ife, it would be
a base return for His goodness to shut those graces up in our hearts
(were such a thing possible), instead of using them in more extended
endeavour for the glory of His Kingdom; instead of arming ourselves by
their means for more complete and crushing conquests of His enemies.

The Saints are led along the path of sanctity that they may be more
effective soldiers; not that they may by such progress escape from the
presence of the foe, and find a pusillanimous peace in this life, while
all the powers of evil are storming at the gates of the Kingdom, and
making captives of the King's children.

Peace is to be had indeed, and in this life, "for the Kingdom of God is
righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost,"[25] but, says a
Kempis, {55} "he that knows how to suffer will possess the greatest
peace." Endurance of hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ is the
only passport to honourable peace in this life, the only pledge of the
"peace of God which passeth all understanding"[26] in the life to come.

IV. _Satan in the Sanctuary_

Thomas a Kempis tells us again, "There is no order so holy nor place so
secret where there be not temptations."[27]

It would seem that the energies of Satan against God would, from the
nature of things, find themselves paralysed under certain conditions.
Surely, one should think, the devil could introduce his temptations
more readily in a brothel than in a church, in ordinary secular
employment rather than when we are engaged in the service of the
sanctuary.

Such, however, is not the case. Amid the common employments of the
carpenter shop in Nazareth we should scarcely have wondered had He been
tempted; but that the enemy should have approached the Incarnate Son of
God while in the midst of His great retreat in preparation for His
ministry does fill us with astonishment. {56} Or if it seem not
unnatural that He should have been tempted in the desert solitudes, yet
we do marvel at the audacity that led the tempter to bear Him to the
holy precincts of the temple, and seize upon the circumstances there to
tempt Him to seek other than His Father's will. But so it was with the
Master, and so shall it be with the disciple.[28]

Who has not been tempted at the holiest times and in the most sacred
places? Is it not, furthermore, the common experience that Satan the
more eagerly and readily pursues us under such circumstances? There is
a principle in it, and a