Reckon with the fact
that in so far as we stand for anything in a life worth living, there
are people who have the will, the wish, and the power to do us hurt.

And yet, I say again, they can hurt us vitally--mark the word
vitally--only so far as we place the opportunity within their power.
We have to hurt ourselves before we can be hurt by anything outside us.
We have to be our own enemy to give the enemy his advantage.
"Nothing," says St. Bernard, "can work me harm except myself; the harm
I sustain I carry about with me, and never am I a real sufferer but by
my own fault."

Recall once more the word of the Lord Jesus, how He said: "The prince
of this world cometh, and findeth nothing in Me." The prince of this
world crucified Christ; he made Him the victim of the fear, the hate,
the murderous fury of the organized religious classes of that day. But
the prince of this world could not pass by a shade the extent which the
saving purpose of the Saviour had Himself decreed and set fast. When
the prince of this world came to the soul of the Saviour, the power of
the prince of this world had reached its limits. Had there been, I
will not say sin, but a sin; had there been the shade of a suspicion of
what the world significantly calls a "past" in that Soul, the devil
would have had his leverage, and the Divine Saviourhood would have
thinned out at the most in the ordinary tragedy of a human martyrdom.

The emissaries of the prince of this world could lay violent hands on
the body of Christ--that was permitted for your salvation and mine; but
their power became impotence when it approached the soul, and there is
where the battle is won or lost. "Fear not him who can kill the body
only, but fear it"--that is the better translation--"fear it, the evil
principle within thee, that can cast both body and soul in hell."

We are told that a man once wrote the late Mr. Spurgeon saying that
unless he received from him within two days a specified sum of money,
he would publish certain things that would go far to destroy the great
preacher's hold upon public estimation. And Mr. Spurgeon wrote back
upon a postcard: "You, and your like, are requested to publish all you
know about me across the heavens." There is a world of meaning in the
answer. This master in Israel had his enemies, who would have hailed
as a providence any report, true or false, which could have been
effectually used to strike at the message through the man.