So long as the heart is unregenerated and unpurified by the cleansing power of the Holy Ghost, Satan has access to every nook and corner of our heart life. He enters and discovers every vulnerable and invulnerable section of the soul’s fortification. The tempted and fallen are often unable to tell how it was done. “Why did you go there?” or, “Why did you do it?” Oh, so many, many times do we hear the answer: “I do not know.” A friend once showed me a little iron safe in which he kept his valuable papers. This safe had a very ingenious lock; the combinations were such, and the mechanism so wonderful, that it was capable of three hundred thousand combinations.
Why and how are sane men and women overcome? They were met at a certain place, under peculiar circumstances; met by several—a word, a smile, an argument, a pressure of the hand. How was it done? They do not know. Somehow the attack came in a way which rendered them helpless to resist. One effort failed—a dozen failed; but as often as it failed the Expert changed the combination, until the door yielded, and an entrance into the citadel of Mansoul was effected. Three hundred thousand combinations.
The spy has information from within; and, therefore, the most dangerous man in the army. Satan, by his supernatural powers directing his practice and experience for several millenniums, is a crafty, sagacious spy, acquainted with all the weaknesses and emotions of the human heart. Who is equal to such an enemy? Contending alone, no one on this sin-burdened footstool.
XIV
THE QUACK DOCTOR
“Having the form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.”—2 Timothy iii. 5.
We do not agree with some late views of the nature of sin—that it is a physical and mental disorder: the resultant of heredity, food, soil, climate and social environment. If the root of the difficulty springs from these primary causes, the whole problem of evil could be wiped out in one generation by the application of sanitary laws and social betterment. In the Bible sin is known by several disease terms, but always such diseases as were incurable by any treatment known in those days: leprosy, born blind, deadly poison, paralytic, etc. Sin is a disease, and the whole man, body, mind, and spirit, is more or less affected therefrom; but it is, in particular, a soul malady, going deeper than human remedies can reach, whether social or medicinal.
To cure this soul disease the race has sought eagerly from the day Cain and Abel built their altars. All the ramifications of civilization have had one all-absorbing desire: a readjustment of something fundamentally wrong within. This fight for an atonement with the Creator has been a long, heart-sore pilgrimage; it has painted the blackest pages of history and committed the bloodiest crimes. This human drama has been enacted in tragedy and tears. Why is it so? Because deeper than any other heart-throb is the consciousness of personal uncleanness, and the bitter anguish it has caused.