die, but which none of His friends admitted, and none of the authorities and skilled interpreters in His country admitted?  Was it not, after all, possible that His kingdom might be established by other means?  We can see but a small part of the force of these temptations, but If the presence of those august figures intensified the normal temptation of this period, their presence was also a very effectual aid against this temptation.  In their presence His anticipated end could no longer be called death; rather the departure, or, as the narrative says, the Exodus.  The eternal will and mighty hand which had guided and upheld Moses when he bore the responsibility and toil of emancipating a host of slaves from the most powerful of rulers would uphold Jesus in the infinitely weightier responsibilities which now lay upon Him.  Elijah, also, at a crisis of his people’s history, had stood alone against all the might and malignity of Jezebel and the priests of Baal; alone, and with death staring him in the face, he confessed God, and, by his single-handed victory, wrought deliverance for the whole people.  Their combined voice, therefore, says to Jesus, “Banish all fear; look forward to your decease at Jerusalem as about to effect an immeasurably grander deliverance than that which gave freedom to your people.  Do not shrink from trusting that the sacrifice of One can open up a source of blessing to all.  Steadfast submission to God’s will is ever the path to glory.”

But not only must our Lord have been encouraged and heartened by recalling the individual experiences of these men, but their presence reminds Him of His relation to them in God’s purposes; for Moses and Elijah represent the whole Old Testament Church.  By the Law and the Prophets had God up to this time dealt with men; through these He had revealed Himself.  But Jesus had long since recognised that neither Moses nor Elias, neither Law nor Prophets, were sufficient.  The Christ must come to effect a real mediation between God and man; and Jesus knew that He Himself was the Christ.  On Him lay the task of making the salvation of the Jews the salvation of the whole world; of bringing all men to Jehovah.  It was under pressure of this responsibility that He had searched the Scriptures, and found in the Scriptures what those had not found—­that it was necessary that Christ should suffer and so enter into glory.

Probably it was not so much any one passage of Scripture which had carried home to the mind of Jesus that the Christ must die.  We may seek for that in vain; it was His perception of the real needs of men, and of what the Law and the Prophets had done to satisfy these needs, that showed Him what remained for the final Revealer and Mediator to accomplish.  The Law and the Prophets had told men that God is holy, and men’s blessedness, even as God’s blessedness, lies in holiness.  But this very teaching seemed to widen the breach between men and God, and to make union between them truly hopeless.  By the law