some
insidious, hidden way. In dealing with such souls he loses his
lion-like character, and lies in ambush like the coward who is afraid
to strike save from behind.

A great comfort, therefore, we must draw from the thought that Satan's
career has been one of failure as well as of victory. God's Saints,
following the lead of the King of Saints, have on a thousand
battle-fields trampled him under their feet; and with whatever insolent
confidence he may approach us, it is never without a haunting,
unnerving fear lest the issue be what it has been many times before, a
crushing defeat.

It is not the weak human soul only that trembles at the impending
conflict, but the soul of Satan, so often beaten down and humiliated at
the hands of the weakest of the soldiers of God.

[1] 2 Cor. xi, 3.

[2] 1 Tim. ii, 14.

[3] St. John viii, 44.

[4] 2 Cor. iv, 4.

[5] 2 Cor. xi, 14.

[6] St. Mark xiii, 22.

[7] _Imitation_, I, xiii.

[8] "The soul, from her nature, always relishes good, though it is true
that the soul, blinded by self-love, does not know and discern what is
true good."--St. Catherine of Siena, _Dialogue_, p. 122. (Thorold
Trans., London, 1907.)

[9] "There is something satanic in the contempt and the ridicule with
which men treat Satan. I say it is satanic because it is a Satanic
illusion to make men cease to fear him, or cease even to believe in
him. He is never more completely master of a man than when the man
ridicules his existence,--when, as we hear in these days, men say,
'There is no devil.'"--H. E. Manning, _Sin and Its Consequences_, pp.
168-169.

[10] St. Luke xvi, 8.

[11] It is perhaps best to avoid such expressions as "personality of
evil," lest they be misunderstood. "Evil cannot be personal in or of
itself; it can only obtain the advantages of personal embodiment and
action by being accepted by an already existing creature, endowed with
will,--a creature which freely determines implicitly to accept it by
rejecting good.... In Satan evil has become dominant and fixed as in a
previously existing personal being; there was no such thing in the
universe of the Almighty and All-good God as a self-existing or
originally created devil."--Liddon, _Passiontide Sermons_, p. 95.

[12] "What do they exactly mean by this imposing phrase? How can evil
itself be, strictly speaking, a principle? The essence of evil is
absence of principle, principle being something positive. Evil is
c