Yes, but the surest means will be to endeavour to fortify him against
temptation, not to remove it out of his way.
He heard them and, as always at moments of
temptation, he repeated the words, 'Lead us not into
temptation,' and bowing his head and lowering his eyes went past the ambo and in by the north door, avoiding the canons in their cassocks who were just then passing the altar-screen.
However," I continued, "Miss Brewster is right in contending that
temptation is
temptation whether the man yield or overcome.
Let this man be tried by a
temptation which insidiously calls into action, in his own interests, the savage instincts latent in humanity--the instincts of self-seeking and cruelty which are at the bottom of all crime.
I warrant his
temptations were less by at least as many runlets of wine as may be borne by two sumpter beasts when thou, red robber, had finished with him," exclaimed Father Claude.
Fortune may tempt men of no very bad dispositions to injustice; but insults proceed only from black and rancorous minds, and have no
temptations to excuse them.
More than once I have tried to picture myself in the position of a boy or man with an honoured and distinguished ancestry which I could trace back through a period of hundreds of years, and who had not only inherited a name, but fortune and a proud family homestead; and yet I have sometimes had the feeling that if I had inherited these, and had been a member of a more popular race, I should have been inclined to yield to the
temptation of depending upon my ancestry and my colour to do that for me which I should do for myself.
The Lord has devised this
temptation as a test of my soul and I will grope my way out of darkness into the light of righteousness.
Well may we hesitate to condemn the frailties of our fellow-creatures, for the one unanswerable reason that we can never feel sure how soon similar
temptations may not lead us to be guilty of the same frailties ourselves.
Rough and steep was the path indicated by divine suggestion; mossy and declining the green way along which
Temptation strewed flowers; but whereas, methought, the Deity of Love, the Friend of all that exists, would smile well-pleased were I to gird up my loins and address myself to the rude ascent; so, on the other hand, each inclination to the velvet declivity seemed to kindle a gleam of triumph on the brow of the man-hating, God-defying demon.
But let not a man trust his victory over his nature, too far; for nature will lay buried a great time, and yet revive, upon the occasion or
temptation.
He told the story which Caedmon a thousand years before had told of the war in heaven, of the
temptation and fall of man, and of how Adam and Eve were driven out of the happy garden.
