's periods are only God's commas," so this man's going
down is but a more splendid way of going up. I can imagine that
nothing is more pleasing in the sight of Heaven than to see uprightness
only the more enlightened, quickened, and made imperative by the
troubles and vicissitudes of life. Let a man keep, if he can, what he
has honourably got; but if go it must, let it go rather than attempt to
save it at the cost of moral integrity. Let him say: "Empty my purse
if need be, but fill my soul; take my world, but spare my life; darken
my circumstances, but keep bright my spiritual outlook." And what are
the slights and neglect of a passing and superficial world to a man
whose life is in tune with the Infinite, who hears in secret what one
day will be said from the housetops of time and eternity: "Well done,
good and faithful servant"?

We are not always responsible for the temptations that sweep into our
life. I will go further than that, and say that we are not necessarily
responsible for what the attack of temptation finds in us; that, in
some cases, may be our inheritance, and in others faults of early
training; but we are responsible for what temptation does with what it
finds. For it cannot be repeated too often that temptation never puts
evil in our thoughts, it only makes manifest the evil that is there.

And hardly more do we differ in our features than we do in the things
which, and through which, we are temptable. We cannot all be tempted
by the same thing, but all of us can be tempted by something. You
remember how Achilles was dipped in the magic water and made
invulnerable in all parts except one. "Where the finger and thumb held
the heel it was dry, and, though the arrows glanced off from the other
parts of the body, when they pierced this one soft place he was
wounded, and that unto death."

Each one of us has his vulnerable place, and it is our life-business to
guard it. The weak place is there; the arrow will be aimed at it, and
if it find the place it is aimed at, we may refer the blame to what or
where we will, it does not affect the truth, that the blame is nigh
unto us, even at our own door.

"Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot
be tempted with evil things; neither tempteth He any man with, or unto,
evil things; but every man is tempted when he is drawn away, when he
yields to his own lust, and by it is enticed, by it is overcome."

Which means, in the