themselves, both altogether and in every particular as being the very pattern of perfection?

As for the Sadducees, they do not believe in another life. How then would they understand the necessity of leaving this life, and leaving it voluntarily? They do not believe in another order, supernatural, higher than the present order of things. They deny this new kingdom which the Good News proclaims. How can they understand the new birth of the heavenly life? They deny there is good and evil, vice and virtue. What sins would they then have to confess?

These are the men of mutilated thought, of base hope, and of sophistic negation. These are the men of empty religion. These are the two detestable moral races-races, alas! of all times and of all places-who are the obstacle to the life of God in the soul of individuals and of peoples. They employ their perverse spirit to poison the one against the other of the two forces, equally given of God: Reason and Religion.

The Forerunner calls them "Brood of Vipers." To break their haughty spirits and hard hearts, which will not be converted, and are lost if they do not consent, he threatens them, as serpents, with ax and fire.

3:11. "I, indeed, am baptizing you with water of repentance," etc.

Here John falls into Hebrew Parallelism.

But few people are aware of the fact that a considerable portion of the Bible, perhaps a third of it, is of the nature of Poetry.

The oriental mind is naturally more poetic than the western and has a strong tendency to the figurative style, which is one of the ordinary characteristics of poetry.

We find the Hebrew Poetic spirit cropping out in the

New Testament from time to time, now in the utterance of the greatest hymn the world has yet heard, again in words of wisdom such as the world has never before nor since listened to.

I refer to the hymn of Mary, S. Luke 1:46-55, and our Lord's Sermon on the Mount, S. Matthew 5:1-7 : 27.

Besides Mary's Hymn, see that of Zachariah, S. Luke I: 68-89, and that of Simeon, S. Luke 2:29-32.

Our Lord's address to the twelve when he sent them out to preach, and other instances of Hebrew poetic structure will be noticed as the reader proceeds.

For fuller treatment of Hebrew Verse Structure see the note on this subject among the General Notes in S. Mark.

3:12. "His fan is in his hand," etc.

For a correct understanding of this image, it is necessary to recall how the Jews gathered their harvest. When the mowers had cut the wheat, the sheaves were spread upon an oval shaped threshing floor. Cattle yoked abreast trampled it with a double effect, causing on the one hand the grains of wheat to become separated from the stem and each grain to become separated from its enveloping husk. Towards evening, when in the east a strong breeze springs up, this mixture of grain and broken chaff is thrown into the air with the aid of a fan, a wide shovel with a very short handle; the grain, the heavier of the two, falls back upon the earth, while the chaff and the light fragments are carried to a distance. This is what is called cleaning the floor. It only remains for the harvester to store the harvest in the caves which served as granaries in those countries. The straw and the remains of the wheat were burnt to make manure.

See also notes on S. Mark 9:43, 44, 47, 49, 50.

4: I. "To be tempted by the devil."

The word "temptation" generally leaves the impression of sinfulness, a kind of an internal attraction for the evil resisted. The weakness of our nature is such that, even when we triumph over the temptation, it fastens upon us. The old Adam, alas, proves in us the miseries of lust. And we, on our part, feel a vague complicity with the enemy. The man tempted in his senses, in his probity, in his patience, feels an evil tendency within him. He subdues it. But he feels it. It is evident our Lord was not so tempted. As related by the Evangelist it is altogether an external thing. It is only an attempt on the part of the devil. It was in no bad sense at all a temptation of the Son of God. For the temptations which come to other men from their bodily desires, or from the evils of the world around them, have had no power over Jesus. They have not even brought the sense of effort to Him in overcoming them.

Yet if life had passed on thus with him to the end, the holiness inseparable from it would have been imperfect in so far as He was to be the Saviour of men. For men

could never have realized the sympathy of one who had thus passed through life. As the Epistle to the Hebrews so well suggests, there was a divine fitness that Jesus, too, should suffer and be tempted, that He might "be able to succor those who are tempted."

4:4.

"Man shall not live by bread alone."

Jesus can leave His life and all belonging to it in His Father's hand. In so losing His life, if that must be the issue, He is certain he will save it. If His Father has given Him a work to do, He knows He will be empowered to do it.

4:5.

"Sets him on the pinnacle of the Temple."

Shall He test the declaration that He is the beloved Son by throwing Himself headlong down from this pinnacle? Was there not a seeming warrant for such a trial of the reality of his Sonship? Had not the Psalmist declared of the chosen one of God that His angels should bear Him up?

The answer Jesus makes the Tempter shows the suggestion tended to a pretense rather than reality, to distrust rather than reliance.

4:6.

"He will give his angels charge over thee."

In this appeal to familiar and sacred words, the subtlety of the Tempter lay in the perversion of their true meaning. As in all analogous temptations, the words here presented to the soul of Jesus, with their true meaning obscured and preverted, must have been precisely those before most precious. We may think of Jesus as having heretofore fed on these very words. He had found in them the stay and comfort of his soul. But now these are the words through which He is brought to the test.

To have questioned His Father's care in such an hour of trial would have been to have entertained a spirit of distrust of His Providence, He commits Himself absolutely to His Father's will.

4:8.

"Takes him up to a very high mountain." Milton's well known expansion of this part of the Temptation (Paradise Regained, Book III), though too obviously the work of a scholar exulting in his scholarship, is yet worth studying as the first serious attempt, to realize in part at least what must thus have been presented to our Lord's mind.

The offer of the Tempter in appearance rests on the actual history of all great conqueror's achievements. The

Herods, the Cæsars, and their like, gain eminence by trampling the laws of God and of men under foot. They all alike accept evil as the Master and bow down at its behest. To become a mighty conqueror of such a kind Christ has but to go beyond the self imposed limits of a true Messiahship and refuse to accept longer the guidance of the Spirit within and the word of His Father without.

4:II.

"The devil leaves him."

This scene is that of Adam the conqueror.

The first Adam had been thus put to the test. He had been conquered. Nature had revolted against him.

Jesus, the new Adam, is conqueror. Spiritual nature obeys him. The evil angel flees. Good angels become his servants. It is after this victorious trial that physical nature is seen to be submissive to him and he exercises miraculous power.

In his retirement to the wilderness before his public life, the Son of God gives an example that even in the natural order every man ought to follow if he thinks to accomplish here below any great work, any fruitful work, any durable work. In the bosom of solitude man gathers and multiplies all his forces in extraordinary proportions. From an intellectual point of view, he can work out his plans, his thoughts, his needs, every object whatsoever of his meditation. From a practical point of view, he penetrates general causes and particular effects, he measures the extent of means and calculates their disposition. He goes thence thoroughly equipped for action. What then, if he has recourse to prayer and gives heed to, not only his own spirit, but the Spirit of God invoked by him? A celestial power then descends upon him. Angels become his servants. They remain his never failing allies.