Of what follows Jesus' acceptance of His Commission, Mark gives us the briefest but the most vivid account.

"And immediately the spirit driveth him into the wilderness. And he was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan; and was with the wild beast; and the angles ministered unto him" (Mark 1:12,13).

As I read these words I fell as if upon a screen before my eyes a crucial scene in a great drama had been flashed for a swift second and then withdrawn. No clear outline is left upon my mind. But a thrilling impression remains of intense emotion, titanic struggle, and dominant Deity.

Grouping, I try to recall similar epochs in the careers of the world's great leaders. I think of Cecil Rhodes dreaming his empire dream in the wilds of the South African veldt. I remember that Paul spent a mysterious three years in Arabia before starting upon his world-shaking journeys.

Would these experiences be worth investigating as affording possible parallels? I do not think so. The greatest of mortals are but actors playing their little fixed parts upon the stage and passing off it. To Jesus only do the words of General Foch, lecturing many years before the first World War in the Higher Military School in Paris, on the high position of the Commander-in-Chief, apply supremely: "The Generalissimo alone creates the art, the strategy in the complete sense of the word; all the others create the tactics, the prose. He alone is the composer and the chief of the orchestra, in which all the others play but a part."

When I turn to the narrative of the other gospels, I find considerably more details of a character which have led to the title "The Temptation in the Wilderness" being given to this chapter in the King's career. And yet even when I took at these, I feel as if I had in my hand not an actual picture of the scene, but rather what photographers call a negative, from which the picture itself has yet to be made.

I feel as if I had gone into the first headquarters of the Commander-in-chief and found them deserted and empty, still marked with the signs of a struggle, but with nothing left in the way of plans and papers except three fragments of discarded plans lying in the waste-basket.

When I pick these up and smooth them out, I find that they contain proposed movements written in an unknown script. Across them, in the firm clear hand of the Commander himself, is written the word "Rejected," and the reasons why they were rejected.

When we examine the first fragment we find that the suggestion discarded is contained in the words, "If thou art the Son of God, command that these stones become bread."

In His all-absorbing preoccupation of mind resulting from His intensified sense of mission, Jesus had omitted to provide himself with food, and it was now many days since He had eaten anything. The proposal that He supply His needs by the exercise of the supernatural power, which He now felt so conscious of possessing, will seem to us a not improper one. But He rejected it. Why?

Perhaps He thought that it would be like a quartermaster pilfering from army stores for his own use. Perhaps He thought it would be shirking some of the suffering of the rank and file with which He had identified Himself; and He was determined, like Garibaldi, to share all the hardships of the common soldier. The answer, which He, himself, makes, however, gives a reason quite different from these.

"It is written," he says, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proccedeth out of the mouth of God." In these words uttered under such significant circumstances, Jesus declares once and for all that food is not the first and greatest need of mankind. He places the spirit above the body, the need for God before the need for bread. At the very outset of His career, He refuses to become a mere physical philanthropist, a Bread King;

¹ The Table of contents of Calvin's book can be found with letter W-MCP2-3b.035.

For chapter 1, see Box 04-028.

For chapter 2, see Box 04-029.

For chapter 3, see Box 04-030.

For chapter 4, see Box 04-031.

For chapter 6, see Box 04-033.