Lord thy God.' The Son of God once more claims the right to obey a commandment-the right to trust and to depend. Once more He claims that right for us. We may abide where we are placed, for our Father has placed us there. If He was not the Lord our God, we might make experiments on that which He would do for us supposing we broke His law. Because He is,

we may submit to it, and rejoice in it.

My friends, this story has pleaded its own cause for eighteen centuries with those who are fighting a battle. I do not think it can be accepted as true-in any important sense of the word true-by any others. They may maintain its canonical authority, they may insist that it cannot be rejected without peril to their theory of the infallibility of the Bible; but though they will defend it against objectors, and for others, it will not signify anything to themselves. If it did, they would not despair of its coming with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power to any objector— to any man. They would set little value on any demonstration but that. In this sense it is, I think, a most beautiful introduction to the rest of the Gospel. May a man trust the word of God to supply him with bread? Are the kingdoms of the world the devil's, or do they belong to the Lord our God? Which is a man to worship? May a man trust God? May he tempt God? These questions were debated between the Spirit of Jesus and the spirit of falsehood in the wilderness. These were the questions which He was to debate in synagogues and in the streets, in Galilee and in Jerusalem. The Son of God was in all His acts and words to glorify His Father and deny Himself -in all His acts and words to vindicate for those whom He was not ashamed to call His brethren the

right to call His Father their Father. He was to manifest the Spirit of trust, of obedience, of love, of peace, in opposition to the spirit of self-will, of division, of hatred.

(10) We are told, that when the devil had ended all his temptation, he departed from him for a season.' Such seasons of rest, of freedom from doubt, of joyful confidence, are, I suppose, vouchsafed to the soldiers of Christ after periods of terrible conflict, as they were to the chief Captain. But the inward battle was to prepare Him, as well as them, for battles in the world. The enemy in the wilderness must be encountered there. We read :

:

'And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee and there went out a fame of him through all the region round about. And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all. And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him. And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears. And all bare him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth. And

they said, Is not this Joseph's son? And he said unto them, Ye will surely say unto me this proverb, Physician, heal thyself: whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in thy country. And he said, Verily I say unto you, No prophet is accepted in his own country. But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land; but unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian. And all they in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath, and rose up, and thrust him out of the city, and led him unto the brow of the hill whereon their city was built, that they might cast him down headlong. But he passing through the midst of them went his way, and came down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee, and taught them on the sabbath day.'

(11) It is in the power of the Spirit that He went into the desert; it is in the power of the Spirit that He goes into Galilee. It is of the Spirit which is upon Him that He speaks to the Nazarenes. The story of His visit to their synagogue occurs only in St. Luke. It is consistent with all that we have read in His Gospel hitherto. It prepares us for what we are to read hereafter. The writer of the Acts of the Gospel must tell us of a kingdom which conquers by spiritual might. He must tell us of a kingdom which is to set captives free. And he must warn us that the news of such a kingdom, uttered through Prophets, through Apostles, through the Son of Man, will be rejected precisely because it does address itself to

spirits, and brings spiritual evidence of its reality. 'Is 'not this the carpenter's son?' 'Are not his sisters all 'with us?' will be one form-one chief form-of the arguments by which its claims are resisted. They are those which have especial weight among the kinsmen and neighbours of the Prophet of the King. Among them, He has the first keen taste of the bitterness of the work which is to carry such blessings, which testifies of such love. The acceptable year, the divine jubilee, must be inaugurated by the effort of the subjects of the King to cast Him headlong from the brow of the hill on which their city was built.

LECTURE VI.

THE KING CASTING OUT EVIL SPIRITS.

And in the synagogue there was a man which had a spirit of an unclean devil, and cried out with a loud voice, saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art; the Holy One of God.-ST. LUKE vi. 33, 34.

THE superstition which connects demons with a wilderness has been used, as I told you last Sunday, to explain our Lord's temptation. I shewed you that the explanation had nothing to do with the story which is given us by the Evangelists. They speak of no demons in the desert. They describe the encounter of the spirit of Christ with the spirit of evil; the test of their veracity lies in the experience of human beings in cities as much as deserts, in one period as much as another.

But the subject of demons is, as I intimated, one which comes before us in the Gospels, as soon as our Lord enters upon His ministry. Not in deserts, but in places of concourse, in the synagogues, we hear of them. We cannot evade them. Casting out the demons is connected with all our Lord's acts of power. It takes precedence of all His other acts. If we follow the order of the Evangelists, we must not first inquire