The Warfare of the Soul Part 10

Patience is also a necessary virtue that has constantly and a.s.siduously to be cultivated if we would be ready always for the battle.

(1) We are to be patient with G.o.d, biding His time, tarrying His leisure,[8] awaiting whatever He may send in the conflict, a.s.suring one's heart always that He rules and overrules, and that all things work together for good to those who love Him.[9]

(2) We know the necessity of patience with our fellow-men. Our daily experience show us how large a proportion of temptation arises from failure to bear with those among whom we live, {102} not infrequently those who hold the first place in our hearts. A wholesome remedy for impatience with those about us is to remember ourselves. "Endeavour to be patient in bearing with the defects and infirmities of others of what sort soever they be: for thou also hast many which must be borne with by others. If thou canst not make thyself what thou wouldest, how canst thou expect to have another to thy liking? We are glad to see others perfect; and yet we mend not our own faults. We will have others severely corrected: and will not be corrected ourselves. The large liberty of others displeases us: and yet we will not have our own desires denied us. We will have others restrained by laws: but will not in any way be checked ourselves. And thus it appears: how seldom we weigh our neighbour in the same balance with ourselves."[10]

(3) All these things we have just been considering are doubtless familiar to us, but perhaps the thought of patience with ourselves is not so common a one, although there is no more important a factor in all the Christian warfare.

Patience must be exercised towards oneself as towards a weak and wayward child. We are not to expect too much of ourselves. To turn upon oneself angrily or bitterly because we cannot {103} immediately drive away some persistent temptation, or because we have yielded,[11]

is an act of spiritual pride. It shows that we thought ourselves quite able to cope with the tempter; prided ourselves indeed upon our spiritual powers; and are now in a state of surprise and indignation that we should have failed; when all the while, had we known ourselves, we should have seen that the real wonder is that we are ever able at all to resist him successfully.

Nor must we be surprised if there seem to rise up out of our own hearts foul and humiliating temptations. We are not to forget that we are made from the dust of the earth that can, of itself, bring forth naught but thorns and thistles. The material of temptation is everywhere, within and without, the soul "having the worst temptation within itself in its own temptibility."[12]

Nor will he who understands himself and his own weakness grow impatient with the long {104} continuance of the battle. He will recognize that if he had his just deserts he would long since have been cast out from G.o.d rather than permitted to wear the King's uniform, and fight battles for the honour of His Name. He who knows himself will go softly all the days of his life, knowing that only by so great a salvation as that wrought on Calvary has he been preserved from the power of the enemy.

So "by little and little, and by patience with long suffering through G.o.d's help thou shalt better overcome, than by hardness and thine own pertinacity."[13]

VII. _The Practice of Diligence_

There remains to be considered the spirit of diligence that must characterize the soldier of Christ. Keep yourself always busy with the things of G.o.d. Keep the whole mental faculty engaged; keep it under the command of the Holy Ghost, for just as in all else that belongs to man, if G.o.d does not direct it, Satan will. There is a deep spiritual truth in the old proverb, "An idle brain is the devil's workshop."

Not only will this course superinduce such habits of thought and character as will strengthen us mightily, but, the human mind being what it {105} is, will render it often impossible for Satan to find lodgment in it for his temptation.

The mind can only be engaged with a limited number of things at any one time. This varies with various persons, according to their mental training and development, but even the most highly developed mind can compa.s.s but few things at the same moment. Our common mental processes consist of one thought, or group of thoughts, thrusting out others, and taking their place until in their turn they are displaced. Since this is the case, one's safety from evil thoughts lies in diligently keeping the mind filled with good and holy thoughts. Keep the will at work calling up a continuous procession of suggestions and pictures of things righteous and G.o.d-like, and when Satan approaches to insinuate into the heart his temptations, he will find it so full that there will be no room in it for him or his works.

This must be done in an organized and methodical way. Let us not trust to chance opportunity. At every moment the will is, consciously or subconsciously, making a choice either for good or evil. Our part is to seize upon these moments and force that inevitable choosing to be not only righteous, but definitely and explicitly a choice of righteousness.

Practise over and over again the work of {106} choosing G.o.d. Arraign before the mind things good and evil, the higher and the lower, that the will may be drilled in the repeated preference of what belongs to Him.

This will be a much simpler method than may seem at first. How many moments are there in each day when we are, of necessity, unoccupied.

We have to wait five minutes for an appointment; we spend a quarter of an hour on a crowded car; we have a little distance to walk to reach some destination; or occasionally there is a wakeful hour at night.

What are we doing all this time? We can be sure the will is operating.

It stands sentinel to admit or repulse every thought that comes; and what is the nature of the thoughts admitted? Idle thoughts, critical thoughts of those about us, silly vain thoughts of self,--how covered with confusion and shame we should be if some by-stander were able to look within and see the busy, thronging procession that streams through our mind unchallenged, nay more, welcomed and indulged. Yet this is the very opportunity G.o.d gives us to busy ourselves for Him: and instead of using it, we let it run to sinful waste, marring our whole character, for as a man thinks, so he is.

How much better would it have been had we said, when we realized the unoccupied minute: {107} "I will use this little time to make an act of love, of hope, of faith. I will speak to Him familiarly in some e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of prayer. I will, for His praise, repeat some psalm I may know by heart. I will pray for some of these people, strangers though they be to me."[14] Then immediately perform this resolution in a most definite way, framing with care even the very words with the lips, that the body as well as the mind may have its part in the work.

Try this for a month, earnestly and persistently, and at the end of that time see if the whole inner being does not spontaneously turn to such holy exercises. So far as the human aspect of it is concerned, it is a mere matter of psychology. The mind acts thus, because it has been trained to it. The repeated act has formed the habit, and the habit in its turn repeats the act; but through and in it all is divine grace, the very life of G.o.d, operating in the infinite activity of His love.

Especially must we exercise this diligence when we perceive the tempter's approach. When we become conscious of the slightest suggestion that seems to point to sin, let the will rally all our {108} faculties to expel it, and to fill the mind so full that it can have no chance of returning. But here as everywhere else must we be on our guard against Satan's subtilty and power. Often in response to such an att.i.tude on our part, he presents some attractive thought, pure and good, perhaps; then another and another, leading the soul that is not watchful by a long train of a.s.sociated ideas up to the goal he has prepared, to some one thought that is either itself sin if consented to, or the ready vehicle of sin.

Accustom the mind with unwearied diligence to such thoughts as we can readily, conceive finding place in the mind of Christ, rejecting all others. "Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things."[15]

Let the mind be thus employed, and Satan may indeed be able to lead us along some line of thought up to the place of temptation, but it will be only to find, as with our Lord, when he bore Him up to the pinnacle of the temple, that this place of his own choosing will prove the scene of his own utter defeat.

[1] St. Matt. xviii, 3.

[2] "A temptation can never be divorced from a course of life. It is woven into the very texture of life's continuity. It is a temptation because of what we are _at the time_. It is the conditions of the crisis which make a moment, a decision, critical.... It is thus the whole setting of a life which brings temptation. So temptation is never clean detached from the past, or the future, of the tempted; for there is no such thing as a human experience which has not its roots in the past, and its fruit in the sequel."--H. J. C. Knight, _The Temptation of our Lord_, p. 55.

[3] Walter Hilton, _The Scale of Perfection_, Bk. I, Pt. II, chap. i.

[4] Acts x, 38.

[5] _Imitation_, I, xiii.

[6] Rodriguez, _The Practice of Religious and Christian Perfection_, Vol. I, p. 86. Pere Grou teaches "that nothing is small or great in G.o.d's sight; whatever He wills becomes great to us, however seemingly trifling, and if once the voice of conscience tells us that He requires anything of us, we have no right to measure its importance.... There is no standard of things great and small to a Christian, save G.o.d's will."--_The Hidden Life of the Soul_, p. 206. ("Half-a-Crown" Ed.)

[7] "Be still, then, and know that I am G.o.d."--Ps. xlvi, 10. "In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength."--Isa. x.x.x, 15.

[8] Ps. xxvii, 16.

[9] Rom. viii, 28.

[10] _Imitation_, I, xvi.

[11] "You are vexed at the vexation, and then you are vexed at having been vexed. I have seen people in the same way get into a pa.s.sion, and then be angry because they had lost their temper!"--St. Francis de Sales, _Spiritual Letters_, xxvii.

[12] S. T. Coleridge, _Aids to Reflection_, p. 186. (Bohn Ed.)

Bishop Andrewes in his second sermon on the Temptation of Christ, speaking of it being impossible for Him to have sinned since there was no fire of concupiscence in Him, quaintly says: "To us the devil needs bring but a pair of bellows, for he shall find fire within us."--Andrewes, _Sermons_, Vol. V, p. 508.

[13] _Imitation_, I, xiii.

[14] A busy Wall Street financier not long since told the writer that for several years, whenever stepping from an omnibus or car, in the thronged street or crowded railway station, he had made a practice of offering an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of prayer for his fellow-pa.s.sengers.

[15] Phil. iv, 8.

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CHAPTER VIII

THE STAGES OF THE BATTLE

The spiritual masters in every age are at agreement concerning the process by which the soul pa.s.ses from a state of grace into a state of sin. They express it in various ways, and in varying degrees of elaboration, but when a.n.a.lysed it can be brought down to three steps given us by St. Gregory, _Suggestion, Pleasure, Consent_.[1] Thomas a Kempis presents it somewhat more fully, and it is with his statement of the process that we purpose engaging ourselves.

"First," he says, "a bare thought comes to the mind; then a strong imagination; afterwards pleasure, and evil motion, and consent."[2]

I. _The Satanic Suggestion_

First of all, then, "the bare thought,"--_simplex cogitatio_,--"comes to the mind"; or more literally _runs upon_ (_occurit_), the mind. The word {110} is full of action. The suggestion of evil does not drift into the mind in any merely accidental way. It is propelled from without by a strong, alert intelligence,--none other than the Tempter,--and under just the conditions and circ.u.mstances that his experience shows him are the most advantageous for his uses. a Kempis doubtless had here in mind St. Paul's thought, expressed to the Corinthians, "There hath no temptation _taken_ you, but such as is common to man";[3] the idea being that of the temptation laying hold of the soul as a warrior might take hold upon his adversary in battle.

He proposes the evil thing, not perhaps as a thing sinful in itself, for, as we have already seen, his experience has taught him that few souls, even of the most depraved, can be induced to accept evil for evil's sake. He presents it sometimes under the guise of that which is positively good; or perhaps, with an a.s.sumption of great virtue, he acknowledges it to be wrong in itself, but seeks to persuade us that it would be right for us to make an exception of ourselves under the peculiar circ.u.mstances that are present.

It is necessary for us to study with care the subject of suggestion of sin, lest either through Satan's wiles, or our own ignorance, we be deceived, to our soul's hurt. It is at this point {111} that we must understand the difference between temptation and sin. The failure to grasp this difference has been the cause of great distress to many faithful souls; it has been the root of fatal discouragement in numberless cases, and, in not a few, of downfall and final wreck.