stone, that it become bread.' The answer of Jesus, on the other hand: 'It is written, Not by bread alone shall man live, but by every word of God.' He ought, even as Son of God, to regard bread and sensual enjoyment as the first condition of life; on the contrary, He declared that for Him, even as man, the first condition of life, the nourishment which sustains life, and the enjoyment of life, are not found in bread, but in the word of God. Even in the consciousness that He was a God, He should give place to the painful cravings of appetite, and with the haste of a sorcerer procure for Himself bread, according to Satan's suggestion; He, on the contrary, declared that He, as man, according to the statement of the word of God, finds the life of His life in the word of God.

2

The second temptation was as follows:-The devil, taking Him up into a high mountain, showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time,1 and said to Him, 'All this power will I give thee, and the glory which they all these kingdomsafford; for to me it is delivered, and to whomsoever I will, I give it. If thou wilt therefore bow the knee in worship before methus he spoke with satanic logic, putting a gloss on sin-thine it shall be the glory-whole, and without reserve.' Jesus answered, 'It is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.' In the refulgence of the world's grandeur, it was intended that the Lord should see the power and glory of its prince, and that this sight should excite in Him the lust of ambition. He was to have possession of the world's dominion on the condition of secretly bowing the knee to Satan. But to the word of Satan, which sought to turn the splendour and beauty of the world into an object of fascinating enchantment, He opposed the word of Holy Scripture. To this worldly dominion and glory which He should possess, with secret self-contempt, in the consciousness that He was Satan's slave, He opposed the consciousness of Him who is poor, but stands right royally free over against all the glory and enchantments of the world, and only falls down before the Lord His God, whom alone He serves.

1 This point is not unjustly regarded as an indication of symbolical representation.

2 The words, 'Get thee behind me, Satan,' which are not sufficiently authenticated, appear to have been adopted from Matthew. Here they interrupt the connection.

On this, Satan prepared the way for the third temptation, by bringing Him to Jerusalem, and setting Him on a pinnacle of the temple. When there, he thus spoke: 'If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence; for it is written, He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee; and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.' To this Jesus replied, 'It is said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.' Thus the Lord also triumphed over the temptation to fanatical presumption and spiritual pride,—a temptation which, with diabolical artifice, misemployed a word of Holy Scripture itself to attain its object. Jesus shows that the more special declarations of the word of God are to be explained by the more general, the more figurative by the more literal, the darker by the more distinct; and thus sets aside the false application of the passage quoted. And to the fanatical and hierarchical presumption which, with hypocritical perversion of the word of God, seeks to make even the government of God subservient to its own interests, He opposes the obedience of the child of God, who refuses to tempt his God, or turn His supreme dominion into a means of attaining his own private and selfish ends, and repels with holy indignation the daring insinuations of the tempter, who would have Him so to do.

This last temptation appears to human feeling as the most horrid and the most dangerous of all, and compliance with it as the most terrible apostasy; and thus might the Evangelist of Christian humanity be led to place it as the last and highest of the series.1

After the devil had tried the Lord with all these various forms of temptation, he departed from Him for a season-probably until the time of His passion.*

NOTE.

Schleiermacher connects also vers. 14 and 15, as a concluding formula, with this section. The general character of ver. 15

1 The conception of the three temptations in the form of a continuous journey (which did not conduct from the desert to Jerusalem, and then back again to the high mountain), might also doubtless, as a co-operating cause, have occasioned Luke to place them in the order he has followed. See Schleiermacher, p. 55.

2 See above, ii. 65.

no doubt invites to this arrangement; but one must, nevertheless, not overlook the close connection between this and the following part.

SECTION VIII.

THE BEGINNING OF THE PUBLIC CAREER OF JESUS. HIS DEPARTURE FROM HIS NATIVE TOWN, NAZARETH.

(Chap. iv. 14-30.)

The public life of Jesus was a pilgrimage in the highest and noblest sense. One may regard as the starting point of this pilgrim-life His native place, Nazareth, from which He was early expelled. Its termination was Jerusalem, where He died on the cross.

In the power of the Spirit, Jesus returned into Galilee. His fame spread itself through all the region around. He made Himself known chiefly as a teacher in the synagogues; and in this first period of His ministry He was praised of all.

Not so, however, in His own town of Nazareth, the place in which He had been brought up. Here He went, as was His custom, into the synagogue on the Sabbath-day. He accepted the post of reader. He stood up. There was delivered to Him the book of the prophet Isaiah. He unfolded the manuscript, and found the following passage:

Therefore hath He

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor. He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to proclaim deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind; to set at liberty them that are cast down,-thus-to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord-the year of jubilee' (Isa. lxi. 1).

When He had closed the book, and delivered it to the officer, He sat down. The eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fastened on Him. He began to speak, and the groundwork of His address was, 'This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.' He presented Himself as that messenger of peace to the 1 This clause is not fully authenticated.

Vide Lachmann.

poor of every class whom the prophet had described. The people became impressed with the feeling that it was indeed He; they testified in His favour, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth.

This devout admiration was, however, destined soon to turn into vulgar surprise. They took offence at His humble origin, saying, 'Is not this Joseph's son ?' 'Ye will surely,' rejoined our Lord, 'say unto Me this proverb, Physician, heal thyself. The things which, as we have heard, thou didst in Capernaum, do also here in thine own country." To this He replied, 'Verily I say unto you, No prophet is accepted in his own country. But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout the land. But unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet; and none of them was cleansed saving Naaman the Syrian.' And all they in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath, and rose up, and thrust Him out of the city, and led Him to the brow of the hill, whereon their city was built, that they might cast Him down headlong.

But He, passing through the midst of them, went His way.

It was in accordance with the character of the Son of man, that He should immediately, at the commencement of His ministry, bring the Gospel to His native place. It was an arrangement which displayed it in the most beautiful manner, that He should announce to the despised city of Nazareth the

1 The critical spirit should not be stumbled by the apparent contradiction between this expression on the part of the people of Nazareth, and the previous remark, that they bare Him witness. It constitutes the point of the whole passage.

2 From this passage it has been concluded that the event belongs to a later period, after the miracles performed in Capernaum, as narrated by the Evangelist. But the place assigned to it by Luke is supported by John iv. 45. That Jesus had already performed miracles in Capernaum, is implied not merely in the narrative of Luke, but in the passage just quoted. How else could the nobleman there spoken of have sought the Lord in Cana? One needs only to bear in mind that Jesus, before His first journey to Jerusalem, resided in Capernaum for a short time, during which the miracle in question may have taken place.

Old Testament Gospel of the Lord's Anointed, who preaches good tidings to the poor, and proclaims the jubilee year of deliverance to all the wretched. In expounding this scripture, He expounded His own heart; the Scripture testimony of the Anointed One was a testimony concerning Himself; and the sermon regarding the proclamation of the year of jubilee, became a proclamation of the jubilee itself. He carried thus the offer of this deliverance now to His own despised countrymen, and they felt the power which resided in the gentle flow of His gracious words.

But the thought of His humble birth was able to destroy all these happy impressions.

This thought had already proved an obstacle to the display of great miraculous power amongst them. And now they were disposed to make it a ground of reproach, that He had preferred the vain, worldly, heretical, and proud maritime city of Capernaum to their own little mountain town,-in their eyes perhaps distinguished for its piety, and, at all events, His native place. This reproach He met by a few examples from the Old Testament, which struck at the very root of the claims to the ministry of prophets, raised either by a narrow-minded home pride, or by pharisaic Judaism. Had not the prophet Elias-the ideal of a true and zealous Jewish prophet-during the time of the famine, dwelt in a foreign land, in the house of a heathen widow, and dispensed miraculous sustenance to her, rather than to the widows of Israel? Had not the prophet Elisha healed the Syrian captain Naaman of leprosy, although there were then many lepers also in Israel? Both those prophets had disregarded the double offence given to their own people: they had afforded miraculous help to foreigners-to heathens, whilst they had allowed many persons in Israel, similarly afflicted, to go empty away.

Thus the Lord exposed to the view of His countrymen only a few things from Old Testament history-from the life, one may say, of the most orthodox prophets. But that little was so universal in its tendency, that it sounded in their ears as the grossest heresy. With uproarious unanimity the synagogue in Nazareth rejected Him, they excommunicated Him, cast Him out of the synagogue and the city, and had almost thrown Him headlong from a precipice in order to destroy Him.