ry door down to the Dead Sea. It was once described as "the
garden of God," that is, as Eden, for beauty and fertility, like the
fertile Egyptian bottoms. For long centuries no ghastlier bit of land can
be found, haggard, stripped bare, its strata twisted out of all shape,
blistering peeling rocks, scorching furnace-heat reflected from its rocks,
swept by hot desert winds, it is the land of death, an awful death; no
life save crawling scorpions and vipers, with an occasional hyena and
jackal. Here sin had a free line and ran riot. It ran to its logical
conclusion, till a surgical operation--a cauterization--was necessary to
save the rest. Earth's fairest became earth's ugliest. It is the one spot
where sin's free swing seamed its mark deepest in. The story of sin's
worst is burned into the crust of the earth with letters over a thousand
feet deep. This is sin's scar: earth's hell-scar.

There is no talk of the glory of the kingdom here. Yet there had been
once. This is the very spot where that proposition on smaller scale was
made to a man in a crisis of _his_ life, and where, lured by the
attractive outlook, he had chosen selfishly. This is the wilderness, sin's
wilderness, whither the Holy Spirit led Jesus for the tempter's assault.
No man does great service for God till he gets sin into its proportion in
his perspective.

Jesus was tempted. Temptation, the suggestion to wrong, must find some
point of contact within. Therein consists the temptation to the man.
Without doubt there was a response within to the temptations that came to
Jesus. Satan always throws his line to catch on a hook inside. The
physical sense of hunger responded to the suggestion of getting hold of a
loaf. The unfailing breath of Jesus' life was trusting His Father. For the
_way_ a thing should be done, as well as for getting the result, He
trusted His Father. This trust, underlying and permeating His whole life,
furnishes the point of contact for the second temptation.

The ruling of a world righteously--not for the glory of reigning,
ingrained in _us_, but for the world's good and betterment--was ingrained
in Jesus by His birth, and fostered by His study of the Hebrew scriptures,
and by the consciousness of His mission. Here is the point of contact with
the third temptation. At once it is plain that there is nothing wrong here
in the inward response. For instantly it was clear that a response of His
_will_ to these outer propositions would not