The picture which our Lord leaves us of His struggle with the evil suggestions of His insidious foe teaches us many lessons, but the clearest of all are these—If we fight the world with its own weapons we soon put our hands out for using any others than those. If we seek what the world has to give we soon fall down and worship it, without having the least intention of doing anything of the kind. But besides giving a lesson for after ages, our Lord here indicates a particular resolve which shaped His action upon earth. It was this,—He would not employ His superhuman powers to force men to obey, or even to resist the violence which might be offered Him. He would not use them to assist in setting up the outward fabric of a Kingdom of God: and then, going a little further, He determines not to set up by His own hand any outward fabric of such a Kingdom at all. He was not to be an aspirant for worldly distinction—He was not to be the _leader of a cause_—He was not to be the founder of a school of philosophy or of any external form of religion at all. He came to do a _Work_, The Central Work of the History of mankind. He declared God, and declared Himself to be united to God, and that He would be with men for ever until the end of the world. But all that has to do with organisation, outward customs, effective sanctions, or the condensing of doctrines into the formulæ of creeds, belongs to the human side of religion, and men of different climes and ages must shape such matters for themselves. He came, as I have said, only to kindle the fire and to set a new force moving in the world. This Law,—that neither force nor worldly policy should be used to carry out the Work of God,—governs all our Lord’s acts. It need hardly be said that there is no miracle of our Lord’s recounted in the canonical Scriptures in which violence is either done or repelled. In the apocryphal Gospels we find endless legends of the retribution which our Lord brought on those who injured Him, especially in His boyish years. Neither do we ever find that our Lord so displays His signs or shapes His conduct, as to win from the crowd material support for the work He is carrying on. It was never more important for Him to win over the enthusiasm of the people than when He taught in Jerusalem in the week of the Passover: but no public miracle at all is then performed. It must have seemed strange to the disciples that He did not confound Pilate on his judgment seat, or Herod on his throne, but _we_ see that the whole meaning of His coming would have been lost if He had. The disciples however are not left at that time without some indication that His Divine power remained unimpaired—the withering of the fig-tree, and the foretelling to Peter that he should deny Him thrice, shewed them that Jesus was still the Lord. When the Lord in the hands of His enemies turned and looked upon Peter, how striking must have been the contrast between the Kingdoms of the earth and of God!