e same time, by their operation, further and
deepen, a spirit of humility. Let us consider three of them.

(1) How quick we are to criticise the sin we see in others, but there
could be no such {176} arrogance if through Satan's temptations we were
daily made to realize what is possible in ourselves. On the contrary,
we should be filled with the gentle sympathy that a man feels for one
who is in the grip of some dread disease from which he himself has just
recovered; and sympathy is always humble.

(2) The sight of the degradation of the world in its sin will fill us
with a true gratitude to God that we have so far escaped the peril into
which Satan had succeeded in leading others, and true gratitude is
necessarily humble because even the smallest exercise of it is, as far
as it goes, a recognition of our dependence on another, and pride would
be unwilling to admit any such dependence.

(3) There will, in view of sin as it appears in life about us, be
awakened a wholesome fear, such as that which seizes upon a man whose
companion has been struck down at his side by the sting of a deadly
serpent,--a fear that will drive him back in humble dependence on God,
and make him realize how utterly powerless he is, of himself, to avoid
a like fate.

IV. _The Lessons of Consolation_

The teaching of the Holy Ghost is not confined to warning us of danger.
He has also many lessons of encouragement and consolation for us {177}
in the hour of temptation. Certain of these have already been
considered, and those that we shall consider now, must be disposed of
briefly. Perhaps some of us may take them up at another time as themes
for further thought and meditation. Such an exercise would be of great
profit, for Satan so constantly seeks to discourage us in the field,
that we may be sure that it is the loving will of God to offset this by
holding before us always that which will enhearten us, and fill us with
somewhat of that "stern joy" of the battle which must ever thrill the
true soldier in the discharge of his trust.

(1) Temptation is an advertisement to the soul that it is, at least in
some degree, in the grace of God.

To forget this is always a cause of weakness. It is a common thing to
hear the complaint, "Something must be wrong with me, or temptation
would not come so persistently and in such manifold forms."

To see the fallacy that underlies this complaint, one has only to think
of our Lord "in all points te