The Temptation (Continued)

Almighty God, we would begin the year in thy strength, and in all the hope of thine infinite grace. Not one day would we live without thee, every morning would we be foand at thy gates, and every eventide with a new song upon our lips. This is our purpose, how much greater is thine intent concerning us. Thou hast given us this lifting up of heart: we speak not in view of our own inspiration, our tongue utters what thou hast already told the heart to say. Let thine Amen be greater than our prayer, yea let thine answer overflow the letter of our petition as the waters cover the channels of the sea. From this day forth may we all be thine, may no man call himself his own, may the cross be the object of our love, and the kingdom of Christ the supreme hope of our life. Forgetting the things that are behind, may we press towards the things that are before — better things, higher and altogether greater; by a mighty and daily constraint of the heart may we be drawn onward to the things which are full of God and therefore full of heaven.

We give thee unanimous and unfeigned thanks for all the mercies of the year to which we have said farewell. Within that year we have wedded the bride, and rocked the cradle, and dug the grave; we have heard the birds sing and seen the flowers die, and now it is gone away with the story of our temptation and our sin, our many prayers and our feeble efforts. The Lord help us in the year that is now coming to be nobler in every purpose, more steadfast in every grace: may we be marked in our whole life by a broader and stronger charity, and by a constancy which no wind of temptation can shake. Where there is particular fear, may there be particular help, and if anyone is desiring this night to offer special prayer for special mercies in circumstances critical, full of danger and distress, the Lord hear us on the behalf of such, and send gracious answers of light and hope to suffering children of men.

The Lord hear us in all our prayers, and cause us to love his altar, with a higher affection. The Lord save us from all delusions, all vain notions, all unworthy purposes, and fill us with a consuming desire to know himself and his truth more profoundly. If any man have a quarrel against any, let the quarrel cease just now. If any man have an uncharitable thought about his fellow-man, let the heart be cleansed of that evil thought just now. If any man have consciously done wrong to any fellow-creature, work in him an immediate desire to apologise and repair and repent both towards man and towards God. Wherein our purposes are right, strengthen them every one: wherein our counsel is founded in vanity and marked by feebleness, the Lord turn it upside down and visit us with the darkness of confusion.

The Lord pity us, the Lord forgive us. Our prayer is not of our own utterance, nor is it offered in our own name. We pray in the name of the Priest, the Intercessor, the One Mediator between God and man. Remembering his cross, his precious blood, his infinite sacrifice, we commit our prayer to his priesthood, and we know the answer will be great and sure. Amen.

The Temptation {continued).

Let me ask your attention for the third time to the record of our Saviour’s temptation, which we have just read. Already we have twice assembled around this incident: in the first case making ourselves acquainted with the precise nature of the temptations addressed to our Lord, and in the second instance making ourselves acquainted with the answers which were returned to those subtle and terrific assaults. Our purpose to-night will be limited to the setting forth of certain practical lessons suggested by the conflict, which may apply to ourselves in all the weary strife and painful discipline and all but incessant temptations of our own earthly course.

Shall I startle you very much if I say that there is some comfort to be derived even from temptation? Shall I for the moment depart from the usual course of preachers and instead of dwelling on the dark side of temptation, show you how light comes in that black hour? There are times enough in the year when I may seek to afflict you with considerations that pain the soul; what if, for the time being, we get lifted in tenderer mood altogether, and speak light to those who sit in darkness? This is of the Lord’s doing and it is as marvellous in our eyes as it is consolatory to our heart.

For example, temptation implies a measure of goodness on the part of the man who is tempted. The orchard robber does not go into the orchard in the winter time: he says there is nothing to be gained; why skulk behind the hedge, why watch the doors of the house, why lay plots and schemes for the robbery of this orchard? There is not one particle of fruit to be had upon all these winter-bound branches. The robber of orchards comes in fruit time; it is the fruit that tempts him; it is the fruit that is worth having; he does not want the barren branch, how great and far-reaching soever it may be; he wants the ripening fruit — for that his fingers itch.

Is it not so, in some degree, with regard to the assault of the enemy? There is some virtue he would pluck from us, there is some noble temper he would spoil, there is some high desire he would mar, there is some meditated prayer just taking wing for Heaven that he would turn aside. Reflect, then, that your temptations may be, from the diabolical side, but so many indications that you are worth tempting.

Then let us once for all get rid of the delusion that temptation is sin That thought has troubled many an honest heart. A man feels himself

Strongly drawn in a wrong direction, and he says, “I am a very bad man.” Once let a man’s hope in himself through God fail, and he will be the very thing that he fears. The temptation doubles itself in its breadth and momentum by suggesting that itself is sin. The best are the most tempted; we have already seen that in the course of our exposition, when we read these words together, one after the other in sharp succession — “This is my beloved Son. Then was Jesus led up of the spirit to be tempted of the devil.” We all remember instances in which the thought that temptation was sin utterly took the sunshine out of our life. You are tempted to take that drink that has ruined you. You say, “I have as good as done it; there is a pull at my heart which wants me to do it, and if I have already drunk it in my heart I may as well drink it with my lips. I have committed my sin spiritually, I may as well perfect it externally.” Beware lest you give temptation sharpness, leverage, and the use of all the mechanical powers by considering that temptation is itself sin. Do not say, “What a bad heart I have, or I could not be tempted so;” on the contrary, reason thus — “What a strong enemy I have, how he plagues me, and does he play his game for nothing? Is he laying all his plots and schemes and plans that he may win a rotten straw?” Through the force and urgency and number of your temptations, see the grandest side of your nature. Who wastes his guns on empty citadels? Who wastes his fire in burning up that which is itself valueless for all the purposes of cleansing and purification? In proportion as you are great and noble and heavenly-minded will be the force and persistency of the diabolic assault.

There is yet another streak of comfort in this dreary discipline. The struggle excites ifiterest in two worlds. In this great battle you find the devil, you find humanity, and you find angels. The last verse reads, “Then the devil leaveth him, and behold angels came and ministered unto him.” We are watched. Seeing then that we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses — what then? Let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith. “Then was Jesus led up of the spirit into the wilderness.” Then he will be alone. He will be struck at where there is no friend to help him. Not so! Put the first verse and the last together. No man was there, but all God’s angels thronged the assaulted Christ. Lord, open our eyes that we may see the reality of things. We think we are alone when all high Heaven is round about us, and every angel is on guard to defend our life and consummate our purpose. We are blind, we have mistaken the ceiling for the sky, and walls of our own building have we mistaken for thine unmeasured horizon. Give us accuracy and farness of vision.

How differently — let us dream a moment, wildly, almost blasphemously — the verse might have finished, namely thus, “Then the devil leaveth him, and behold his angels, black as himself, pitiless as his own heart, came and dragged him away.” O wild dream, nearing the border line of blasphemy, yet not without its wholesome suggestion, for what was impossible in the case of Christ is pos.’^ible in the case of every one of us, for we are so frail, so short-sighted, so open to seduction and false lure. Shall it be said of me, of you, “Then the devil leaveth him, and sent hounds of hell to drag the wounded soul into the pit. Then the devil having bruised his heart and thrown him down and cast him to the ground with infinite superiority of strength, left him to be fetched home by some hound of hell “? I hit my body in the eye, I blacken both my eyes, I push and thrust sharp knuckles into my eye, lest, having preached to others, I myself become a castaway. What I say unto one I say unto all — Watch. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. We fight not with flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against forces impalpable and all but irresistible.

I cannot look then at the temptation in this light, without seeing somewhat of the grandeur of MAN. Two worlds contend for his possession; the angels want him, and the damned host gnash their teeth upon him and long to devour him. What is he? Some dying insect; some frail, animated dust, some little creature that can be consumed utterly as to his soul as well as to his body, before the moth? It is not so that I read the biblical account of my own nature; the divinity stirs within me, I can utter vast prayers, I can stretch my supplications onward till the stars fall under them, like earth-lamps dimly seen through infinite mists. Do not tell me that I am little and mean and worthless; I know what I am when the devil would give all he has to get me, and when Christ laid down his life that I may never die. Not the metaphysician, not the psychologist, not the philosopher, can take from me by long and weary-winding reasoning my grandeur. I feel it, I know it; when the long-strained argument has ceased its murky and confusing eloquence, I rise and say, “I feel that I am the bearer of the image of the divine.” My consciousness cannot be argued down, my vocabulary may be exhausted, my intelligence may be put to shame by the superior knowledge of many a disputant, but when all that can be said on the other side has completed itself in many a weary period, my consciousness rises and says, “Thou art a king’s son; claim thine heirship and insist on the possession of thine inheritance.” Tell me if you have not had moments of consciousness in which you have forgotten your littleness and have stood out in heroic breadth and grandeur, transformed, your very clothes shining with light and your face aflame with a lustre not thrown upon it from any external lamp.

Thus would I gather comfort from the temptations of life. Doubt yourself if your temptations are few. The man who sleeps in a wooden hut, with not one thing of any value whatever upon his person or within his residence, says, “I hear a good deal of burglaries and felonies of one kind and another, but do you know I have no faith in the rumours. / am never assaulted, / have never seen a burglar, no man ever interferes with me; I fancy, therefore, that all this talk about the burglarious invasion of houses is folly.” Can you account for that man’s never having a visit from a burglar? How would you account for his exemption from that social pest? Instantly you would say, “That man has nothing worth taking; burglars do not waste their time on such, they go where the prey is.” So I say to thee, my tempted friend, wearying thyself out with much vivisection and cross-examination of thy poor tortured heart. If the temptations are many, it may be because the possessions are great. Take this view of the assault and strengthen thyself in God.

Beware of the temptation which comes with an IF in its mouth. If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down. Suspicion may be the beginning of ruin. Suspect your sonship and you are undone at once. For a moment begin to wonder if you are really a child of God, and the battle is half won by the enemy. The old divines used to preach the grand and savoury doctrine of assurance. They used to say, faith is the milk, assurance is the cream. With puritanic zeal, but with a divine enthusiasm, they used to urge us to claim all the enjoyment and security of distinct assurance. Have we escaped from their terms and from their theology? Then we have escaped from a rich banquet, that we might feed ourselves upon the empty wind. Recall the great and noble words of Scripture — “Now are we the sons of God, and it doth not appear what we shall be; if sons, then heirs, heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ.” There is substance in that talk; it is not a coloured vapour, it is the substance of the soul’s distinct recognition of certain divine securities which God has promised never to withdraw from the faithful and loving soul. Can you “Abba, Father,” cry? Can you ever with your soul’s tenderest trust say, “God is my Father “? Then, never let the devil write his big and hideous if upon your faith. Fatherhood like God’s does not change with the wind; this divine relationship is not a question of the barometer; this acceptance on the part of the divine Father is not a question of your physical sufferings and moods and indigestions and divers infirmities. Remember that you built your house upon a rock, and do not suppose any fog can overthrow it. If you had built the edifice of your life upon the shifting fog it would not have been worth one moment’s purchase. If your foundation is right, the air will presently be clear. You know what visitations of fog we have had, and suppose anyone had said to you, “All the great buildings of London are now in imminent danger,” you would have smiled at the childish suggestion. Why? Because nothing has interfered with the foundations of those buildings. Fogs break no slates, fogs cannot even

Io6 THESE SAVINGS OF MINE.

break the glass; how then should fogs shake the rocks and make the towers totter?

It is even so with our spiritual life. These temptations and times of depression, sad feeling, low-heartedness, and want of courage, are but the fogs that come for a moment. You are founded on a rock, then lift up your heads — the fogs will pass and every star will be found to be firm in its place. As for those of you who serve the devil, let me tell you that you are either under the dominion of God or you are under the dominion of God’s enemy. Do not suppose that there is a third master. It is God or mammon. Do not suppose that if you escape religion you escape all service — bondage — you are the slaves of the devil, or you are the slaves of Christ. Let me tell you one or two things about your master. He was once mine and I know him. I have studied his game. I know every move he makes. He has only three moves with their variations on the chess-board of life. He has only 07ie world to offer, and he offered it to Christ. “All these things,” said he, “will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.” All — a little ALL! It appeared great to his eye, as it appears great to our eye, but it is a little all, and how infinitely little it must have appeared to him who made all the worlds! If you have devised a little light that will shine ten yards further than the light which somebody else has devised you will have column after column in the newspaper about it, and it will appear a great light. But if you had made one single sunbeam, you would laugh at the greatness of your supposed illustrious flame. If you could see all the solar system and all the outlying stellar universe, circuit beyond circuit, flame beyond flame, and then be called to look at some little jet of man’s contrivance, you would smile at the mighty epithets which he applies to its definition. The devil looks upon the world and says “All these things will I give thee” to a Man who made the universe, and stands above it, and sets on the proudest sun the imprint of his footstep. Do not be deceived by nearness and by small proverbs and by immediate possessions. Have bread to eat the world knoweth not of; have the high acquaintanceship of God, and then the petty fellowship of earthly princes will dwindle into its proper insignificance.

I will tell you another thing about your master which will make you ashamed of him. He trade.’^. upon my weakness; he never comes to me in my strength; for whenever he sees me a little weary, then he comes with all his force. When I have fasted forty days and forty nights and become conscious of painful hunger, then he slouches up and tells me his little plan for bread-making out of stones. When I feel tired at night, all my energy gone out of me, he comes to me and says, “You could do a great deal better than this, you know, if you left the pulpit and took up with another line of life that I could put you into — why, there is no telling what you might do.” And I say, “I do feel tired, I wish I could escape this weariness.” And he says, with pleasant voice, lowered into a soft minor, so dear to true confidence, “I can show you how.” The beast never faced me when I was strong, he was afraid of me when the God shone in my face, but whenever he has caught me weak and depressed and sad, with tears in mine eyes, at the grave-side, at the bedside of my dying friend, then he has come to me and said, “I can get you out of all this.” Be ashamed of such a coward, disown him, write a better name on your life-banner — he is a. coward, a liar, a murderer from the beginning, a separater of brethren, a deceiver, a usurper. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.

And as for you, poor soul, barely living, I want a word with you at the opening of this year. You are a misunderstood man; persons come to you and say that you ought not to do this, and ought not to do that, and you know it well enough, and their exhortation is but so much vitriol poured into an open wound. They call you a bad man and they have no hope in you, and everybody has left you now but your mother, and sometimes you think she is going too, but if she goes out at one door she will come back through another. When a man’s mother leaves him, no angel can come to minister unto him; he is ready then for the hounds that drag him down. Shall I set myself up against you and boast and triumph over you? No. Why? Because you have been sorely tempted, and I may not have been tempted so sorely. It took you a long time to fall; I might have fallen in half the time: who am I then that I should taunt you and mock you? Be it far from me to practise this kind of reproach — it is the meanest use of morality.

And you have lived a poor, poor life and are next to nothing to look at now from a spiritual point of view, and you are going almost to give up. Don’t. The friends around you know what temptations you have fallen into, but as Robert Burns says in one of the sweetest of his poems,

“They know not -what’s resisted.”

We see only one aspect of a man’s life. When he tumbles flat down in the mud we say, “We always knew it,” — but when he is just going along the road, staggering, drunk but not with wine, almost in hell, they know not what has been resisted. There is one judge and his name is God, and if we do our utmost in his strength, he will count our purposes temples and our desires shall be precious to him as accomplished facts.