Christ’s whole life on earth was the assertion and example of true manliness—the setting forth in living act and word what man is meant to be, and how he should carry himself in this world of God’s—one long campaign, in which “the temptation” stands out as the first great battle and victory. The story has depths in it which we can never fathom, but also clear, sharp lessons which he who runs may read, and no man can master too thoroughly. We must follow him reverently into the wilderness, where he flies from the crowds who are pressing to the Baptist, and who to-morrow will be thronging around him, if he goes back among them, after what the Baptist has said about him to-day.

Day after day in the wilderness the struggle goes on in his heart. He is faint from insufficient food in those solitudes, and with bodily weakness the doubts grow in strength and persistence, and the tempter is always at his side, soliciting him to end them once for all, by one act of self-assertion. All those questionings and misgivings as to his origin and mission which we have pictured to ourselves as haunting him ever since his first visit to Jerusalem, are now, as it were, focussed. There are mocking voices whispering again as of old, but more scornfully and keenly in his ear, “Are you really the Messiah, the Son of God, so long looked for? What more proof have you to go upon than you have had for these many years, during which you have been living as a poor peasant in a Galilean village? The word of this wild man of the wilderness? He is your own cousin, and a powerful preacher no doubt, but a wayward, wilful man, clad and fed like a madman, who has been nursing mad fancies from his boyhood, away from the holy city, the centre of national life and learning. This sign of a descending dove, and a voice which no one has heard but yourself? Such signs come to many—are never wanting when men are ready to deceive themselves—and each man’s fancy gives them a different meaning. But the words, and the sign, and the voice, you say, only meet a conviction which has been growing these thirty years in your own heart and conscience? Well, then, at least for the sake of others if not for your own sake, put this conviction to the proof, here, at once, and make sure yourself, before you go forth and deceive poor men, your brethren, to their ruin. You are famishing here in the wilderness. This, at least, cannot be what God intends for his Son, who is to redeem the world. Exercise some control over the meanest part of your Father’s kingdom. Command these stones to become bread, and see whether they will obey you. Cast yourself down from this height. If you are what you think, your Father’s angels will bear you up. Then, after they have borne you up, you may go on with some reasonable assurance that your claim is not a mere delusion, and that you will not be leading these poor men whom you call your brethren to misery and destruction.”

And when neither long fasting and weakness, or natural doubt, distrust, impatience, or the most subtle suggestions of the tempter, can move his simple trust in his Father, or wring from him one act of self-assertion, the enemy changes front and the assault comes from another quarter. “You may be right,” the voices seemed now to be saying; “You may not be deceived, or dreaming, when you claim to be the Son of God, sent to redeem this fair world, which is now spread out before you in all its glory. That may be your origin, and that your work. But, living as you have done till now in a remote corner of a despised province, you have no experience or knowledge of the methods or powers which sway men, and establish and maintain these kingdoms of the world, the glory of which you are beholding. These methods and powers have been in use in your Father’s world, if it be his, ever since man has known good from evil. You have only to say the word, and you may use and control these methods and powers as you please. By their aid you may possibly ‘see of the travail of your soul and be satisfied;’ without them you will redeem nothing but perhaps a man here and there—without them you will postpone instead of hastening the coming of your Father’s kingdom, to the sorrow and ruin of many generations, and will die a foiled and lonely man, crushed by the very forces you have refused to use for your Father’s service. If they were wholly evil, wholly unfit for the fulfillment of any purpose of his, would he have left them in command of his world till this day? It is only through them that the world can be subdued. Your time is short, and you have already wasted much of it, standing shivering on the brink, and letting the years slip by in that cottage at Nazareth. The wisest of your ancestors acknowledged and used them, and spread His kingdom from the river to the Great Sea. Why should you reject them?”

This, very roughly and inadequately stated, is some shadow of the utmost part, or skirt as it were, of the trial-crisis, lasting forty days, through which Christ passed from his private to his public career. For forty days the struggle lasted before he could finally realize and accept his mission with all that it implied. At the end of that time he has fairly mastered and beaten down every doubt as to his call, every tempting suggestion to assert himself, or to accept or use any aid in establishing his Father’s kingdom which does not clearly bear his Father’s stamp and seal on the face of it. In the strength of this victory he returns from the desert, to take up the burden which has been laid on him, and to set up God’s kingdom in the world by the methods which he has learned of God himself—and by no other.