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.