but in the pressing want of all that is necessary for the sustenance of life, and in the felt

weakness consequent upon it. For (unlike the first) the Second Adam was, in His

Temptation, to be placed on an absolute equality with us, except as regarded sin. Yet

even so, there must have been some point of inward connection to make t he outward

assault a temptation. It is here that opponents (such as Strauss and Keim) have strangely

missed the mark, when objecting, either that the forty days' fast was intrinsically

unnecessary, or that the assaults of Satan were clumsy suggestions, inc apable of being

temptations to Jesus. He is 'driven' into the wilderness by the Spirit to be tempted.30 The

history of humanity is taken up anew at the point where first the kingdom of Satan was

founded, only under new conditions. It is not now a choice, b ut a contest, for Satan is the

prince of this world. During the whole forty days of Christ's stay in the wilderness His

Temptation continued, though it only attained its high point at the last, when, after the

long fast, He felt the weariness and weakness of hunger. As fasting occupies but a very

subordinate, we might almost say a tolerated, place in the teaching of Jesus; and as, so far

as we know, He exercised on no other occasion such ascetic practices, we are left to infer

internal, as well as external, necessity for it in the present instance. The former is easily

understood in His pre-occupation; the latter must have had for its object to reduce Him to

utmost outward weakness, by the depression of all the vital powers. We regard it as a

psychological fact that, under such circumstances, of all mental faculties the memory

alone is active, indeed, almost preternaturally active. During the preceding thirty-nine

days the plan, or rather the future, of the Work to which He had been consecrated, must

have been always before Him. In this respect, then, He must have been tempted. It is

wholly impossible that He hesitated for a moment as to the means by which He was to

establish the Kingdom of God. He could not have felt tempted to adopt carnal means,

opposed to the nature of that Kingdom, and to the Will of God. The unchangeable

convictions which He had already attained must have stood out before Him: that His

Father's business was the Kingdom of God; that He was furnished to it, not by outward

weapons, but by the abiding Presence of the Spirit; above all, that absolute submission to

the Will of God was the way to it, nay, itself the Kingdom of God. It will be observed,

that it was on these very points that the final attack of the Enemy was directed in the

utmost weakness of Jesus. But, on the other hand, the Tempter could not have failed to

assault Him with considerations which He must have felt to be true. How could He hope,

alone, and with such principles, to stand against Israel? He knew their views and feelings;

and as, day by day, the sense of utter loneliness and forsakenness increasingly gathered

around Him, in His increasing faintness and weakness, the seeming hopelessness of such

a task as He had undertaken must have grown upon Him with almost overwhelming

power.31 Alternately, the temptation to despair, presumption, or the cutting short of the

contest in some decisive manner, must have presented itself to His mind, or rather have

been presented to it by the Tempter.