Third Sunday in Lent, March 26, 1848.
Matthew VI. 13.
I said that the words of our Lord, ‘It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God,’ were a ground for the petition, ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’ Lent, above all seasons, might teach us the sense and power of it. ‘Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors,’ had surely as close a connexion with these forty days. To be delivered from a heavy burden, this is the blessing of confession: a blessing which (as the prophets so often told the Jews) we cannot realize by any prayer or fast unless we seek to set others free from their burdens. The subject of Temptation might seem even more than either of these, to embrace the whole history and purpose of this time in its relation both to our Lord and to ourselves. But here a difficulty presents itself. We are told by the Evangelist, that our Lord was ‘led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the Devil.’ We are taught to pray, ‘Do not lead or bring us into Temptation.’ Must we not infer from this opposition, that there is not that close resemblance between His struggles and ours which we have sometimes imagined; that our spiritual life is not under the same law as His; that we are to deprecate that kind of trial to which He cheerfully submitted?
There are some, perhaps, who will not feel even the semblance of perplexity here. They will say, ‘Certainly; there are multitudes of perils into which it was fitting for the Son of God to enter, and which it would be madness for his followers to encounter. He stood in the might of his impeccable divine nature; how can sinners, nay, even mere human creatures if they were not sinners, ever forget their own readiness to fall?’ Persons who use this language cannot be aware what practical heresies they are uttering, how completely they are demolishing the whole intent of the Gospel, the very ground of man’s trust and hope. If there are some parts of our Lord’s example that we are not to follow, what authority is to tell us which? Does not the assertion that He stood by the strength of a nature in which we are not sharers, exclude us as much from communion with one of his acts as with another? We make void the doctrine of His having taken our nature: it is too little to say that we lessen the perfectness of the relation; it becomes imaginary.
And surely no record of our Lord’s life is so entirely outraged by this hypothesis as the record of His Temptation. If He had asserted an independent standing ground, He would have listened to the words of the Tempter. He would, because He was the Son of God, have made the stones bread, have cast Himself from the pinnacle of the temple, have taken to Himself the Kingdoms of the world and the glory of them. He refused to do this. He would simply stand by faith and dependence on his Father; thus and thus only would He assert his filial character. He did put himself upon a level with those whom He called his brethren; he did claim for them a right to depend as He depended, to trust as He trusted. Dependence and trust are not inconsistent with the condition of creatures who are human, and who have sinned. Because we depend and trust so little, we prove that we are still trying to be gods—that is our sin. Just so far as we depart from our Lord’s example, we show our pride, not our humility, our self-confidence, not our fear of ourselves.
The prayer then cannot be justified on this plea; it cannot bear a construction which would make it a separation between the creatures who offer it, and Him in whose name it is offered.
Indeed, if we reflect, we shall perceive that such a notion of it would be as much at variance with what we know of ourselves, as with what we believe of Him. Is it not the fact that we, too, are led up into one place or another—a wilderness or a city—to be tempted? Is not this whole life of ours one continual succession of temptations? I say, advisedly, of Temptations: for we shall gain little, I think, by changing that word for ‘trials,’ as if every trial did not of necessity involve a temptation. When we speak of undergoing ‘trials,’ we do not mean merely ‘troubles;’ we mean that in some way or other we are proved, that we have an opportunity given us of doing wrong or right. When we speak of Temptation, we look at the same fact from another side; we wish to indicate, not merely that we have the good and evil set before us, but that there is a power biassing us to the evil. But this is implied in either form of expression. And therefore, if we suppose that God has brought us into this world, and that we are dwelling in it under His guidance, and that all trials are ordained by Him; we must suppose that He just as much intended us to be tempted as He intended His Son to be tempted. If we make out a difference, we do it wilfully. Our consciences, and Scripture, equally oppose the attempt.
But why then should we pray, ‘Lead us not into Temptation?’ I answer, Because this, and no other, is the prayer which, if we believe the Scripture account of our Lord’s forty days in the Wilderness, He must Himself have prayed at the very time when He was led up to be tempted, and when He was going through the Temptation. His first act of dependence and obedience was to go whithersoever He was led; not to choose His circumstances for Himself; to be equally ready for the desert or the market-place. His second act of dependence was in the desert or market-place, in the full sight and foresight of the Temptations which beset him to say, ‘Father, bring me not into them.’ And the prayer was heard. That wicked one touched Him not. The Tempter had no power over Him, not because He exalted Himself in His own strength, but because He would not exalt Himself in it; because in all things He glorified Him whose will he came on earth to do. It may seem a subtle and shadowy distinction to make; and subtle and shadowy must be all verbal distinctions which concern the Will and its acts. If you would realise the distinctions which words try to embody, you must leave them and turn to facts. There you will find how substantial are these subtleties; that in them lies all the difference between the best and the worst man; between an angel and a devil. To be incapable of temptation is the privilege of involuntary creatures; a man, or an angel dares not desire it. So long as he feels who it is that has made him capable of such danger, who has given him a will, he is safe; for his life is a prayer that he may not be left to his own guidance. The moment he ceases to offer that prayer he is brought into temptation, he comes under the Tempter’s power; because he has lost trust and allegiance and claimed independence. Then he tries to say that he was tempted by God; but he is conscious that he lies; he knows that his act was one of submission to another than God, that it was a secret defiance of Him. He had a right to believe that God placed him in the circumstances which his own will has made destructive; but that belief, if he had hallowed the Name of God, if he had cried, ‘Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven,’ would have been a security against the Temptation; it would have given him confidence to cry, ‘Thou, Father, art leading me; bring me not into this temptation, but through it.’
The deflections and eccentricities then which sin has introduced into our lives do not make the life of our Lord, which exhibits to us humanity in its orderly state, in its perfect harmony, a less practical standard; on the contrary, they oblige us to look for such a standard: we cannot measure or interpret our own acts without it. In the sunlight of His history, our relations to the Father, and to all which opposes Him, stand out clearly and distinctly revealed; though it is only in prayer and in action that we can fully appropriate the lesson, and feel the truth as it is in Jesus to be also a truth in us.
However strange it may be to affirm that God is leading us every day into some circumstances of temptation, and that here lies the very strength and warrant of the prayer that He will not bring us into it—will not suffer our enemies to prevail against us; we can boldly adopt that paradox, and find the blessing of it in all ordinary events and in all terrible emergencies. Riches, we know, are temptations; poverty, we know equally, is a very great one. The king in the Proverbs might be judicious in desiring a mean; but therein too lies a peril of its own; a kind of secure hardness, self-indulgence comforting itself with the assurance that it is not luxury, the rich and the poor man’s sins both regarded with abhorrence because they interfere with us and there is no knowledge of either. What wild pride and recklessness there is in the sense of health! how miserably are those deceived who fancy that a sick bed is in itself a cure for natural infirmities, and not an aggravation of them and an excuse for them! What selfishness is there in possession, but oh! how it turns inward, how gnawing it becomes in the hour of deprivation and loss. Various gifts and endowments we speak of as full of danger, and yet the man in the Gospel hid his talent in the earth because he had only one. The physician, lawyer, divine, may each suspect that the other has some especial means of usefulness, some exemption from evils which he has felt; but the heart knows its own bitterness; not one of them is wrong in saying that his position is full of snares; and that what seem to the on-looker securities, are really dangers. If the busy man is every day tempted to worship the idola fori, how many idola specus are there which continually seduce the contemplative man from his allegiance! How easy it is for monks to bring evidence that marriage makes the soul less free; how utterly they fail when they would praise the safety of celibacy. When the characters of those who are bound together are unsuitable, what irritation and restlessness; if they perfectly accord, what fear that each may confirm that which is wrong in the other! How free from all debate and turmoil the halls of philosophy may be thought by one who has only known the region of politics: sometimes men escape from both for security to the religious world, and find that there they are in the midst of more fierce and implacable contentions.
The last discovery seems appalling. Can religious habits, a religious atmosphere, tempt us into evil, into falsehood, into Atheism? Experience answers, Yes! It tells us not only that no sect, no Church, is free from these dangers, but more, that sects and even Churches directly or implicitly, by the idolatries or self-righteousness which they encourage, or by the reaction against them, by pious frauds, or the unbelief which follows upon their detection, may lead us into utter ruin. It is most necessary, in our day especially, to know that fact, and to keep it in our recollection. There may be a Protestantism, a Catholicism, a Christianity without a God; all that sounds most religious, all that really is full of deepest worth, of divinest meaning—confessions, ordinances, the Bible—may be used to make us in practice and ultimately in theory, deniers of Him from whom they have proceeded and of whom they speak. Where then lies the security? In this, that He is, that He lives, and that in one condition or another we are still led by Him. Into what perils soever we have come, into what perils soever we may come, let us be sure it was not the Evil Spirit, but God himself who ordered the whole frame and condition of our lives, and that this frame and condition is not the worst but the best possible for us, the best possible though—yea, because—it is one of tremendous temptation. Let us be equally sure that He is not our tempter; that He never tempted any man to evil; that we fall into it only when we think He is not with us to deliver us from it; that to think so is to believe a lie; that at all times, and in all possible states, this is a right and true prayer which He inspires and which He hears. ’Bring us not into temptation. Those old words, ’The Lord is my Shepherd, therefore can I want nothing. He prepareth a table for me in the midst of mine enemies. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me; these words have lasted three thousand years, and they are just as living and as good now as they ever were; as adapted to the temptations of every Englishman in the 19th century as to those of David.
The words ‘Lead us not into Temptation,’ are of the same kind; equally reminding us that we are in the midst of enemies, that we may have to pass through a valley of the shadow of death, through a state of utter darkness; equally telling us that there is One who provides us a table now, and will be with us then. But it is a prayer which goes down more deeply, for He taught his disciples to use it, for whom the table had been prepared in the wilderness where there was no bread, but only stones; who was Himself to pass through the valley of the shadow of death, and to feel all that can be felt of desertion and solitude there. He bids us say, ‘Lead us not into Temptation,’ assuring us that God is not merely the Shepherd over each lonely man, when passing through hours and days of gloom and doubt and anguish which no other creature knows of, but that He is also the Guide of the whole flock, of His own Church upon earth, and of the great human family, out of darkness into His marvellous light. ‘Lead us not into Temptation,’ said He who is the Head of the whole body, intimating that though it consists of many members, and each has its own special trial, which would not be precisely such an one to any other— though it often seems as if this were the greatest hardship and misery of all, that sorrow is incommunicable, that each person understands so little of his neighbour’s,—yet in spite of this seeming diversity and solitude, there is the most intimate relation between all the parts of the body, that what affects one, of necessity affects all. We know it to be so, and in our different ways express the conviction. We talk of family likenesses, of national feelings, of a particular age having its characteristic tendencies, its own special good and evil. The observation of these sympathies is one of the necessary qualifications for conversing with men and describing their acts; we may have made comparatively small progress in the enquiry, but all confess it to be real and full of interest. Our hearts bear witness to the Scripture assertion, that we have a common Tempter and a common Deliverer; that all things, though made the instruments of one, are yet actually and truly the instruments of the other; that there must be such a cry from all hearts as this, and that it must be the most helpful and uniting of all cries: ‘Lead us not into Temptation.’ O strange and mysterious privilege, that some bed-ridden woman in a lonely garret, who feels that she is tempted to distrust the love and mercy of Him who sent His Son to die for the helpless, should wrestle with that doubt, saying the Lord’s Prayer; and that she should be thus asking help for those who are dwelling in palaces, who scarcely dream of want, yet in their own way are in peril as great as hers; for the student, who in his chamber is haunted with questions which would seem to her monstrous and incredible, but which to him are agonizing; for the divine in his terrible assaults from cowardice, despondency, vanity, from the sense of his own heartlessness, from the shame of past neglect, from the appalling discovery of evils in himself which he has denounced in others, from vulgar outward temptations into which he had proudly fancied that he could not fall, from dark suggestions recurring often, that words have no realities corresponding to them, that what he speaks of may mean nothing because to him it has often meant so little. Of all this the sufferer knows nothing, yet for these she prays—and for the statesman who fancied the world could be moved by his wires, and suddenly finds that it has wires of its own which move without his bidding; for her country under the pressure of calamities which the most skilful seek in vain to redress; for all other countries in their throes of anguish which may terminate in a second death or a new life. For one and all she cries, ‘Lead us not into temptation.’ Their temptations and hers, different in form, are the same in substance. They, like her, are tempted to doubt that God is, and that He is the Author of good, and not of evil; and that He is mightier than the evil; and that He can and will overthrow it, and deliver the universe out of it. This is the real temptation, there is no other. All events, all things and persons, are bringing this temptation before us; no man is out of the reach of it who is in God’s world; no man is intended to be out of the reach of it who is God’s child. He himself has led us into this wilderness to be tempted of the devil; we cannot fly from it; we cannot find in one corner of it a safety which there is not in another; we cannot choose that we shall not have those temptations which are specially fitted to reach our own feelings, tempers, infirmities; they will be addressed to these; they will be aimed at the heel or head, at whatever part has not been touched by the fire, and is most vulnerable. We must not crave quarter from the enemy: to choose for ourselves where we shall meet him, is to desert that guardianship in which is all safety. But we may cry, ‘Lead us not into Temptation:’ and praying so, we pray against ourselves, against our evil tendencies, our eagerness for that which will ruin us. Praying so, that which seemed to be poison becomes medicine; all circumstances are turned to good; honey is gathered out of the carcase; death itself is made the minister of life.
Away then with that cowardly language which some of us are apt to indulge in when we speak of one period as more dangerous than another; when we wish we were not born into the age of revolutions; or complain that the time of quiet belief is passed, and that henceforth every man must ask himself whether he has any ground to stand upon, or whether all beneath him is hollow. We are falling into the temptation, when we thus lament over it. We are practically confessing that the Evil Spirit is the Lord of all; that times and seasons are in his hand. Let us clear our minds from every taint of that blasphemy. God has brought us into this time; He, and not ourselves or some dark demon. If we are not fit to cope with that which He has prepared for us, we should have been utterly unfit for any condition that we imagine for ourselves. In this time we are to live and wrestle, and in no other. Let us humbly, tremblingly, manfully look at it, and we shall not wish that the sun could go back its ten degrees, or that we could go back with it. If easy times are departed, it is that the difficult times may make us more in earnest; that they may teach us not to depend upon ourselves. If easy belief is impossible, it is that we may learn what belief is, and in whom it is to be placed. If an hour is at hand which will try all the inhabitants of the earth, it is that we may learn for all to say, ‘Lead us not into the Temptation’ of our times; that so we may be enabled with greater confidence and hope to join in the cry of every time, ‘Deliver us from Evil.’