We ran across legends quite like it in other parts of the Orient. They all
seemed to point, with other similar evidence, to the feeling deep down in
human consciousness of the need of sacrifice. Is it a bit of an innate
instinct in our common human nature, that only through sacrifice can the
hurt of life be healed? However this be, it certainly is true, that the
touch of Him who gave His life clear out for men, that touch is the thing,
and the only thing, that can make music where there was only discord. It
is only His pierced hand upon weaver and web that touches ugly threads
into beauty as they are woven into the fabric of life. Only He can lead us
up out of the valley of death up to the road of life along the high
hilltops.

The Wilderness.

You remember, there were four experiences of suffering and sacrifice in
our Lord Jesus' life. The first of these was _the Wilderness Temptation_.
That rough road He took led straight to and through a wilderness. He was
tempted. He was tempted like as we are. He was tempted more cunningly and
stormily than we ever have been.

It was a pitched battle, planned for carefully, and fought with all the
desperateness of the Evil One at bay against overwhelming forces. It was
planned by the Holy Spirit, and fought out by our Lord in the Spirit's
strength. For forty full lone days it ran its terrific course. But our
Lord's line of defence never flinched. The Wilderness and Waterloo, those
two terrific matchings of strength, the one of the spirit, the other of
the physical, both were fought out on the same lines. Wellington's only
plan for that battle was to _stand_, to resist every attempt to break his
lines all that fateful day. The French did the attacking all day, until
Wellington's famous charge came at its close.

Our Lord Jesus' only plan for the Wilderness battle was to _stand_, having
done all to stand, to resist every effort to move Him a hair's breadth
from His position. That battle brought Him great suffering; it took, and
it tested, all His strength of discernment, and decision, of determined
set persistence, and of dependent, deep-breathed praying. And through
these the gracious power of the Spirit worked, and so the victory, full
joyous victory, came.

Now it comes as a surprise to some of us to find that the "Follow Me" road
leads straight to the same Wilderness. No, it is not just the same, none
of these experiences mean as much to us as they did to Him. They a