The Pulpit Commentary — Luke — Volume 1 — Section 94

1lran~ epleode In the life 11 very ehort, thnt account it was not the loss real e.ml but hrmnonizee perfeclly with the longer true. acoounte of SS. Matthew and Luke. St. Nor is it by e.ny means a solitary expe- John omits it o.ltogether; flret, becauee, with rience, this living, beholding, listening, e.nrl the earlier written Oospele before him, he even speo.king in tho Spirit, narrated by tlio woe awo.re tho.t the Churoh of bill Master evangelist in this place as e. circumstance o.lready poeeeeaed ample detaile of the occur- in the Lord's life. Centuries before, Ezeki,,J, rence; and eecondly, the etory and lessons when in his exile by the banks of ChebBr of the tempto.tion did not enter into the plan in Che.Idea, wa.s lifted np a.nd borne by which St. John had before him when he the Spirit to far-distant Jerusalem, that he composed his history of his Lord'e teaching. might see the secret sins done in the temple Who.t, now, was the temptation? Did the of the Lord (Ezek. viii. 11). I.,aiah again, evil one appear to Jeens actually in a bodily in the year that King Uzziah died, saw the form ? Did his feet really press some eleva- Lord on his throne, surrounded by sera- • tion, such as the 1111mmit of snowy Hermon, phim; in this vision the prophet wpealc., and or the still more inaccessible peak of Ararat? hears the Lord speak, and a burning coal o.nd did the far-reaching prospect of sea and from off the altar is laid on his mouth lo.nd, mountain and valley, bathed in the (Isa. vi. 1-11). To po.as over the several noondo.y glory of an Eostem eun, represent visions ofisaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and others, to him the kingdoms of the world, and the in which the tra.nsa.ctiona fay altogether in glory of the!ll? Did be in very truth stand the spirittial region of their lives, we would on the summit of the great temple-roof, and instance from the New Testament St. Pa.nl's from that dizzy height gaze on the crowds account of himself caught up into paradise, below, crawling like ants across the sacred "whether in the body or out of the body" court, or toiling along the J.erusalem streets? he could not tell (2 Cor. xii 1-4). And So generally thought the ancients, and so still more to the point, St. John's words it would appear, on first thoughts, from St. prefacing hill Revelation, how he wa.s " in Matthew's account, where we read (iv. 3), the Spirit on the Lord's day," when he " The tempter came to him ; " and the vivid heard the voice behind him, and saw bis realistic imo.gery of St. Mark (i. 12, 13) glorified Master. On tho.t day and in that would rather help us to the some conclusion. hour he heard and saw wha.t be relates in Some expositors and students of the Word his twenty-two chapters of the Revelation. ho.vc imo.gined-for it comes to little more In language very slightly different, the -that the devil manifested himself to Jesus temptation of the blessed Son of God is under thl' guise of an angel of light; others related by the evangelists, when they preface have supposed the tempter came to him as the history of the event with the words, a wayfaring man; others, as a priest, as one "Jeans being full of the Holy Ghost , .. of the Sanhedrin council. was led by the Spirit into the wilderness" But on further consideration all this seems (see, too, Matt. iv. 1). highly improbable. No appearance of the We conclude, then, with some confidence, devil, or of any evil angel, is ever related in that the devil did not appear to Jesus in a the Bible records. The mountain whence the bodily form, but that, in a higher sphere view of the world's kingdoms was obtained than that of matter, the Redeemer met a.nd after o.11 is fanciful, and any realistic inter- encountered-with the re,,ult we know so pretation is thoroughly uneatisfactory cmd well-that spiritual being of superhnman improbable. The greater of the modem but yet of limikd power, who tempts meu echolars of different countries-the Gormans to evil, a.nd accuses them before the throne Olshausen and Neander, the Dutch Van of God when they have yielded to the temp- Oosterzce, the Frenchman Pressense, the tation. "We believe "-to use Godet'a Swiss Godet, Fan-o.r and Plnmptre in our words here--" that had he been observed own land-reject altogether the idea of a by any spectator wbiliit the temptation was presence of the tempter viHible to the eye going on, he would have e.pp,are<l all of sense. The whole tmll811otion lay in the through it motionlellB upon the soil of the spiritual region of the life of Christ, but on deeer\. But though tho coufilot did not  TIIE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. LUKE. [on. rv. 1-U