or Christ with the Devil's weapons, to make compliance
with him for ends which they thought good, to keep terms with evil, or
to adopt worldly policy, craft, or force. They have never succeeded,
and, thank God! they never will.

That duel was fought for us. There we all conquered, if we will hold
fast by Him who conquered then, and thereby taught our 'hands to war'
and our 'fingers to fight.' The strong man is bound. The spoiling of his
house follows of course, and is but a question of time.

THE SPRINGING OF THE GREAT LIGHT

'Now when Jesus had heard that John was cast into prison, He
departed into Galilee; 13. And leaving Nazareth, He came and dwelt
in Capernaum, which is upon the sea coast, in the borders of
Zabulon and Nephthalim: 14. That it might be fulfilled which was
spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, 15. The land of Zabulon, and
the land of Nephthalim, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan,
Galilee of the Gentiles; 16. The people which sat in darkness saw
great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of
death light is sprung up.'--MATT. iv. 12-16.

Though the narrative of the Temptation is immediately followed by the
notice of Jesus' return to Galilee, there was a space between wide
enough to hold all that John's Gospel tells of the gathering of the
first disciples, the brief stay in Galilee, the Jerusalem ministry, and
the journey through Samaria. John i. 43 refers to the same point of time
as verses 12-16 of this chapter. It is rash to conclude Matthew's
ignorance from his silence, and it is plain, from his own words, that he
did not suppose that the return to Galilee followed the Temptation as
closely in time as it does in his narrative. For he does link the
Temptation to the Baptism immediately, by '_Then_ was Jesus led up of
the Spirit' (verse 1), and so some interval of time must be allowed,
during which Jesus left the wilderness, and went to some place where He
could hear of John's imprisonment. A gap is necessary. Its extent is not
indicated, nor are the reasons for silence as to its contents. But we
may as reasonably conjecture that Matthew's eagerness to get to his main
subject, the Galilean ministry, led him to regard the short visit to
Jerusalem as an episode from which little came, as put his silence down
to a very improbable ignorance. The same explanation may account for the
slight mention made of His 'leaving Nazareth,' of which L