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Alas, the world's kisses are death to the hidden life. The world is perilous in its array; full of seducing spirits, crafty, fair-seeming, versatile, and deadly. We may well fear it. Well is it if we fear it greatly; for few there be that fear it at all. Happy are they who walk unspotted of the world, in ways of lowliness and self-mistrust; and happy they whose pride is abased, and whose presuming hearts are brought down by a salutary humiliation. Piercing as the discipline may be, better is it to have a spiritual sorrow, sharper than any twoedged sword," than to walk proud and blindfold, deceiving and being deceived," tempting the Lord our God.

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SERMON VIII.

WORLDLY AMBITION.

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ST. MATT. iv. 8-10.

Again, the devil taketh Him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth Him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; and saith unto Him, All these things will I give Thee, if Thou wilt fall down and worship me. Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve."

THIS temptation seems to be an offer of worldly power on an unlawful condition. The tempter

addressed himself to that inclination of our nature which, when perverted in us, is ambition and vainglory. We are wont to call ambition an infirmity which lingers last and longest of all, even in minds that are noble and pure. It has in it, as we think, nothing low, mean, or little. It is closely allied with the consciousness of great powers, right intentions, high purposes of unselfish devotion for the welfare of others; it is upon a

large scale, and takes a wide sweep and range in its aims and endeavours; it thereby lifts itself out of the common level of mankind, and rises above all lesser inducements, and the motives which sway other men; its whole tone and bearing has a breadth, dignity, and grandeur nearly allied to moral greatness. Perhaps it was in the belief that our blessed Lord was at least susceptible of some such pure and exalted allurement, that Satan presented to Him "the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them."

He "taketh Him up into an exceeding high mountain." We shall do best to understand this

as we read it. The truest interpretations are

those that are nearest to the letter. We do not know by what laws of motion or of place this mysterious passage was controlled. All the conditions of the spiritual world are inscrutable to us. As in the book of the prophet Ezekiel we read of his rapture to Tel-abib: "The spirit took me up, and I heard behind me a voice of a great rushing, saying, Blessed be the glory of the Lord from His place. I heard also the noise of the wings of the living creatures that touched one another, and the noise of the wheels over against them, and a noise of a great rushing. So the spirit lifted me up, and took me away, and I went in bitterness, in the heat of my spirit; but the

hand of the Lord was strong upon me. Then I came to them of the captivity at Tel-abib, that dwelt by the river of Chebar, and I sat where they sat, and remained there astonished among them seven days"-and again, of his rapture to Jerusalem: "And it came to pass in the sixth year, in the sixth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I sat in mine house, and the elders of Judah sat before me, that the hand of the Lord God fell there upon me. Then I beheld, and lo a likeness as the appearance of fire: from the appearance of his loins even downward, fire; and from his loins even upward, as the appearance of brightness, as the colour of amber. And he put forth the form of an hand, and took me by a lock of mine head; and the spirit lifted me up between the earth and the heaven, and brought me in the visions of God to Jerusalem, to the door of the inner gate that looketh toward the north; where was the seat of the image of jealousy, which provoketh to jealousy. And, behold, the glory of the God of Israel was there, according to the vision that I saw in the plain. Then said he unto me, Son of man, lift up thine eyes now the way toward the north." Moreover, we read of the rapture of St. Philip to Azotus, and of St. Paul into the third heaven ;3 of the mysterious

1 Ezek. iii. 12-15.

3 Acts viii. 39, 40; 2 Cor. xii. 2.

2 Ezek. viii. 1-5.

visitations of our Lord after His resurrection, and of His ascension to the right hand of God. It is, therefore, more natural to believe, that as our Lord was "led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted," so Satan was permitted to take Him to the pinnacle of the temple and to the mountainheight, to consummate the mystery of His temptation. And we shall do best simply to believe, that from some vast summit, looking down upon a boundless reach of earth, the tempter did shew the kingdoms, and pomp, and riches, and splendour, and glory of the world. It was a vision of worldly power and greatness, full of allurements and promises; of unbounded means of doing good to mankind; of wielding such dominion as perhaps man never wielded before. Whether Satan had any power to fulfil this promise; whether any indirect means, through the agency of evil, of bestowing the kingdoms of this world; whether any control was permitted to him over the collective actings, as over the individual acts, of men, so as to give him a sway in the disposal of earthly crowns-we know not. It may be that the promise was mere guile

fair and false: but this matters little. The temptation was simply this, that our blessed Lord should obtain the powers and gifts of the world by transferring His obedience from God to Satan. And this brings the nature of the temptation

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