awaited him, Peter (Matt. xvi. 23) began to rebuke him in words which implied that the Messiah could not thus meanly and ignobly die. This was the one suggestion of evil, veiling itself in garments of light, which he met with the sharpest exhibition of sensibility and impatience.

"for a season,"

There

Here the Devil left him, as St. Luke says, and "behold, angels came and ministered unto him." is nothing in either of the Evangelists to imply that the tempter came in bodily shape, or that such a presence was recognized in any other way than by the nature of the suggestions that were made. Whether there really is a prince of darkness, a malignant and mighty spirit, who had access. to the mind of Jesus, with power to instil into it thoughts of evil under the guise of holiness and faith, is a question that we shall consider more fully hereafter. See xiii. 24-30. We know, however, too little of the unseen world of spiritual existences, and especially of the dark background of evil which lies behind all actual sin, to be able to speak with confidence on such a subject. How far that invisible realm of life may be peopled by spiritual beings good and bad, how far, if at all, the two orders of spiritual beings may be allowed to intermingle and carry on their various works, what limitations are assigned to their free action, and how the kingdoms of light and darkness may be arrayed one against the other, are questions which we cannot specifically answer. An evil man separated from the body is an evil spirit. There is then, so far as we can see, no more reason why evil spirits should not exist than that evil men should not. "There is nothing," says Mr. Norton, (Translation of the Gospels, Vol. II. pp. 61, 62,) "in the idea of dæmons being allowed to affect the minds and bodies of men irreconcilable with anything we see in the moral government of God. There is no proof à priori against such agency." It narrows down the world in which Jesus moved, far more than reason gives us any warrant for doing, to cut him off from connection with all existences, except God on the one hand, and man with

the laws and forces of the material universe on the other. We cannot say how far the work of redemption in which he was engaged allied to itself the sympathy and employed the assistance and fellowship of angels, such as here came and ministered to him, or of holy men in their spiritual estate, such as Moses and Elijah who talked with him on the mountain of Transfiguration. Neither can we say how far his mighty work of redemption may have reached down through realms of spiritual darkness, and arrayed against him the active malignity of evil spirits as well as of wicked men. Without the recognition of such existences both above and below, passages in his life, such as the temptation, the transfiguration, the agony, the cry upon the cross, to which the wondering and trusting instincts of his followers have turned in all ages, lose much of their sublime moral significance, and their mysterious spiritual power. The victory which he gained in the wilderness was over something more than a passing thought of evil, which of itself could have had no power to shake his firm and sinless mind. It was the first of that series of struggles and victories through which he was to overthrow the very empire of darkness, and "destroy him that had the power of death.”

While we thus view the temptation as one which actually occurred to Jesus in the suggestion of thoughts which for the time disturbed and agitated his spirit, we may see in it an epitome of the heaviest temptations that can assail his disciples, and of the way in which they should be overcome. There are the temptations of desire, — the love of enjoyment, the love of admiration, and the love of power, not presenting themselves to us in their coarse and selfish colors, as self-indulgence, vanity, and ambition, but clothing themselves in hues borrowed from heaven, and insinuating themselves into our hearts by false appeals to high and generous and holy ends. There is no sin in laboring to satisfy our bodily wants; but to concentrate our highest and best gifts on this work is to lose sight of the more essential truth, that we are to live not

by bread alone, but by all the influences and teachings of God. In that way the soul will be impoverished by the low and narrow acts to which it is devoted. On the other hand, in a high and religious act, throwing ourselves as favored ones of heaven on the special providence of God, that through the wonder thus excited we may gain over advocates to his cause, we may be led by hidden motives of personal vanity unconsciously to tempt and provoke that Providence whose leadings we ought to wait for and obey. Or while both the end and the motive are right, in our impatient zeal to advance what we believe to be the cause of righteousness and God, we may be tempted to stoop to unsanctified means, and to consent for the time to worship even the Devil in his disguise, if only he, with the powers which have been committed to him, will help us on in our work.

12-16. - MAKES HIS HOME IN CAPERNAUM.

From the way in which the narrative goes on, we should suppose that the events recorded in the twelfth and following verses succeeded immediately to the Temptation. But from the first five chapters of John, we find that a considerable period of time and some important acts here intervened. Jesus, immediately after the Temptation, had come to John the Baptist, who on seeing him pronounced to his followers the remarkable words, “Behold the lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." Jesus then returned to Galilee where his first miracle was performed, and afterwards came up to Jerusalem to the Passover. It was probably while he was at Jerusalem that he heard of John's imprisonment, which led him to hasten his return to Galilee. On his way back to Galilee he had the conversation with the woman of Samaria, which is related in the fourth chapter of John. He now left Nazareth and took up his abode at Capernaum, which was near the northwest corner of the Sea of Galilee, though its pre

cise locality is not known with certainty. The quotation from the Old Testament is part of the remarkable passage already alluded to in the first chapter of Matthew, and might well be employed by the writer to call the attention of his Jewish readers to the extraordinary events which he is about to record as in some sense a fulfilment of the hardly less extraordinary prediction. Isa. viii. 22; ix. 1-7.

17-22.- THE CALL OF SIMON PETER AND ANDREW HIS BROTHER, AND OF JOHN AND HIS BROTHER JAMES.

The readiness with which this call was obeyed would indicate some previous knowledge of Jesus on their part, such as we find (John i. 35-42) that they actually had. The expectations excited by John the Baptist were kept intensely alive by Jesus, though he had not yet publicly declared himself to be the Messiah. His proclamation (iv. 17) is the same as that of the Baptist: "Repent; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” But while he used and continued to use words familiar to the Jews as describing an earthly kingdom, he took them up, as he did so many other Jewish phrases, into a higher plane of thought, and gradually invested them with a higher meaning and a purer spirit. He did not institute a new religious language; but by a change of heart and life and thought through the great truths which he proclaimed, he would fill out old and familiar expressions with new ideas, and make them glow with the new light which he had thrown into them.

23-25. The nature of the diseases which are here specified, and the character of his miracles, will be more properly considered in the specific cases as they occur hereafter.

NOTES.

THEN was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness, to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days 2 and forty nights, he was afterward an hungered. And when 3 the tempter came to him, he said: If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. But he answered 4 and said, It is written, "Man shall not live by bread alone,