all the way, and accompany him with song and dancing. Wisdom comes to him with sterner voice—with beauty, indeed, but with solemn and almost forbidding beauty—and calls him to combat and to battle that he may win manhood. So in the later history of the Church is the strange, mystical story of the temptation of St. Anthony, with its wiles and its enticements, with its demons inviting to sin by smiles, and its demons tormenting with red-hot pincers. In human history we find the same or like record. We have like temptations in the lives of John Wesley, of Luther, of Xavier, of Loyola. Open the page of history where you will, and you can hardly find the story of any great, noble, prophetic soul that has not had its hour of battle with the powers of darkness. As in the story of Napoleon the Great, concerning whom history tells us that for two long months he struggled over the question whether he should divorce his faithful wife and take another that he might build up a European dynasty, and came out from his chamber after the last night of battle with a face so pallid, so wrought upon by the struggle, that it was as no face he ever shewed after the hottest battlefield of Europe. But love went down before the hope of ambition in that battle; and the devil won.
Tempted like as we are.—It is recorded of the great soldier, the gallant Montrose, that finding his followers ill provided with armour, he stripped off breastplate, and steel cap, with his stout leathern coat, and rode into battle in his bared shirtsleeves, at the head of his men, to show them that he scorned to use defences of which they could not avail themselves. Even so our Great Captain laid aside the panoply of heaven, and as a man entered into the conflict.
Temptation following on privileges.—Pirates, when they see a ship set sail for a rich cargo to foreign parts, keep away, and take no notice of her; they let her go by in peace; but when she is coming back from that foreign port, laden with rich goods, the case is very different. Then the pirate uses all his efforts to take that ship, and leaves no means untried. So with us; after Holy Communion the devil knows that we are very dear to God, and have received Christ.
Satan vanquished.—There is in Tintern churchyard, not far from the grand ruins of the abbey, a defaced and broken tombstone, grass-grown, and whereon only one sentence can be read; it consists of these striking words—“I tread Satan under my feet,” not a word more; it is the record of an unknown fight, and a nameless victory over the wiles of the devil. Such may, through Christ’s help, be one day the triumphant exclamation of us all.