Renunciations are the lowly gateways on the narrow road of obedience. They are a measure of a man's moral sagacity, his clearness of vision both of his duty and of the means of realizing it, his simplicity of spirit and freedom from vanity or self-will. Men are readily drawn aside, the lower sort by suggestions of vanity and self-importance, the higher by the vision of some good more quickly realized. The world of political and industrial and social problems is a lower world than that in which Jesus wrought. It is a realm of expediency ; its conditions change from age to age. The leaders
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there are men of affairs, men of practical wisdom, taught to discern what is immediately possible. The world will never lack such guides, for riches and honour and power gather quickly to them. Jesus kept aloof from siich questions. He walked a more self-denying road, though one more fruit- ful of good to the world. He was not sent save as the physician of sick souls and the shei^herd of lost ones. It was His to found a Kingdom not of this world, the Kingdom of God : and to provide, by His teaching and by the manifestation of His own loving heart in suffering and in death, what would quicken faith, and hope, and love in men through- out all lands and all times.
The Messianic idea was another great tempta- tion. Evil is here entwined in all things ; temp- tation lurks within a man's purest and highest aspirations. Men must always work with the instruments at their hand. Jesus came with the consciousness of being ' God's final messenger, after whom none higher can come' (Wernle, Begin- nings of Christianity, Eng. tr. i. 45). He had to appeal to the popular exjjectation, their hopes of the Messiah soiled by ignoble thought. The popular thought is ever on a lower plane than the Divine, and becomes a difficulty and a temptation to the servants of God. When Jesus saw Himself as the long-looked-for Messiah, all the worldly hopes that clung to the office in the thoughts of Rabbi or people flowed in upon Him. There were the expectation of political glory, and the worship of force, in the popular mind. There was the Rabbinic expectation of a kingdom of right obedi- ence set up miraculously by God through the sudden appearance of the Messiah — a more refined, seemingly pious exjiectation, full of trust in God only and of zeal for His glory. These were the thoughts and hopes which rose up at the claim of Messiah. In the wilderness Jesus had to face them : He had to come to a clear understanding of the nature of the Messianic Kingdom and of the means He had to use to establish it. There every- thing material and external fell from His idea of it. The earthly kingdom became spiritual ; the glory of Israel became universal ; the way of its estab- lishment was to be through an appeal to the honest heart's faith in God as the highest good and the convincing vision of goodness ; and for Himself not any success and glory, but suffering, and shame, and death. These elements of His purification of the Messianic idea only emerged gradually in His teaching, but they were present to His con- sciousness at the beginning, when He determined to worship God only, and to serve Him in simple obedience to His highest thought, making no com- promise with the Prince of this world (Mt 4'").
Jesus had to meet again in the world all those temptations which He had vanquished in His thought. The people desired to make Him king (Jn 6^'). He made it the occasion of .showing clearly the spiritual nature of His mission, and reaped for His faithfulness their disbelief. The temptation came closer. Peter, in love, took Him aside and rebuked Him when He sought to prepare the disciples' hearts for the shame and death before Him. Peter was the mouth-piece of the Prince of this world, pointing out the lower way (Mt 16-^"^^). From the lips of mother and brethren the same temptation came. His mother whispered, ' They have no wine ' (Jn 2'') ; His brethren sai<l, ' Go into Jud.Ta (where the great and powerful are), that thy disciples also may see the works that thou doest' (Jn V-*). Temptation thus entrenched itself against Him among the sanctities of the heart. Jesus, as in the wilderness, triumphed by simple obedience. He put the temptation aside with the words, ' Mine hour is not yet come' (Jn 'i-'*). He had no ear for any of the suggestions of policy or worldly prudence,
whose hour is alway ready ; He was a man under authority, waiting for the call of the Father ; and clear and sweet above the discordant voices of the world that call ever came, and He followed it to Calvary. There His obedience Avas perfected (Jn 14=^').
(2) Brotherly relation to men. — There were no limits to Jesus' sympathy and love for men. (a) The religious prejudices of His day did not impair His brotherhood with the sinful and the outcast. He discerned clearly their worth. That is a witness to His brotherhood. For interest and afl'ection are the lights which illumine the personality of others ; only by them can Ave read their hidden worth, especially when obscured by the dominant thought and prejudices of the day. Jesus discerned the spiritual soundness which might underlie sins of passion, the capacity of generosity with its heal- ing power, the quick and deep response to a gospel of forgiveness in the humility of self-accusing hearts, the sacred soil where love grows (Lk 1'" 18i», Mt 2p8-»2)_ And He drew nigh unto men in brotherly love as the physician of sick souls, the faithful shepherd seeking the lost sheep of God, though thereby He outraged the sentiments of the Pharisees (Mt 9" IF^, Lk 15^ 19''), though His friendship with them was helping to raise the cross on which He Avas slain. The simplicity of Jesus' feeling of brotherhood for them is witnessed by the fact that they drew near to Him gladly (Lk 151, Mt 9'»).