Shirley Carter Hughson

“ Do we realize, when the conflict comes, that our heart is but the arena of a struggle between the omnipotence of God and the weakness of Satan, and that we are called to fight along with Him "Who is the Author of unconquerable might, the King of the Empire that cannot be overthrown?" If so, then there can be no fear or repining because of the battle, but with the glad war-cry, "Emmanuel,—God with us!" can we plunge into the glorious strife, knowing that with His own right hand and with His holy arm will He get Himself the victory. ”

“ The strong man is always the calm man. An agitated spirit is the evidence of a conscious weakness. The soldier who has faith in his commander, who knows he can rely on the weapons furnished him, and who is certain that his strength is greater than that of his enemy, is not excited in the face of attack. He receives it with serenity because he feels assured of what the result will be. It is uncertainty that brings agitation; it is the uncertainties of life that produce the worry that kills—and worry means want of faith. But the Christian soldier is beset by no uncertainties. ”

“ Again, consider what is the meaning of each particular defeat to God. Every baptized soul is a point on the far-flung battle line of the Church Militant; every baptized soul is His soldier, made in His image and sealed with His Sign of adoption, and set to defend a definite point in the front of God's army. Is it nothing to Him that such a soul be beaten down by the foe? Is it nothing to Him that His divine image be marred and denied with the marks of the Fiend, and that he who bears it be dragged away a captive of hell? ”

“ Our only hope lies in a stubborn refusal of consent. Our safety lies in fixing the will on this one thing. Never mind how fiercely the enemy may assault. He may deliver charge after charge with a rapidity that bewilders the soul, and makes it grow sick and dizzy. We may seem to be beaten down under his feet, and all the storms and billows of a fierce and terrible temptation may sweep over us, and yet so long as from the {125} midst of the confusion we cry, "I will it not," the soul is safe. ”

“ We must for our own encouragement remember that though He is perfect God as well as perfect Man, yet it was not by means of His divine power alone that He fought His own battle against temptation and conquered. He won the victory by the use of His human will, fortified by His divinity. It was as Man, not as God, that He fought and conquered. Had he contended against Satan in His God-nature only, there would have been no real struggle, for even the slightest exercise of His divine power must have crushed the enemy in a single moment of time. ”

“ So, if in our temptations, we would share His victory, our method of battle must follow His. The tempted soul must fling itself instantly upon God in the humblest acknowledgment of dependence. Much of our failure in the conflict arises from a forgetfulness of this. How often does the very dread of the sin so agitate the soul that instead of turning to God, we stand, as it were, fascinated by the horror of the suggestion, losing precious moments that should be devoted to flinging open all the channels of communication with God, that His own strength may flow into us for the battle. ”

“ Every man's experience has told him this, and yet deep in the human heart there is that uncontrollable longing for the loving touch of another heart, human like our own. God sees this, and condescends to it. He takes humanity, full and complete, up into the Godhead, that in Him we may find that human Heart that will give us perfectly the comfort and sympathy for which we yearn. ”

“ The headlong rush of water whirls it round, and it can never stop its work so long as it is driven by the water. Yet it is in the power of the man who directs it to decide whether he will have wheat, or barley, or darnel ground by it. For it must certainly crush that which the man in charge of it puts in. So the mind is driven by the torrents of temptation which pour in on it from every side and cannot be free from the flow of thoughts, but we control the character of the thoughts by the efforts of our own earnestness."—Cassian, Conferences, I, 17, 18. ”

“ The power of divine grace, like that of the Adversary, is impulsive, not compulsive, that the free power of our will may be entirely preserved. Wherefore, for the evil things which a man does by the influence of Satan, it is not Satan that receives the punishment, but the man himself; forasmuch as he was not involuntarily forced into those things, but was consenting in his own will. In the same manner also with respect to what is good, Grace does not ascribe it to itself, but to the man, and it therefore assigns to him glory, as the cause of good to himself. ”

“ If they will but hold fast, and in the power of the Spirit let not Satan have the advantage, the grace of God within them will so operate of its own inherent force and activity that each will be counted among those that overcome, and will receive the gracious reward promised to those who are worthy to be ranked among the victors in the Kingdom. What strong consolation is here! What proof of the love and compassion of our God! Only yield not to Satan, hold fast that which thou hast, and thine shall be a share in the glory of the victorious Son of God. ”

“ No risings, then, of any passion, yea, though it should rise again and again, against thee, and by rising weary thee, and almost wear thee out: no thought by night when thou hast not power over thy soul, and thy will is not conscious: no thoughts by day, which come to thee again and again, and besiege thee and torment thee, and would claim thee for their own: no distractions in prayer, even if they carry thee away, and thou lose thyself and awake, as it were, out of a dream, and thy prayer be gone,—none of these things are thine. ”

“ How much sin, for example, is due to the action of memory! It is indeed strange that this wonderful faculty, which more than any other operates to give unity, consistency, and proportion to our life, should be so often used to call up past sins that we may sin them over again in will if not in deed. We linger with pleasure, by the exercise of this faculty, over past sins, making them our own again, staining our souls once more with that which we thought had been buried forever in the far-off years. ”

“ We see how in the conflict we have tremendous personalities to deal with, the Personality of the triune God,—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,—and the Personality of Satan and his innumerable fallen angels, who, though finite and created, possess a scope and power which are, perhaps, so great that our human thought cannot compass them. But immeasurably below any of these as it is, our own personality must not be forgotten, for let it ever be kept in mind that the issue of our individual battle depends on ourselves. ”

“ How many times have loving hearts that would choose death a thousand times rather than dishonour our Lord become sick with terror when in the midst of such prolonged temptation there {127} comes a dread whisper within, "You have consented, though you knew it not." It is the voice of the tempter, and the ruse is a favourite one in his warfare against the soul, for he knows that for us to think we have sinned is almost as fatal in its effects on the morale of the soul as to have actually yielded consent. ”

“ It is on these grounds that the "superior will" has been called the "Royal Faculty," because like a king it sits enthroned over all other faculties, guiding and ruling them. No matter what dispositions we may have, they are inoperative until the will commands; and according as the will dictates, so is our whole life. We, and all that pertains to us, are good or bad according as the will operates for good or evil.
Let us understand clearly, however, what is meant by the freedom of the human will, lest we fall into error. As we have seen, the will is indeed free. Satan cannot force it ”

“ Thus does the Psalmist recall a day of shame and humiliation in the history of God's people. Well prepared for the battle, with every hope of victory before them, the children of Ephraim failed in the hour when they faced the enemy.
Thus has it been with many souls in the spiritual warfare. We may be forewarned, we may be armed with the manifold gifts of the Spirit, and yet fail, for the preparation is not everything. When in the actual presence of the foe, the soul must smite boldly and well. The weapons God supplies must be used. Not to use a grace is to lose a grace. ”

“ But man must have his part. Salvation can come to no soul that does not labour for it, and temptation is the opportunity definitely prepared and presented to us by a loving God that the work of the Cross may not for us have been wrought in vain. Therefore great consolation must come with every assault, and as we feel the weight and thrust of the awful conflict, let us joyfully cry, "Now is the accepted time; now is the day {181} of salvation! Why art thou so heavy, O my soul, and why art thou so disquieted within me! Look up and lift up your head, for your redemption draweth nigh!" ”

“ Satan thought by means of death to make eternal life with God impossible; but by the divine overruling death is made the gateway of everlasting life. He watches the progress of the effect of sin; he sees the bodily weakness which he introduced into the race when he induced our first parents to sin, increasing, only to realize that the supreme result of evil in the world is to remove the soul he has been pursuing with malignant hate, forever from the sphere of his action. ”

“ If we desired to describe our life here in one word, that word might be Temptation. From one point of view the purpose for which we are put into this world is to be tempted, that is, to be tried or tested, in order that the wheat among us may be separated from the chaff, and that the children of light may be manifested and divided from the children of darkness. ”

“ It is a part of the temptation itself that, as we contemplate the fact of its universality, the question should arise in the soul, weary with the battle, sore with long buffeting, "Is there no rest, no cessation from the strain and stress of the warfare?"
The question comes from Satan. Assuming the role of a comforter, he whispers to us of the hardness of the ceaseless struggle. It is a temptation to induce us to forget our character as the followers of our Lord. ”

“ There are many practical means we can employ to allay that kind of solicitude which is both the cause and effect of a doubting spirit.
(1) Think not overmuch of the dangers of the warfare. The imagination brooding over them will be apt to paint them in lurid colours that will terrify and weaken. If the thought of the peril presses upon us, supplant it by recalling the oft repeated pledges of divine help. Think rather of the glory of a conflict in which God is our Leader, and in which victory is absolutely assured if only we do not lose heart but fight on to the end. ”

“ Let us regard a little child just baptized—it is an innocent child of God, but what is innocence? In many respects a beautiful attribute, but a purely negative one; for it is the attribute of an untried soul. That child must pass through the wilderness of temptation, and with the result either that the innocence will be transformed into sanctity or will be lost and give place to sin. ”

“ How Satan gloats as he marks one point that is being left unguarded, and waits, alert and observant, for a favourable opportunity for attack. Through long time, months and years it may be, he maintains a steady, subtle work of suggestion, leading the mind little by little, unconsciously because no guard is kept, into an attitude where the temptation we boastingly defied will prove a terrible foe before whose sudden onslaught we shall go down in grievous and ignominious fall. ”

“ God's Saints, following the lead of the King of Saints, have on a thousand battle-fields trampled him under their feet; and with whatever insolent confidence he may approach us, it is never without a haunting, unnerving fear lest the issue be what it has been many times before, a crushing defeat.
It is not the weak human soul only that trembles at the impending conflict, but the soul of Satan, so often beaten down and humiliated at the hands of the weakest of the soldiers of God. ”

“ The humble soul is always the praying soul. The soul that realizes its dependence will lose no time in calling upon Him on Whom it leans, and this earnest prayer is the weapon in the warfare, without which certain overthrow must ensue. ”

“ God has infinitely more at stake than I have; my victory is infinitely more to His interest than it is to mine, just because He is so infinitely greater than His creature. Seeing that this is so, we can understand how mightily He will strive to give us the victory. No matter what undreamed of gifts of grace are needed, He stands ready to bestow them. ”

“ For grace does not so constrain by compulsive force as to render a man's will incapable of altering; but though it be present to him, it gives way to his free and arbitrary power, that his will may be manifested how it is disposed to good or to evil. For the law is not applied to our nature, but to our free-will, which is able to convert itself either to good or to evil."—Macarius, Institutes of Christian Perfection, Bk. ”

“ God will not. But this does not mean that the will is free to stand alone. It means simply that the will is free to choose. Man was made for service. It has been said that the dream of mankind has ever been of liberty, but the one practical question that faces us every moment from the cradle to the grave is, Whom shall I serve? Furthermore, there are but two alternatives of service,—God or Satan. Man, from his very nature, cannot choose to serve himself. Brought down to its final analysis, all service is that of God or Satan, heaven or hell. ”

“ Imagine an army troubled, strained, distressed, confused; what possible chance would it have of victory against a powerful and confident foe? It would be the plaything of the enemy, as indeed the human soul often is when it allows itself to be unnerved by a false anxiety.
Thus we see that the anxious soul is the doubting soul, and the soul that doubts God's goodness and loving care in the midst of the trial and conflict has already flung away its weapons and prepared the terms of its surrender to Satan. ”