The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah Vol 1 - Predestination

shelter of that great Bock over which its intenseness
had spent itself. Yet a very real temptation it
was, this provoking to the assumption of
successively lower grades of self-assertion, where
only entire self-abnegation was the rightful feeling.
Each suggestion of lower office (like the
temptations of Christ) marked an increased
measure of temptation, as the human in his mission
was more and more closely neared. And greatest
temptation it was when, after the first victory,
came the not unnatural challenge of his authority
for what he said and did. This was, of all others,
the question which must at all times, from the
beginning of his mission to the hour of his death,
have pressed most closely upon him, since it
touched not only his conscience, but the very
ground of his mission, nay, of his life. That it was
such temptation is evidenced by the fact that, in the
hour of Ids greatest loneliness and depression, it
formed his final contest, in which he temporarily
paused, like Jacob in his Israel-struggle, though,
like him, he failed not in it. For what was the
meaning of that question which the disciples of