our divine Instructor. How constantly has the Church studied the great
campaign prosecuted against Satan by our own great Captain in the
wilderness! How much has been learned by the study of His methods of
resistance and attack! The lives of the Saints, too, are but studies
of military campaigns waged for God.

But perhaps most profitable of all will be the study of our own
battles. Under the guidance of the Spirit, go back to some recent
temptation, (always excepting scrupulously temptations against faith
and purity); study its circumstance, how it arose, if it came through
any fault of ours. Did we presumptuously run into occasion of perilous
temptation? If not, what occasion did the enemy seize upon for his
attack? Was there parleying with him? Did we meet it in the first
moment with prayer and acts of faith, hope, love, contrition, and
humility, or were these powerful weapons not brought to bear? Through
it all, did we strive to keep our lines of communication with our
headquarters and our base of supplies open by prayer? Or did we forget
who our Leader was and grow panic-stricken? Can we recall the
particular point at which downfall {185} began? Or, if there was
victory, what prayer, what thought, was it that imparted a sudden
strength to the heart, and drove home the thrust that put the enemy to
flight? Or what painful pressing on, inch by inch, forced him at last
to fly the field? And when we beheld him fleeing, did we secure
ourselves, and spike his guns, as it were, by fervent acts of gratitude
to God who had given us the victory?

We may not be able to find answers to all these questions, but if in
the beginning of such a study, we find only a few, well and good. We
shall profit by them, and in the next temptation use the knowledge
gained; and so shall we go on, gaining more and more knowledge out of
the study of our own experience, and more and more faithfully putting
that knowledge to use, until we become skilled and practised
campaigners in the wars of the Lord; until, indeed, we become worthy to
be enrolled among those of whom the Apostle speaks, "Who by reason of
use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil."[20]

{186}

All this while, however, we are not to neglect our study of the
spiritual campaigns of others. In the pages of the Bible, in the lives
of the Saints and holy men, in their own experiences that they have
recorded for us in their spiritual writings, we