The principle that room is to be left for man’s will to act in determining his creed is observed not only in all the New Testament but throughout the spiritual history of mankind. Towards the close of the third chapter I have remarked on the analogy between an overwhelming manifestation, such as a Sign from Heaven, and a rigorous demonstration that Christ’s revelation is of God. Men have at times cried out both for one and the other; but if what they demand had been given them, the higher knowledge would have been discontinuous, with uncertainty on one side of a line and absolute certainty on the other. There would have been rigid dykes, as of granite, crossing the field of spiritual thought, which would have baulked our progress. The Laws which I have stated concerning Signs are steadily observed throughout the canonical Scriptures, although the writers of the books knew nothing of any such Laws. The Apocryphal Gospels on the other hand violate these Laws at every turn. This opens out almost a new line of argument on internal evidence. Is not the coincidence strange, supposing that the writers allowed play to their fancies, that all the four Evangelists should have uniformly refrained from introducing any miracle worked merely for miracles’ sake; or anyone which served to minister to the bodily wants of the worker; or which was employed either to enforce submission or to punish hostility? Is it not also strange that neither in the Gospels nor the Acts have we any instance of any public display of power such as should awe the crowds into belief against their wills? In this chapter I have considered the series of Temptations, with reference to their bearing on the miracles. I have tried to shew that they supply insight into our Lord’s way of solving the problem of introducing the infinite element without causing the finite to disappear. But this is only a student view; and the lesson which the church has always drawn from them is of infinitely greater practical worth. The heads of this lesson are: that the great prizes of life presented themselves to Jesus as they do to us; that they glittered in His eyes as they do in ours; that they offered themselves to His grasp as they sometimes do to ours, and were deliberately renounced by Him as hollow, compared with the blessing of knowing and doing the will of God. Without this record, could we have conceived our Lord as being “Man of the substance of His mother born in the world”? Might we not have looked on Jesus Christ as only a manifestation of Deity, clad in outer human guise, but without human affections; visible indeed to men’s eyes, but destitute of a pulse which beats in unison with theirs? This error would have lodged Christianity in mens’ heads instead of in their hearts and would have destroyed its universality and force; and this error, the narrative of the Temptation—whether we regard it as apologue or fact—is alike effectual to dispel.