by
affording him opportunity of overcoming and so of gaining spiritual
strength, which is the only true advancement in man's eternal course of
progress. The one purpose of providing bodies for the preexistent
spirits of the race, and of advancing them to the mortal state, was to
"prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the
Lord their God shall command them."[539] The plan of mortality involved
the certainty of temptation. The intent of the supplication appears to
be that we be preserved from temptation beyond our weak powers to
withstand; that we be not abandoned to temptation without the divine
support that shall be as full a measure of protection as our exercize of
choice will allow.

How inconsistent then to go, as many do, into the places where the
temptations to which we are most susceptible are strongest; for the man
beset with a passion for strong drink to so pray and then resort to the
dramshop; for the man whose desires are lustful to voice such a prayer
and then go where lust is kindled; for the dishonest man, though he say
the prayer, to then place himself where he knows the opportunity to
steal will be found! Can such souls as these be other than hypocrites in
asking God to deliver them from the evils they have sought? Temptation
will fall in our way without our seeking, and evil will present itself
even when we desire most to do right; for deliverance from such we may
pray with righteous expectation and assurance.

_"For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever.
Amen."_ Herein we acknowledge the supremacy of the Being whom we
addressed at the beginning as Father. He is the Almighty in whom and
through whose provision we live and move and have our existence.[540] To
assert independence of God is both sacrilege and blasphemy; to
acknowledge Him is a filial duty and a just confession of His majesty
and dominion. The Lord's Prayer is closed with a solemn "Amen," set as a
seal to the document of the supplication, attesting its genuineness as
the true expression of the suppliant's soul; gathering within the
compass of a word the meaning of all that has been uttered or thought.
_So let it be_ is the literal signification of _Amen_.

From the subject of prayer the Master turned to that of fasting, and
emphasized the important truth that to be of avail fasting must be a
matter between the man and his God, not between man and his kind. It was
a common thing in the Mast