Temptation through physical conditions.
In this and two later homilies the several temptations are to be more precisely treated. The four homilies will be suggestive of a series of sermons on the "Lord's temptation." The temptation must be closely associated with the baptism. The one thing necessary to the understanding of it is our apprehension of the fact, that Jesus had become suddenly conscious of the trust of miraculous powers; and he had to fix the principle on which alone he would use those powers. The first question to decide was—Would he use them to supply his own necessities? Meeting the deepest sense of bodily hunger, a passionate craving for food after a prolonged fast, came the consciousness of possessing miraculous power. He heard, as if in the depths of his soul, a cry saying, "Why do you suffer? Make the stones bread. You can do it." The force of the temptation lay on one side in the cravings of bodily appetite, and on the other side in this new sense of power.
I. HUMAN TEMPTATION THROUGH BODILY CRAVINGS. It is the first form that human temptation took. Eve saw that the fruit of the tree was pleasant, and good for food. It is the universal form of temptation, but it is the lowest; it belongs to man as an animal. Beneath the temptation of bodily appetite, the glutton, the drunkard, and the sensualist have fallen in all the ages. The first sphere of conflict for the spiritual being man is that animal nature in which he is set in order to sustain earthly relations. That bodily organization ought to be his servant; it is ever striving to be his master, and seeks to secure its end by subtleties of craving and allurement. Easily men have been led to think that the body itself is evil. But the wrong lies in the unbalanced will, which fails to restrain and control bodily appetite.
II. THE LAW OF TRIUMPH OVER TEMPTATION COMING THROUGH BODILY CRAVINGS. The soul is of more value than the body. A man is not a body; all that is true is that he has a body. A man's life is not the material thing, eating and drinking; that only sustains the animal nature. A man's real life consists in obedience to the will of God, as he may come to know it; and if that means starving the body, the body must be starved.—R.T.