the name was usually spoken to the ear, it was sometimes written for the eye. If the Samuel of the above record was the father of John and Charles Wesley, must he not have been seventy-three years of age at his death? But if, as Wood, Dr. Calamy, and Hutchins say, the Rector of Epworth was born at Preston, near Weymouth, A.D. 1666, then it is truly reported that at his death, in A.D. 1735, he was sixty-nine years of age. Liskeard, January 6th, 1858. WILLIAM BEAL. THE TEMPTATION OF OUR LORD. (Concluded from page 64.) BUT to return to the wilderness.-When Satan departed, having ended all the temptation, he had secured the accomplishment of another object, of which he knew nothing. It was part of the discipline of the Redeemer that He should obtain by experience a perfect knowledge both of the depths of Satan, and the depths of man as the object of Satan's temptation. On this subject, the words of Scripture are the only safe words; but we do not trespass the limits of their interpretation when we say that the incarnate Son of God, who throughout the whole of His life upon earth was learning in the school of suffering to sympathize with all the infirmities of our tempted nature, received His first and deepest experience of man's misery, as a tempted being, in the wilderness where he was tempted in the likeness of sinful flesh. This leads our thoughts, though abruptly, to the second aspect of the Redeemer's temptation, in which we regard Him as a type and a pattern to ourselves. There is a sense in which His experience must be renewed in every one of His disciples. That fellowship with Christ to which St. Paul so often points, includes His temptation, as well as His death and resurrection. Our crucifixion with Him, and full fellowship with His risen life, attain their consummation only through that process of our being tempted and conquering with Him. In this sense, He is not alone with our foe in the wilderness: He takes us all with Him, that He may teach our hands to war, and our fingers to fight. The lessons which the temptation of our Head teaches us are manifold, and of the utmost importance. We learn the necessity, the dignity, and the true character of our own temptations. We see as in a glass-Christus speculum Christiani-the great essential principles which regulate them, and the manner of their development. We are taught the secret of our sure defence. We learn rightly to estimate our dread responsibility as imitators of a Master who does not vicariously conquer, but rather gives His own defence the character of command to us. And, finally, we are assured by His example of the glorious issue of our own faithful endurance. The Christian, like his Lord, is led up by the Spirit to be tempted. VOL. IV.-FIFTH SERIES. M The Spirit of Christ subjects the regenerate nature to testing, which He will overrule for its establishment and perfection. The unregenerate soul dwells in the wilderness; is led hither and thither by Satan at his will; sins by the free law of his unholy nature; and is not, in the exact sense under review, tempted at all. The seduction exercised upon him is from the Spirit of God; and its aim is to allure him by Divine solicitation out of the wilderness of sin. But the regenerate has a spiritual character to be tried; and, as the trial of a new and Divine nature, temptation is a high and sacred thing. The Spirit, however, leads him not into but unto temptation. The Christian who enters the wilderness in the Spirit, and who fights in the Spirit, "keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not." When he renounces the defence of the Spirit, he falls; so falling, he gives up the essential prerogative of every new-born soul-not to sin in the hour of temptation; and that comes to pass which the Lord bids us with all our soul to pray against: He is led into temptation, when the Spirit designed only to lead him unto the test. A soul united to Christ by living faith, and being one spirit with Him, is led into the wilderness by the same necessity, under the same sanction, and with the same glorious prerogative of conquering, as his Master was. Christ has magnified temptation, and made it honourable it is, whether in Him or in us, humiliation to be temptedbut humiliation glorified, without shadow of sin or shame. : Again: The process of our Lord's final temptations was so ordered as to exhibit to us the process of our own: not, of course, in their endless diversity; for who does not see that that could not have been the meaning of His being tempted in all points like as we are ?-but in their profound principles. The Lord teaches us this, when He translates back each of Satan's suggestions into words which express its true significance; and, accordingly, we shall understand each of them better in the Lord's replies, than in Satan's challenge. Thus, for the first of them. Satan tempts the needy Christian to distrust the providence of God, to throw off his entire dependence upon the provision of Heaven, and to seek his bread in his own way. Our Lord's reply goes to the root of that temptation, and shows that Satan would seduce us to forget or renounce the first eternal principle of religion, -that our life, in all that word includes, is from God, and in God, and by God. On the one hand, he tempts us, by ten thousand thousand reproductions of the original apple, to find our happiness out of God, to separate our life from His breath, from His word,-from His Christ, who is His Word, and the Bread of our life. On the other hand, and as the correlative of this, he tempts us to loathe and murmur at those privations and tribulations which the Lord sends, as He sent them to His people in the desert, to teach us that "man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God,”—that is, by direct communications from His Spirit to ours. If we take Satan's literal words as the measure of his temptation, how wide is their application! In how many ways does he tempt God's poor and afflicted children to distrust their unseen Father, and strive to make the stones of earth a substitute for the bread of heaven! But, if we interpret it by the profound reply of Christ, it is a temptation which comes home to every son of God upon earth. For, where is the Christian whom Satan tempts not daily to forget that his life is hid with Christ in God-that its springs are below the nether and above the upper springs of this world's good-in God Himself? The second temptation is addressed to man, not in the humility of his disciplinary lot, but in its exaltation; to the Christian, not in the stony valley, but on the pinnacle. As it proceeds out of the mouth of Satan, (for our Lord suggests to us this antithesis throughout,) it is an enticement to presume on the keeping of God in paths which man wilfully chooses. And grievous are the wanderings from his appointed way into which this misleader of men's souls seduces the Christian servant of God! But our Lord's reply goes to the root of this temptation likewise. It is the endeavour to make an accepted son of God tempt his Father in heaven. And where is the child of God upon earth who is not daily thus tempted to tempt his God,-even as His first created children presumed upon their prerogative in the garden, and His people trifled with His majesty in the desert? This temptation, alas! like the others, finds its best and its worst comment in the sins which dishonour God in His church :-in the spiritual pride which tempts the Lord to withdraw His gifts; in the presumption which trifles with danger, and dispenses with safeguards, trusting in an unpledged protection; in the secret and daring confidence of many backsliders in heart, that whenever they repent God will freely receive them; in the hidden or open antinomianism of those who tempt Christ by making Him the minister of sin; in the lighter but still most perilous folly of those who think that their liberty absolves them from the necessity of ordinances, sacraments, fastings, and habitual prayer; in the presumption of those who leave the path of humble duty to rush into ways to which neither God nor man has called them; in all the unnumbered forms of compromise with the fashions of the world ;—and, to sum up all, in the spirit, conduct, and lives of those generally who forget that the privileges of grace belong to the lowly in heart, and are to be maintained only by walking humbly with God. Satan, who tempts us to forget that out of the mouth of God proceedeth the word on which alone we live, tempts us also to forget that out of that same mouth proceedeth the word at which we must tremble. The third temptation offers to man the glory of the world,-all that St. John subdivides into "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life," on the condition of a sinful compliance with his will. But the full force of this mighty and universal temptation is not understood until we interpret it by the light of the Lord's reply. Applied in its naked and awful form, how many have been its victims! How many, taken up by Satan to some tower or higher mountain, have been beguiled by his enchantments, and have bartered their religion and their souls for the vanities of the world, or for things good in themselves which have become sin by passing through his hands! But, when we behold the temptation in the light of our Lord's sublime reply, who does not feel that it is one which pervades the whole of his life, and touches him at every point of his affections? Our Lord has taught us in the wilderness that the weapons of our unfailing defence are in the word of truth. He did not resist Satan by any utterance of His supreme majesty and authority, but by opposing to his lying suggestions the pure word of God. And, although He brought with Him new and as yet undisclosed scriptures for man, He did not take from them His weapons. He used the ancient oracles of truth, taking from them three several sayings, the meaning of which is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; the truth of which is for time and eternity. He who would use God's word as his defence must live, and move, and have his being in it. It must give him all his principles of action, and sway his whole life by its influence; making him wise unto salvation-not only wise to find the true blessedness of life, but wise to overcome all its temptations. The words chosen by our Lord were three central words; and each of them has a thousand commands, warnings, and promises ranged under it. But, inasmuch as the temptations of Satan come to us in detail, and must be met one by one, it is needful that the tempted soul should have in readiness the individual word of law, threatening, or promise, wherewith to meet the adversary in the prayer of faith. There must be no reasoning with Satan, on the one hand; no despising of his temptation, on the other: but the simple and resolute appeal to the word of God,-and this, not as our Lord confronted Satan with it directly, but it must be used against the enemy through the medium of prayer to God. The more habitually we live in the word, making it our own through meditation, and fasting, and prayer, the more readily shall we find the right words, the chosen pebbles wherewith to smite this Goliath. But the three words of our Lord may in time of need stand for all the rest :-" O my God, I am tempted to seek my happiness out of Thee, or to repine at Thy appointment; but man liveth on Thy word alone: help me to seek no other life. O my God, this is Thy commandment: save me from tempting Thee by breaking it. O my God, other lords are striving to win my heart: help me to worship Thee alone!" Once more: The contemplation of our Head in the wilderness should constantly remind us how much He expects from ourselves. By passing through it, He has sanctified it, and disarmed it likewise of all superhuman terrors. He has seen to it that there shall be no assaults, devised by Satan, but such as are proper to man: all beyond that He exhausted Himself. He has left the wilderness, but He knows everyone of its darkest caves; and He is still present in the Spirit, watching, animating, and helping His followers in their lesser conflicts. He does not save all; for everyone who would conquer, must fight for himself the good fight. He is no vicarious conqueror in those temptations which are common to man,”—only in those which were proper to Christ. Hence many fall, whom He never 66 raises again. Many turn the stones into bread, and die; many have tempted Christ, and have been dashed to pieces in their presumptuous way; many have worshipped the Beast and his image, and their carcases have fallen in the wilderness. "He that does not fight this good fight successfully, after My example, for My sake, with My help, and to win My great reward, is not worthy of Me!" Finally, we see in the triumphant issue of our Lord's temptation the pledge and earnest of the triumphant issue of our own. The Redeemer rested from His long and sore conflict, and angels ministered to Him. He went on His way of humble obedience, in the consciousness that this first victory was the pledge of the last, after which all things should be put under Him. Satan returned again; but never as a personal, visible adversary of Christ, hoping to conquer. "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven," was not merely an allusion to what the eternal Son had seen before the foundation of the world; it was the expression of His sublime assurance of victory, given partly in soliloquy, partly in explanation to His disciples, when through His name they had cast out devils. But Satan returns to Him again in His members: for in all their temptations He is tempted, and He regards all the assaults of the enemy upon His disciples as aimed at Himself in them. Therefore His sympathy with them is beyond the power of human words to express. His angels minister to them, not only after, but in, their conflicts; nay, He Himself is ever with them, renewing in their fidelity His own triumph over Satan. The throne of His own victory shall be large enough for all who overcome; for it was not of the Apostles only, nor of His own tribulations on earth, that He thought, when He said, "Ye are they that have continued with Me in My temptations; and I appoint unto you a kingdom." The same Captain of our salvation, who is with us in the wilderness, is also in that paradise which He has regained by His own victory. There He receives all who are faithful unto death; welcoming them first as faithful soldiers of the cross, before He finally rewards them as faithful servants of the Gospel. And they who enter there are tempted no more; for the flaming sword which once kept man from the earthly, keeps Satan for ever from the heavenly, paradise. SELECT LITERARY NOTICES. [The insertion of any article in this list is not to be considered as pledging us to the approbation of its contents, unless it be accompanied by some express notice of our favourable opinion. Nor is the omission of any such notice to be regarded as indicating a contrary opinion; as our limits, and other reasons, impose on us the necessity of selection and brevity.] The Collected Works of Dugald Stewart, Esq., F.R.SS., &c., &c. Edited by Sir William Hamilton, Bart., A.M., &c., &c. Vol. X. [con taining] Biographical Memoirs of |
