There are many theories respecting this remarkable history of the temptation. Some suppose the Evil Spirit to have assumed a visible form, and to have been appreciably present. But if we accept the statement we have quoted from the Epistle to the Hebrews, that our Lord was tempted in all respects as we are, it must have been an invisible and spiritual presence with which he contended. The temptations must have presented themselves to him, as to us, by thoughts injected into his mind. It seems probable that, of many forms of temptation which he passed through, the three of which we are told are selected as specimens, and if we notice we shall see that they represent certain great radical sources of trial to the whole human race. First comes the temptation from the cravings of animal appetite. Perhaps hunger--the want of food and the weakness and faintness resulting from it--brings more temptation to sin than any other one cause. To supply animal cravings men are driven to theft and murder, and women to prostitution. The more fortunate of us, who are brought up in competence and shielded from want, cannot know the fierceness of this temptation--its driving, maddening power. But he who came to estimate our trials, and to help the race of man in their temptations, chose to know what the full force of the pangs of hunger were, and to know it in the conscious possession of miraculous power which could at any moment have supplied them. To have used this power for the supply of his wants would have been at once to abandon that very condition of trial and dependence which he came to share with us. It was a sacred trust, not given for himself but for the world. It was the very work he undertook, to bear the trials which his brethren bore as they were called to bear them, with only such helps as it might please the Father to give him in his own time and way. So when the invisible tempter suggested that he might at once relieve this pain and gratify this craving, he answered simply that there was a higher life than the animal, and that man could be upborne by faith in God even under the pressure of utmost want. "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." How many poor, suffering followers of Christ, called to forsake the means of livelihood for conscience' sake, have been obliged to live as Christ did on the simple promise of God, and to wait. Such sufferers may feel that they are not called to this trial by one ignorant of its nature or unsympathetic with their weakness. And the same consolation applies to all who struggle with the lower wants of our nature in any form. Christ's pity and sympathy are for them. All who struggle with animal desires in any form, which duty forbids them to gratify, may remember that God has given them an Almighty Saviour, who, having suffered, is able to succor those that are tempted.