his angels charge over thee, to keep thee, and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone." Luke iv. 10, 11. To be at once delivered from the immediate presence of Satan, and received into the arms of the holy angels ; while to decline it was apparently to shrink not only from the proof of his divinity, but also from a test of individual faith in the promise of God,-this was a snare, the craft and subtlety of which are not always sufficiently considered; nor the practical use of the lesson regarded. For, be it remembered, it was no necessary part of our redemption to make us acquainted with such a passage in our Lord's experience: the Holy Ghost has very sparingly revealed to us the particulars of what was by far the most grievous portion of his sufferings we are not told what took place during the forty days, throughout the whole period of which St. Luke tells us, he was tempted of the devil. The thorny crown, the scourge, the nails, the spear, were the lot of many others, whose physical frames suffered, perhaps, no less exquisitely the pangs of a torturing death: but here we have a glimpse of mental and spiritual endurances, such as would crush the whole mass of guilty men- "the travail of his soul"-the "sorrows" and the "grief;" the heavy pressure wherewith "it pleased the Lord to bruise him." Isaiah liii. 10. We know not what ensued, when, just previous to this fearful agony in the garden, the Lord said, "The Prince of this world

cometh." John xiv. 30. Neither can we penetrate what was implied in the expression used to the wretched men who seized on him,-" This is your hour, and the power of darkness.” Luke xxii. 53. Hereafter we shall doubtless know what in their present burdened state our spirits could not support; we shall better comprehend the nature and intensity of sufferings undergone by Him who poured out his soul unto death for us: but since what is given by inspiration is written for our learning, we may be assured that the scene so distinctly sketched of the mysterious encounter between the Sun of righteousness and the prince of darkness, is intended to fill us with godly fear; to keep us watchful against the tremendous foe, and to endear to us the written word of the Old Testament, which some Christians are apt to slight; but which furnished the Captain of our salvation with weapons wherewith to repel the bold assailant. The Deity of Jesus is the sword from which Satan shrinks; and even in the brief, but inexpressibly momentous narrative referred to, there is observable a constant reference, on our Lord's part, to the eternal God, which appears calculated to remind the rebel that He with whom he was presumptuously dealing, was yet the Lord his God. Some have represented this assault as planned by the evil one, to satisfy himself as to the fact of Jesus being the Christ: we cannot subscribe to this view: surely the prince of the devils was not worse informed than his subordinates, who, on the approach

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of our Lord, evermore yelled forth their confessions of his Deity, and deprecated the visitation of his wrath. Satan knew full well, that the elect angels were no liars, like himself: and when in songs of joy and praise they announced to the shepherds the birth of " viour, which is Christ the Lord," he could not disbelieve their testimony. The particulars of that miraculous birth were not concealed from him; neither was the promise which God gave to Eve, or the prediction declared to Ahaz, unknown. Still less can we for a moment suppose that the testimony given just before, at the Lord's baptism, had escaped him. No; Satan knew with whom he had to do; and well may we tremble, when we find him taking advantage of the purest concomitants of undefiled humanity, and with them tempting the Lord his God!

Scripture likewise unfolds to us many instances in which God's servants have been assailed by the enemy, under the feigned character of a divine influence, to confirm which he has put forth all his powers, and wrought wonders. A very remarkable instance of this is found in the story of Israel's deliverance: and though it is a part of his craft to lead men so to explain away the passages touching himself as to neutralize in a great degree God's gracious purpose in dictating them, we are not bound to follow their glosses, we may venture to take Scripture as we find it, and to believe that when the Holy Ghost says a thing, he means what he

says, and not something else. The marvels that Satan wrought by means of Pharaoh's magicians were calculated not only to harden the heart of the tyrant against the truly miraculous manifestations of God's power, but also to stagger the faith of Moses and Aaron in the divine origin of their mission. We are not at liberty to call them juggling deceptions, as some do ; mere sleight-of-hand tricks, performed by court conjurors: the word of God declares them to have been realities : and most instructive they are to us, who, looking for the national redemption and final restoration of Israel, according to the Lord's promise, now very near at hand, may expect to witness fearful things done in opposition to it by the power of Satan, who hates the Jew with an implacable hatred. We find the magicians of Egypt doing what man, without supernatural aid, could never have accomplished. "Now the magicians of Egypt, they also did in like manner with their enchantments: for they cast down every man his rod, and they became (not they seemed to become) serpents : but Aaron's rod swallowed up their rods." Exod. vii. 11, 12. Here was a great wonder wrought by the power of Satan, but overruled to the fuller proof of the mighty work of God. When Moses turned the water into blood, the magicians did the same, but of course on a very small scale, since there could be but little left for them to practice upon. Again, they were able to imitate a miracle, by bringing up frogs upon the land; but

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here the power of Satan ended: the next wonder was one of creation; and life, even the lowest order of animal life, is not his to bestow. He can kill, when permitted; but to make alive was never given to him. His agents essayed to bring up frogs, from the recesses where they were hidden, and succeeded: but when they attempted to bring forth lice from the dust of the earth, they utterly failed. It does not appear that after this they ventured on increasing the swarms of flies, as they had done that of frogs; or to smite the cattle of the children of Israel, when the Lord had destroyed those of the Egyptians: and the next visitation drove them out of the royal presence, covered with loathsome sores which their infernal master had no power to heal.

How encouraging is this to us! Satan may do much to terrify, to perplex, and to afflict us; but as soon as he touches on a single attribute of the Most High, he fails, and is put to flight. Yet to make it appear that what he does is done immediately by the Lord, is almost always his plan. Thus we find, when destroying the flocks of Job and their attendants, he so managed his elements of destruction, that the terrified messenger of evil tidings described it as a divine visitation: "The fire of God is fallen from heaven, and hath burned up the sheep and the servants, and consumed them." Job i. 16. It could not but dreadfully aggravate the affliction of the righteous man, to regard these sore trials as marks of the Lord's indignation, proceeding directly