and uniqueness of mission. He feels Himself in union with His Father.1

This experience of the invading Life, awakening a consciousness of unique personal mission, brought with it, as an unavoidable sequence, the stress and strain of a very real temptation. The inner world of self-consciousness has strange watershed "divides" that shape the currents of the life as the mountain ridges of the outer world do the rivers. No new nativity, no fresh awakening, can come to a soul without forcing the momentous issue of its further meaning, or without raising the urgent question, how shall the new insight, the fresh light, the increased power be wrought into life? The deepest issues turn, not upon the choice of "things," but upon the choice of the kind of self that is to be, and the most decisive dramas are those that are enacted in the inner world before the footlights of our private theater. The temptation is described by the Evangelists in such conventional language and 1 Mark I. 10-II.

1

in such popular and pictorial imagery that its immense inner reality is often missed by the reader. This oriental, pictorial way of presenting the drama of the soul catches the western mind in the toils of literalism. The picture is taken for the reality. What we have here in the temptation, when we go into the heart of the matter, is the momentous choice of the kind of Person that is to emerge. It is the immemorial battle between the higher and the lower self within. It was the line of least resistance to accept popular expectation, to go forth to realize the dream of the age. A person conscious of divine anointing, fired with passionate loyalty to the nation's hopes, gifted with extraordinary power of moving men to new issues would feel at once that he had only to put himself forth as the expected Messiah in order to carry the enthusiastic people with him. Let him but come with the spectacular powers of the Messiah that was eagerly looked for, the power to turn stones to bread, to leap from the pinnacle of the temple without

injury, to break the Roman yoke and make Jerusalem once again the city of God's chosen people and success was sure to follow. God's ancient covenant was an absolute pledge to the faithful that He would in His own time make bare His arm and deliver His people. As soon as the anointed one appeared all the forces of the unseen world would be at his command and his triumph would be assured.

The appeal of a career like that is no fictitious "temptation." It is of a piece with what besets us all. It is out of the very stuff of nature. At some such crossroad we have all stood-with the issue of our inner destiny in unstable equilibrium.

Over against it, another "way" is set, another kind of life is dimly outlined, another type of anointed one is seen to be possible, another kingdom, totally different from the one of popular expectation, is descried. This kingdom of His spiritual vision cannot come by miracle

or by power; it can come only through complete adjustment of will to the will of the Father-God. This anointed one of His higher aspiration will be no temporal ruler, no political king, no spectacular wonder-worker. He will rule only by the conquering power of love and goodness. He will venture everything on sheer faith in the Father's love and on the appeal of uncalculating goodness of heart and will. This new kind of life that draws Him from the line of least resistance is a life of utter simplicity, which discounts what the world calls "goods," which draws upon an unseen environment for its resources and which expands inwardly, rather than outwardly, after the manner of the green bay tree. The new "way" that opens to His sight, and that beckons Him from all other ways of glory, is a way of suffering and sacrifice, a way of the cross. It offers itself not because self-giving is a better way than an easy, happy path, but because it is the only way by which love in a world like ours

can reach its goal; it is the only way by which the kingdom of God can be formed in the lives of men like us.

He came forth from those momentous days of inner struggle with the issue settled, and with the first step taken in the way of the Kingdom.

II

MAKING A LIFE

Our present-day age has a kind of passion for the study of developing processes. We do not feel quite at home with any subject until we can work our way back to its origin or origins and then follow it in its unfoldings, explaining the higher and more complex stages in terms of the lower and more simple ones.

That method, however, cannot be successfully used to unlock the secret of the gospels. We do not find beginnings here; we cannot follow genetic processes; we are unable to discriminate higher and lower stages of insight. We must launch out at the very start in mid-sea. What