SERMON XVII.

MATTHEW iv. 1.

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

ONE of the leading defects observable in the various systems of ethics, taught by the philosophers of the Gentile world, was the absence of that authority which sanctions the doctrine by the example of the teacher. I speak not of the infamy which stands recorded in the lives of many of the first masters of ancient morals, which would have been a scandal and a disgrace even to the lowest of their followers, and was sufficient of itself to disannul the power, and discredit the influence of any moral code; but I would call your attention rather to the total disability, even among the purest and most innocent of them, of acting up to the principles which they professed, and of raising the practice of their life and conduct, to their own exalted standard of moral virtue.

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Now this deficiency may arise either from the want of opportunity, or the want of power. The Stoic might enforce upon his hearers the contempt of pain, yet such a precept would proceed with but little authority from one, who had either in his own person never felt its anguish, or had sunk most unphilosophically under his sufferings. Thus then, in order to enforce the authority of any practical system of duties, it is necessary, not only that its teacher should be guiltless of offence against his own laws, but that the force of their severest enactments or prohibitions should be experimentally visible in his own person. The truth of this observation cannot be more powerfully illustrated, than in the Saviour of mankind, who in every stage of his existence upon earth, was in his own person both the bright exemplar and the practical proof, of the purity of that doctrine which he descended from heaven to inculcate and enforce. It is not only in the purity of his life, in the ardour of his love, and the activity of his benevolence towards man, that the truth of this assertion is founded: it rests more strongly, on the resistance to those temptations, and the subjugation of those passions, the assaults of which, from the tenure of mortality, he was doomed to undergo. For " he took not on him the nature of angels," who were above the pains and passions

of this lower world, "but he took on him the seed of Abraham," who were the slaves of their dominion. In taking this our nature upon him, he took not merely the form and the materiality of man, but the wants, the pains, and the infirmities of human nature; for in the words of the Apostle, "we have not an High Priest, which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but one who was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin."

By his condescension to the weakness, and his assimilation to the infirmities, of our frail existence, we view in the incarnate God, not only the perfection of abstract purity, but the brightness of that innocence, which was assailed by every temptation, to the attacks of which we are ever subject; which was victorious over every foe, to whose malice man has ever stood exposed; which though above the power of the highest to reach, is not beyond the capacity of the lowest to imitate. Amidst the history of the life of our Lord, there is not an event more singular in its nature, nor more important in its consequences, than the transaction recorded in the chapter from which my text is taken; an event, which the recurrence of this solemn season, has from the earliest ages of the Christian church, been ordained to commémorate. The scéne now expanded before us is fraught with the most sub

lime and awful interest; it presents to our view the first grand conflict between the Redeemer and the destroyer of man. A conflict, to which by his descent from the right hand of the Most High, the Son of God had exposed himself, as on the terms of equal war. When clothed in the panoply of heaven, and encompassed in the brightness of the Godhead, the powers of darkness environed not the throne of the living God; but when divested of his glory, he took upon him the nature of man," through death to destroy him that had the power of death," he stood forward the willing combatant of the prince of darkness.

It was not without the painful discipline of a fast of forty days, that he entered upon this first tremendous trial of his mighty ministry. A trial which was revealed to the eye of no mortal witness. Man would have been an unconcerned spectator of such a conflict, in which the powers of more than mortals were thus deeply engaged. He was accompanied by the Spirit only, which led him up to the wilderness for the performance of this wonderful deed, and which was the companion and counsellor of his pilgrimage upon earth.

It may now be enquired, why the tempter should at all assault our Lord, or what advantage he could hope to obtain over the incar

nate Son of God? Could he think to defeat the counsel, or disappoint the designs of the Almighty, in sending the promised Messiah into the world?

That evil spirits should have hoped at any time to prevail against the power of the Almighty arm, by open war, is too absurd to be imagined; but that they should rebel against the counsel, and oppose the will of God, and his kingdom of grace in this lower world, is sanctioned by probability, and confirmed by the test of experience. That this has been the constant and unwearied desire of sinful men, in every age of the world, the history of infidelity will clearly shew. If in a lower degree this has been the anxious attempt of evil men, will it not follow in a higher degree, it must have been the neverceasing aim of those evil spirits, who are their masters and guides? It may be considered farther, that possibly the tempter was not yet sure whether our Lord was indeed the Messiah or not. His very words "if thou be the Son of God" may express an uncertainty on that point. But even supposing that the tempter did know our Lord to be the promised Messiah, yet still it was more than probable, that the great deceiver should suppose, that as by seducing the first Adam he had excluded man from that paradisiacal state, in which, by the bounty of the Al