on that He use His extraordinary powers to provide
food. Satan had chosen the most propitious time for his evil purpose.
What will mortals not do, to what lengths have men not gone, to assuage
the pangs of hunger? Esau bartered his birthright for a meal. Men have
fought like brutes for food. Women have slain and eaten their own babes
rather than endure the gnawing pangs of starvation. All this Satan knew
when he came to the Christ in the hour of extreme physical need, and
said unto Him: "If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be
made bread." During the long weeks of seclusion, our Lord had been
sustained by the exaltation of spirit that would naturally attend such
all-absorbing concentration of mind as His protracted meditation and
communion with the heavens undoubtedly produced; in such profound
devotion of spirit, bodily appetites were subdued and superseded; but
the reaction of the flesh was inevitable.

Hungry as Jesus was, there was a temptation in Satan's words even
greater than that embodied in the suggestion that He provide food for
His famishing body--the temptation to put to proof the possible doubt
implied in the tempter's "If." The Eternal Father had proclaimed Jesus
as His Son; the devil tried to make the Son doubt that divine
relationship. Why not prove the Father's interest in His Son at this
moment of dire necessity? Was it proper that the Son of God should go
hungry? Had the Father so soon forgotten as to leave His Beloved Son
thus to suffer? Was it not reasonable that Jesus, faint from long
abstinence, should provide for Himself, and particularly so since He
could provide, and that by a word of command, _if_ the voice heard at
His baptism was that of the Eternal Father. _If_ thou be in reality the
Son of God, demonstrate thy power, and at the same time satisfy thy
hunger--such was the purport of the diabolical suggestion. To have
yielded would have been to manifest positive doubt of the Father's
acknowledgment.

Moreover, the superior power that Jesus possessed had not been given to
Him for personal gratification, but for service to others. He was to
experience all the trials of mortality; another man, as hungry as He,
could not provide for himself by a miracle; and though by miracle such a
one might be fed, the miraculous supply would have to be given, not
provided by himself. It was a necessary result of our Lord's dual
nature, comprizing the attributes of both God and man, that He sho