The heart and soul are subject to four principal glamours: the glamour of youth, the glamour of romance, the glamour of evil, and the glamour of God.
When once the Spirit of Love, which is God, descends into our soul then a new light becomes created in us by which we see the glamour of evil in its true form and complexion. We see it as disease, misery, imprisonment, and death; and who finds it difficult to turn away from such?
The natural man sees evil as an intense attraction, the spiritual man as a horror of ugliness. See then how the Spirit of Love is at once and easily our Salvation.
Amongst all mysteries none seems greater to us than the mystery of Evil. God—Goodness—Love: these we understand. But evil—whence and why, since God is Love, Omnipotence, and Holiness?
We cannot but observe that all things have their opposites: summer and winter, heat and cold, light and dark, silence and sound, pleasure and pain, life and death, action and repose, joy and sadness, illness and health; and how shall we know or have true pleasure in the one without we have also knowledge of the opposite? The man who has never known sickness has neither true gratitude, understanding, nor pleasure in his heart over his good health: he does not know that which he possesses. Neither can we know the great glory that is Holiness till we have known evil and can contrast the two.
"But what a price to pay for knowledge; what fearful risk and danger to His creatures for God so to teach them!" we may cry, forgetting that with God all things are possible, "Who is able and strong to save." And does He dare set Himself no difficult thing that He may overcome it? The strong man's knowledge of his own courage forbids us think it. God wills to save us. We have but to join our will with His, and we are saved. How shall we mount to God other than by mounting upon that which offers a foundation of tangible resistance, overcoming and mounting upon evil. Evil then becomes our stairway—the servant of Good. By using the evil that we meet with day by day, we mount daily the nearer to God by that exact degree of evil which we have overcome by good—that is to say, by practice of forgiveness, compassion, patience, humility, endurance, held out over against the invitation of evil to do the exact opposite. A negligent, thieving, lying servant that we have to deal with calls forth forgiveness, and humility also, for are we a perfect servant to our Lord? The evil of a drunken husband may be used by the wife as a sure ladder to God, for because of this evil she may learn to practise all the virtues of the saints. Truly if we have the will to use it, Evil is friendly. If we misuse Evil—that is to say, if we do not use it by mounting on it but, intoxicated with its glamour, consent to it,—this is Sin, and immediately the stairway is not that of ascent but of descent and death.
The Master says "Resist not evil." How are we to understand this but by assuming that if we try our strength against Evil, Evil is likely to overcome us? but on being confronted with Evil we should instantly hold on to and join with the forces of Good and so have strength quietly to continue side by side with Evil without being seduced by it. When Evil cannot seduce—that is to say, make us consent to it,—then for us it is conquered. When we give in or conform to this seduction we generate Sin. Let us say that we are in temptation, that Evil of some sort confronts and invites us; if we battle with this presentment, this picture, this insinuating invitation held out before us by Evil, the act of contending with the invitation will fix it all the more firmly in our minds. We need to substitute another picture, another invitation, another presentment, of that which pertains to the good and the beautiful. He who has learnt so to substitute and present before his own heart and mind Jesus and the pure and beautiful invitations of this Divine Jesus can solve the difficulty. This is not contending, this is substituting; this is transferring allegiance from the glamour of Evil which is present with us, to the glamour of God, which, because we are in temptation, is not present, but is yet hoped and waited for.
To return again to the lying, dishonest, and negligent servant. If we argue, contend, and battle morally with this evil servant we do not alter him, but by this contention generate antagonism. Then what is our own position? Bad temper, a disturbed heart, an inharmonious angry mind; but if without contending we bear with and act gently with this evil, making careful comparisons with our own service to our own Lord, we learn patience, forgiveness, and humility also, for have we never lied, have we never been dishonest, have we never been negligent to this sweet Lord? Then immediately His patience, His forgiveness, His love are brought more intimately to our consciousness, and our heart nearer to His and His to ours. Is this loss or gain? Is Evil then an enemy? No, a handmaid. So is Satan made a servant to his Overlord, and his power crossed.
Of all false things nothing is more false than the glamour of Evil, for when on being drawn into it we sin, instead of the hoped-for delight we soon find satiety; instead of exhilaration, fatigue; instead of contentment, disillusion; instead of satisfaction, dust; instead of romance, the greedy claws of the harpy; and the further we go in response to this glamour the more pitiable our outlook; for the sweets and possibilities of Evil are extraordinarily limited. Can any man devise a new sin? No, but ever pursues the same old round, the same pitiful circle.
If we pursue the glamour of God, we find the exact opposite of all these things. Spiritual delights know no satiety because of infinite variety: they know no disease, no disillusionment, and who can set a boundary or limit to the beautiful, to love, and light, and God?