III.

Temptations of Power.

Mark i. 11-13.

"And there came a voice from Heaven, saying, 'Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.' And immediately the Spirit driveth him into the wilderness. And he was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan; and was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered unto him."

(THIS is a startling order of events. Satan so soon

after God! the voice of heaven almost introducing the visits of hell! the very Spirit of Holiness driving the chosen soul into the wilderness of temptation! Where, it may be asked, is the privilege of inspiration, if it cannot even ward off the access of fiends? where the peace and blessing of Divine approval, if, while its accents yet ring upon the heart, the powers of darkness

bring their awful challenge?) Is there then no sanctity before which evil shrinks away, like spectres before the dawn? and around even the most beloved of God are the shadows still so deeply spread, that haunting forms of sin can lurk and choose their moment for surprise? It seems a natural demand of feeling, that he who is

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consecrated to great ends, who is pronounced at one with God, should be spared the humiliating strife of lower minds, and lifted into a region of his own above obedience and beyond resistance.

This very feeling however is but a whisper from the same angel of unfaithfulness that hung upon the shadow of Jesus in the desert. It is the great illusion of our hearts to suppose a contrariety between the inspirations of heaven and the conditions of earth,— to expect from a holy call, not more awful conflicts, but only more splendid victories,-to think, when appointed to a sacred work, of the support God will give to us, rather than of the severities we must bear for him. That his grandest gift should bring, not special exemptions, but a more unsheltered exposure, -should plunge us deeper into temptation, and waste us with intenser sorrows, is so disappointing to the visions of natural romance, that only the fewest can believe it still. Yet to give us this truth, to wean us from the false tastes which deny it, to touch us with love enough for its free acceptance, was the highest end of Christ's revelation: it was for this that he united all opposites in himself, and reconciled them in a harmony incomprehensible before; whatever we most trust in God, and whatever we most pity in man; the most absolute sanctity and the bitterest trials; the sublimest destination yet the humblest lot; the nearest union with the holiness of heaven, yet no separation

from the constant shadow of possible sin. With him, as with us all, it was no doubt difficult, so long as he was amid the surroundings of common life, to believe in the stirrings of a divine call within him. The mystic promptings of the soul, the deep appealing look of men and things, the flash of inspired prayer into the mind, did not agree with the narrow home, the village cares, the synagogue routine: they would start away at the sound of the plane and saw; be drowned in the gossip of neighbours; and not dare to speak before the bearded Rabbi of the place. How should the youth suppose, even when the intimations were most full of wonder, that God had really sent for him? Long would he look for the heavenly light to shine on him through other souls, and turn with hopeful reverence to the wisdom he drew from the old and the enthusiasm he kindled in the young; not suspecting that the lustre was native to himself, and was but reflected in their face. When at length the ordinary lot could no longer quench the divine consciousness, when he had waited till the passionate haste of life was gone and he had found it clearer and deeper than before, when he had entered Jordan for the baptism of water and emerged to be invested with the baptism of fire;-driven to accept his loneliness with God, and to confess that neither the gentle home nor the stern prophet can help him to read the visions of his mind, he finds himself flung by reaction into a struggle

opposite in kind. Hitherto, he has clung to the quiet lot and shrunk in wonder before the awful inspiration: now, he is conquered by the inspiration and the lot appears suitable no more. He cannot return to it and yet believe the heavenly voices which the silence of the desert has made clear. They will grow confused again when the familiar sounds of Nazareth come back upon the sense; and the face of Joseph and of Mary will make them seem unreal. How can he feel himself the trusted Child of the Most High, and yet go in and out at the old cottage door? how venture on the language of authority in which his thoughts clothe themselves to his own mind, amid the dear scenes of early duty and obedience and beneath the astonished looks of nature and of men? To live the divine life without any rescue from human conditions, to remain the peasant yet signify the holy God,—is it not a task which, even without unfaithfulness, humility and selfdistrust themselves must spoil? The moods of the purest and loftiest spirits are liable to cloud and change there are none that can always and equally believe in their own best inspirations; and when all seems against them and no response falls upon their loneliness, what is to uphold their faith? If God would but irrevocably commit his servant, fling him publicly from the highest pinnacle of his convictions upon the outer pavement of his work, then perhaps, with the gate of retreat visibly closed against him, he

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might hope to bear the strain, and hold himself in majesty above the misgivings of others or himself. This is the prayer which Jesus is tempted to breathe, ere he follows the spirit from the desert to the world: Only pledge me, O Lord, before the face of men, and I shall be strong to do thy will: by the flash of thy power make it clear to even dull souls that I am thine, that I may hold to their thought in dark hours when I doubt my own: behold the pride of men and the greatness of this world; send me not alone with bare feet and uncovered head to win thy kingdom there." Yet the prayer, ere he could think it through, he knew to be the Tempter's and not his own. It was an evil heart that stipulated for a sign; that insisted on exemptions, and waited for a preconceived position : and it was at once the very problem and the only proof of the holy spirit, to decline no outward necessity and to glorify them all, to consecrate the accustomed ways of God, and find room within them for all that earth can hold of what is heavenly.

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Every disciple shall be as his master."(The temptation of Jesus is repeated wherever there is any gift of faculty, any mission and opportunity of work.) Few are there, who can take their post and fling themselves into their appointed ends, without complaining of the conditions by which their hands are tied, and craving for immunities to lift them over an obstacle and facilitate their achievement. When, however,