THE THIRD TEMPTATION.

IMMEDIATELY after the baptism of our blessed Lord, being now prepared for his prophetic office, he was induced, by a divine impulse to go into a solitary part of Judea, where, having fasted forty days and forty nights, the Devil appeared to him in a bodily shape, and offered him three several temptations. From his hunger he took occasion to tempt him to despair and distrust in Providence; but our Saviour baffled his design, and silenced him by a passage from the Holy Scriptures, signifying that when God pleased he would employ extraordinary means for the nourishment and support of men. The second temptation, according to St. Matthew, but the third, according to St. Luke, was an appeal to the Saviour's pride. "And he brought him to Jerusalem, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee: and in their hauds they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone *." But the Saviour again answered the tempter with a quotation from the Sacred Text, showing that the Son of God could not be guilty of doing what he suggested, as it would be a breach of the divine law. The last temptation was addressed to Christ's ambition.— Bearing him to the top of an exceeding high mountain, he showed him "all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them" promising that all should be Christ's if he would only fall down and worship him. This blasphemy drew from the Saviour a severe rebuke, which abashed the tempter, and caused him to depart. When the devil had quitted our blessed Lord, Angels came and ministered unto him," who had already began to fulfil the prophecy pronounced in Paradise, that he should "bruise the serpent's head."