It is probable that John knew Jesus, though he may not have met Him for many years. John was baptizing by the river, and when Jesus approached him a voice within whispered who this peasant was, and he saw in an instant how wide was the gulf between Him and the others who came to be baptized,-nay, between Him and the baptizer. But Jesus made His purpose known, and said He would be baptized, because it became Him to fulfil all righteousness. He did not disclaim the homage that John paid Him,-He never disclaimed homage, however great, but He declared that the head and representative of the people should prepare their way. He was to die for them, and to bear the weight of their sins, and He would identify Himself with them in their most humble experiences. So He went down into the water,-not, indeed, to be cleansed by it, rather as an old writer says, to cleanse it; and the divine voice declared: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." He descended into the water, just as He submitted in His early years to the Jewish law. His being baptized was part of His humiliation. Jesus pledged Himself to the fulfilment of all righteous 1 1 See Keim, ii. 274-276, and Note B. ness on behalf of the race whom He had come to save, and the divine Spirit was given to Him to prepare Him for the rest of the work. He had the spirit before. Here it was given to Him with a new richness to equip Him for the new functions He was now to perform, and in His strength He went forward. It might be pointed out that Christ is complete, while John was incomplete. Christ was the centre of truth, yea, the truth beyond which we cannot advance. John was but the vestibule into the temple. John was conscious of imperfection, and pointed from the messenger who was human, to the message that was divine. Jesus came not merely to preach the gospel, but to be the gospel, and challenged the strictest scrutiny, both of Himself and of His message. John, for all His unfaltering boldness, erred and doubted. Christ made no mistake-no retractation. John died as a victim-the victim of a lustful woman. Jesus died as a priest; no man took His life from Him. John's death did nothing for the race; Christ's death saved the race. There was no story of the resurrection of John. His grave was the end of his school. When the disciples laid in the tomb his awful and headless dust. they gradually disorganized. Jesus died and rose again, and by His resurrection drew His disciples together. All are unsatisfying and incomplete save Christ. We ascend till we come to Him; further we cannot go. Such a life and death as John's cannot be explained without the faith of immortality. His life, viewed from an earthly standpoint, was a complete and dreary failure. But his death was an escape from the twofold prison-the prison of Herod and the prison of his own doubts— into wide and utter liberty. It was an entrance into the kingdom of heaven, where that kingdom is realized in its purity and completeness. CHAPTER V. The Temptation of Christ. "To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in His throne." “The day when he, Pride's lord and man's, To Him before whose countenance The years recede, the years advance." ROSSETTI. HE temptation of Christ followed His bap THE tism, and must be viewed in connection with it. When God gives armor, He soon puts it to the proof, and so the strength given at the baptism was soon tested in the wilderness. The first Adam fell from the garden into the wilderness, and so in the wilderness the second Adam takes up and wins the battle. He was led by the Spirit into the wilderness-led by the good Spirit to be tempted of the evil. "The spirit," says Mark, "driveth Him into the wilderness," an expression we may fairly take as showing how great is the pain of temptation, and how Christ shrank from it. Temptation is not to be avoided by flying into solitude, for there the Lord met with the evil spirit. Into some difficulties connected with this subject we do not intend to enter, simply because it does not appear that there are materials for the solution of these problems. That there is a personal devil, and that he was the agent in the temptation, we assume as the plain teaching of Scripture, confirmed by many mysterious passages of life. It has been well said that though the devil may be expelled from theology, he cannot be got out of the world, so marred by traces of his work. We do not attempt to explain how the sinless Christ could be tempted. We assume that a sinless manhood can be tempted, and further, that to a sinless nature temptation must come from the outside, and not from within; and thus we find it here. 1. The first temptation, "If Thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread," was addressed to Jesus after forty days of fasting. During these days He had been sustained, not by the power of His divine nature, |