shining being was a Son of God in his splendour, his power and his liberty. No one had ever called Jesus the Son of God since Gabriel had announced it years ago, and Zacharias and Elizabeth and Simeon and the shepherds had echoed the cry. But that was long ago and all who had heard the story had agreed that a mistake had been made somewhere. This was the son of the carpenter, royal if you please but thoroughly human and, if the truth be told, not much of a prince. How well He knew the common opinion, and here was this glorious angelic being ramming it home!

But there steals into His mind the memory of a whole company of people, the Chosen of God, who had also been led into a wilderness, and found nothing to slake their thirst but water, or satisfy their hunger but manna. This was one of His Father's ways, designed to drive home the great lesson that the spirit was more important than the flesh, and the Bible more necessary than the dinner table. He would learn that lesson well, that in the days to come He would never question His Father's love, when food was short and beds hard to come by, and money non-existent!

What was this? 'Command these stones that they be made bread' ... ah, but the power with which He had been but lately entrusted was for the blessing of others, not Himself. If He once descended to use it to help Himself He would end up as Gehazi, a leper, or a Solomon better housed than His God. The time would come when He would make loaves by the thousand, but they would be eaten by others, not Himself. Twice would He show that the Son of Man could make bread in the wilderness, but not thrice. How vile was this insinuation that His Father was not looking after Him properly; His soul was well fed and full of meat. He understood well His Father's ways, as had Moses. His body? All in good time the Angels would feed Him as they had Elijah: but in the meantime He had more important matters in hand; there was a world to be saved,