07 - Meditation 7
MEDITATION VII.
“LEAD us NOT INTO TEMPTATION, BUT DELIVER US FROM EVIL.”
“BEHOLD, thou art made whole; sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.” It was with these words that our Lord exhorted a man whose body he had cured of the palsy, and whose soul he had healed of the more deadly malady of sin, when afterwards he met him in the temple at Jerusalem. And on another occasion, when the Jews brought to him a woman taken in adultery, and he had compelled those designing hypocrites to go away, being convicted in their own consciences, he addressed the unhappy criminal, saying unto her, “Where are these thine accusers 1 hath no man condemned thee?” “ No man, Lord!” answered the woman, ashamed and confounded. And Jesus, who came “ not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved,” then said, “ Neither do I condemn thee;” but immediately he added, “Go, and sin no more.” Now as the Word of God is always perfectly consistent, and never contradicts itself, we here find the Saviour, after permitting us to say in our prayers, “ Forgive us our debts,” directing us immediately to add, ’-’Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” The reason is, as we have already said in our preceding meditation, that the pardon which God bestows, must necessarily be a sanctifying pardon. He who asks for and obtains the pardon of his sins, desires also to obtain deliverance from his sins; he demands of God the strength to renounce them for ever, and to live to the glory of him who redeemed him at so great a price.
Bat how many obstacles be has to surmount! how many difficulties to overcome! how many enemies to combat! how many sacrifices and sufferings to submit to! how many crosses to bear with patience before he reaches the destination towards which his heavenly calling in Christ Jesus has directed his footsteps! Placed in a world which sin has overrun on every side; exposed to the corrupting influence of the spirit of darkness; carrying about in himself a heart prone to sin; finding “ a law in his members which wars against the law of his mind;” sinful man, even after he has asked for and obtained pardon, walks continually upon the edge of a precipice Who will uphold him there in security? God, my brethren, God alone who has saved him from ruin can still protect him; God alone can finally secure to him a complete and everlasting 1 triumph over the enemies of his eternal repose! This Divine protection, the work of grace, and this delightful prospect, are just the object of the petition which we have to meditate upon this day, “ Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
Temptation, the means of escaping it, the deliverance promised to us, in other words, the enemy, the conflict, the victory, are the subjects which shall successively claim our attention.
Lord! one of the most dangerous temptations to which we can be exposed, is that of hearing thy word with lightness and indifference. Oh! expose us not to this temptation; for then, we feel, we should have no strength to fight against the rest, and we should inevitably fall before them. Lord! be our strength! be our deliverance! Amen.
Some persons have found a difficulty in the words of our text, “ Lead us not into temptation.” Has not God, it has been asked, declared in his word, that he “ tempteth not any man; that no man when he is tempted should say, I am tempted of God.” This expression, then, it has been added, must have a meaning different from its ordinary signification; and hence some translators, or rather commentators, have rendered it, Let us not fall into, abandon us not to, temptation. My brethren, it is always an evil method of explaining the Bible not to allow it to speak for itself, but to make it say something different from what -its language naturally expresses. This method, to which, unhappily, men too often have had recourse, has only multiplied difficulties, and engendered dangerous abuses and pernicious errors.
Thus, as we find it here literally in the original, expose us not to temptation, lead us not into temptation, why should we weaken or change the sense of this word by an unfaithful paraphrase? Is it to avoid the objection which I have noticed? But since it is true that not a hair of our head can fall to the ground without the permission of the sovereign authority of God; since the most insignificant event of our life is foreseen by his divine prescience, and directed by his good pleasure, why should we not ask God to put away from us occasions of falling, and not to place us in circumstances which would infallibly expose us, whether internally or externally, to powerful and dangerous temptations? Why should we not ask God to turn away our footsteps from paths where there lie perilous precipices 1 In a word, why should we not say to him in our prayers, as Jesus Christ directs us, “Lead us not into temptation?” It is an inestimable favor which he permits us to ask our heavenly Father; it is the object of the supplication of the Psalmist, “ Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity.” In the other sense, on the contrary, we voluntarily deprive ourselves of the privilege of asking this grace of God; we inlreat him not to remove from us the temptation, the danger, but to save us when the temptation has already assailed us, and the danger is imminent; not to preserve us in time from falling into the snares of sin which so easily envelop us, but to draw us out of them when we are already entangled in them on all sides. Ah! which of us can so far count upon his own strength, or rather is so far insensible of his danger, that he has not reason earnestly to desire to be spared this terrible trial? Or which of us can count, with sufficient certainty, upon a continual miracle of grace ever interposing, just at the critical moment, to save him from a fall, when he is already tottering on the verge of the precipice? We do not mean that in such a case the believer has no longer any resource, and that the petition in our text no longer affords him either strength or hope; God forbid! Nothing is further from our thoughts. This petition may and ought then to be the cry of his soul, and it shall not ascend in vain to that God who saves and delivers. Hence we do not exclude from this petition the restricted sense upon which we have offered these remarks; all that we wished to establish, was, that it expresses but a part of the assistance which we are authorized to demand of God with reference to temptations; and that in this place, as in every other, we ought to receive the terms of Scripture as they have been given us by the Spirit of truth. In order to enter with some precision into our subject, it will be necessary to determine the limits of it by a second observation. There are men who, properly speaking, are strangers to temptation, and who, consequently, never feel the need of offering up the prayer which we are considering. Think not, however, that I have here in view persons who are so far emancipated from sin, so far raised above its assaults, so righteous and holy, that they have no longer any thing to fear, or any reason to cry unto God from the midst of danger, “Lead us not into temptation.” No, we believe not in the existence of such men upon this earth. Those whom we have in view stand just on the opposite confines of the moral world at the other extremity of the scale of accountable beings.
They are men who are so unhappy as not yet to know the criminality of sin in the eyes of God, and the terrible nature of its consequences.
These persons, I repeat, are strangers to temptation. Temptation, in fact, supposes the existence of two forces opposed to one another; the one drawing us towards an object, because it is pleasing to some inclination of our nature; the other drawing us away from that object, because it is marked with the Divine reprobation, and as such we fear it. There is, therefore, attraction on the one side, and resistance on the other. Now, in the persons whom we have pointed out, the first of these forces alone is found; the second has no existence; for, far from fearing sin, as provoking the wrath of God, and bringing in its train the most terrible evils, they, on the contrary, love it and take pleasure in it, because it is agreeable to their corrupt and imregenerate nature; they seek in it an element which they imagine will appease their burning thirst; instead of drawing from the fountain of living Avaters, “ they drink in iniquity like water,” according to the forcible expression of Holy Writ.
What temptation can there be to a man of such a character? Does it require perseverance on the part of Satan, the tempter, to induce him to separate himself from God? He already lives at an immeasurable distance from, and in habitual forgetfulness of his Creator. Does he need to aim at persuading him to cast off his allegiance to God, as he did our first parents in Eden? The man has never bowed his heart nor his will to that allegiance; he obeys only his own passions or the prince of darkness.
Satan finds his work already done; why should he seek to bring under his bondage a being that already serves him. or to bind and reduce a victim which already belongs to him? What temptations can such a man feel from the world?
He is “ of the world,” as St. John says; he has the spirit of the world, the principles of the world, the conduct of the world; he does with pleasure the evil which the world has invented and propagated; the world is satisfied with him; it has nothing to reproach him with or io offer him.
What temptations can such a man find in his own heart? He lives, and wishes to live, after the flesh and its desires. To satisfy his passions, his lusts, his ambition, his avarice, his pride, and his vanity; to “ walk after the imagination of his own heart and the desire of his eyes,” is that which he seeks, his good pleasure. But if you say that the career of sin is very long from the man that is honored and respected by polite society, down to one who is notoriously unjust, impure, or profligate, or to the criminal against whom the strong arm of human justice is lifted up; and that, consequently, there may always be temptation for a sinner to descend from one degree to another: I admit it; but if he gives some resistance, and even a vigorous resistance, which enables him to carry off the victory, it is because, at a certain point, sin brings immediately with it its own punishment; it wounds him in his enjoyments, his honor, his property, and his liberty, or even in his life. Now the most thorough egotist, the most devoted disciple of the utilitarian school, will stop at the moment when sin, even upon earth, immediately brings evil along with it. But have God and his sovereign will any part in this calculation? Think you that the man who habitually lives in sin, so Jong as he finds a carnal profit in it, will stop at any point whatsoever, from a regard to God?
And, then, is it to God that such a man will say, “Lead me not into temptation?” If he said it to any one, it ought to be to his own egotism, which is in danger of suffering, or to human justice, which threatens to punish him! But who are they for whom there exists temptation? And whence does it come that they are exposed to it? The order in which the petition under our consideration stands, with reference to the preceding, might, if necessary, afford us some assistance in answering this question. He alone, who with an awakened and sensible conscience, and by the light of God’s holy law, has learned to know sin; he alone to whom sin has become an intolerable burden, and who, humbled and broken-hearted, has cried at the foot of the Saviour’s cross, “ Forgive us our debts!” knows, or can know, what is temptation. And if that prayer has been heard on his behalf, if hope has risen upon his soul, like a soft light dissipating his darkness, if he has heard those life-giving words of the Saviour, “ Son, be of good cheer; thy sins are forgiven thee!” if he has felt the peace of God, now reconciled to him, taking possession of his heart, O then, be assured, that at the very thought of encountering sin again in his path, he will cry, with the terror of the helpless infant, that casts itself into its father’s arms at the approach of danger, “ Lead me not into temptation!” Ah! the reason is, that now he knows that the peace which he enjoys, and which is better than life, would be taken away from him by sin: that now he fears above all things to offend that God who so loved him, and to grieve the Spirit of grace which hath sanctified him; in a word, to escape from sin, which for so long a time kept him in a state of bondage, is to him, as a Christian, “ to be. or not to be.” And henceforth, what a warfare, to use the language of the Bible, what, continual assaults of temptations the most diversified, powerful, and subtle, has the redeemed of Christ to undergo, before he reaches the end of his career! The prince of darkness, pursuing the work which he began in Eden, ambitious to recover a victim rescued from his grasp by the grace of God, will contrive to bring to the conflict temptation and sin in every form, and in every way. I am aware that in our day it is scarcely fashionable to speak of the devil, and of the temptations with which, he assaults us; unbelief calling his very existence in question, sees in the idea of the devil nothing more than a bugbear to frighten weak-minded persons; a pious fraud, invented in by-gone days, to make an impression upon the ignorant multitude. On the other hand the artistic religion of our day represents Satan as a poetic figure, a literary personage whom imagination makes use of for its own purposes, but who has no real connexion with sin, or with the ruin of immortal souls, who commit it. The Word of God, which we are much more disposed to hear and to believe on such a subject, holds a far different language: “ Be sober, be vigilant, for your enemy the devil as a roaring lion goeth about, seeking whom he may devour.” Here is the secret of those hours of doubt which torment even the converted soul, of those periods of unbelief which dry up the sources of life, which take away from the Word of God its efficacious power, render barren the fruitful truths of the Gospel, like a tree whose roots an enemy has cut. Hence, also, that distrust which keeps us from prayer; that cleaving of our hearts and affections to the things f earth, as if heaven were no more our country, as if it no longer contained anything worthy of our love, as if we had for our portion only earth and corruption, “ Hath God said?” demands Satan in our heart, in order to undermine faith, which is our life, and to insinuate doubt, which is death; then, when the soul is disarmed, and the ’heart weakened, a temptation presents itself, the allurement of sin solicits the passion, conscience awakens, admonishes, and with stern eye points to the law, to duty; but the seducer hastens; It is a thing” of no consequence, says he; no one will know of it. God will not regard it: “ ye shall not surely die!” Then woe to him who has not cried to his God, “Lead us not into temptation!”
Temptation! the world presents it to you under every form, at every step, and every moment.
You breathe it in the atmosphere, which sin has impregnated with its poison. It was called false shame when you saw the smile of derision curl the lip, or heard ironical remarks made upon your religious principles; it is called vanity when these same men, from amongst whom you were banished, wanting to draw you again in their society, and into their evil courses, flatter, praise, and solicit you. It imperceptibly insinuates itself into your heart, and into your very principles, when, after having manifested indignation against certain actions, or a certain manner of living, you by degrees become habituated to them, so as to be indifferent to them, and perhaps even to conform to them. It follows you to the very threshold of your door; it enters with you into the intimacy of your family and of your friends, where, less watchful, because you think you are in less danger there, you pronounce, in the effusions of confidence, words which, weighed in the balance of the sanctuary, would be called slander, flattery, imprudent levity, or the betrayal of a secret confided to your heart. Temptation accompanies you in all the details of your calling; if you meet with difficulties or disappointments iu it, it inspires you with distrust, discouragement, and murmurs against those to whom you attribute the blame of it; if you meet with success, your heart may be puffed up with vanity. and may give you a self-satisfaction and a security which pave the way for the most disastrous falls. Are you in prosperity? temptation is found in those carnal enjoyments which you know not how to give up, that you may be able to do more good. Are you exposed to privations or to sufferings? there is temptation in that look of secret covetousness which you cast upon those in happier and more elevated situations, or in those earthly cares which hinder you from waiting upon the Lord with faith, confidence, and submission.
Temptation! look not even so far to be on your guard against it. You carry it in your heart, which, corrupt by nature, produces it under a thousand forms, and “deceitful above all things,” hides it from you under a thousand veils, and a thousand illusions. Observe that impure thought which the flesh brings forth, and the imagination cherishes; it rises unperceived, like a cloud in the horizon; call the breath of God’s Spirit to dispel it immediately, it is temptation! Search into the bottom of that thought which troubles your heart, in thinking of some brother who has showed a want of respect towards you, despised, or wrongly judged you; throw over it the mantle of Christ’s charity. it is temptation! There was formerly some defect in your character which made you suffer much; with the assistance of God’s grace, you have vigorous!}” and victoriously combated it; you imagine you are free from it; but an occasion, calculated to bring it into action, again suddenly presents itself; watch, pray it is a temptation!
You love, with a noble, pure, and legitimate affection, some being, in intercourse with whom you find happiness; this affection by degrees becomes exclusive; it occupies too large a place in your heart, your thoughts, and your time, to allow you to give to others what you owe them; God, and the hallowing thought of him, no longer stand in the first rank; your affection having become selfish, can no longer be satisfied, O you should long ago have seen that this was temptation!
O how grave and serious is this subject!What will be the consequence if a remedy be not applied immediately, and in an efficacious manner? The consequence? Let the Bible answer: “Every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed. Then, when lust hath conceived, itbringeth forth... sin! and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth DEATH.”
Death! eternal death! the ruin of the soul!
O, my beloved brethren, when we hear this sanction of the holy law, when we see the dangers which on every side surround us, the temptations which present themselves to us under every form, the devil, the world, and our own heart; when we see the occasions of falling which meet us every day, in society, in our families, in our calling, in our station, in our interior and exterior life, which of us will be so careless, carnal, or impious, as not to receive with eager attention, with fear and trembling”, that admonition of the Saviour, addressed to us by the mouth of one of his servants, “Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day. and having clone all, to stand.” The armour of Gfod” the apostle tells us. and not of man. After having showed you the danger, it would be bat a poor resource, my brethren, if we were to direct you to your own means, and tovour own strength, to overcome our spiritual enemies, and to “ withstand in the evil day/’ It would be to lead you into error, to deceive you, and to prepare you for an inevitable defeat. Where is the Christian that has not oftentimes acquired, by a dear-bought experience, the knowledge of his own weakness? Where is the Christian that, left to himself, will presume to say, in presence of the least of the temptations which we have enumerated, I will resist it, and remain firm. It was thus Peter spake, promising to die rather than be unfaithful, and an hour after... he denied his Master! Ah! let us remember, that the most formidable powers of our nature, our passions, our evil heart, are most frequently leagued with temptation, instead of resisting it, and leave the fortress without defence at the mercy of the enemy! It is, then, on the Almighty and merciful God that we must depend; his faithfulness must be our buckler; to him we must lift up our eyes at the approach of danger, to him we must cry in the hour of distress. Sometimes the thought of God’s presence alone, his name passing upon our lips, will be sufficient to show us sin in all its deformity, and to destroy its attraction. And has not the Lord, in a thousand passages of his Word, promised succor and deliverance to every one that calls upon him in the time of trouble 1 And have not his children, at all times, and in all places, experienced the faithfulness of his promises? “Our fathers trusted in thee; they trusted, and thou didst deliver them. They cried unto thee, and were delivered.” “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” And, finally, what are the words upon which we are meditating but a cry of the soul in danger? Ah! how well did he know our wants and our weaknesses, who taught us to call God to our assistance in our temptations, and who thereby opened unto us an inexhaustible source of omnipotent succor and excellent virtues! With what full assurance may we send up to the throne of grace a prayer which Jesus Christ himself has dictated to us! Is he not thus pledged, in the most solemn manner, not to “ lead us into temptation, but to deliver us from evil?
“Watch and pray.” said the Saviour to his beloved disciples, when he sought to guard them against a dangerous fall; “ watch and pray, lest ye enter into temptation.” Thus, my brethren, to prayer we must add watchfulness. And let us not deceive ourselves as to the nature of this Christian virtue, as a preservative against temptation. It does not consist in a pusillanimous anxiety, which, in a world like that in which we live, would deprive us of all liberty of action, all courage, and all joy. To be watchful, we must first of all know ourselves, study with a scrupulous exactness the weak sides of our character, the sins to which we are the most prone, in order to apply a remedy to them with all the promptitude and all the powerful efficacy of the means with which the Gospel supplies us. Without this knowledge of our own heart, there can be no spiritual development, and temptation will always find a wide door by which it may enter. disarm, and overcome us. Next, to be watchful, we must; by means of the Word of God, which “ discerns the thoughts and intents of the heart,” make continual progress in the discernment of spirits. To distinguish error from truth, and evil from good, whether in doctrine or in practice, is half the victory over temptation. For observe, that sin never presents itself to us under its real name or its real form; it is always disguised, it always wears a mask which sets it off. and a beautiful name with which the world is skilful in clothing it.
He therefore, who, to use the remarkable expression of an apostle, “seeth not afar off,” he whose eye is not penetrating, and his discernment exercised by the Word of God, that man will infallibly be deceived. In the last place, to be watchful, we must shun temptation as far as possible. O, let us not trifle with sin! Let us not hold parley with the enemy,. relying on our own strength or skillfulness. The angel that watched over Eve in Eden, might have wept over her fall, the moment she inclined an ear to the insinuations of the devil and stopped to answer him. How many sins does hell exult in, how many souls are ruined, because they have wished to calculate with God, to speculate on the line which they ought to trace, and on the distance which they ought to put between His will and sin! To look at the imprudent curiosity of young Christians, or the systematic temerity of ill-advised Christians, who seek at the same time to keep fair with the world and their principles, and to reconcile, if it were possible, Christ and Belial; to look, I say, at such persons, one would say that they took a secret pleasure in treading upon the very limits of the ground on which God had set his curse.
Let us beware of such dangerous folly. Let us enter into an entire and unrestricted communion with our God. He alone is our fortress and our strong tower; if His Spirit dwell in us, it will always warn us of the approach of evil by its natural and striking contrast with every species of defilement. This is the only real watchfulness. The Word of God will not only enable us to detect evil, by giving more acuteness and depth to our discernment, and to our whole Christianity the firmness of an edifice, built not upon the shifting sand of human opinions, but upon the Rock of Ages; but it will be to us, in the presence of temptation, our most potent weapon to combat with and overcome it. This is what St, Paul calls the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. Our divine Master, who was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin, has given us an example of the manner in which we ought to use this weapon: IT is WRITTEN! Such was the barrier which he opposed to the assaults of the enemy, the buckler from which the fiery darts of the enemy fell powerless. It is written! and that which is written is the expression of the sovereign will of God, which no man can violate with impunity, and which we ought to love above everything in this world. What can the insinuations of the devil, or the most attractive allurments of sin, do in the presence of this great thought?
See that child of God thus armed, watchful, ready to cry unto his God! Some action which he sees committed, or some line of conduct which he sees followed, not merely by the multitude, but by persons otherwise respectable, makes him doubt for a moment the principles which he has drawn from the Bible, sets off to his eye that which the Word of God disapproves of, and shows in an unfavorable light that which it commands. Am I right? he asks with some inward anxiety. How shall I combat this temptation? The sword of the Spirit is in his hand; it is written,:! Wo unto him that calleth evil good and good evil, that putteth darkness for light and light for darkness!” and though the whole universe were to judge differently, he is re-assured, he has overcome! In a happy moment of success, of prosperity, or of signal mercy, some indiscreet praises meet his ear; he feels his heart lifted up, while he ascribes the glory to himself and forgets his natural misery... The temptation is dangerous; he feels it; he seizes the sword of the Word; it is written^ “ Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall,” and he fears, he is humbled, he has overcome! Is he, on the contrary, in an hour of discouragement and at the view of his sins, tempted by a painful doubt of his salvation, of the efficacy of his Saviours work, his adoption, or the faithfulness of God towards his children; lie examines his faith anew, assures himself that he is trusting only in the cross of Christ, and in the free grace and mercy of God, and seizes his weapon, It is written: “ There is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.” It is written^ “ My sheep shall never perish;” and he rises by faith and is comforted! Do we mean that all temptations are thus easily overcome? O no! the conflict is sometimes long, obstinate, and terrible. The combatant is sometimes out of breath, almost sinking beneath the blows of the enemy, “ his soul melteth for very heaviness;” if he comes off victorious, he may bring with him painful wounds; if he is overcome, if he succumbs, if he sins,... oh what agonizing remorse! what bitter regret! what profound and ignominious humiliation! how the offender hates himself! how he deplores his corruption! his weakness, his unfaithfulness! how ardently he longs for holiness! O the infinite mercy, and tender compassion of the Saviour of sinners! Here, again, in the prayer which he permits us to address to God, we find a remedy for this great evil, a balm for the bleeding heart, a proof that the Redeemer has not abandoned it; out of the depths shall ascend unto the throne of grace this last and fervent supplication, “ Deliver us from evil!”
Until this prayer be answered for us, temptation will return incessantly and with all its force; so long as sin dwells in us, so long as it exists in our heart as the echo which answers to evil without, as the electric spark which may, at any moment, produce a conflagration, our life will be but travail, our peace will be constantly troubled, our joy often changed into tears. Disciples of Jesus, you whom God, in his faithfulness has often delivered from temptation, you whom he has so often made victorious by the power of his grace, stop not at this stage of your spiritual development, abuse not the goodness of God!
Rather descend into the bottom of your hearts with the torch of his Word, measuring yourselves “ according to the stature of Christ;” and if you still discover some defilement there, some pride, some vanity, some seeking of self, of your own interests, your own reputation, your own glory, which waits but for a favorable opportunity to issue forth like troubled and polluted waters, cry to your God, “ Deliver us from evil!” If, comparing your present state with what you were after you first believed the Gospel, you find that you have made little progress “in righteousness and true holiness.” if you still discover in yourselves much lukewarmness, many earthly and carnal dispositions, little real spirituality, little love to Him who first loved you, little real, active, devoted charity towards your brethren in the faith, and towards all men, cry, cry to your God, “ Deliver us from evil.” And if you are sincere in this prayer (for here delusion is easy, thousands have offered this prayer to God a thousand times, who yet would have been very sorry to have been taken at their word), if you thus pray because you are burdened by the temptations which arise from your indwelling sin, because you groan to see that, notwithstanding your firmest resolutions, you still offend against your heavenly Father, because you deeply feel that to you deliverance from evil would be a real happiness, ah! be assured your request shall be heard. It shall be heard, because your deliverance from all evil, my beloved brother, is a part of the great deliverance wrought out by the Redeemer; his work is the guarantee of your salvation; you are, for your part, the price of his sufferings and of “ the travail of his soul.” “ He who hath begun a good work in you will carry it on until the day of Jesus Christ.” Your request shall be heard, for your life until this hour has been but one uninterrupted succession of deliverances, without which you would long since have perished; God hath thus confirmed the faithfulness of his promises, which are henceforth to you the Rock of Ages; the past answers for the future. “If we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.’ Your request shall be heard, for it is its own voucher. It is the Saviour that put it into your anguished heart and upon your trembling lips, that you might send it up to God, to whom he himself presents it; he cannot deny himself, he cannot lie, he cannot deceive us. You do not, then, pray alone, my brethren! Has not our gracious Saviour himself addressed this prayer to God his Father on behalf of his beloved disciples, and “of all those who shall believe through their word?” Like you they were in a world where sin dwells; but hear the accents of the Saviour, which have traversed ages and still ascend up for you before the throne of God. “I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.” Your request shall be heard, heard even to the utmost limits of your career, whatever you may still have to encounter in it. Be of good courage! A few days more of temptation, conflicts, and tears, and “you shall see the salvation of God!” To be delivered from evil! Does not this thought animate your faith? does it not verify your eternal hopes’? does it not give you new strength for the struggle? does it not renew your strength like the eagle’s? is it not heaven itself to you? And yet raise your eyes still higher, stretch your hopes still farther! Evil! ah! it is not only from that which we carry about in ourselves that we have to suffer, from which we ask to be delivered, and from which we shall eventually be delivered. Members of suffering humanity, whose hearts have been taught by the Gospel to feel, and who can never remain selfishly strangers to any of the ills that pray upon your fallen race, you have seen, and you have seen it with grief, that evil is spiritual darkness, ignorance of God and his Word, unbelief and idolatry, those errors and prejudices, those lying systems and that impiety which overspread so many parts of the earth with darkness, though the bright Sun of righteousness has risen upon them; that evil, is that infernal art with which men who ought to love one another, so often put forth their natural corruption to make one another suffer; that evil, is that mass of injustice, fraud, violence, hatred, vengeance, wars, oppression, and ingratitude which fill the pages of man’s history and the days of human life: that evil, is those impure passions, that avarice, that discord, those bitter reproaches, those grievous disputes which rankle in the bosom of families; that evil, is the bitter fruit of sin, physical and moral sufferings, remorse, anguish, privation, poverty, sickness, and death; in a word, that evil, according to the touching language of an Apostle, is, “ the whole creation groaning and travailing together in pain until now.” Oh! Christians, who know the only but infallible remedy for all these evils, which of you has not cried a thousand times in his life of anguish, embracing in that aspiration of comprehensive charity the whole world, “Deliver us from evil!” But in this respect also, my beloved brethren, your request shall be heard! The work of eternal redemption shall not remain imperfect. Do we not see it going forth conquering and to conquer until it shall reach its last triumph over evil? God himself has marked out the hour of that triumph: who shall delay it. 1 He wills it; he has promised it; who shall hinder it? “If he tarry, wait for him/’’ It would ill become us to say with the mockers of the last times, “Where is the promise of his coming?” we who know that “ with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day,” and who already see in the horizon the glimmerings of morning, which announce the coming of that day when Zion shall rejoice in the God of her salvation. Christ has overcome the world, sin, and hell; he must reign “ till he hath put all enemies under his feet.” We shall see with our eyes the day when, either through love or through fear, “Every knee shall bow to Jesus, of things in heaven, and things on earth, and things under the earth, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Oh! how those holy men of God who have given us these promises on the part of the great Redeemer, in the prospect of that deliverance which they hailed afar off, lift up their voices with joy! how their hymns of rejoicing ascend up on high! how their accents penetrate the hearts of those who still groan under the weight of evil, but yet believe in deliverance! “ We, according to his promise, look for new heavens, and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.” “ And I saw a new heaven and a new earth. And I John saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, corning down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a voice out of heaven, saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.”
These promises of God who cannot lie; this glory, this felicity in the presence of him who hath so loved us, are, to thousands of the redeemed of Christ, no longer a matter of hope, but a reality. Strangers and foreigners, like us, sinners and sufferers, like us, they but a short time ago breathed forth this aspiration from the midst of these corruptions and miseries, “Deliver us from evil!” and they have been “ delivered from evil!” They now no longer send up to God the prayer which we are considering; they have no more need of it! To us they are a cloud of witnesses; we have the same God, the same Saviour, the same hopes. Are we ready to join them; to mingle our voices in their songs of triumph and thanksgiving? I ask again, are we ready? for “He that shall come, will come and will not be late."