The Warfare of the Soul: Practical Studies in the Life of Temptation

by Shirley Carter Hughson

CHAPTER XI

THE SCHOOL OF THE HOLY GHOST

One of the most precious promises in Holy Scripture which is repeatedly made to the faithful is that they shall be taught of God. "Them that are meek shall He guide in judgment, and such as are gentle them shall He learn His way."[[1]] "I will inform thee, and teach thee in the way wherein thou shalt go; and I will guide thee with Mine eye."[[2]] "All thy children shall be taught of the Lord";[[3]] "The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, He shall teach you all things";[[4]] "He will guide you into all truth."[[5]]

I. The Teaching of Temptation

One of the chief courses of instruction in the School of the Holy Spirit is that of temptation. Victory over Satan is a very glorious achievement, but it is only half, and so far as our earthly life is affected, the smaller half, of God's purpose in sending and permitting temptation. He means us in every battle to gain a knowledge of self, a knowledge of our weak points, that realizing them our wills may be incited to co-operate with His to re-enforce them.[[6]]

(1) One of the first lessons it is needful for us to learn is that when great difficulty is experienced in resisting a temptation we are to regard the point of this particular assault as one that requires strengthening. How wonderfully does the divine wisdom force Satan himself to be our instructor and, in permitting him to buffet us, compel him to proceed according to a principle which teaches the soul its own needs, and so turns to his own undoing, and to the profit of the one who is tempted.

Even when, for the time being, he gains a victory, the same principle holds good. After true penitence has come to make good the breach, how much has the soul learned, how sensitive it is at that particular point, how alert to perceive any renewed attack, how full of a holy desperation that the same disaster come not again.

Satan's desire is to keep us in ignorance of our weakness, and he would persuade the sinner that his relation with God is at all points what it ought to be. Then, having soothed the soul with the opiate of deception, he would bind us hand and foot. But whatever he may be able to do with those who have submitted themselves to his unholy will, God will not have it so with those who are seeking to be faithful, but forces Satan to act as His messenger to warn us.

"Temptations," it has been said, "are often very profitable to us though they be troublesome and grievous."[[7]] We have much to learn in the consideration of this saying. Why should a child of God who is daily and consciously receiving and enjoying the gifts of a loving Father find the direct solicitation to offend Him so difficult to overcome? If one whom we knew to be our enemy should try to persuade us to commit some act that would be a deep dishonour to a loving earthly parent, we should not find it hard to repel the suggestion. More than this, the fact that such a thing had been proposed would instinctively impel us to some immediate word or act of devotion, that would leave no shadow of doubt upon our love and loyalty.

An answer to this question comes from the Holy Ghost in the very temptation that is vexing us, for in it He would teach us two truths:

(1) The first is a very humiliating one, namely, that although our reason recognizes our relation and duty to God, yet somewhere in our nature there is a powerful tendency to choose evil rather than good, the service of Satan rather than the love of God.

The Apostle describes his own experience in his letter to his Roman converts. "That which I do, I allow not," he says, "for what I would, that I do not, but what I hate, that I do.... The good that I would, that I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do."[[8]]

Nor need we be in the dark concerning its extent, for the struggle for the right is always grievous in proportion to the strength of the tendency to choose what Satan offers.

(2) Again, when God permits a temptation that is hard to overcome, He is giving us a sign that should teach us that our love for Him is wanting, and that He means us to try by every means to increase it. We ought to be able to act towards God as we do when one whom we love with an earthly love is involved. We read the lives of the Saints, and we see with what ready indignation they rejected Satan's suggestions. It was because their hearts were full of love for God; and when they were asked to dishonour Him, they felt that an indignity had been put upon them, and they rose up against it with all the force of a nature made strong and pure by divine grace.

II. The Bulwark of Love

At the risk of a digression, we must here consider how we can increase our love and acquire that quality in our souls which will enable us to meet with a sense of outrage any persuasion to violate God's will.

The difficulty we experience in repelling Satan points directly to the duty of practising those things which will give us an increase of love and loyalty to God. This is to be accomplished by the execution of some practical resolution which might be framed in this fashion: "I found it hard to refrain from wounding Him; I know, therefore, that my love for God is weaker than I thought. I will therefore this day seek to increase my love in two ways: (1), I will watch for the evidence of His love for me, and will meditate upon it, and upon my unworthiness of it; (2), I will, by His help, force opportunity of doing a definite number of loving acts toward Him and others, that by the practice of love I may increase my love."

Then if we would secure a sure increase of love, we must permit no sort of indefiniteness to enter into the fulfilment of our resolution. It must be carried out with precision.

For our meditation, nothing could be more profitable than to write out with fulness and care the account of some blessing that has come to us through God's love; and by the side of it write a like definite account of some infidelity of ours toward Him. The shame of the contrast, if our hearts be not wholly bad, cannot but drive us to Him with a fuller desire, which will win from Him the gift of a renewed and strengthened love.

The acts, too, must be of the most definite kind. Go out of your way to speak or do some loving thing, offering it, at the time, to God as your work of love to Him. Or it may be some simple act of prayer, such as kneeling with great recollection and deliberation, folding the hands, and lifting the heart in silence for a moment to God, then repeating, very reverently and devoutly, the Lord's Prayer, or some other short devotion. Then, after a pause, add, "Dear Lord, I offer Thee this, to show Thee that I love Thee, and that I want to love Thee more"; or some such little prayer as that of Fenelon's: "Lord, take my heart, for I cannot give it Thee; and when Thou hast it, keep it, for I cannot keep it for Thee; and save me in spite of my sins."

Many a sinner has followed some such simple, child-like method, and God's response has come into his heart with a thrill of awakening love that has startled it with its sweetness and power, and filled him with a keen sense of personal dishonour at ever again wounding the heart of Jesus by parleying even for a moment with the tempter.

III. The Lesson of Humility

The greatest of all lessons the Holy Ghost teaches us is that of humility. Thomas à Kempis shows that one of the special points of profit in temptation lies in the fact that in it "a man is humbled."[[9]]

The most necessary virtue the Christian soul must learn is that of humility. When our Lord would give His disciples the chief reason why they should learn of Him, He said it was because, "I am meek and lowly in heart."[[10]]

It was a common expression of the Fathers of the Church that humility is the mother and mistress of all virtues, and they loved to see in the etymology of the word (humus, earth), the suggestion of the soil under our feet, in which, though often unpleasant and repulsive, all fair flowers and fruits have their root and draw their sustenance.

We have only to consider pride, the vice which is the contrary of humility, to understand what is meant by the statement that without humility no other virtue can exist.

The first of the great virtues, Faith, can certainly not exist along with pride, for it is of the essence of pride to make for self-confidence, as opposed to trust in God or in anyone else besides one's self.

Hope cannot exist, for the true God-ward Hope which constitutes this virtue has in it an element of meekness and patient waiting on God that is incompatible with the presence of pride.

Nor can Love and pride exist in the same heart, for love is necessarily unselfish, and the proud soul is essentially bound up in self.

How then are we to obtain this so necessary virtue of humility? St. Bernard gives us the answer, an answer by no means original with him, however, but which has been the burden of the spiritual masters of every age of the Church. "Humility is nurtured only by humiliations." The soul that constantly rejects that which humiliates can never acquire the virtue of humility, for it is deliberately refusing to learn the lesson set for it by the Holy Ghost.

Let us not be surprised if God then sets very definite lessons for us in the school of humility. We should not be so foolish as to think we could acquire the knowledge of an earthly trade or profession, without applying ourselves to the lessons set for us. If a young man applied to a lawyer to be allowed to study the law under his direction, he would feel that it was hopeless if the lawyer said: "You need not trouble to work at this thing very much. Just stay around my chambers for a year or so, and you will find yourself a pretty good lawyer." This would not satisfy him. He wants to be told that the law is a jealous mistress, that he must labour long and hard if he would win her honours. His common sense tells him that this is necessary. But, alas, in learning the highest of all knowledge, that of humility, we refuse to use common sense. We think we can acquire it without the lesson of humiliation.

(1) Temptation humbles the soul by showing it the possibilities of its degradation. Satan knows us much better than we know ourselves, and it is not likely that he would solicit us to commit a certain sin unless he saw something in us that encouraged him to think we would, with some persuasion, be willing to do it. Let us be sure that the presence of a special temptation, however it may at the time repel us, is the proof that there is something definite in our nature that would be attracted by this solicitation, if the grace of God were not holding us back. So temptation brings self-knowledge, and self-knowledge is the first degree of humility.

(2) Temptation, by showing us the possibilities of degradation which, but for the grace of God, would become actualities, enables us to exercise the virtue of humility towards others. If we really understand the natural tendency towards what is evil, and that only through the divine mercy are we saved from the worst forms of sin and corruption, it will be impossible to maintain an "Holier than thou" attitude towards others.

"If thou shouldst see another openly sin, or commit some heinous offence, yet oughtest thou not to think the better of thyself, for thou knowest not how long thou shalt be able to stand fast in good. We are all frail, but thou shalt esteem none frailer than thyself."[[11]]

This humbling self-knowledge will also produce a train of virtues which will grow out of and at the 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 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 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 tempted like as we are."[[12]] No one was ever so beset with temptation as He was, and if constant temptation be a sign of something wrong within, then no one was ever quite so far gone from righteousness as was our Lord Christ Himself.[[13]]

Something is indeed wrong, from Satan's point of view, with the soul whom he besets with many snares. He is not satisfied with us. There is altogether too much divine love and power in our hearts to please him, and so he sets the battle in array against us. Surely it is a thankworthy thing, one that must bring great joy, to have the evidence that Satan regards us as his enemy.

Suppose no temptation assailed us,—what a terrible significance this would have! When we went to prayer, or to Communion, or about the commonplace, God-sent duties of the day, what a fearful thing it would be if Satan, observing us, were to reflect that he had no reason to attack us because, do what we might, he was sure that no harm could come to his kingdom through us!

There are men in the world, many of them, indeed, who have no temptations, and who cite the absence of such experience as proof that the Christian teaching concerning the devil and his work is false.

Alas, they know not their own misery, for "never art thou more strongly set upon than when thou believest thou art not at all assaulted."[[14]] Satan does not assail them, and in thus refraining he acts on the same principle as does a warring king who lays no siege to a fortress that is already in his possession, whose sometime defenders lie in his dungeons, chained hand and foot.

But as we saw in our first chapter when considering the terms of this warfare, the captivity that such untempted souls are enduring is no idle, passive confinement in some spiritual prison. These worldly souls are the most effective soldiers of him whose very existence and power they deny. He has no reason to unmask himself to them. He "leaves them alone, they are doing his work. The blasphemer is not tempted to blaspheme. Why should he be? He blasphemes already. The unbeliever is not tempted to unbelief,—he has lost his faith. The scoffer is no longer tempted to scoffing,—he scoffs enough already to satisfy even the 'god of this world.'"[[15]]

(2) Temptation is also an advertisement to the soul that God has some special mark of His love to bestow at the particular time.

Every occasion of temptation is pregnant with graces and heavenly favours which God has in store for the victor. Calling us forth to the battle is just His way of calling us to lay hold of some increase of strength He has prepared for us.

(3) Great comfort is laid hold of by the soul in contemplating that in temptation God is but furnishing us the opportunity to carry out His commands,—"Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven";[[16]] and, "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling."[[17]] Unless such commands are fulfilled there can be no redemption for us. God has done His part and done it perfectly. So far as His work is concerned, He could, when yielding up His soul on the Cross, most truly cry, "It is finished,"[[18]] for everything necessary for God to do in order that man might lay hold on salvation was accomplished. But man must have his part. Salvation can come to no soul that does not labour for it, and temptation is the opportunity definitely prepared and presented to us by a loving God that the work of the Cross may not for us have been wrought in vain. Therefore great consolation must come with every assault, and as we feel the weight and thrust of the awful conflict, let us joyfully cry, "Now is the accepted time; now is the day of salvation! Why art thou so heavy, O my soul, and why art thou so disquieted within me! Look up and lift up your head, for your redemption draweth nigh!"[[19]]

(4) The greater and more prolonged the temptation, the greater should be our consolation. The fact that the assault is fierce and persistent gives the blessed assurance that the soul has been faithful in the little temptations. The tempter realizes that if he is to have us at all, it must be at great cost and labour; that we are not going to sell ourselves cheap.

(5) We sometimes hear men complain against God's justice because He permits souls to be so beset by the Evil One; but as a matter of fact his antagonism reassures us on this very point. Temptation is Satan's tribute to the divine justice. He is the Accuser of the brethren, and in tempting us he is acknowledging that he must have something real wherewith to accuse us at the Judgment.

(6) When strange, terrible, and unaccustomed flashes of temptation come, we learn with great joy that the tempter is puzzled concerning us. Our steadfast service of God has baffled him, and he can only experiment with us, as it were, hoping a weak point may by some means be discovered. Such temptations, in many cases, mean that the tempter is working in the dark.

(7) Great comfort must be found in the thought of the victory that awaits us if we are faithful. This should not arise merely from the sense of relief at escaping a fall, but from the happy thought that in every such victory, great or small, Satan is weaker in my life than he was before, and God and His love are stronger. True, great conflicts may be still in store for me, but I have greater strength than ever before for meeting them and overcoming. So while the warfare continues, the soul grows keener for the struggle, and finds greater joy in it, because it realizes its strength, and rejoices, as does every strong man, to use it.

Many other points of consolation may be found in the spiritual combat, but these will suffice to show us how much of joy there is in the active, militant life of the Christian, if we only try to find it.

Let us, then, thank God for temptation, and if it presses us hard, let us rejoice the more, for it is His way of sending us the pledge of our peace with Him, the guerdon of His love.

V. How to Learn our Lessons

How are we going to recognize all these lessons as they are presented by the Spirit? There is hardly time in the thick of the battle to pause to think these things out, as we have done in the quiet hour we have given to the reading of this chapter. The soldier cannot stop to draw calm conclusions, and to study the purpose and effect of tactical movements, when the enemy is thundering at the gate, and all but making his way in.

One simple suggestion may help us. Let us make a practice of studying our past temptations, as soldiers are wont to study the great military campaigns of history in order to learn methods of warfare. Go to some War College and see the eager young officers as they follow a skilled instructor, all poring intently over a diagram of some battle fought and won a century ago. "Here Napoleon made his mistake; there was the movement by which the field was won; that splendid manoeuvre turned the enemy's flank." They study every move, the effect it wrought, whether it failed or succeeded, and why. And thus, combined with their own practice, men learn the art of war.

In some such way let it be with us in the spiritual conflict. The School of the Holy Ghost is a War College in which the campaigns of the armies of God and Satan are to be studied under the guidance of 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 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]]

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 can find innumerable things with which we can compare, and by which correct, the conclusions of our study of the principles of the warfare.

These are especially valuable when found in the biographies of the great servants of God, for in such records we find the theory actually worked out in the lives of men of like passions with ourselves.

A beautiful illustration of this is recalled from the life of that great champion of the Faith, Bishop Gray of Capetown. When in the midst of his contest with the heretic Colenso, when the Church and the world seemed combined against him, from one of his long wagon-journeys across the lonely African veldt, he writes, "I find great comfort in repeating the first three petitions of the Lord's Prayer." What a mighty weapon was that! Have we used it as did this servant of God?

[[1]] Ps. xxv, 8.

[[2]] Ps. xxxii, 9.

[[3]] Isa. liv, 13.

[[4]] St. John xiv, 26.

[[5]] St. John xvi, 13.

[[6]] "One does not arrive at virtue except through knowledge of self and knowledge of Me, which knowledge is more perfectly acquired in time of temptation, because then man knows himself to be nothing, being unable to lift off himself the pains and vexations which he would flee."—St. Catherine of Siena, Dialogue, p. 119. (Thorold Trans., London, 1907.)

[[7]] Imitation, I, xiii.

[[8]] Rom. vii, 15 and 19.

[[9]] Imitation, I, xiii.

[[10]] St. Matt. xi, 29.

[[11]] Imitation, I, ii.

[[12]] Heb. iv, 15.

[[13]] St. Luke says, "When the devil had ended every kind of temptation, he departed from Him until a convenient season."—Chap, iv, 13. "He was tempted throughout the forty days, and that what is recorded is merely an illustration of what took place. The enemy tried all his weapons, and was at all points defeated."—Plummer, Internal. Crit. Comment, in loc.

[[14]] St. Jerome, Epistle to Heliodorus.

[[15]] H. E. Manning, Sin and its Consequences, p. 173.

[[16]] St. Matt. vi, 20.

[[17]] Phil. ii, 12.

[[18]] St. John xix, 30.

[[19]] 2 Cor. vi, 2; Ps. xliii, 5; St. Luke xxi, 28.

[[20]] Heb. v, 14. The words of the author of the Epistle may be paraphrased somewhat as follows: "Who by reason of the possession of perfected habit have the mental faculties exercised (by a course of spiritual gymnastics), for discriminating between good and evil." See Westcott and Alford in loc. St. Macarius, speaking of these spiritual gymnastics, says, "We have need of many and great efforts, of much secret and unseen toil, to be able thoroughly to sift and scrutinize our thoughts, and to exercise the languid senses of the soul to discern both good and evil. We must continually arouse and excite the debilitated members of the soul by a close application of our minds to God."—Institutes of Christian Perfection, Bk. I, ch. vii.