What Does Matthew 4:8 Mean?

(8) **An exceeding high mountain.**—Here, if proof were wanted, we have evidence that all that passed in the Temptation was in the region of which the spirit, and not the senses, takes cognisance. No “specular mount” (I use Milton’s phrase) in the whole earth commands a survey of “all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them.” St. Luke’s addition “in a moment of time,” in one of those flashes of intuition which concentrate into a single act of consciousness the work of years, adds, if anything could add, to the certainty of this view. Milton’s well-known expansion of this part of the Temptation (*Paradise Regained,* Book III.), though too obviously the work of a scholar exulting in his scholarship, is yet worth studying as the first serious attempt to realise in part, at least, what must thus have been presented to our Lord’s mind.