VI. Staying not the Hand
We are told in the Second Book of the Kings[[27]] that when the prophet Elisha was fallen sick of the sickness whereof he died, Joash, the King of Israel, came unto him. The man of God commanded him to take the arrows and smite upon the ground, whereupon the King, weak in ambition, and with no vision of God's destiny for him as a national deliverer, smote thrice upon the ground and stayed. "And the man of God was wroth with him and said, Thou shouldest have smitten five or six times; then hadst thou smitten Syria till thou hadst consumed it." If he who goes forth to fight for God would utterly consume the enemy, he must seek the vision of His purpose for him, and if he is truly ambitious of heavenly honours it is not far to seek.
We can quite safely say that God never predestined any soul barely to win the victory. He plans high things for all his children, but how many are there who never attain them because, like the king of Israel, they are giving Him a spiritless service. They smite thrice with the arrows of deliverance and stay their hand. They are content to remain on a low spiritual plane, within the pale of divine grace indeed, but satisfied with this, and using their further energies for passing earthly things instead of devoting them with a burning splendour of enthusiasm to an ever higher service in the kingdom that shall have no end.
How disappointing are such lives to God! He had meant to promote them to great honour, and they have no aspiration above the lowest place. Nor can they plead that they know not His purpose for them. The Scriptural revelation is full of the highest assurances. God lays wide open before us the plan He has prepared for our glory. He tells us in a hundred passages, every utterance eloquent with love, what it all is, and He stays in His description only when the finite mind of man cannot follow Him; and then He cries: "Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him."[[28]]
If we are to rise up to satisfy the divine measure of our predestined glory, we must smite not thrice, but five or six times. We must smite not only until we feel the assault stayed, but until we are sure that the tempter has acknowledged himself defeated. Some spiritual guides advise the soul pursuing the tempter, not allowing him to depart from us without further chastisement and humiliation. "Do not leave off the conflict until the enemy is, as it were, wearied out, dead, and yields himself up discomfited."[[29]]
"When the assaults have ceased," says Scupoli, "excite them again, so as to have an opportunity of overcoming them with greater force and energy. Then challenge them again a third time so as to accustom yourself to repulse them with scorn and horror."[[30]]
Remember, however, as a point of the most extreme importance, that this course should never be adopted in temptations against faith or against purity. In these cases there should be an immediate avoidance of the thought and occasion of the temptation, and the mind should be instantly diverted utterly from it by definite occupation of a contrary nature.
VII. The Final Phase of Victory
The counsel of the author of "The Spiritual Combat," appeals to us not only as coming from a great guide of souls, but because (as is always the case with the wisdom of the Saints), it answers our sense of the fitness of things. A poor soldier he would be who never planned to fight on the offensive, who never sought to carry the war into the enemy's country. The Blessed Christ has organized the armies of the Kingdom not merely for the protection of a weak and incapable people, but for the positive conquest of Satan through the strength and aggressiveness of His soldiers. In the account of the armour of God as given us by St. Paul,[[31]] we are, it is true, told of the breast plate, the shield, and the helmet, all armour of defence; but we are also told of the feet shod that the soldier might march straight forward; and of the sword of the Spirit with which we are to slay the adversary.
Under the old dispensation, too, the Spirit taught the like truth. In one of the chiefest of the Psalms of consolation,—the 91st,—the soul is spoken of as finding its refuge in the very secret place of the Most High; as being covered with His wings,—shielded from the mysterious terror that walks by night, from the arrow that flies by day; and there is mention of shield and buckler, weapons of defence. But also there is mention of the splendid feats of aggressive conquest that God expects from those to whom He accords His almighty protection. "Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder; the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet."