n what is
our own position? Bad temper, a disturbed heart, an inharmonious
angry mind; but if without contending we bear with and act gently
with this evil, making careful comparisons with our own service to
our own Lord, we learn patience, forgiveness, and humility also, for
have we never lied, have we never been dishonest, have we never
been negligent to this sweet Lord? Then immediately His patience,
His forgiveness, His love are brought more intimately to our
consciousness, and our heart nearer to His and His to ours. Is this
loss or gain? Is Evil then an enemy? No, a handmaid. So is Satan
made a servant to his Overlord, and his power crossed.

Of all false things nothing is more false than the glamour of Evil, for
when on being drawn into it we sin, instead of the hoped-for delight
we soon find satiety; instead of exhilaration, fatigue; instead of
contentment, disillusion; instead of satisfaction, dust; instead of
romance, the greedy claws of the harpy; and the further we go in
response to this glamour the more pitiable our outlook; for the
sweets and possibilities of Evil are extraordinarily limited. Can any
man devise a new sin? No, but ever pursues the same old round, the
same pitiful circle.

If we pursue the glamour of God, we find the exact opposite of all
these things. Spiritual delights know no satiety because of infinite
variety: they know no disease, no disillusionment, and who can set a
boundary or limit to the beautiful, to love, and light, and God?

It is characteristic of temptation that while we are exposed to it
Christ is absent from perception; for to perceive Christ would
instantly free us from all temptation (and often it is by temptation
faithfully borne that we mount).

When we are in a condition of contact with Christ which is His
grace, we are raised above the stem of faith into the flowers of
knowledge; but for the true strengthening of the will it is necessary
that we live also on the harder and more difficult meat of faith. So
we return again and again to that insulation from things heavenly in
which we lived before we had been made Aware. When we emerge
from these dark periods we find ourselves to have advanced. With
regard to Grace we can neither truly receive nor benefit by it without
our heart, mind, and soul are previously adjusted to Response to it.

The regenerated creature is not exempt from further temptations, but
contrariwise the poignancy of these temptations is greatly i