SERMON IV.

The Fasting and Temptation of our Lord.

ST. MATTHEW iv. 1.

Then was Jesus led up of the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.

THE yearly cycle of Lent is a great boon to us, it should be a great blessing. Every year it lays the same, yet ever-varying, lessons before us; every year we may learn these lessons, or we may learn them not. We cannot fail to see the hand-writing, we may fail to learn its interpretation. And even if the interpretation be easy, the application is not the less arduous, for nature seeks ever to reclaim us from grace. And here the language of nature and the lessons of Lent, if not contradictory, are widely different. The one bids us enjoy as she is joyous; the other says, Deny thyself, if thou wouldst conquer. The one would tell us that there is peace for all; the other cries, There is no peace to the wicked.

We are, indeed, ever ready to allow that there are times and seasons for all things; that there is a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; and, as Christians, to allow with

Butler that we are made for compassion rather than congratulation; that the fact of our probation lies through suffering rather than joy; and that we are the metal to be purified in the furnace, rather than the plant to be developed by balmy showers and warm sunlight. And yet, my friends, pursuers of pleasure as we all are in some of its myriad of subtle forms, are we not ever led to choose the joy, and not the sorrow? are we not more prone to rejoice with them that do rejoice, than to weep with them that weep? are we not ever ready to seize the time to laugh and the time to dance, and are we not fertile in excuses for delaying the time to weep and the time to mourn? How gladly would we join our Lord in the marriagefeast of Cana; how unwilling to watch with Him one hour in Gethsemane. This is why the practice of Lent is hard, even though its lesson be easy. It bids us to stem the torrent of our nature, not to drift securely and heedlessly down its stream. It bids us to turn our eyes inward, and manfully to grapple with the individual foes of our individual souls.

The voice of the Lord, by the mouth of His prophet Joel, calling on His people to rend their hearts before Him, even yet re-echoes in our ears: "Turn ye even to Me, saith the Lord, with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning." And the responsive wail of the universal Church we seem even yet to hear (weeping and saying), "Spare Thy people, O Lord, and give not Thy heritage unto reproach." No, my friends, we can

not mistake the lessons of Lent. Its solemn tones of warning strike upon our ears; we must hear them, but we may disobey their summons.

On Wednesday last our Church brought before us this great doctrine of denial and abstinence, of fasting and humiliation; to-day she bids us gaze on the one great Pattern and Exemplar of this and every Christian duty. The Church is very jealous to teach her children that they should never content themselves with a less exalted standard than the perfect one. Thus we are bidden to-day to behold and see the fasting and temptation, and victory too, of our blessed Lord and only Saviour. We are bidden to come to no marriage-feast, to behold no blind man receive his sight, to hear no dumb man burst forth in the praises of God. To-day we are summoned out into the dreary wilderness, if we would be with Him; asked, as it were, for one day to dwell in tents, and forget our easy, pleasant homes. Thus haply going forth into a desert place, and abiding there with Him, we may be reminded that we are still on our journey through the wilderness; that though here and there the waters of the spring, and the cool of the palms, or the shadows of the great rock may and do refresh and cheer us, we are yet in the weary land, the desert stretching before, and behind, and around us, ending only where it meets the skies.

It is not an attractive prospect, this going out into the desert, but it may be a profitable one. It may

work a strength in our souls, if we have courage to march straight onward in the footsteps of Him who leadeth us. He may return victor, who in the desert has clung to the Victor's robe, crying, "By Thy fasting and temptation, good Lord, deliver me." Ere now, men have gathered manna, the food of angels, from desert sands.

And we too, my friends, may assuredly find crumbs on which to feed and live for ever, if we trust to Him alone to feed us, if we regard Him alone and not think of self, if we imbibe the power and spirit of His words and deeds, and not think to satisfy ourselves with the husks of man's word or wisdom. Virtue flows from Him alone. Touch Him we must, if we would have the fountain-spring of sin within us ever dried up.

Our blessed Lord's whole life on earth was one entire Lenten season. From Bethlehem to Calvary we may fairly say that sorrow and suffering, selfdenial and humiliation were the one unvarying impress stamped upon it; for during that early period of His private life, when we are told that He " 'grew in favour with God and man," we learn how anxiously when twelve years old He laboured "to be about His Father's business." But more, His was a life of ever-increasing, ever-intensified suffering. From the first cry of the new-born babe to the last anguish cry of the dying man, one day of suffering was but the stepping-stone to the morrow's higher degree of woe. What a touching prelude is His weariness at the

well of Jacob to His own sad words, "The Son of Man hath not where to lay His head." And how was this fasting and temptation in the wilderness the foretaste of, and preparation for, the greater woe of the Garden, and this, again, for the greatest anguish of the Cross? His whole life was one long via crucis, of which that from the judgment-hall of Pilate to the spot "without the gate" was but the epitome and climax.

And if we further note His lifelong way of sorrow, we are struck by the prominence of three great stations in the steep ascent: the temptation in the wilderness, the agony in the garden, and the anguish of Calvary, were the three great conflicts which it behoved Him to suffer, and the three great victories wherein He overcame, and won for us the power to overcome likewise. And each of these three great stations of suffering and victory may be said to be threefold; there are the three temptations in the wilderness, there is the thrice repeated and more earnestly prayed prayer of the agony of blood, and there were the three words from the cross; the "I thirst" of the parched and bleeding body, the "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" of the God-forsaken, sin-bearing soul; and lastly, the "It is finished" of the perfect Victor and of the all-powerful Redeemer. How much was then finished which we can scarcely hope yet to know or understand? but thus much we do know, that then was finished the full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and