01 - Lecture 01

Lecture 1 - The Combat

FIRST LECTURE. THE COMBAT.

"And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, being forty days tempted of the devil. And in those days he did eat nothing: and when they were ended, he after­ward hungered. And the devil said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread. And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God. And the devil, taking him up into a high moun­tain, showed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it. If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine. And Jesus answered and said unto him, get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. And he brought him to Jerusalem, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence: For it Is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. And Jesus answering said unto him, It is said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. And when the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from him for a season."--- Luke 4:1-13.

Read also Matthew 4:1-10, and Mark 1:12-13· MY DEAR FRIENDS, The Scriptures appear in a totally different light, according as they are perused with the eye of human wisdom or with that of faith; and nowhere is this dif­ference more striking than in the passage we have just read. I can recollect the time when I could not read it without a sense of humi­liation for my intellect, and almost for the Word of God itself, whereas now I seek it as a favorite place where my soul finds rich and abundant pasture. The reason is, that this portion of Scripture is as replete with salutary instructions for the little child, who simply accepts God’s testimony, as it is full of mystery for the philosopher who pretends to judge the Scriptures instead of allowing himself to be judged by them.

There is mystery in the personal existence of the devil and in the pernicious influence he exercises over us. This influence is so clearly attested by the Scriptures that we cannot deny it without impeaching their veracity: but what is its origin, its nature, and extent?---of all this we know nothing, or almost nothing. There is mystery in the power granted to the devil to lay his wicked snares for the Son of God himself. That we should be tempted, we, who through sin are subjected to his empire, we can imagine; but how can we conceive that he should be per­mitted to tempt the "Lord of Lords and the Holy of holies," he "in whom he hath no­thing?" (John 14:30) There is mystery in the nature of the temptation to which Jesus Christ is sub­jected. "He was tempted," and "that with­out sin." These two facts are expressly affirmed in the Scriptures: but try to go a step further, and you are arrested on all sides. How can we comprehend a temptation without any inward tendency for sin? how can we recon­cile an inward tendency to sin with perfect holiness? If Jesus could not yield, where is the glory of His triumph?---and if He could, what becomes of His divine nature? And, lastly, there is mystery in the manner in which the whole scene of the temptation takes place. All seems to indicate that the history is found­ed upon fact; the time of the narrative, the place where the event took place, the char­acter of the book; and yet, whether we con­sider it as a whole, or whether we take the various details separately, we feel that it is altogether beyond the limits of human experience. How can we reconcile this apparent contradiction? Where does this struggle, which has the earth for its theater, while the actors are brought from heaven and from hell, take place? Is it in the visible or invisible world? or in some unknown, obscure region which separates them, partaking of the nature of both? Mystery upon mystery!

I shall not even attempt to penetrate these mysteries, but consider my subject only in its practical view, just as a child might grasp it as well as we, and perhaps far better than we can. Guided by these words of the Lord: "I have given you an example that ye should do as I have done," let us seek to know what are the instructions He here gives us for our conduct through life. Now, in this fearful struggle of the Son of God with the Spirit of darkness, we distinguish three principal points: the conflict, the victory, and the weapons. Each of the three will instruct us in its turn. By the conflict He carried on, Jesus teaches us that we must expect to be engaged in a similar warfare; by the victory He obtained, Jesus teaches us that we too can conquer; and by the weapons that He used, Jesus teaches by what means we also can overcome. The subject is so rich, that J will divide it into three discourses: we will limit that of today to the conflict that Jesus maintained in the wilderness. This conflict should reconcile us to that which we have to carry on: it is a response to an earnest longing of our renewed nature. Children of God, who have some experience in Christian life, I am not afraid of being con­tradicted by you when I say that the temptations with which it is so thickly sown are to you a matter of surprise, and sometimes cast a stumbling-block in your way. When we have set out on the Lord’s highway, it seems to us that the devil should be kept at a dis­tance, and prevented from touching us. When we feel his attacks, a secret dread takes pos­session of us, as if the Lord were withdrawing from us. Our distress increases if the temp­tation is prolonged or multiplied, if it returns at seasons of communion with the Lord,---if it does not seem to answer any special pur­pose of which we are conscious; so that at last we are reduced to a state bordering upon despair: the temptation of Jesus answers to all this.

Jesus is tempted. The conflict that you sustain, He sustained it before you. What do I say?---Your conflict does not deserve to be compared to His. There are divers kinds of temptation: for all are not equal, and the same temptation is not equal for all. To ap­preciate a temptation, we must consider not only what it is in itself, but especially what it is for him who is exposed to it. Do we attempt to appreciate the tempta­tion itself? Amongst all your own, you can­not find one that can be compared to that by which Jesus was assailed. Set your mind upon it, and endeavor to imagine yourself in His place: far from human society, cast alone into a wilderness, surrounded by wild beasts, deprived of food, with the devil beside Him, laying snare upon snare, and all this going on for forty days and forty nights! (The evangelist’s narrative shows that the Lord was tempted during forty days and forty nights; and it was at the end of this period that the devil tried a supreme effort, of which alone he gives us the details.) This situa­tion, in which you would not even dare to imagine yourself, was that of your Savior. But let us go yet further into the subject. We cannot rightly appreciate temptation by outward circumstances; the true appreciation can be found only in the inward dispositions of him whom it visits. The cold, slimy touch of a serpent is very different for the rough skin of the laborer, or for the delicate skin of a young child; and how different the assaults of the tempter for a sinner such as you or I, or for the "Holy of holies." And if it is terrible for us to come into close contact with the Spirit of darkness, say,---what must it have been for the Son of God? For us, who are "born in sin and shapen in iniquity," and thus lawfully subjected to the "Prince of this world," his approach, his assaults, the blows he aims at us, are in the natural course of things. But is it not a strange anomaly that the "Only and well-beloved Son" should in His turn be exposed to all this? And must not His holy nature shrink with unutterable dread from the conflict in the wilderness? However that may be, He is engaged in it; children of God, behold the only and well-­beloved Son contending, like you, with the eternal enemy of God and of His people.

If you had been living in Judea eighteen-hundred years ago, and had been told that the promised Messiah was somewhere in the world, where would you have sought Him? I know not; but certainly it would not have been where He was. You would not have sought Him in the carpenter’s humble work­shop; you would not have sought Him amongst those that John had baptized upon the banks of Jordan; and, above all, you would not have sought Him in the wilderness, en­gaged in a conflict with the devil. And yet it is there that He must be sought to be found; and during forty days and forty nights you would vainly have sought Him elsewhere. . . . . But if at last you had found Him there, would not the sight of His temptation have explained the inexplicable mystery of yours? Ah! I now understand: the struggle from which I shrunk, and the warfare in which I was ready to faint, is the lot of humanity; and a lot so inevitable that even His, though a partaker of the divine nature, must pass through it. Henceforth if temptations arise, even in their most appal­ling, most humbling aspect, they can neither surprise nor alarm me! It is in the wilder­ness that we must seek Jesus Christ, Jacob at the ford of Jabbok, Moses at Massah and at Meribah, Daniel in the lions’ den, St. John in his exile, St. Chrysostom in his disgrace, John Huss at the Council of Constance, and Luther at the diet of Worms!

Jesus "was tempted"---and how ?---"He was tempted in all points like as we are," (Hebrews 4:15) is the answer of the Holy Ghost---yea, truly, "in all points;" follow Him in the light of my text, and you will, see Him tempted in all times, in all places, and in all ways. In all times. "These are the beginnings of sorrows,"---that the sequel will complete. When the devil had ended all the tempta­tion for this time, "he departed from Him," but, "for a season." He will return to the attack, you need not doubt it; he will return, and return during all the human life of Jesus; he will return, and especially as the great decisive moment approaches. After having "bruised his heel" in the wilderness, he will strike a second blow at Golgotha, that Jesus, who had begun to "tread upon the serpent" in His solitude, may "bruise his head" upon the cross. Thus we find placed at the be­ginning and at the close of the ministry of the Son of God, two of the most terrible temp­tations, opening and terminating the series of all those that assailed Him successively during three years and a half: the first a temptation of lust or covetousness, all that the earth or world can offer to be rejected; the second a temptation of suffering, all the rage of hell and the wrath of heaven itself, to bear. This twofold temptation, that of the wilderness and that of the cross, will present themselves upon our path, and in general will appear in the self-same order. At the beginning of the Christian career, worldly de­sires to overcome by self-denial; later, and especially in the last struggle, the anguish of the flesh and spirit to overcome by patience: "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross." (Matthew 16:24) In all places. Here we have only to follow our subject: we find Jesus tempted in the wilderness, tempted on the mountain, tempted in the holy city. There are men who have retired into deserts to escape temptation. Strange delusion! Had they forgotten that it was in the wilderness that the Lord was tempted? you may avoid the society of your fellow-men, but how can you escape from Satan and your own heart? This outward enemy and this inward foe, leagued together against you, will follow you wherever you may fly. In the wilderness, upon the mountain, in the holy city,---that is to say, you will every­where find temptations, in solitude, in the world, in the church, everywhere you will find it, and the difficulty is not to flee but to fight. It is not to exchange the temptations of one position for those of another, which may prove the more dangerous perhaps, because you have chosen and sought them, but to stand fast against the temptations of the situation in which God has placed you.

Finally, and this is my principal remark, in all ways. Here again I return to my text. The devil stops only when "the temptation was ended." Of all the temptations to which Jesus was subjected, that of the wilderness is the most complete and the best delineated. We here see concentrated all the efforts of the enemy, exhausting one after another all the means and all the resources he has at his disposal. It is more than a temptation, it is "the temptation;" it is a system, and, as it were, a regular series of temptations. For the devil has a plan of which we should not be ignorant, and that the Holy Spirit has re­vealed to us: "The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life." (1 John 2:14.---The order in which the apostle names the three great carnal lusts of humanity cannot have been stated by chance, for we see the same order observed in the temptation of Eve as in that of Jesus, as it is given us by St. Luke. It seems as if the three temptations were here presented according to the deceitfulness of their nature; the first is a temptation of the flesh, the second a temptation of the eyes, and the third a temptation of the mind.) He followed this plan with Eve, who yielded to the temptation on seeing, first "that the fruit was good for food;" then, "that it was pleasant to the eyes;" and, lastly, "that it is to be de­sired to make one wise." He follows the same plan with Jesus, whom he tempts at first by the necessities of the flesh, then by the spectacle of worldly pomp; and, lastly, by the pride of a splendid miracle. And his intention will be still more evident if, instead of considering the object of the temp­tation, you penetrate into the spirit of it. Satan endeavors to make the Lord fall, first, by a spirit of distrust in God; then by a spirit of infidelity towards God; and, lastly, by a spirit of rash confidence in God; he thus ap­peals to a want of faith, the forgetfulness of faith, and the abuse of faith: how well is all this calculated and combined, and carried out to the end! And this is not all. There is nothing that the tempter does not use as an instrument. What may be wanting in his own resources he borrows from the weapons used to resist him, and finds arms in what is opposed to him. Jesus has just heard a voice declaring Him to be the Son of God: the devil seeks to seduce Him by this glorious title. Jesus has been endowed by the Holy Spirit with sovereign power: the devil endeavors to make him misuse this power. Jesus fasts: the devil endeavors to overcome Him by hunger. And the better to succeed, the traitor transforms himself into an angel of light. (2 Corinthians 11:14) He pretends to sanctity, and employs holy things; the holy city, the holy temple, and even the holy Word of God; all is turned to account in his treacherous hands.

Observe especially the use he makes of the name of Messiah given to Jesus. It is this name that he takes for the basis of the tempta­tion. He is willing that Jesus should appear as the Messiah, provided it is not the Messiah described by the holy prophets, but a Messiah such as the carnal Jews imagined; in this he hoped the better to succeed, because in addressing Jesus he addressed a Jew, and a Jew interested in justifying the expectations of his fellow-countrymen. As the Messiah pos­sesses a power greatly superior to that of man, Satan will have him make use of it, not as the prophets had foretold, to save the souls of men, but as the carnal Jews would, to satisfy his own desires and theirs: "If thou art the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread." The Messiah was to inherit all the kingdoms of the world; Satan will have Him receive them, not as the prophets had foretold, from His Father, and as the price of His sacrifice, but as the carnal Jews would, without conflict, and from the Prince of this world: "If thou wilt fall down and worship me, all shall be thine." And, lastly, the Messiah has magnificent promises of protec­tion and deliverance; Satan would have Him take advantage of them, not as the prophets had foretold, to accomplish His work of mercy, notwithstanding all obstacles,---not­withstanding Satan himself, but as the carnal Jews would, to advance His own glory and that of His people. "If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence." Such are the wiles of this fallen spirit! Such are the folds of the serpent; and so true it is, that He spared nothing to make Jesus fall, if He could have fallen!

Oh ye, then, who are assailed, and as it were overwhelmed by temptations, cease to com­plain. Though all should seem leagued against you; though your efforts, your pre­cautions, your props, even your prayers should become a snare; though you should feel your­selves without comfort, without strength, abandoned by men, separated from God, and ready to faint with anguish---cast a look, a single look upon Jesus in the wilderness, and believe that a moment spent with Him during those forty days of anguish would have left you recollections that would have forever preserved you from the doubts that the mani­fold temptations might suggest, and from the murmurs that they might draw forth. Re­place this moment of sight by faith, and your drooping courage will be raised. What has happened to you that did not happen to Jesus? What happens to you that is not infinitely below what happened to Him? No, no, children of God, your Father has not forgotten you, He treats you as He treated "His only-begotten and well-beloved Son." It is now that you are "conformed to the image of His Son that He might be the first-born among many brethren." (Romans 8:29) "For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need." (Hebrews 4:15-16) Jesus is tempted,---and when?---after what, and before what?

After His baptism, after a fervent prayer, after the heaven opening over His head, after the Holy Ghost descending upon Him, after that voice came from heaven which said: "Thou art my beloved Son; in Thee I am well pleased;" after all that, and according to St. Mark, "immediately after." (Mark 1:12) It is this time of glory and spiritual blessing that is chosen for the temptation: chosen by Satan, because it is at this moment that the Son of God excites in the highest degree his rage and jealousy; but chosen likewise by God, because it is then that His Son is strength­ened and best fitted to resist the assaults of the Enemy. Beware not to think yourself abandoned by God, because you are the prey of temptation: Satan is perhaps employing all his forces against you, only because the signal graces you have received have marked you for his attacks, while at the same time they prepare you to resist them. Tempta­tions are the lot of humanity, we say, and we may add that extraordinary temptations are the privilege of the best. It is a trial that God reserves for those heroes of faith that no obstacle can arrest, and no difficulty surprise: for a Moses, a Samuel, a Jeremiah, a poor Canaanite, a centurion of Capernaum, a St. Peter, a St. Paul. And this is not all: He not only reserves it for the strongest, but for the time of their greatest strength. They were spared during the first period of their spiritual career, in which they could advance only sup­ported by the fervent piety of the new con­vert, as by a touching law of Moses a newly-­married man was discharged of military ser­vice, that he might "be free at home one year to cheer up the wife which he hath taken." (Deuteronomy 24:5) But when the vivacity of a new sentiment has given place to another more matured and less subject to variation, that of the faith that "against hope believeth in hope," (Romans 4:18) then comes the time for the fatigues of war; then the Lord calls His children to rougher com­bats that keep up and develop their holy courage. You have just been baptized with a new baptism of the Holy Spirit; you have just been pouring out your heart before God in humble and fervent prayer; you have in some measure beheld the heavens opened over your head; you have heard the voice of God "bearing witness with your spirit that you are a child of God:" you think that at least at this time you are in safety against the assaults of the evil one:---undeceive your­self. It is the very moment in which you may expect him, and in which you require a double guard around your heart: watch then, and pray; it is also the time for which God has taken care to strengthen you beforehand: therefore take courage. It is when Paul had been "caught up to the third heaven" that "there was given him a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet him." (2 Corinthians 12:7) And before what is Jesus tempted? Before, immediately before, the beginning of His min­istry, just before He entered upon this life, wholly consecrated to the glory of God, to the salvation of men, to the most holy labor that was ever undertaken. As long as Jesus re­mained at Nazareth, hidden in the privacy of Joseph’s workshop, we do not hear that He was molested by the devil; but as soon as He enters into His public life, and gives Himself up to the mission He had received from His heavenly Father, He is arrested at the first step. Be not then surprised if, when you lend your aid to some good work, to the founding of some Christian establishment, to some un­dertaking approved by God and men, you should see temptations arise and thicken around you. And more especially you, young servants of the Lord, who are preparing to exercise in His Church the ministry of the Word, "think it not strange" if the time that you spend in this holy preparation should be a time of peculiar trial for your soul. As long as you lived retired, unknown, under the paternal roof, the faith that was instilled into you from your birth, and that had become, as it were, a second nature, appeared so firmly rooted that no storm could ever shake it. But now, de­prived of the vigilant direction of a father, and of the tender advice of a faithful mother; now, placed in the midst of an incredulous and profane world, that bears with everything except what is holy and true; now, having penetrated sufficiently into the science of holy things to raise more than one difficult ques­tion, but not sufficiently to solve them, you are frightened at the unbelieving thoughts that creep into your heart. . . . .My young friend, be not alarmed: this is the common experience of all those that have preceded you in the ministry; it is the experience even of the most holy, the most faithful. It is "the enemy that doeth this;" and he does it because he sees you so usefully occupied. He would perhaps consent to trouble you less, if you would consent to hide the talent that you have received from the Lord; for then, caus­ing you to fall, it would be yourself only that he would injure; but now, it, is your future ministry that he hopes to hinder; it is a mul­titude of souls that he hopes to deprive of the Word of Life, if he deprives you of your "holy faith;" that is what makes him so vigilant and so active. The work of the Holy Spirit and that of the devil are, often very near one to the other; the first provokes the second, and in the invisible world heaven and hell border upon each other. The Holy Ghost leads Jesus into the wilderness, where He is tempted by the devil; and Satan, before tempt­ing Job, went with the "sons of God to, pre­sent himself before the Lord." *(Job 1:6) Warned, as you are, by the example of the Lord himself, expect the tempter, standing firm. "Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." (James 4:7) Does he seek to cool your ardor for the reading of the Word of God?---Meditate upon it still more attentively. Does he discourage you in prayer?---Pray with still more fervor and persever­ance. Does he endeavor to turn you from the simplicity of your faith?---Apply yourself to obtain more of the spirit of the little child, while at the same time you increase in the knowledge of the theologian. When the enemy sees that you thus take advantage of his at­tacks, to strengthen your own faith, he will become weary of attacking, and will leave you quiet rather than do you so much good. And in all cases he can never undertake anything against you that the temptation of Jesus Christ has not enabled you to foresee. The rulers of the synagogue, too, may here instruct you. You will find in the beginning of the second chapter of Ecclesiastes, one of their apocryphical books, the following words: "My son, if thou come to serve the Lord, prepare thy soul for temptation."

Finally, Jesus was tempted; and why? A full answer to this question touches on those mysteries into which we would not penetrate. But the Scriptures tell us "that it behooved Him" to be tempted. The apostle informs us expressly that "in all things it be­hooved Him to be made like unto His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people; for in that He himself hath suffered, being tempted, He is able to succor them that are tempted." (Hebrews 2:17-18) It was also necessary to justify by Jesus Christ’s victory the condemnation of man, overcome in a similar conflict; it was necessary to fill up the measure of the vicari­ous sufferings of Messiah; it was necessary to begin to show in Him, to earth, and heaven, and hell, "This Son of God who came to de­stroy the works of the devil; " (1 John 3:8) and for aught we know, perhaps to reveal it fully to Himself, to make Him perfect through suffering, and thus to enable Him to go forth "conquering and to conquer." (Revelation 6:2) One thing is certain, "it behooved Him to be tempted;" that suffices me. The temptation was not an accident in His life, nor in His ministry; it was requisite, indispensable; it entered into the plan of our redemption. All the images under which the prophets had portrayed the Messiah who was to come, had revealed, between Him and the spirit of darkness, the struggle of which the history related in my text is only the prelude. Coming to establish a kingdom, but to estab­lish it upon the ruins of an usurped power; the Messiah, that true Joshua, could establish his dominion only by conquest, and receive "the nations for His inheritance" only by wresting them forcibly from the "Prince of this world." The Jews themselves had under­stood this, and it was an article of their the­ology that the Messiah must be tempted by Satan on entering upon His ministry. Our text also recognizes in the temptation this same character of necessity: all is here fore­seen, combined, willed by God. Jesus is "led," or, according to St. Mark, "the Spirit driveth him into the wilderness" to be tempted of Satan. (Mark 1:12 ---The expression of the evangelist has a particularly energetic signification,---thrown, cast.) The devil tempts Him, and then "when he had ended the tempta­tation, he departed from Him, "as if he had finished the part he had to act; for, in tempt­ing Him, he could not, any more than in crucifying Him, do more than what the "hand and counsel" of God had "determined before to be done." (Acts 4:28)

Let us learn from hence, my dear friends, that for us too, the temptations of which we complain are useful, indispensable, for the perfecting of our sanctification, and to prepare us for every good work that God may give us to do in the world. "God," says St. James, "cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempt­eth He any man;" but He may "lead us into temptation, as He did His Son, to try us, and to know what was in our heart." (Deuteronomy 8:2) "If we re­sist temptation, we come out of the furnace stronger, more faithful, purified as gold in the fire." If we yield, we must bear the punishment of our sin; but, even then, if we repent, and turn again, we have learnt to know our own weakness, and to seek all our strength in the Lord. It is in this incessant struggle, going from victory to victory, or alas! if not always con­querors, from alternate triumphs and defeats, that the salutary exercise and development of our faith goes on. The storm roots up and overturns the tree that is not firmly fixed in the soil! but the hurricane that shakes the gnarled oak only compels it to cast its thou­sand roots deeper into the earth, which, by the same effort, it more firmly grasps and penetrates. "Tribulation," says the apostle, "worketh patience! and patience, experience; and experience, hope." (Romans 5:4.---To comprehend fully these significant words, we must remember that tribulation here means, not affliction, properly speaking, but the trial that affliction makes of our faith, and that ripened character which it communicates; and hope, not an expectation more or less uncertain, but the firm assurance of a blessed future that we possess at present only by faith, (Romans 8:23-24) When we are afflicted, we are exercised to patience; when we have suffered with patience, we know that our faith is what it ought to be; and when our faith has been thus tried, we have a firm and glorious assurance in the grace of the Lord. )

What is here said of afflictions, the species of temptations about which the Word of God is the most explicit, is also true of all other trials. For this reason it is that the apostle James, in the energetic and paradoxical language that is peculiar to him, exhorts us to "count it all joy when we fall into divers temptations;" and calls "blessed," not the man who is not tempted, but he "that endureth temptation;" (James 1:12.---The words endure and tried offer rather an equivocal meaning; but in the original both suppose that the trial has succeeded, and the temptation been overcome. ) that is, he who bears it without yielding: for, "when he is tried," that is to say, when he has resisted the trial, "he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to those that love Him."

If temptation was necessary for Jesus, it is as necessary for us; the devices of Satan are necessary to perfect the work of the Holy Spirit; and nothing can attain perfection in this lower world without the devil’s coopera­tion. It was necessary, in order that Job’s faith should be enlightened, his heart strength­ened, and his joy perfected, that he should encounter the direst display of Satan’s malice. It was necessary that Daniel should have those perfidious enemies who had him cast into the lions’ den, to reveal to him, during that peaceful night, spent among wild beasts of prey, the power and faithfulness of his God. It was necessary for St. Paul to have "a thorn in the flesh, an angel of Satan to buffet him," to keep him humble, and to prevent his "being exalted above measure, through the abundance of the revelations;" and to sug­gest to him that blessed thought which was his own consolation, as it will be that of all those that are sanctified, till the end of time:

"When I am weak, then am I strong." It was necessary that St. Peter should pass through the court of the high priests’ palace to make him feel his own weakness, and to make him appear to the Church, after the confession and the pardon of his sin, more worthy than before, of the honor that the Lord had conferred upon him, and that he maintained, notwithstanding his fall. It was necessary that Chrysostom should encounter the anger of his master, and St Augustine the perils of his youth; that Luther should endure the mortal anguish of his soul, and Calvin contend against his feeble constitution and his im­placable enemies. And you, dear brother, that Satan seems to have chosen as the ob­ject of his most formidable attacks; you, in whose defeat he seems to have engaged all his pride; you, who think that you are re­duced to the last extremity, and ready to give up all for lost; you, who are ready to join in the cry of distress uttered by Messiah in the Psalms: "I am come into deep waters where the floods overflow me. I am weary of my crying; my throat is dried; my eyes fail while I wait for my God!" (Psalms 69:2-3) Believe that you needed all this to teach you to serve God, to confound the great adversary, and to "rejoice with unspeakable joy and full of glory." You are a child of God, His well beloved and favored child; and, indeed, if we knew how to rise above flesh and sense, and judge according to the Word of God, we should be more inclined to envy than to pity you. "Hold fast, then, your hope, that shall receive so great a recompense of re­ward;" resist, hold firm to the end, give glory to God, and abound in thanksgivings.

Young servants of God, if temptations are necessary for all, they are doubly so for you. The conflict that you are commencing against the opposition of the world, and above all against the natural unbelief of your own heart, must not alarm you; it is the narrow way in which you must walk to attain a stronger faith, and by which you must learn, as your Savior did, by the anguish of temp­tation, to sympathize in later years with the infirmities of others, and to help those who are tempted. Hear what a great master in matters of Christian experience said upon this subject; one who had struggled valiantly against the powers of the world and of hell. Luther, writing to a young theologian, makes him remark, in the 119th Psalm, three prin­cipal means which the psalmist uses to strengthen himself in a holy life: prayer, the meditation of the Scriptures, temptation; he thus expresses himself upon the last of the three:---

"Temptation is the touchstone that will not only make you know and understand, but also feel, how true, how upright, how sweet, how amiable, how powerful, how consoling, how much wiser than any other wisdom, is the Word of God. Without temptation, there can be no good preachers, only talkers, who know not themselves of what they talk, nor why, as St. Paul says to Timothy: (Desiring to be teachers of the law; understanding neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm.’ (1 Timothy 1:7) And you see David often com­plains in our Psalm of all sorts of enemies, oppressors, obstinate and rebellious spirits that he must bear with, because he carries with him everywhere the Word of God. You will no sooner have begun to bear testimony to the Word of God than the devil will begin to tempt you, to make of you a good teacher, and to instruct you, by the trials that he will create around you, to seek and to love this Word of life. I am much indebted to my Papists, who, through all the wiles of Satan, have so ill-treated me, and reduced me to such an extremity of distress, that they have made me a better theologian than I should ever have been without them; and as to what they have gained over me, I abandon most willingly their honors, victories, and triumphs, which is all they desire."

Lord Jesus, we will no more complain of temptations. We have found Thee today in the wilderness; we will not refuse to follow Thee there. We have had a glance of what Thou hast suffered, being tempted; and we have been moved to our inmost soul. Thou hast suffered to be made like unto us: shall we not consent to suffer to be made like unto Thee?---We distrust ourselves, Lord, and we say to Thee, as Thou hast taught us: "Lead us not into temptation! "But if we must be led into the furnace, we will add with con­fidence, as Thou hast also taught us: "Deliver us from evil!" It is enough for us to remember that we have in Thee" a merciful and faithful high priest, who having suffered, being tempted, is able to succor them that are tempted." Ah! how consoling is this thought to us, Lord! to know that whatever may be our temptations, Thou hast experienced them before we did, and beforehand---Thou hast conquered them for us! For this reason, Oh compassionate Savior, we will unburden our heart before Thee with a holy liberty; and if it were possible that we should be tormented as Thou wast, "we would come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need." It is not against us that Thy enemy and ours would fight, it is Thee, yea, Thee only that he attacks in us: it is, then, Thou that must defend us! Triumph over him in us! and since Thou hast been tempted like us, make us conquer like Thee! Amen.