When we leave the external imagery, and come to the gist of the lesson, we find in it the truth which we have had before us over and over again.(70) A man’s belief is not _his_ belief and will not be effective for moulding his life unless his mind and his will have some part in the acceptance of it; and if his own endeavours were to be on a sudden superseded by Divine action, this would be inconsistent with that studious culture of man’s distinctive freedom which runs through the conduct of the world. If will and reason are to be dumbfounded by the interference of absolute power, why should men possess them or care to put them to use? As a fact, God _suggests_ but does not _compel_, and our Lord’s signs agree herewith. They emphasise His lessons, and witness for God to those who have eyes for Him—but men can reject the lesson, signs and all if they please. Let us imagine the form the Tempter’s arguments might take in the mouth of one like Milton’s Satan: “You wish,” he might suggest, “men to believe that your power comes from on high. Leave them no room for doubt. People about you look for a Sign from Heaven, such as Joshua worked in Ajalon, and Isaiah displayed in the days of Hezekiah. Beelzebub, they think, may work Signs on earth, but Heaven, they own, is God’s domain, and what is written in the skies carries God’s hand and seal. Shew men these Signs for which they ask, and display your wonders so as to strike men the most. Cures and works of mercy, witnessed by a few score people, create but little stir. Shew something that all Judea, or at least Jerusalem, can behold _at once_;—great emotions take strongest hold among men in a mass: display a comet or darken the sun; or, to begin with, stand on the pinnacle of the Temple—there is a tradition that there the Messiah should appear(71)—and in the presence of all the crowd hurl yourself into the Priests’ Court below.” To meet these thoughts suggested by the Tempter, there would rise in our Lord’s mind a crowd of arguments: some of these I have already ventured to imagine. If our Lord had displayed a Sign of overwhelming effect, and bidden men deny it if they could, He would have paralysed intellectual growth in mankind. Men had been gifted with faculties fitting them to explore and to judge of spiritual things: if these were curtailed of room for exercise, they would languish like limbs disused. Should He bar investigation in one-half of reason’s realm? Should He so appal mankind, as to enforce an involuntary acceptance of His claims? Would not this be putting fresh fetters on those whom He was come on earth to set free?