Foiled, defeated, the Enemy has spread his dark pinions towards that far-off world of his, and covered it with their shadow. The sun no longer glows with melting heat; the mists have gathered or the edge of the horizon, and enwrapped the scene which has faded from view. And in the cool and shade that followed have the Angels [1477] come and ministered to His wants, both bodily and mental. He has refused to assert power; He has not yielded to despair; He would not fight and conquer alone in His own strength; and He has received power and refreshment, and Heaven's company unnumbered in their ministry of worship. He would not yield to Jewish dream; He did not pass from despair to presumption; and lo, after the contest, with no reward as its object, all is His. He would not have Satan's vassals as His legions, and all Heaven's hosts are at His command. It had been victory; it is now shout of triumphant praise. He Whom God had anointed by His Spirit had conquered by the Spirit; He Whom Heaven's Voice had proclaimed God's beloved Son, in Whom He was well pleased, had proved such, and done His good pleasure.
They had been all overcome, these three temptations against submission to the Will of God, present, personal, and specifically Messianic. Yet all His life long there were echoes of them: of the first, in the suggestion of His brethren to show Himself; [1478] of the second, in the popular attempt to make Him a king, and perhaps also in what constituted the final idea of Judas Iscariot; of the third, as being most plainly Santanic, in the question of Pilate: Art Thou then a King?'
The enemy departed from Him' - yet only for a season.' But this first contest and victory of Jesus decided all others to the last. These were, perhaps not as to the shaping of His Messianic plan, nor through memory of Jewish expectancy, yet still in substance the same contest about absolute obedience, absolute submission to the Will of God, which constitutes the Kingdom of God. And so also from first to last was this the victory: Not My will, but Thine, be done.' But as, in the first three petitions which He has taught us, Christ has enfolded us in the mantle of His royalty, so has He Who shared our nature and our temptations gone up with us, want-pressed, sin-laden, and temptation-stricken as we are, to the Mount of Temptation in the four human petitions which follow the first. And over us is spread, as the sheltering folds of His mantle, this as the outcome of His royal contest and glorious victory, For Thine is the Kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever!' [1479] __________________________________________________________________
[1437] No other terms would correctly describe the book of Keim to which I specially refer. How widely it differs, not only from the superficial trivialities of a Renan, but from the stale arguments of Strauss, or the picturesque inaccuracies of a Hausrath, no serious student need be told. Perhaps on that ground it is only the more dangerous.
[1438] On the temptations of Abraham see Book of Jubilees, ch. xvii.; Sanh. 89 b (and differently but not less blasphemously in Pirké de R. Elies. 31); Pirké de R. Elies. 26, 31, 32 (where also about Satan's temptation of Sarah, who dies in consequence of his tidings); Ab. de R. N. 33; Ber. R. 32, 56; Yalkut, i. c. 98, p. 28 b; and Tanchuma, where the story is related with most repulsive details. As to Moses, see for example Shabb. 89 a; and especially the truly horrible story of the death of Moses in Debar R. 11 (ed. Warsh. iii. p. 22 a and b). But I am not aware of any temptation of Moses by Satan.
[1439] Bemidb. R. 15, ed. Warsh. vol. iv. p. 63 a, lines 5 and 4 from bottom.