petition a
half-conscious allusion to a captive being led into a prison.

What we should chiefly desire is that God would lead us not _into_, but
_through_ and _out of_, temptation. To pray simply for exemption from
trial is--

1. To ask what is impossible.

All scenes of life, all stages, both sexes, all relations, all
professions, are and ever will be full of inducements to sin.

Whether any given circumstance will tempt you or not depends on what you
are. If there is nothing adhesive on you, it will not stick.

2. To ask what would not be for our good.

Effect of conquered temptation on the Christian life.

Effect on character. The old belief that the strength of a slain enemy
passed into his slayer is true in regard to a Christian's overcome
temptations.

Effect on grasp of truth.

Effect on consciousness of relation to God.

Effect on Future.

So then we ought to desire not so much exemption from temptation, as
strength in it.

And He will always be at our side to grant us this.

We should seek not freedom from furnace, but His presence in it; not to
be guided away from the dark valley, but through it. His prayer is our
model; His life is our pattern, who was tempted 'though He were the
Son'; His strength is our hope. He is 'able to succour them that are
tempted.'

We identify ourselves in such a prayer with all who have sinned, and
knowing that we are men of like passions, and that we may fall like
them, we cry 'lead _us_ not.'

He who offers this prayer from such motives will best and most willingly
meet temptation when it comes. The soldier who goes into the field with
careful circumspection, knowing the enemy's strength and his own
weakness, is the most likely to conquer. It is the presumptuous men,
confident in their own strength, who are sure to get beaten.

'DELIVER US FROM EVIL'

'But deliver us from evil.'--MATT. vi. 13.

The two halves of this prayer are like a calm sky with stars shining
silently in its steadfast blue, and a troubled earth beneath, where
storms sweep, and changes come, and tears are ever being shed. The one
is so tranquil, the other so full of woe and want. What a dark picture
of human conditions lies beneath the petitions of this second half!
Hunger and sin and temptation, and wider still, that tragic word which
includes them all--evil. Forgiveness and defence and deliverance--what
sorrows these presuppose! Each step of these latter supplications seems
to