eautiful and
holy thoughts, and glad to help us with our meditation because he knows
it is being made selfishly, and therefore contrary to the divine will.

V. _The Soul's Safety_

Our assurance of escaping the power of this malignant and tireless foe
lies:

(1) In never parleying or arguing with him. He is far cleverer than we
are, and if we stop to consider his proposals, or to reason about them,
our fate will, sooner or later, be that of our first mother, who,
because she was willing to hear what the tempter had to say, found
herself deceived to her utter undoing. Our only safe course lies in
instant and vigorous rejection of all that he suggests.

(2) But, although we shall see later that it is often wise to ignore
him wholly,[19] our resistance is not to be merely a passive one. We
are to meet point with point, attack with counter-attack. If he is
tirelessly active in his cause, there must be in us a corresponding
activity and zeal for God's {44} service and for the safety of our
souls; a like aggressive spirit, a forcing of circumstances and
conditions, wherever possible, that glory may be won for our King, and
the power of the devil diminished; a like persistency, and equal
alertness, a ready trying of one method, then another; and no matter
what past failures may have been, a continuing the fight, that in the
end we may be worthy of the victory.

If we can learn these lessons, though the strength and prowess of Satan
be an hundred-fold greater than that which human might can own, yet we
shall have no fear of him. On the contrary he will fear us, delivering
his attacks warily, lest he find his power shattered by the weapons
with which we shall be able to oppose him.

We were considering a little while ago how Satan "walketh about,
seeking whom he may devour."[20] These words of St. Peter have another
significance. True, he goes about with strong and ceaseless
aggression, but he goes about seeking only those whom he _may_ devour.
He does not fall without discretion upon the throngs of men, as the
lion upon the flock. He seeks only those who will, he thinks, in the
end yield themselves to him. He skulks about, hiding himself, seeking,
as we have seen, to blind men to the {45} very fact of his existence,
until he finds opportunity for attack when he thinks the soul will
yield. Some strong souls he does not openly seek, for too often has he
been defeated by them, and he fears to tempt them save in