when the greater part is the accidental, and the habitual the less. For then, as soon as the danger seems past, a still more dangerous security comes on. Our feelings grow less active; we think we have exaggerated our peril, that we have made excessive efforts and needless resolutions; our watchfulness over ourselves relaxes; the thoughts of our hearts are less taxed, our tempers less guarded, our prayers fainter or fewer; our whole state let down some degrees of intensity, and our whole posture of mind inclines to relaxation. So hard is it to use God's gifts rightly and thankfully. When the tempter is departed, we forget him; when angels minister to us, we turn our consolations into dangers, and our rest into a declension.

2. The next danger of this time of peace is that our old state, in which the temptation found us at first, returns; and yet it is seldom altogether so well with us as before. Temptations are sent or permitted for many reasons: to try us, to humble us, to purify us, to waken us up out of lukewarmness, to kindle us with greater fervor of devotion, to form in us a higher tone of character, and to perpetuate it. When the temptation is gone, its effects ought still to survive. The fruits of the discipline are designed to be an abiding grace in our souls. Whatsoever be the peculiar temptation, it was no doubt designed to elicit and establish in us the antagonist grace. If we have been tempted to pride, it was to leave us rooted in humility; if to worldliness, it was to perfect in us a deadness to the gifts of life; if it was excess of any kind, it was to chasten us into definite rules, strong resolutions, habitual self-denial; and so on. If, with the temptation, these also pass away, we shall but have suffered in vain, or rather for the worse. For, first, our old character will rise again to the surface; our old pride, self-consciousness, self-esteem, uncharitable

ness, luxury, softness, will come out again, encouraged by the return of calm, the absence of fear, and even stimulated by repression. They have been rather irritated than subdued; and a strange self-complacency spreads itself in our minds after a season of self-discipline, on the strength of which we take a larger measure of freedom. For instance, we think ourselves secure from censoriousness if, while we say sharp things of others, we have a consciousness of the sin of being censorious still present in our minds; or we think that the rest we enjoy is an indication from God that we may indulge it, forgetting that all peace must be of God's giving, not of our taking. Or again, after self-denial, such as fasting, we consciously allow ourselves a freer diet, as if it were neutralized by past abstinence. Such are the strange compositions we make with our consciences; and the effect is to destroy the simplicity of our acts and the purity of our intentions, to make us refined and casuistical in plain duties, and so to prepare us to be deluded by the return of temptation.

3. And once more: another danger is, that active temptations return as it were from the opposite side. Sometimes, indeed, the very same comes back upon an unwary mind, almost as soon as it seems to be gone, with a force sudden and sevenfold, and fairly carries all before it. We may have held out for a week under provocation, until the trial seemed over, and then some unlooked-for event has kindled the anger of seven days in one, and "the last state is worse than the first." So it is in other temptations. But generally it seems that the manifold versatility of Satan changes the avenues of approach and the form of his attack. It is but a feint to call all our watchfulness to one point, and then to assault us in another. People who have overcome temptation to worldliness often become pharisaical-luxurious

people miserly; they who have been humbling themselves with fasting become complacent at the half-admitted suggestion of their humility; or again, pure minds may become proud, severe spirits harsh and unsympathising. Such are our infirmities; so are we surrounded by temptation, that we often do but make exchanges of the sins of boyhood for the sins of youth, the sins of youth for the sins of old age, the sins of the flesh for the sins of the spirit, and of spiritual sins one for another; the more visible for the less perceived, the lower for the more sublime. Such is our wonderful and fearful nature, it revolves in a circle with an instability and a speed so great, that we rise and fall by an inward motion of the heart at our highest we are nearest to a change, and our changes are often diametrical and extreme. Verily it is an awful saying, "There are first which will be last, and last which shall be first." "I saw Satan as lightning fall from heaven." Such as the speed of his fall, such oftentimes is ours; and as his was from heaven to earth, so is ours from the highest aspiration to the lowest abasement.

Now it will seem, perhaps, paradoxical to say that times of temptation are times of safety. Yet there is a truth in it. And it is true thus far :-Temptations that are resisted become a wholesome and searching discipline. Unresisted temptations, or temptations only faintly opposed, of course tend simply to perdition. These are excluded from our present subject by the very terms of it. We are speaking of Him who bruised Satan under His feet, and of those who, like Him and in Him, "resist the devil." I have already said what is the temper and posture of mind which temptations produce in us; and also that it is doubtless the design of God, in suffering us to be so tried, that the spiritual state elicited in the season of temptation should become habitual, and abide as a gift of grace in us for ever. It may be, that

to beings once fallen, the pain and toil of this warfare is the unly way to perfect strength and purity. For our sanctification is the expulsion of evil from the will, under the help of God's Spirit, by its own energies and acts. Every temptation overcome is such an act of expulsion, and therefore tends to our perfect cleansing.

Of this we are very certain, that at no time is the protection of angels and the help of God more near to us than when the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall."* At no time is the providence of God more directly pointed upon us than when snares are being spread around our feet: nor does the intercession of our blessed Lord, who, through temptation, knows "how to succor them that are tempted," ever prevail more mightily by His infinite merits than when the "hour and the power of darkness" is upon our souls. Peter was our type: and all that are tempted were in him, when our gracious Master said, "Simon, Simon, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not."*

Strange, indeed, through our perversity, that dangers should come with the cessation of danger; that rest, peace, refreshing, quietness, should become perils. Yet so, in truth, they too often are. We are most liable to temptation at times when we think ourselves least likely to be overcome; for instance, when things have been going on smoothly; when we have been long unmolested by assaults; when we have overcome some solicitations to things unlawful or inexpedient; when we have done acts, or made resolutions, of higher devotion; when we have been reading and adopting in intention the example of saints; when we have been using high and great words of sanctity and of the cross; * Isaiah xxv. 4. * St. Luke xxii. 31, 32.

when we have done acts of charity, mercy, faith, and have the gladness of them still upon our hearts; when we have been highly accepted and owned of God in our prayers, or at the holy Eucharist, as Christ at His baptism, just before He was tempted: all these are times when we have need to watch with tenfold care, lest, through our slackness of security, peace should be more dangerous to us than temptation.

Let us, then, consider how we ought to use this peace which follows upon a season of trial.

First, we ought to use it for a particular retrospect of the circumstances of our temptation. So long as the trial lasts, we are less able to take a true view of our case. We ought closely to ascertain what were the avenues by which the temptation came upon us; what occasions, or salient points, or positions of vantage, we gave to the tempter; what were our thoughts and dispositions of mind before it made its approach; what were our intentions; what were its symptoms and effects. And in all this we shall generally find the spiritual discernment and guidance of another more penetrating than our own. And the act of laying it open will bring with it that which will tend to check our relapse into a like condition.

Next, it will be necessary for us to make such resolutions of self-discipline, as shall cut off the occasion of which temptation took advantage before. Sometimes this may not be wholly possible; but in a great number of cases it it will be. The perpetuating of any one resolution made at such a time will be a continual memorial of warning and admonition.

Again the acts of prayer and humiliation used by us in a season of temptation may either wholly or in part be continued, and joined to our daily devotions. Again: the