Better to be religious and to fear and love God, though you were tempted
by all the devils out of the pit, than to be irreligious and a mere
animal, and be tempted only by your own carnal nature, as the animals
are. Better to be tempted, like the hermits of old, and even to fall and
rise again, singing, "Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy, when I fall I
shall arise;" than to live the life of the flesh, "like a beast with
lower pleasures, like a beast with lower pains." It is the price a man
must pay for hungering and thirsting after righteousness, for longing to
be a child of God in spirit and in truth. "The devil," says a wise man
of old, "does not tempt bad men, because he has got them already; he
tempts good men, because he has NOT got them, and wants to get them."
But how shall we know these temptations? God knows, my friends, better
than I; and I trust that He will teach you to know, according to what
each of you needs to know. But as far as my small experience goes, the
root of them all is pride and self-conceit. Whatsoever thoughts or
feelings tempt us to pride and self-conceit are of the devil, not of God.
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