The teaching of the Holy Ghost is not confined to warning us of danger. He has also many lessons of encouragement and consolation for usin the hour of temptation. Certain of these have already been considered, and those that we shall consider now, must be disposed of briefly. Perhaps some of us may take them up at another time as themes for further thought and meditation. Such an exercise would be of great profit, for Satan so constantly seeks to discourage us in the field, that we may be sure that it is the loving will of God to offset this by holding before us always that which will enhearten us, and fill us with somewhat of that "stern joy" of the battle which must ever thrill the true soldier in the discharge of his trust.
(1) Temptation is an advertisement to the soul that it is, at least in some degree, in the grace of God.
To forget this is always a cause of weakness. It is a common thing to hear the complaint, "Something must be wrong with me, or temptation would not come so persistently and in such manifold forms."
To see the fallacy that underlies this complaint, one has only to think of our Lord "in all points tempted like as we are."[12] No one was ever so beset with temptation as He was, and if constant temptation be a sign of something wrong within, then no one was ever quite so fargone from righteousness as was our Lord Christ Himself.[13]
Something is indeed wrong, from Satan's point of view, with the soul whom he besets with many snares. He is not satisfied with us. There is altogether too much divine love and power in our hearts to please him, and so he sets the battle in array against us. Surely it is a thankworthy thing, one that must bring great joy, to have the evidence that Satan regards us as his enemy.
Suppose no temptation assailed us,—what a terrible significance this would have! When we went to prayer, or to Communion, or about the commonplace, God-sent duties of the day, what a fearful thing it would be if Satan, observing us, were to reflect that he had no reason to attack us because, do what we might, he was sure that no harm could come to his kingdom through us!
There are men in the world, many of them, indeed, who have no temptations, and who cite the absence of such experience as proof that the Christian teaching concerning the devil and his work is false.
Alas, they know not their own misery, for "never art thou more strongly set upon than when thou believest thou art not at all assaulted."[14] Satan does not assail them, and in thus refraining he acts on the same principle as does a warring king who lays no siege to a fortress that is already in his possession, whose sometime defenders lie in his dungeons, chained hand and foot.
But as we saw in our first chapter when considering the terms of this warfare, the captivity that such untempted souls are enduring is no idle, passive confinement in some spiritual prison. These worldly souls are the most effective soldiers of him whose very existence and power they deny. He has no reason to unmask himself to them. He "leaves them alone, they are doing his work. The blasphemer is not tempted to blaspheme. Why should he be? He blasphemes already. The unbeliever is not tempted to unbelief,—he has lost his faith. The scoffer is no longer tempted to scoffing,—he scoffs enough already to satisfy even the 'god of this world.'"[15]
(2) Temptation is also an advertisement to the soul that God has some special mark of His love to bestow at the particular time.
Every occasion of temptation is pregnant with graces and heavenly favours which God has in store for the victor. Calling us forth to the battle is just His way of calling us to lay hold of some increase of strength He has prepared for us.
(3) Great comfort is laid hold of by the soul in contemplating that in temptation God is but furnishing us the opportunity to carry out His commands,—"Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven";[16] and, "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling."[17] Unless such commands are fulfilled there can be no redemption for us. God has done His part and done it perfectly. So far as His work is concerned, He could, when yielding up His soul on the Cross, most truly cry, "It is finished,"[18] for everything necessary for God to do in order that man might lay hold on salvation was accomplished. But man must have his part. Salvation can come to no soul that does not labour for it, and temptation is the opportunity definitely prepared and presented to us by a loving God that the work of the Cross may not for us have been wrought in vain. Therefore great consolation must come with every assault, and as we feel the weight and thrust of the awful conflict, let us joyfully cry, "Now is the accepted time; now is the dayof salvation! Why art thou so heavy, O my soul, and why art thou so disquieted within me! Look up and lift up your head, for your redemption draweth nigh!"[19]
(4) The greater and more prolonged the temptation, the greater should be our consolation. The fact that the assault is fierce and persistent gives the blessed assurance that the soul has been faithful in the little temptations. The tempter realizes that if he is to have us at all, it must be at great cost and labour; that we are not going to sell ourselves cheap.
(5) We sometimes hear men complain against God's justice because He permits souls to be so beset by the Evil One; but as a matter of fact his antagonism reassures us on this very point. Temptation is Satan's tribute to the divine justice. He is the Accuser of the brethren, and in tempting us he is acknowledging that he must have something real wherewith to accuse us at the Judgment.
(6) When strange, terrible, and unaccustomed flashes of temptation come, we learn with great joy that the tempter is puzzled concerning us. Our steadfast service of God has baffled him, and he can only experiment with us, as it were, hoping a weak point may by some means bediscovered. Such temptations, in many cases, mean that the tempter is working in the dark.
(7) Great comfort must be found in the thought of the victory that awaits us if we are faithful. This should not arise merely from the sense of relief at escaping a fall, but from the happy thought that in every such victory, great or small, Satan is weaker in my life than he was before, and God and His love are stronger. True, great conflicts may be still in store for me, but I have greater strength than ever before for meeting them and overcoming. So while the warfare continues, the soul grows keener for the struggle, and finds greater joy in it, because it realizes its strength, and rejoices, as does every strong man, to use it.
Many other points of consolation may be found in the spiritual combat, but these will suffice to show us how much of joy there is in the active, militant life of the Christian, if we only try to find it.
Let us, then, thank God for temptation, and if it presses us hard, let us rejoice the more, for it is His way of sending us the pledge of our peace with Him, the guerdon of His love.
How are we going to recognize all these lessons as they are presented by the Spirit? There is hardly time in the thick of the battle to pause to think these things out, as we have done in the quiet hour we have given to the reading of this chapter. The soldier cannot stop to draw calm conclusions, and to study the purpose and effect of tactical movements, when the enemy is thundering at the gate, and all but making his way in.
One simple suggestion may help us. Let us make a practice of studying our past temptations, as soldiers are wont to study the great military campaigns of history in order to learn methods of warfare. Go to some War College and see the eager young officers as they follow a skilled instructor, all poring intently over a diagram of some battle fought and won a century ago. "Here Napoleon made his mistake; there was the movement by which the field was won; that splendid manoeuvre turned the enemy's flank." They study every move, the effect it wrought, whether it failed or succeeded, and why. And thus, combined with their own practice, men learn the art of war.
In some such way let it be with us in the spiritual conflict. The School of the Holy Ghost is aWar College in which the campaigns of the armies of God and Satan are to be studied under the guidance of our divine Instructor. How constantly has the Church studied the great campaign prosecuted against Satan by our own great Captain in the wilderness! How much has been learned by the study of His methods of resistance and attack! The lives of the Saints, too, are but studies of military campaigns waged for God.
But perhaps most profitable of all will be the study of our own battles. Under the guidance of the Spirit, go back to some recent temptation, (always excepting scrupulously temptations against faith and purity); study its circumstance, how it arose, if it came through any fault of ours. Did we presumptuously run into occasion of perilous temptation? If not, what occasion did the enemy seize upon for his attack? Was there parleying with him? Did we meet it in the first moment with prayer and acts of faith, hope, love, contrition, and humility, or were these powerful weapons not brought to bear? Through it all, did we strive to keep our lines of communication with our headquarters and our base of supplies open by prayer? Or did we forget who our Leader was and grow panic-stricken? Can we recall the particular point at which downfallbegan? Or, if there was victory, what prayer, what thought, was it that imparted a sudden strength to the heart, and drove home the thrust that put the enemy to flight? Or what painful pressing on, inch by inch, forced him at last to fly the field? And when we beheld him fleeing, did we secure ourselves, and spike his guns, as it were, by fervent acts of gratitude to God who had given us the victory?
We may not be able to find answers to all these questions, but if in the beginning of such a study, we find only a few, well and good. We shall profit by them, and in the next temptation use the knowledge gained; and so shall we go on, gaining more and more knowledge out of the study of our own experience, and more and more faithfully putting that knowledge to use, until we become skilled and practised campaigners in the wars of the Lord; until, indeed, we become worthy to be enrolled among those of whom the Apostle speaks, "Who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil."[20]
All this while, however, we are not to neglect our study of the spiritual campaigns of others. In the pages of the Bible, in the lives of the Saints and holy men, in their own experiences that they have recorded for us in their spiritual writings, we can find innumerable things with which we can compare, and by which correct, the conclusions of our study of the principles of the warfare.
These are especially valuable when found in the biographies of the great servants of God, for in such records we find the theory actually worked out in the lives of men of like passions with ourselves.
A beautiful illustration of this is recalled from the life of that great champion of the Faith, Bishop Gray of Capetown. When in the midst of his contest with the heretic Colenso, when the Church and the world seemed combined against him, from one of his long wagon-journeys across the lonely African veldt, he writes, "I find great comfort in repeating the first three petitions of the Lord's Prayer." What a mighty weapon was that! Have we used it as did this servant of God?
[1] Ps. xxv, 8.
[2] Ps. xxxii, 9.
[3] Isa. liv, 13.
[4] St. John xiv, 26.
[5] St. John xvi, 13.
[6] "One does not arrive at virtue except through knowledge of self and knowledge of Me, which knowledge is more perfectly acquired in time of temptation, because then man knows himself to be nothing, being unable to lift off himself the pains and vexations which he would flee."—St. Catherine of Siena,Dialogue, p. 119. (Thorold Trans., London, 1907.)
[7]Imitation, I, xiii.
[8] Rom. vii, 15 and 19.
[9]Imitation, I, xiii.
[10] St. Matt. xi, 29.
[11]Imitation, I, ii.
[12] Heb. iv, 15.
[13] St. Luke says, "When the devil had ended every kind of temptation, he departed from Him until a convenient season."—Chap, iv, 13. "He was tempted throughout the forty days, and that what is recorded is merely an illustration of what took place. The enemy tried all his weapons, and was at all points defeated."—Plummer,Internal. Crit. Comment, in loc.
[14] St. Jerome, Epistle to Heliodorus.
[15] H. E. Manning,Sin and its Consequences, p. 173.
[16] St. Matt. vi, 20.
[17] Phil. ii, 12.
[18] St. John xix, 30.
[19] 2 Cor. vi, 2; Ps. xliii, 5; St. Luke xxi, 28.
[20] Heb. v, 14. The words of the author of the Epistle may be paraphrased somewhat as follows: "Who by reason of the possession of perfected habit have the mental faculties exercised (by a course of spiritual gymnastics), for discriminating between good and evil." See Westcott and Alfordin loc. St. Macarius, speaking of these spiritual gymnastics, says, "We have need of many and great efforts, of much secret and unseen toil, to be able thoroughly to sift and scrutinize our thoughts, and to exercise the languid senses of the soul to discern both good and evil. We must continually arouse and excite the debilitated members of the soul by a close application of our minds to God."—Institutes of Christian Perfection, Bk. I, ch. vii.
We may set before ourselves the methods of warfare that lead to spiritual victory; we may study them with all care and prayer; but the weakness of our nature being what it is, we must not expect to go through life without meeting defeat at the hands of the enemy. Even the Saints have not been immune from sin. When St. Paul spoke of sinners, he added, "Of whom I am chief."[1] St. John not only said, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves," but he added those terrible words, "If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar."[2]
A most necessary part, therefore, of our instruction in the school of the soldier is concerning the course we are to follow when we find we have fallen; how we are to find our way back from the captivity; by what means we are to renew our allegiance to our divine Leader.
We all know that the necessary thing isRepentance, but it is not everyone who understands what repentance is. In its essence repentance isnot an emotion; it is not a mere attitude of mind; it is a work, a serious work, and in many instances a hard work. In this chapter we do not purpose using any special method, scholastic or otherwise, of showing what this work is, or how it should be accomplished. In a simple, perhaps informal way, we shall, as the Holy Ghost may guide us, consider some of the aspects of the interior spirit we must cultivate if, after a fall, we would by true repentance come back to our loving Father.
It will help us if we recall one of the principles we thought of in the beginning of our study, when we were considering the terms and conditions of the warfare. We learned then that any fall into sin, in the measure of its seriousness, means, "not an idle, passive confinement in some spiritual prison, but an active enlistment in the armies of hell to fight against our Lord Jesus Christ."
When we think of this, we shall understand that the first consideration must be the speed with which we must hasten to release ourselves from the horrid bondage into which we have fallen. Two reasons for this haste suggest themselves.
(1) First of all, the soul that desires to love will make all speed in order that God's Name maybe relieved of the dishonour that befalls it when one of His family, one called by His name, signed and sealed as His soldier, renounces Him and gives in his allegiance to the Devil. We can brook no delay in such a matter. How keenly sensitive is human honour in like affairs! Let us not think that the divine honour is a duller thing than that indefinable possession men guard as the most sacred of all their moral treasures.
(2) Again, for our own sakes, no time is to be lost in returning to God. Sin is a poison. Every moment the poison remains in the system makes it more difficult to expel. It is absorbed and carried to every part of the body, working wherever it touches with deadly effect. If we should take a poisonous draught by mistake, how instant we should be that we might be rid of it. How much more insistent should we be that the poison whose effects are eternal should not be given time for its deadly work.
It is at this point that Satan's temptation comes in. "What is the use?" he whispers, "you will sin again." So does he try to discourage us, and the soul who thinks only of self is apt to stop and listen. Not so with him whose penitence has its root in love; not so with him who feels keenly that his act has dishonoured a loving, tender Father and Friend. He will not brood over hisfall, for he knows that every hour of such weak repining is an hour of added sin. He will sweep the temptation aside, and cry with strong resolution, "I will arise and go to my Father!" For he knows that if he waits, the numbing influence of the poison will creep into heart and will, and that after a time he may have neither desire nor power to repent.
We must not leave this subject, however, without finding a reply to Satan's suggestion,—"It is of no use; you will sin again." Many a soul has been entrapped by it. Many a one, through fear of future failure, has been held back from righting the present wrong. But to yield to such a fear is to commit a special offence against the Holy Ghost. No promise is more constant in Holy Scripture than that if we rise in the strength He will give us, go forward again, and set no special task for ourselves beyond just doing the best we can, He will keep and sustain us. "He shall give His angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways;"[3] "Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom."[4] "Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid;"[5] "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee."[6]
What completer assurance can we ask of the Holy Spirit than these repeated promises that God will fight for us, defend us on every side, and give us the victory? and he who fears to rise and go forward in the face of such assurances, is assuming that the Spirit has spoken falsely, or that God will not keep His word.
Our penitence, though prompt and swift, must withal be tranquil. True penitence allows no place for excitability.
(1) Because it grasps the truth that our fall was not a matter for surprise. It was only what we are to expect when, failing to use the grace God constantly offers, we venture upon our own strength. The only wonder and surprise should be that we do not fail a hundred times more frequently.
(2) Because surprise at falling indicates pride. We imagined we were strong. In self-righteousness we prided ourselves on our security, and we found that "security is the suburbs of hell." But true penitence knows no such pride, and therefore feels no surprise. The broken and contrite heart is, of necessity, the humble heart; it is the heart that thanks God with wondering gratitude for every hour of faithfulness to Him.
(3) Again, true penitence is tranquil becauseit is sure of acceptance at the Father's hands. Perturbation in its approach to God would indicate uncertainty of mind as to its reception; and this would mean a lack of trust in His promises. Consider again what the promises are: "Turn unto the Lord your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness";[7] "To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgivenesses, though we have rebelled against Him; neither have we obeyed the voice of the Lord our God;"[8] "Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out";[9] "The Blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin."[10]
Can the heart desiring to return to the allegiance of our God have any qualm of doubt in the face of such promises? If there is true penitence, rather will it return in a confident peace, knowing with a most assured certainty that "the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear Him."[11]
(4) The penitent soul turns to the Father in tranquillity because it knows that, though there has been grievous fall, yet all is not lost. He will give it another chance. In the Father's house are many mansions, and He is still preparing a place for us. All the treasures of HisKingdom may yet be ours if we come back in true sorrow. We broke our resolution, we wounded Him again in the same old sin, but He has not given us up. Even while we are wondering how we can ever face Him again, He is starting out on His way to the wilderness to seek the sheep that is lost. The stones of the way cut His Sacred Feet; the thorns and briars of sin tear His Hands as He bends down to extricate the entangled soul; but He cares naught for these if only He can fetch home again His banished one.
We are told that "The Saints are the sinners who kept on trying." They reign in glory to-day not because they were pure from sin, but because when sin entered in they did not forget the Father's tender love, but came back, calm and sure, to the peace of His pardoning embrace.
A heart that loves, and that has offended the object of its love, naturally longs for opportunity to make reparation. If our return to the divine allegiance after a fall is in the smallest measure sincere, we shall not have to spur ourselves on to a desire for reparation. It will spring up unbidden, strong and dominant. The heart will be restless and disquieted until opportunity be found.
This desire is not a supernatural gift only. Itbelongs even to the natural heart of man. We see it showing itself in little children. Mark the child who has offended a loving mother, who has wept out its heart-broken confession on her bosom, and been forgiven and soothed, and sent away restored to the mother's favour. How quick is that little one all day long to watch for and grasp opportunities of responding to her slightest wish. The little heart instinctively longs to make good the wrong of its disobedience. So with the heart that, having sinned against God, has repented. This is one of the best tests of true and godly repentance. If we long to repair the wrong, if we are quick to seize opportunities to honour Him whom our sin had dishonoured, there can be no question that we have sorrowed after a godly sort.
How does God meet this spirit on the part of the penitent?
Here enters the divine Love and says, "My child, you have indeed dishonoured Me in your sin, and wounded and crucified Me afresh. Your love demands an opportunity for reparation and my answering love will give it you. Go forth to this renewed battle; show that you can be a good soldier of the Cross. Fight valiantly that you may win even greater glory for My Name than that which was lost by your failure."
What more can the generous heart ask of God? Suppose when we came to Him in deep sorrow for our fault, He should say to us, "I will pardon you, but never will I give you the opportunity of serving me again. I trusted you once and you failed me. I will not trust you again."
Would our hearts desire heaven on such a condition? I think there is not one of us who would not feel that to stand in His presence among the redeemed on such terms would be the veriest hell. But the love of God deals not thus with sinners. "Though you have failed Me," He says, "I will trust you again. Go forth once more. My grace will make you strong; My love will hedge you round about."
The true test of penitence is amendment of life, but God does not require actual amendment before receiving us back into His service. What He demands is that we have a firm purpose of amendment. No man can say what he will do in the future. The future belongs to God. It may never be ours at all. It is ours at the present moment to make a resolution of amendment, and then to trust in God to fulfil in us this resolve.
From the nature of things we can never arriveat any mathematical demonstration of having amended. On the contrary, it is the invariable experience of those who are striving most earnestly in God's service, that the more they strive the less they think they are accomplishing.
St. Paul did not think when he was persecuting the Church that he was the chief of sinners. But when he had seen the Lord in the way, after he had been rapt to the third heaven, after he had suffered hunger and thirst, cold and nakedness, stripes and imprisonment, for His Name's sake, after he had given up everything that the world counted dear, after men saw he had attained to such sanctity that his name was one of power in all the Churches, then came to him the deep sense that he had accomplished nothing. He thought of himself as the chief of sinners, and counted that he had laid hold of nothing for God; that he must forget the things that were behind and reach forth unto the things that were before if he was to attain the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.[12] Men trembled at his words of burning rebuke, while he trembled lest having preached to others he himself should be a castaway.[13]
The experience of the great Apostle is shared by every soul who loves God, and the reason is plain.
The nearer we approach to our Lord, the more vivid is the contrast between our sin-stained souls and His perfect life. In the illumination of His near presence every fault stands out in awful prominence, and though there may not be a tenth of the sin that once filled our lives, our consciousness of it is a hundred-fold increased.
This must be the case if we are vigilant; and Satan finds in this condition much occasion for temptation. Let us illustrate. A certain man has all his life been a slave to the sin of anger. Every day he has been guilty of it. It becomes so common a thing in his life that he sins habitually, forgetting it five minutes afterward. He kept no account with himself. Had he been questioned about it, he could have given no idea of the frequency of the sin. This man is converted. He now fights hard, and maintains a careful watch over himself. Where sin formerly came and went without attracting notice, now every approach of it is keenly felt. At the end of the day he can recall distinctly a half-dozen falls, and he is tempted to think the case is hopeless. But last week there was a score of falls, though he scarcely remembered two of them at the end of the day. Now he remembers thrice that number with terrible vividness. But the increase of consciousness of sin is not the increase of sin.He is amending his life, though quite the contraryseemsthe case.
These considerations show us how untrue, of necessity, must be all our estimates of our progress in amendment. We have no outside point of view from the vantage-ground of which we can form a right judgment.
Therefore God says to the sinner, "Make your resolution in honesty of purpose; commit it to Me; do the best you can; above all things never violate your own conscience; and under no circumstances try to estimate your progress. If you should see that you had advanced, pride and presumption would arise to imperil you; if you could see no progress, the temptation to despair might unnerve you. Commit your ways unto Me; that will bring a man peace at the last."
We have said that the true test of penitence is amendment of life. We can hardly read this sentence without being conscious of temptation, for it is here that Satan brings in one of his most subtle suggestions. We can hear him taunting the soul: "Is this all you have to depend on for your hope of salvation? Have you ever really amended your life?"
And then with that mysterious power thatGod has given him for the trial of the Saints, and which he uses so pitilessly, he flashes upon the mirror of the mind old sins, sins of long ago, of which we repented in bitterness and tears, it may be; but which we took again to our hearts time after time. We made our Confession, we said to God in the presence of His priest (for he could not have absolved us without this), "I firmly purpose amendment." Then we went away and sinned again and yet again. After a time we came back to Confession. The same acknowledgment, the same promise,—and then the same old sin again.
Thus has life gone on, year after year, and yet we dare to look to God to take us back to our old allegiance. Satan tells us all this; and it loses nothing in the telling. It is very terrible, and the soul shrinks back appalled.
Then swift as thought the voice of the tempter comes again: "What is the use? You will sin again; why not give it all up?" Many a soul has followed his counsel to its eternal loss. It sounded plausible. It seemed to fit exactly into our own experience; and yet it was a lie.
It was a lie because in all that he said the tempter was deceiving us as to the true meaning of amendment. Satan's knowledge of what perfection is, is a very strange and wonderful thing.An angel from heaven could not set up a higher standard than he is able to do when he is seeking to discourage a struggling soul.Amendment does not mean perfection of life; it does not mean never committing some particular sin again. This was not what we resolved; it was not what we told God we purposed doing. What amendment does mean is, "to change for the better."[14] This is to be the spirit and resolution with which we return from the captivity of sin. It is all God asks.
But the tempter is not yet vanquished. Quick comes the whisper in the soul,—"Have you done even this? Has there been a change in your life for the better? Have you any assurance that your life is in the smallest degree better than it was a year ago?"
Staggering questions these, to the soul that is ignorant; but the soul that is wise, the soul that is really under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, has its answer ready.
"I do not know whether I have done this or not. I know not if my life is changed for the better, or if I am living more as Christ would have me live than I did a year ago. Moreover, I am not concerned to give you, God's enemy and mine, any answer to these questions. I have no account to render to you. But one thing I know;when I sin I can come back to Him. I kneel at His feet, I put my hands in His, I look up into those eyes brimming with love, and I say, 'Dear Lord, here is my poor heart all full of sin again; I lay it at Thy feet. Wash it in Thy Precious Blood, and make me strong to serve Thee better. I am sorry and I purpose to amend, but I am weak. Be Thou my strength; fight Thou against them that fight against me, and let me be the victor in the end.' I speak thus to Him, and leave it all with Him. I sin again, and again I come and kneel at His feet; and though I have to come daily to Him with the same burden, His embrace is never less tender, His words not less sweet, His eyes are ever full of the same old love.
"Am I amending my life? I know not,—He knows. Is my soul a saintlier thing than it was a year ago? I know not,—He knows. All I know is that I love Him, and I want to love Him more; and that when I think on Him my heart is at peace."
[1] 1 Tim. i, 15.
[2] 1 St. John i, 8 and 10.
[3] Ps. xci, 11.
[4] St. Luke xii, 32.
[5] St. John xiv, 27.
[6] Heb. xiii, 5.
[7] Joel ii, 13.
[8] Dan. ix, 9, 10.
[9] St. John vi, 37.
[10] 1 St. John i, 7.
[11] Ps. ciii, 17.
[12] Phil. iii, 13-14.
[13] 1 Cor. ix, 27.
[14]Vid.Webster.
In His instructions to His disciples, while not hiding from them what were to be the hardships and, as the world counts it, loss, that must accompany His service, our Lord was ever full of words of encouragement. He strove always to show them that while the following of Him was not what the natural heart would look for as a flowery path, yet, if understood aright, His yoke was easy and His burden light, and that those who bore it would find rest for their souls.[1]
Particularly in His last discourse to them He sets forth repeated words of encouragement. Twice He used those words of tender assurance, "Let not your heart be troubled," adding, "Neither let it be afraid."[2] Four times He declares in substance, "Whatsoever ye shall ask in My name, that will I do."[3] He assures them that He Himself will be diligent in praying the Father for them that the Blessed Comforter mayabide with them forever.[4] He declares that if they will but abide in Him, they will be able to bring forth eternal fruit of victory.[5] Sorrow indeed shall be theirs, but "Your sorrow shall be turned into joy," a joy that "may be full," a joy that "no man taketh from you."[6] And the great discourse concludes with a pledge of their final victory,—words of lofty encouragement that should ever be in the hearts of His soldiers, sustaining in them the spirit of a divine valour: "These things I have spoken unto you that in Me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world."[7]
Let us therefore, as the final study we are to make of the conditions and progress of our spiritual warfare, consider the grounds we have for encouragement at every stage of the battle.