The experience of temptation is universal. Every life must grow up amid unfriendly and opposing influences – some of them subtle and insidious, like miasma in the air; some of them fierce and wild, like the blast of storm or the rush of battle. Much is said in sermons about the solemn nature of death; yet really it is not half so perilous a thing to die as it is to live. No child of God was ever lost, or even harmed, in the experience of dying.
“The grave itself is but a covered bridge
Leading from light to light through a brief darkness.”
But life is full of peril. To live truly we must battle day by day. Satan is no mediaeval myth, but an actual foe, powerful, cunning, treacherous, and terrible. Danger lurks in every shadow.
The question in life is not how to escape temptation, but how to pass through it so as not to be harmed by it. Christ’s way of helping us is not by keeping us out of the conflicts. This would leave us forever weak, untried, and undisciplined. The price of spiritual attainment and culture is struggle. Jesus himself was made perfect through suffering.
All the best things in life – the only things worth obtaining – lie beyond fields of battle, and we can get them only by overcoming. It would be no kindness to us were God to withdraw us into some sheltered spot whenever there is danger, or if he were to fight our battles for us, thus freeing us from all necessity to struggle.
“He who hath never a conflict hath never a victor’s palm,
And only the toilers know the sweetness of rest and calm.”
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