hether our Lord could or could not have done these wonderful deeds,
one thing is plain--that He would not do them; and, therefore, we may
presume that He ought not to have done them. It seems as if He did not
wish to be a wonderful man: but only a perfectly good man, and He would
do nothing to help Himself but what any other man could do. He answered
the evil spirit simply out of Scripture, as any other pious man might
have done. When He was bidden to make the stones into bread, He answers
not as the Eternal Son of God, but simply as a man. "It is written:"--it
is the belief of Moses and the old prophets of my people that man doth
not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the
mouth of God:--as much as to say, If I am to be delivered out of this
need, God will deliver me by some means or other, just as He delivers
other men out of their needs. When He was bidden cast Himself from the
temple, and so save Himself, probably from sorrow, poverty, persecution,
and the death on the cross, He answers out of Scripture as any other Jew
would have done. "It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy
God." He says nothing--this is most important--of His being the eternal
Son of God. He keeps that in the background. There the fact was; but He
veiled the glory of His godhead, that He might assert the rights of His
manhood, and shew that mere man, by the help of the Spirit of God, could
obey God, and keep His commandments.

I say these last words with all diffidence and humility, and trusting
that the Lord will pardon any mistake which I may make about His Divine
Words. I only say them because wiser men than I have often taken the
same view already. Of course there is more, far more, in this wonderful
saying than we can understand, or ever will understand. But this I think
is plain--that our Lord determined to behave as any and every other man
ought to have done in His place; in order to shew all God's children the
example of perfect humility and perfect obedience to God.

But again, the devil asked our Lord to fall down and worship him. Now
how could that be a temptation to pride? Surely that was asking our Lord
to do anything but a proud action, rather the most humiliating and most
base of all actions. My friends, it seems to me that if our Lord had
fallen down and worshipped the evil spirit, He would have given way to
the spirit of pride utterly and bou