eeking
thereby to gain honor and glory or to live in security a life of
wealth, pleasure and covetousness. Hence on every side a Christian
must be in severe conflict, and fight against the world and the
devil, and against himself also, if he is to succeed in preserving
the knowledge of God's will.

WE MUST PRAY FOR SPIRITUAL LIGHT.

10. Now, since this knowledge of the Gospel is so difficult to attain
and so foreign to nature, it is necessary that we pray for it with
all earnestness and labor to be increasingly filled with it, and to
learn well the will of God. Our own experience testifies that if it
be but superficially and improperly learned, when one is overtaken by
a trifling misfortune or alarmed by a slight danger or affliction,
his heart is easily overwhelmed with the thunderbolts of God's wrath
as he reflects: "Wo to me! God is against me and hates me." Why
should this miserable "Wo!" enter the heart of a Christian upon the
occasion of a little trouble? If he were filled with the knowledge of
God as he should be, and as many secure, self-complacent spirits
imagine themselves to be, he would not thus fear and make outcry. His
agitation and his complaint, "O Lord God! why dost thou permit me to
suffer this?" are evidence that he as yet knows not God's will, or at
least has but a faint conception of it; the wo exceeds the joy. But
full knowledge of God's will brings with it a joy that far
overbalances all fear and terror, ay, removes and abolishes them
altogether.

11. Therefore let us learn this truth and with Paul pray for what we
and all Christians supremely need--full knowledge of God's will, not
a mere beginning; for we are not to imagine a beginning will suffice
and to stop there as if we had comprehended it all. Everything is not
accomplished in the mere planting; watering and cultivation must
follow. In this case the watering and cultivating are the Word of
God, and prayer against the devil, who day and night labors to
suppress spiritual knowledge, to beat down the tender plants wherever
he sees them springing up; and also against the world, which promotes
only opposition and directs its wisdom and reason to conflicting
ends. Did not God protect us and strengthen the knowledge of his
will, we would soon see the devil's power and the extent of our
spiritual understanding.

12. We have a verification of this assertion in that poetical work,
the book of Job. Satan appears before God, who asks (ch. 1, 8