is raised. The effort to live rightly, which is the sure result
of God's love believed, first teaches us thoroughly how wrong we are. We
know the strength of the current when we try to pull against it.
Looking to God as our Father, our blackness shows blacker against the
radiant purity of His white light.

Forgiveness does not at once and wholly annihilate the tendency to
transgress. True, the belief that God has forgiven supplies the
strongest motives for holiness, and the new life which comes to every
man who so believes will by degrees conquer all the lingering garrisons
of the Philistines which hold scattered strong-posts in the land. But
though this be so, still the purifying process is a slow and gradual
one, and evil may be forced out of the heart while yet it is in the
blood. The central will may be cleansed while yet habits continue to be
strong, and the power of resistance, new-born as it is, may be weak in
act though omnipotent in nature. All sin leaves some tendency to
recurrence. The path which one avalanche has hollowed lies ready for
another. It is true, on the one side, that no purity is so bright and no
obedience so steadfast as that of the man who has been cleansed and
reclaimed from rebellion. But it is also true that, on the road to that
ultimate purity, a pardoned man has to struggle daily with the bitter
relics of his old self, to wage war against evils the force of which he
never knew till he tried to resist them, against sins which were all
sleek, and velvety, and purring, as long as he fondled and stroked them,
but which flash out sharp claws when he would fling them from their dens
in his heart. Forgiveness does not at once conquer sin, and forgiveness
leads to deeper consciousness of sin. Hence the order of petitions here.
Following on the prayer for pardon, comes that for shelter from and in
temptation which arises from deep consciousness of our own weakness and
liability to fall.

Temptation has two parts in it--the circumstances which lead to sin, the
desire which is addressed by them. There must be tinder as well as
spark, if there is to be flame. Fire falling on water or upon bare rock
will kindle nothing. God sends the one, we make the other.

The Prayer:--

I. Expresses our recognition of God as ordering all circumstances.

There is the general faith that His Providence orders our lot, and the
specific that God orders and brings about temptations.

To tempt is to present induceme