38 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
He alone could breathe ; in it human sympathy slept or died, and human speech could make no sound. Out of the loneliness He issued to begin His work; into loneliness He passed to end it. The moments that made His work divinest were His own and His Father'8.1
ii. Why in the Wilderness?
1. Because temptations are keenest in the wilderness. There is no human sympathy at hand. And where there is no human sympathy, it is the noblest that temptation assails most fiercely. The hermits fled to the wilderness to escape temptation. They fled to Satan's chosen battle-ground, and the saintlier they were, the more was his advantage over them.
IT We are apt to think that Satan is most powerful in crowded thoroughfares. It is a mistake. I believe the temptations of life are always most dangerous in the wilderness. I have been struck with that fact in Bible history. It is not in their most public moments that the great men of the past have fallen ; it has been in their quiet hours. Moses never stumbled when he stood before Pharaoh, or while he was flying from Pharaoh ; it was when he got into the desert that his patience began to fail. David never stumbled while he was fighting his way through opposing armies ; it was when the fight was over, when he was resting quietly under his own vine, that he put forth his hand to steal. The sorest temptations are not those spoken, but those echoed. It is easier to lay aside your besetting sin amid a cloud of witnesses than in the solitude of your own room. The sin that besets you is never so beseeching as when you are alone. You may say kind things in public to the man you hate ; but you make up for it in the wilderness. It is our thoughts that hurt us ; and we think most in solitude. Many a man who resists the temptation to drunkenness at the dinner-table is conquered at the secret hour. Paul says that the Christian armour is most needed after we have vanquished the outward foe, " that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and, having done all, to stand." 2
2. It is through temptation that He must win His p)lace among men. And first of all He must be separated from men, and He must feel the separation. That is the reason why He was driven into the wilderness. The separation was itself the temptation.
* A. M. Fairbairn. ' George Matheson,
ST. MARK 39
CI) He came to John's baptism that He might identify Himself with men. "All the people were baptized" says St. Luke; "Jesus also was baptized.*'' John knew that there was a dijfference. But Jesus would have it so. " For thus it becometh us," He said, " to fulfil all righteousness." It was not simply that He made Himself one with the multitude ; it was that He identified Himself with them in their sin. It was a vicarious act — not the vicarious act, however, of one standing without the race. It was an act whose very vicariousness consisted in this, that He made Himself one of the race, a sinless One, content to be reckoned with sinners.
(2) But if He has already identified Himself with mankind, why is He now separated from men ? Because before He begins His work as Saviour He must prove Himself to be a man. The identification in baptism is the identification of the Saviour with the race He has come to save. In return for that He received the voice from heaven and the endowment of the Spirit. But before He goes forward to His work as Saviour He must meet His own temptations as a man, and conquer. For He can never be the Saviour of others if He needs a Saviour Himself. Now, every man must meet his temptations alone. Jesus must be driven into the wilderness.
IF We must be solitary when we are tempted. The manage- ment of the character, the correction of evil habits, the suppres- sion of wrong desires, the creation of new virtues — this is a work strictly individual, with which no " stranger intermeddleth," in which the sympathy of friends may be deceptive, and our only safety is in a superhuman reliance. The relation of the human beiDg to God is altogether personal : there can be no partnership in its responsibilities. Our moral convictions must have an undivided allegiance ; and to withhold our reverence till they are supported by the suifrage of others is an insult which they will not bear. What can those even who read us best know of our weaknesses and wants and capabilities ? They would have to clothe themselves with our very consciousness before they could be fit advisers here. How often does their very affection become our temptation, cheat us out of our contrition, and lead us to adopt some pleasant theory about ourselves, in place of the stern and melancholy truth ! ^
H In the end each must do the work for himself, and in his * James Maitiueau,
40 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
own fashion. Only in solitude can the hardest part of the path- way to reality be trodden : —