to conquer these very temptations because He was
not merely a child of God, but the Son of God--the perfect Man, made in
the perfect likeness of His Father. He had to endure these temptations,
and to conquer them, that He might be able to succour us when we are
tempted, seeing that He was tempted in like manner as we are, yet without
sin.

Now it has been said, and, I think, well said, that what proves our
Lord's three temptations to have been very subtle and dangerous and
terrible, is this--that we cannot see at first sight that they were
temptations at all. The first two do not look to us to be wrong. If our
Lord could make stones into bread to satisfy His hunger, why should He
not do so? If He could prove to the Jews that He was the Son of God,
their divine King and Saviour, by casting Himself down from the pinnacle
of the temple, and being miraculously supported in the air by angels--if
He could do that, why should He not do it? And lastly, the third
temptation looks at first sight so preposterous that it seems silly of
the evil spirit to have hinted at it. To ask any man of piety, much less
the Son of God Himself, to fall down and worship the devil, seems
perfectly absurd--a request not to be listened to for a moment, but put
aside with contempt.

Well, my friends, and the very danger of these spiritual temptations is--
that they do not look like temptations. They do not look ugly, absurd,
wrong, they look pleasant, reasonable, right.

The devil, says the apostle, transforms himself at times into an angel of
light. If so, then he is certainly far more dangerous than if he came as
an angel of darkness and horror. If you met some venomous snake, with
loathsome spots upon his scales, his eyes full of rage and cunning, his
head raised to strike at you, hissing and showing his fangs, there would
be no temptation to have to do with him. You would know that you had to
deal with an evil beast, and must either kill him or escape from him at
once. But if, again, you met, as you may meet in the tropics, a lovely
little coral snake, braided with red and white, its mouth so small that
it seems impossible that it can bite, and so gentle that children may
take it up and play with it, then you might be tempted, as many a poor
child has been ere now, to admire it, fondle it, wreathe it round the
neck for a necklace, or round the arm for a bracelet, till the play goes
one step too far, t