This pinnacle, supposing my view to be correct, would offer a fitting scene for the story of this trial, not only as being a giddy height, but because also the spot was a public one, and a crowd of spectators would witness the display. If our Lord had only been tempted to assure Himself of His power by a miracle of adventurous rashness, any precipice would have served as well. The essential force of the temptation lay in the suggestion to prostrate men's minds, and to subjugate their wills, by performing before their eyes an appalling act, the superhuman nature of which could not possibly be gainsaid.
When we leave the external imagery, and come to the gist of the lesson, we find in it the truth which we have had before us over and over again.[70] A man's belief is not his belief and will not be effective for moulding his life unless his mind and his will have some part in the acceptance of it; and if his own endeavours were to be on a sudden superseded by Divine action, this would be inconsistent with that studious culture of man's distinctive freedom which runs through the conduct of the world. If will and reason are to be dumbfounded [pg 141] by the interference of absolute power, why should men possess them or care to put them to use? As a fact, God suggests but does not compel, and our Lord's signs agree herewith. They emphasise His lessons, and witness for God to those who have eyes for Him—but men can reject the lesson, signs and all if they please.
Let us imagine the form the Tempter's arguments might take in the mouth of one like Milton's Satan: “You wish,” he might suggest, “men to believe that your power comes from on high. Leave them no room for doubt. People about you look for a Sign from Heaven, such as Joshua worked in Ajalon, and Isaiah displayed in the days of Hezekiah. Beelzebub, they think, may work Signs on earth, but Heaven, they own, is God's domain, and what is written in the skies carries God's hand and seal. Shew men these Signs for which they ask, and display your wonders so as to strike men the most. Cures and works of mercy, witnessed by a few score people, create but little stir. Shew something that all Judea, or at least Jerusalem, can behold at once;—great emotions take strongest hold among men in a mass: display a comet or darken the sun; or, to begin with, stand on the pinnacle of the Temple—there is a tradition that there the Messiah should appear[71]—and in the presence of all the crowd hurl yourself into the Priests' Court below.”
To meet these thoughts suggested by the Tempter, there would rise in our Lord's mind a crowd of arguments: some of these I have already ventured to imagine. If our Lord had displayed a Sign of overwhelming effect, and bidden men deny it if they could, He would have paralysed intellectual growth in mankind. Men had been gifted with faculties fitting them to explore and to judge of spiritual things: if these were curtailed of room for exercise, they would languish like limbs disused. Should He bar investigation in one-half of reason's realm? Should He so appal mankind, as to enforce an involuntary acceptance of His claims? Would not this be putting fresh fetters on those whom He was come on earth to set free?
Some miracles of a stupendous character are worked by our Lord, no doubt: such are the Transfiguration and the raising of Jairus' daughter. But, marvellous as these two manifestations were, they were not worked for the mere wonder's sake; men were not brought together to see them. The wondrousness is an inevitable accompaniment of the declaration of God's Kingdom and the disclosing of His ways, but it is not the prime motive of the act. There is no display, no appearance of effort. Expectation is not awakened or the imagination aroused by the announcement of a coming prodigy. Neither were these great works wrought to win proselytes: the few who witness them are already convinced of their Master's Divine [pg 143] power; it is not so much a fuller assurance that they derive from them, as a deeper insight into the ways of God. To the three apostles who already best discerned God's ways, God's power is in these manifestations more fully displayed; no others behold it. Here as everywhere, it is to those who have that more is given.
This same Law governs the appearances of the risen Lord. He does not stand forth in triumph and confound disbelief. He had only to shew Himself in the temple and His enemies would have lain at His feet. But men were not to be convinced against their will: all our accounts agree that it was to His apostles only that our Lord appeared. St Peter says to Cornelius and his friends:
“Him God raised up the third day, and gave him to be made manifest, not to all the people, but unto witnesses that were chosen before of God, even to us, who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead.”[72]
This limitation is very carefully maintained. Our Lord never appears in His own form, when there is any chance of His being beheld by others than disciples. In the garden, at the tomb, and on the way to Emmaus, He shews Himself to disciples in a strange shape and is only made known to them for a moment: He was not to be seen and recognised by any ordinary passer by. His resurrection was not to be a subject of popular rumour [pg 144] or one for the wonderment of the crowd. Some might say, with the man in the parable, “Nay, but if one go to them from the dead,[73] they will repent,” but our Lord is averse to sensational impressions: men had had the option of believing or not, and they had made their choice. When however the apostles are together in their upper chamber and the doors are shut, He appears in His accustomed form, with the print of the nails upon His hands and feet, for there was no need then for disguise.
The principle that room is to be left for man's will to act in determining his creed is observed not only in all the New Testament but throughout the spiritual history of mankind. Towards the close of the third chapter I have remarked on the analogy between an overwhelming manifestation, such as a Sign from Heaven, and a rigorous demonstration that Christ's revelation is of God. Men have at times cried out both for one and the other; but if what they demand had been given them, the higher knowledge would have been discontinuous, with uncertainty on one side of a line and absolute certainty on the other. There would have been rigid dykes, as of granite, crossing the field of spiritual thought, which would have baulked our progress.
The Laws which I have stated concerning Signs are steadily observed throughout the canonical Scriptures, although the writers of the books knew nothing of any such Laws. The [pg 145] Apocryphal Gospels on the other hand violate these Laws at every turn. This opens out almost a new line of argument on internal evidence. Is not the coincidence strange, supposing that the writers allowed play to their fancies, that all the four Evangelists should have uniformly refrained from introducing any miracle worked merely for miracles' sake; or anyone which served to minister to the bodily wants of the worker; or which was employed either to enforce submission or to punish hostility? Is it not also strange that neither in the Gospels nor the Acts have we any instance of any public display of power such as should awe the crowds into belief against their wills?