fending eye, and to cut off the offending hand. The first visible objects which Satan used to tempt withal were pure creatures of God, the fruit of the tree which God had blessed. So subtil is evil. But since he gained an entrance into the creation of God, he has, through the will and works of wicked men, framed for himself a world of his own, full of the visible forms and suggestions of pride, lust, impurity, covetousness. What else are idolatries, oracles, licentious ceremonies, lying books, unholy sights, pomps, and wars; or, again, false casuistry, sceptical and defiling literature, luxurious arts, worldly grandeur, and the like? And these things find their way into all eyes and ears, and are quickened by the craft and activity of men already corrupt. This world of evil hangs upon us round about, and through it he insinuates the quality of evil into the affections, and by them sways and possesses the will.

And again we cannot doubt that he has still more concealed ways of addressing himself to us. He is a spirit, and we are of a spiritual nature. It is impossible to limit or define the action of intellect on intellect, and imagination on imagination. There are some temptations so peculiar, so sudden, so abrupt in their onset, so contrary to our natural and habitual bias, so disturbing and vehement in their first entrance on the mind, that

we can hardly doubt that the tempter has a direct avenue to the intellectual and imaginative powers of our nature: for instance, religious delusions, in which he appears as an angel of light to the perverted mind. There is, by the common consent of man, such a thing as the direct instigation of the devil, which, though its means of working may be generally through the senses, we cannot doubt is also a work of direct and disembodied evil. Such, for instance, as the unaccountable desire to commit great and eccentric crimes; sudden impulses to do things most feared and hated, concurring with an opportunity unperceived till the impulse detected it. Now though these are extreme cases, and such as we are not commonly exposed to, they lay open a law, so to speak, of temptation which has place in our common life. I mean, the direct power and agency of Satan on the imagination. It is not necessary now to go further, or to inquire whether the images of the mind of which he serves himself are gathered from the ideas of previous experience, or suggested, new and unknown, from without. All that we are concerned with now is, to shew that he has no hold over the will, nor power over the affections, except through the images of the senses and of the mind. And this is a most consolatory and a most practical truth. It shews us our perfect safety so long as the Spirit of Christ

dwells in our hearts: and it teaches us where to watch against the approaches of the tempter.

Let us pray, then, that our eyes, ears, and all senses be mortified; that the cross be upon them all; that no images of pomp, vanity, or lust may pass through them into the affections of our hearts; that no visions of sins past, nor remembrance of any thing that can kindle pride, anger, resentment, or any unholy passion, may haunt us; that our will may be dwelt in by the will of our sinless Lord, who for us overcame in the wilderness, and, if we be pure and true, will "bruise Satan under our feet shortly."

SERMON VI.

WORLDLY CARES.

ST. MATTHEW iv. 3.

"When the tempter came to Him, he said, If Thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread."

WHEN Our Lord had fulfilled the forty days of His miraculous fast, "He was afterward an hungered." He felt at that moment, more than all the sensations of languor and exhaustion to which long abstinence from food commonly brings our nature. It was a time of peculiar weakness, when, if ever, the tempter might hope to have advantage of this mysterious Person. When he came to Him, therefore, he took up the words which fell from heaven at His baptism. He said, "If Thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread." It seems to have been partly for the sake of finding out what He truly was, and partly to prepare the way for other and worse suggestions. We cannot

say how far Satan knew with Whom he had to do. Probably he could only gather His real nature by the manifestations which were revealed in this world. The tempter had, we may believe, no knowledge derived from his own intelligence who this mysterious servant of God might be. He was no longer privy to the secrets of Heaven; and no revelations in the unseen world had made him a partaker in those "things which the angels desire to look into." His knowledge, it seems, was to be gathered from tokens and intimations given to mankind; as, the vision and song of the heavenly host at His birth, and the descent of the Holy Ghost, with the Father's voice at Jordan. And here he came to put all this to the test, and to elicit something more. He came seeking a sign; and that sign, first of all, was a miracle, to be wrought by Christ upon the stones of the wilderness, to stay His hunger. But He who had compassion on the faintness of the multitude would not regard Himself. They had been with Him only three days, and He had fasted forty; but He would not outrun His Father's time, or change His Father's way. He knew, it would seem, that in the end of His temptation, when He had borne it all, and accomplished the mysterious conflict, there should come ministering angels to His succour.

But my object is not so much to enter upon the