ficient fighters
when again called to take the field. "After thou hast escaped these
{93} temptations, or else if our Lord hath so kept thee (as He doth
many by His mercy), that thou hast not been troubled much by any such,
then it is good for thee that thou beware of turning thy rest into
idleness."[3]

Let us consider how Satan uses certain of our faculties as instruments
of sin, and see how by a definite system of spiritual exercises we can
so forestall him that he will find nothing in us ready for his use.

II. _Educating the Memory_

How much sin, for example, is due to the action of memory! It is
indeed strange that this wonderful faculty, which more than any other
operates to give unity, consistency, and proportion to our life, should
be so often used to call up past sins that we may sin them over again
in will if not in deed. We linger with pleasure, by the exercise of
this faculty, over past sins, making them our own again, staining our
souls once more with that which we thought had been buried forever in
the far-off years.

We bring to renewed life old revenges, ancient hates, and revel again
amid scenes of impurity which can never be re-enacted in real life.
Such {94} acts, frequently indulged, grow into a habit, and the habit
becomes necessity when the memory not only easily and naturally reverts
to those events and conditions of the past that were bound up with sin,
but becomes so trained that it must recall the evil, and can only with
great stress, difficulty, and distaste be made to recall that which is
good.

If, on the other hand, by persistent acts of will we force the memory
to recall the righteous passages from our past, far-off happenings
sweet and holy, we, little by little, train it to retain these
righteous things, while all other impressions grow more and more dim as
the years go by.

Those who have practised such methods find that after a time the
memory, even when left alone, will engage itself with that which is
good, just because it has become accustomed to it, and will reject the
evil (in many cases, of itself, without the direct interposition of the
will), because long exercise has so trained it that in its ordinary
operation evil memories are repugnant to it.

Therefore keep the memory definitely busy. Too often when we think it
is browsing, as it were, carelessly among the fields of the past, it
is, as a matter of fact, being subtly directed by Satan, until, ere we
know