Temptation to turn stones into loaves.
I now come to the Temptations themselves. As these trials were mental, we can only realise them by imagining what, consistently with our history, may have passed in our Lord's mind. What actually did so pass is of course beyond our knowledge altogether. We are however justified in supposing that, as our Lord was “tempted as man,” the thoughts and feelings which actuated Him would be such as men might follow and more or less understand.
It would appear that when God lays a work on a man He gives him a general view of the end to be kept in sight, a vehement desire to accomplish it, and a forefeeling of the capacity so to do. But He does not shew him how he is to do it, He does not make the way clear so that he sees his course before him and marks its several stages. If a man were so guided he would not fulfil the conditions of human agency, there would be no room for his own will to act, he would have no responsibility. He would move along a pre-arranged path. God would, in effect, be doing all and he nothing, and [pg 128] so it would come to much the same thing as if the work were done once for all by God's fiat, independently of human action—and this, as we have already seen, is not God's way of governing the world.
When St Paul takes his last journey to Jerusalem, the Spirit, he tells us, “testifieth unto me in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions abide me.” That he must go to Jerusalem he knew and to go he was resolved, but what course of conduct he was to adopt or what the result was to be he did not know at all; afterwards in like manner, he knew that he was to bear witness at Rome, but he had no directions as to what he was to do. It was left to him to act as seemed to him to be the best. This may give us a help towards understanding how it may have been with our Lord, when the mighty charge unto which He was born came home to His mind, and He felt, rising in Him, the wondrous powers given to aid Him in carrying it out.
Our Lord when driven by the Spirit into the wilderness would take no thought of food or shelter. The one thing He craved for was to be alone; He must have solitude, and the wilderness provided that.
When He reflected, He could hardly help asking Himself whether this light which had shone upon Him—this voice from Heaven,—were the resuscitation of His Diviner life or only [pg 129] something in His own eyes and ears? A sure test lay ready: when He had heard Himself hailed as the Son of God a conviction had risen in Him that God would give effect to His commands. He had only to try whether this was so and all doubts would be resolved. Perhaps the whisper came “Try this experiment in a very small matter first.” Who could think this apparent caution and prudence came from an ill quarter?
Spiritual evil always chooses a trifle, something from which it seems that no harm can possibly come, to win its victim to the first false step. Our Lord was hungry, and loaf-shaped stones were lying all about Him. Why not turn a few actually into the loaves they looked like? In so doing, how could He possibly be wrong?
However plausible the appeal of the Tempter, it was not entertained. We can conceive that a whole array of objections would arise; some may have been such as these—
This putting of God to trial by a test of my own choosing, that I may determine whether I will believe His words or not: this implying that I will admit His authority if He speaks in one way and not if He speaks in another—Is this befitting one called to a work like this?
Then came another point—He was hungry. As St Mark says nothing about the fasting it will be best not to assume that the fasting was part of our Lord's original purpose; but as, in the desert of [pg 130] Judea, food could not be got without a journey of some miles, our Lord, whether designedly or not, had put Himself out of the immediate reach of food. Should He remedy this by using the mysterious power with which He felt He was invested? This power was given Him to forward God's Kingdom upon earth—should He use it for Himself?
Then the tempter might return to the assault. There are fluxes and refluxes in human feeling; we are always afraid that we have gone too far in one direction, or been too obstinate about our own point; it strikes us that perhaps we have made more of it than it was worth, and then we listen submissively to the other side.
Such a whisper as this may have come—"These powers are given you to enable you to set up God's Kingdom upon earth; for this you must win adherents. These adherents must be maintained. Your opponents are supported by the great ones of the earth; the God of Heaven has committed to you His powers for the support of yours. This little incident of the loaves only points the way to a much weightier matter; you must use your special powers to supply your own bodily wants in the coming contest,—why not begin with using them for this purpose now?"
Here we have arrived at the gravest point of the debate—Were these powers really to be used for His bodily wants or not? As the true conditions of His work rose before Him, the principles grew [pg 131] clearer; He was to deliver mankind as the Son of Man, He was to work as man, to suffer as man, that suffering men might always look to Him, saying “He was one of us.” And how could this be, if His lot was so unlike theirs that He met His own wants by a word of command directly they arose? How could His followers own the duty of labouring for their daily bread, if stones at a word were turned into loaves for Him? How could He tell men not to think overmuch of the meat that perisheth, if He had used Divine powers to provide it for Himself as soon as He possessed them? If He were to be the stay of loving human hearts, He must say to men, “As you live, I live: of all your ills and troubles I claim my part.”
Our Lord's answer points out a train of thought along which He may have passed, until at length He reached a firm resolve and reduced the Tempter to silence. It will not be irreverent to imagine what might, consistently with what we learn, have been its nature.
Man wants no reminding that he lives by bread. There is no fear of his not giving care enough to the needs of his body; but there is danger lest he should think of nothing but these needs, and starve his soul and become such that eternal life, without a body to care for, would only be a condition of aimless weariness. He resolved therefore to keep His powers apart for spiritual ends. He will work no miracle to shew that He can work a miracle, or [pg 132] to assure either Himself or others that He is the Son of God; neither will He use this power to provide what others win by toil, or to preserve Himself or His followers from the common ills of human life.
There are a few of our Lord's Signs which might, at first sight, look as if in them this principle were not observed. At the marriage of Cana in Galilee, the Sign is worked as an act of kindness to save the host from mortification arising from an accident.
I have mentioned, as regards the miracles of the loaves and fishes, that on both occasions the supply which our Lord's own company had with them was sufficient for their immediate wants. The crowds, however, had, by their rapt attention to our Lord, been detained away from their homes and their supplies, and, if they had had to go a distance to buy bread, they would have suffered from taking so long a journey fasting. The case was an exceptional emergency parallel to that of illness, and our Lord meets it by miraculous means.
The miraculous draughts of fishes benefited probably all who were partners in the vessel, but they were not wrought to meet any necessity on the part of our Lord. All night long they had taken nothing; this scarcity may have been part of the lesson of the miracle, and the great draught is only a bounteous compensation. This is a miracle of instruction, as I said in the last chapter: it tells [pg 133] men that a turn comes at the moment when they are about to give up, and that the faith which bears up long is rewarded. Moreover, to recur to what I said in the last chapter, St Peter had been told that he was to be henceforth a fisher of men; and when multitudes, both of Jews and Gentiles, were gathered into the Church in Jerusalem he must have thought of this as answering to the Sign.
The miracle of the stater in the fish's mouth also requires notice. It is not wrought to obtain the coin, but to keep before Peter's mind that he as well as his Master were the children and not the servants or tributaries of God.
From St Peter's answering without hesitation that his master would pay the didrachm, it is clear that there was no difficulty about producing the small sum. He does not speak to our Lord on the matter, but our Lord, directly he enters the house, asks him, “What thinkest thou, Simon? the kings of the earth, from whom do they receive toll or tribute? from their sons, or from strangers?”[65]
This miracle, as we said in the last chapter, is one of instruction. The payment according to the received view was the half-shekel that every Israelite had to pay for providing victims for the Temple service. It gave the idea of a tribute to God which stood in the way of the conception of perfect sonship. It implied that Israelites alone had part or lot in the worship of the living God. Our Lord [pg 134] would have St Peter regard God as the Father of mankind and not only as the Lord and ruler of Israel. The whole point of the lesson lies in the words “then are the children free.” These words would be stamped on St Peter's mind by the finding the stater in the fish's mouth; and they would recur to him and bring their proper lesson with them when the right moment came. The circumstance is not in itself necessarily miraculous, but it was rendered so in this case by our Lord's foreseeing that the coin would be found in the first fish that came.