very liability to be affected by temptations. So it was with the Corinthians to whom St. Paul said: "Behold this selfsame thing, that ye sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what vehement desire, yea, what zeal, yea, what revenge! In all things ye have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter." The very sorrow and distress are our safeguard. We should be in danger if we did not feel them; and we are safer as we feel them more acutely, and use them for our humiliation and spiritual cleansing.

2. Another truth following on the last is, that nothing can convert a temptation into a sin but the consent of our own will. This one principle, clearly seen, is a key to nine-tenths of all questions of conscience on this subject. The worst of temptations, so long as they are without our will, are no part of us by consent they become adopted and incorporated with our spiritual nature-thoughts become wishes, and wishes intents. Consent is the act of the whole inward man. So long as we refuse to yield, it matters little what temptations beset us; they may distress and darken, and even for a time seem to defile our hearts: but they cannot overcome us. The thought of satisfying

1 2 Cor. vii. 11.

His natural hunger, of vindicating His divine Sonship by miracles, the visions of this false world, the kingdoms of the earth and the glory of them, were cast like shadows on the clear brightness of our Lord's spirit; but they won no assent, left no traces, no deposit of doubt, desire, or inclination. They were simply hateful, and were cast forth with an intense rejection; and that because they encountered a holy will, which is of divine strength even in man.

In measure it is so in every saint; it may be so with us. As the will is strengthened with energy, and upheld by the presence of Christ dwelling in the heart of the pure and lowly; so the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil, are expelled from us, and lose all share in our personal existence. This explains the various degrees of power that temptations have over various men. Some seem never mastered by them, some seldom, some often, and some always. Of the first we have spoken enough. The others will be found in two classes they are either those who, without positive habits of sin, are also without positive habits of holiness; or those whose habits are positively unholy. When I say, those who, without positive habits of sin, are also without positive habits of holiness, I mean, such persons as are pure in their lives, benevolent, upright, and amiable, but not

devout towards God. This in itself is of course, in one sense, sin, because it is a coming "short of the glory" and acceptance of God. I am using 'sin' in its popular sense, of wilful acts of evil. Now such people are open to the full incursions of the tempter in the whole extent of that natural sinfulness which is in them. This gives them a predisposition on which he acts with daily success. They are open and unguarded, and the will that is in them is weak and undisciplined; it has no expulsive power in it, by which evil is cleared from a heart that is sanctified by a life of holiness. We see such people become inconsistent, vain, ostentatious, worldly, and then designing, farsighted for their own interests, selfish, unscrupulous, false to their friends, their principles, their professions. We are surprised by unexpected acts out of keeping with what we believe them to be, and lines of practice in direct opposition to plain and evident duty. The key of all this is, that they have secretly yielded their will to some temptation, and converted it into their own sin; and that sin is their master. We sometimes see such people deteriorating with a frightful intensity and speed; so much so as to make us remember how awfully the emptiness and preparedness of an undevout heart is described by our Lord. The unclean spirit "saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out;

and when he is come, he findeth it swept and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there."

The case is, of course, much more obviously true of those who live lives of positive unholiness. Every sin that a man commits is an invitation to the tempter to tempt him thenceforward to that particular sin. So that every man of a profligate life is the subject of a manifold temptation, which is perpetually multiplying itself. First he is tempted of his own heart, then by Satan, then by consent he tempts Satan to tempt him again in the same forms, circumstances, and details; for by consent he has made that his master-sin. And thenceforward it becomes, as we say, a ruling sin, which is so seldom broken off that St. Peter says of certain, that they have "eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin." They have an active commerce with the tempter, a mingling of will and desire with him; and the inflammation and power of evil affections become a bondage through which it becomes at last morally impossible to break. And how does this differ from a possession of the devil? Is it not a possession in all the reality of fact and truth? How did Satan enter into the heart of Judas with any fuller or more

1 St. Matt. xii. 44, 45.

2 2 St. Peter ii. 14.

personal presence than this? How can we otherwise explain the settled, deliberate career of sin in which some men live-the perfect impenetrableness of heart and conscience with which they hold out against all warnings, fears, and chastisements; as, for instance, in sensuality, falsehood, or pride?

This, then, is the sum of the matter: temptations are no sins so long as we keep our will pure from all consent to them; when we consent, they become sins, are infused into our spiritual nature, and are the first admissions of that which in the end may be no less than a possession.

3. And this leads to one point more-I mean, to the nature and limits of the power of temptation. First, it is plain that Satan has no power over the will of man except through itself. It must be won by self-betrayal, or not at all. This is absolutely certain, and lies at the root of the distinction between obedience and disobedience, holiness and sin. Next, it would appear that he can have no direct power over the affections. He must approach them, as they lie round the will, through the eye and the ear, the touch or the imagination. Through the senses, the avenues of temptation are ready and direct; and all the world around us ministers to danger. Therefore our Lord was so searching in His commands to pluck out the of