vant whom I uphold! I have put my Spirit upon him. He shall not fail nor be discouraged till he has set judgment in the earth." Well might the Evangelist say, after the scene in the wilderness," And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee "!

But some may ask,-How could Jesus Christ be tempted?-Temptation, I answer, is not incompatible with the most triumphant resistance to it. It need not endanger us, if it only try us. It has performed its noblest office, not when it has tested, but when it has attested our moral principles. Inconceivable, do we say, that Jesus should have yielded to any form or degree of temptation? And what has made it inconceivable, but that strength of character which he actually exhibited, under all the moral trials by which he was assailed?

If the disciples had invented a grand pageant of temptation for their Master's glory, it would hardly have been the one they have recorded of him. With their ideas, they would not have represented it as a counsel worthy of the Prince of Darkness, that, in the last extremity of hunger, Jesus should be invited to perform a miracle for his own relief, and thus do for himself what he so often did for others under similar circumstances. The same of the next temptation. Would the fishermen of Galilee, of their own instinct, have revolted at the

thought of his displaying his supernatural powers for the very purpose of such display,— that is, to awaken and intensify the faith of the spectators? True, we of the present day, with that more discriminating moral culture we have enjoyed, can perceive, on reflection, that it was best he should confine his miracles to works of benevolence and special instruction. But in that age a rounder, stronger, warmer view of their proper occasions would naturally have been taken. Our standard as to such matters has felt the refining influence of Christianity, and leads us to admire the example which Jesus exhibited, in so uniting, as he did, the manifestation of his supernatural gifts with the merciful objects of his divine mission, and making the utmost of his wonderful endowments for the benefit of men. But no such standard, I suspect, would have been acknowledged by people generally, or even by the best, at that period. The more decisive, on this account, the evidence for the record as it stands. Fiction would not have invented temptations the point of which would have been unseen by those to whom the story was addressed. Tradition would not have preserved temptations through ages that could not feel the force of them, unless this tradition had been truly and literally historical.

CHAPTER XI.

THE APOSTLES AND EVANGELISTS.

AMONG the earliest acts of Jesus, after he commenced his public ministry, was the choice of a company of followers to be his immediate and constant attendants. He appointed twelve of his disciples for this purpose, under the name of Apostles. There have been various conjectures as to what determined him in favor of this particular number. A larger number would have been more likely to excite the jealousy of the Jewish rulers; a smaller could not be desirable, when they were to be the special witnesses and reporters of his miracles and teachings. "I deem it," says an able writer, "one of the strongest evidences of the truth of our Saviour's miracles, that they were performed not only in sight of the multitude, but of a select company, who were too familiar with him to be deceived themselves, and too honest to join with him in deceiving others. Being brought into the midst of his operations, they were qualified to judge of their

reality and integrity, and therefore qualified to report them to the world with all the warmth of conviction, and all the directness, particularity, and authority of constant experience and repeated vision. A changing crowd, never composed, perhaps, on any two occasions, of the same materials, might have been mistaken; but a band of twelve companions could not have been. They were fitted, as in no other way they could have been so well, for the purpose of declaring to men the power from above with which their Master was invested and that they might be thus prepared was one of his designs in choosing them. 'Ye are witnesses of these things,' said he to the Eleven, after his resurrection from the dead. He evinced a consciousness of innocence and sincerity by admitting so many partakers of his secret counsels and his daily deeds; and he manifested his wisdom by securing such an irrefragable testimony to the reality of those signs from heaven which pointed him out as truly the Son of God."*

With these companions always attending him, he enjoyed an opportunity of communicating his thoughts more freely and clearly than would have been possible under any other circumIt was thus only he could secure

stances.

* Lives of the Twelve Apostles. By F. W. P. GREENWOOD. pp.

31-32.

;

competent depositories and teachers of his religion. And the humble walks of life from which they were taken render more observable the elevated sentiments they have ascribed to him. Many of his discourses which they have recorded were far from answering to their ideas. His lessons upon meekness, forgiveness, and mercy before sacrifice were plainly indebted to no suggestions of theirs; they would have had him call down fire from heaven to consume his enemies. In short, we have received his sentiments through a medium incapable of improving them, and can only be struck with what we may believe was the reverence which prevented the attempt.

His appointment of a number of persons to be constant attendants upon his ministry was fraught with another advantage. It was important that no part of his example should be lost. Yet much of it must have been lost, but for those who were constantly with him to tell us all they saw and knew of him in private. They might have drawn a very imperfect character without being aware of its imperfection; but they have recorded nothing we could wish had been omitted. Why the Gospels are not full of inconsistencies in the whole spirit and conduct of the Saviour, such as Christians now would be obliged to defend as best they might, we have the satisfaction