Jesus knew full well the fact of this national hope. It had been installed into His mind from childhood. He had pondered over it often during the time of His wanderings and sojourn in foreign lands. The occult legends, however, make no mention of His having ever thought of Himself as the Messiah until he was about to re-enter His own land after His years of foreign study and ministry. It is thought that the idea of His being the long expected Messiah was first suggested by some of the Essenic teachers, when He rested with them for awhile before appearing before John the Baptist. It was pointed out to Him that the marvelous events surrounding His birth indicated that He was a marked individual destined to play an important part in the history of the World. Then why was it not reasonable to believe that that role was to be that of the Messiah come to sit on the throne of His father David, and destined to bring Israel from her now obscure position to once more shine as a bright star in the firmament of nations? Why was it not reasonable that He was to lead the Chosen People to their own? Jesus began to ponder over these things. He had absolutely no material ambitions for Himself and all His impulses and inclinations were for the life of an occult ascetic. But the idea of a redeemed and regenerated Israel was one calculated to fire the blood of any Jew, even though the element of personal ambition might be lacking in him. He had always realized that in some way He was different from other men, and that some great work lay ahead of Him, but He had never understood His own nature, nor the work He was to do. And it is not to be wondered that the talk among the Essenes caused Him to ponder carefully over the idea expressed by them. And then the wonderful event of the dove, and the Voice, upon the occasion of His baptism, seemed almost to verify the idea of the Essenes. Was He indeed the long-expected Deliverer of Israel? Surely He must find this out--He must wring the answer from the inmost recesses of His soul. And so, He sought refuge in the Wilderness, intuitively feeling that there amidst the solitude and desolation, He would fight His fight and receive His answer. He felt that He had come to a most important phase of His life's work, and the question of "What Am I?" must be settled, once and for all,--then and there. And so He left behind Him the admiring and worshipful crowds of John's following, and sought the solitude of the waste places of the Wilderness, in which He felt He would come face to face with His own soul, and demand and receive its answer. * * * * *