Accustom the mind with unwearied diligence to such thoughts as we can readily, conceive finding place in the mind of Christ, rejecting all others. "Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things."[[15]]
Let the mind be thus employed, and Satan may indeed be able to lead us along some line of thought up to the place of temptation, but it will be only to find, as with our Lord, when he bore Him up to the pinnacle of the temple, that this place of his own choosing will prove the scene of his own utter defeat.
[[1]] St. Matt. xviii, 3.
[[2]] "A temptation can never be divorced from a course of life. It is woven into the very texture of life's continuity. It is a temptation because of what we are at the time. It is the conditions of the crisis which make a moment, a decision, critical.... It is thus the whole setting of a life which brings temptation. So temptation is never clean detached from the past, or the future, of the tempted; for there is no such thing as a human experience which has not its roots in the past, and its fruit in the sequel."—H. J. C. Knight, The Temptation of our Lord, p. 55.
[[3]] Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, Bk. I, Pt. II, chap. i.
[[4]] Acts x, 38.
[[5]] Imitation, I, xiii.
[[6]] Rodriguez, The Practice of Religious and Christian Perfection, Vol. I, p. 86. Pere Grou teaches "that nothing is small or great in God's sight; whatever He wills becomes great to us, however seemingly trifling, and if once the voice of conscience tells us that He requires anything of us, we have no right to measure its importance.... There is no standard of things great and small to a Christian, save God's will."—The Hidden Life of the Soul, p. 206. ("Half-a-Crown" Ed.)
[[7]] "Be still, then, and know that I am God."—Ps. xlvi, 10. "In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength."—Isa. xxx, 15.
[[8]] Ps. xxvii, 16.