power to do if He had chosen. And hence these temptations, as directed against Him, had a fitness and force altogether peculiar and unparalleled. But He rose superior to them all. He repelled every one of them with prompt and holy indignation. His sense of duty to God triumphed over every impulse of self-gratification. Glory be unto Jesus for stooping to grapple with the fiend! Glory be unto Jesus for stooping only to conquer !

The history of the Temptation suggests several collateral lessons.

We here learn that temptation does not necessitate sin. Jesus was tempted to distrust God, to act presumptuously, and even to worship the devil-yet without sin. And so, we too, though tempted, may hold fast our integrity. If indeed we parley with the tempter-if we lend a willing ear to his solicitations—if we entertain his proposals and consent to them, then are we entangled in his net and drawn into sin. But the mere presentment to our mind of a wicked suggestion does not necessarily involve us in guilt. If the wicked thought presents itself, only to be repelled-if the inordinate desire arises, only to be recoiled from and crushed, we incur no guilt-we suffer no taint. The thunder-cloud, as it sweeps along, may throw its lurid colour on the lake, but it leaves no stain on the pellucid waters.

case.

We here learn wherein lies the power of temptation. It lies, not in the tempting object, but in the temptable soul-not in the Satanic suggestion, but in the disposition to welcome and adopt it. In the case of our Lord, temptation had no power, because it found nothing within Him that responded to it. And were our souls as pure as His, it would prove equally innocuous in our We should then meet it as water meets fire. But unhappily our fallen souls have an affinity for temptation; they meet it as fuel meets fire. They meet it as gunpowder meets the kindled match; they meet it, and forthwith explode. Nay, so strongly predisposed to evil are our souls, that we often fall into sin when there is no outward temptation-the fire being kindled, so to speak, by spontaneous combustion. A depraved soul is its own tempter-its own devil. Nor is there any scene more perilous to a man of corrupt imagination than the wildernesssolitude of his own thoughts.

We here learn which are the propensities that most expose us to temptation. As our Lord "was in all points tempted like as we are," it is reasonable to suppose that the temptations most perilous to our virtue are just the three by which Satan essayed and hoped to ensnare Him. And accordingly experience testifies that the propensities through which we are most assailable and

vulnerable are animal appetite, vainglory, and ambition; or, as the apostle names them, “the lust of the flesh, the pride of life, and the lust of the eyes.” Think what atrocious crimes men often commit at the bidding, and for the gratification, of their carnal appetites. Think, again, how many are betrayed into arrogance and presumption through the desire of vainglorious self-display ; proudly undertaking schemes, and daringly perpetrating deeds, which are forbidden alike by conscience and by Holy Scripture. Nor is ambition a less fatal lure. Few, indeed, are offered “all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them." Few are bribed and befooled on a grand scale, like the Nebuchadnezzars of ancient and the Napoleons of modern times. But the lust of power and wealth may be roused into malign activity, though the bribe be but two changes of raiment. “The devil,” as Bishop Andrews quaintly remarks, "does not need to come to us with kingdoms. A matter of ten groats or some such trifle will bring us on our knees to him."

Finally, we here learn that the true safeguard against the perils of temptation is a predominant sense of duty to God. "The_man Christ Jesus" rose above the solicitations of self, because His master-desire was to do the will of God. And so, that we may overcome the Wicked One and his wiles, it is necessary that God should be en

throned in our hearts, and God's will preferred to our own. And need I say that the way to acquire this predominant Godwardness of soul is just to give ourselves to the Word of God and prayer? We cannot love God, nor prefer His will to our own, until we know Him; neither can we know Him except by devout and earnest study of His Word. But let us truly know Him, and forthwith He will take such a commanding place in our minds and hearts, that no room will be left for the entrance of temptation. A soul in which God reigns supreme, is fenced against the intrusion of evil. Temptation ceases to be tempting to it. And in its hours of solitude there evermore comes to it, not a malignant devil, but a troop of ministering angels.

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SERMON VII.

THE NIGHT OF THE PASSION.

"And it was night."-ST JOHN, xiii. 30.

MANY a dismal night has been passed under these skies of ours.

How dismal that first night after the Fall, when our original progenitors found themselves no longer amid the peaceful shades of Eden, but in the outer darkness of the open waste-homeless and heart-broken! How dismal that first night after the destruction of Sodom, when the bereaved and beggared Lot had to tarry for the laggard dawn in a bleak mountain-cave, -the blasted plain beneath him smoking like a furnace, and the lurid heaven above reflecting the portentous glare! How dismal that night in Egypt, when the destroying angel swept over the guilty land, and in every dwelling, from royal palace to peasant's shed, there was the bitterness of grief for a first