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“And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us
from evil.” — Matthew vi. 1
It was the purpose of the discourse upon the first clause of this
petition to show what temptations are, what causes them, and what
purpose they serve in our regeneration. We found them to be combats
between the internal and the external man, or between evil spirits and
angels who operate upon these planes of man’s nature for the possession
of his soul. They are caused by their efforts to take possession of our
wills and intellectual faculties, and bind us to them and to the
societies with which they are associated by those spiritual ties which
are stronger than any natural or material bonds. Temptation is not a
conflict of words, or arguments, or personal strength, but of power over
those who are tempted. The evil spirits act upon our worldly and selfish
affections; they excite our appetites and inflame our passions; they
seek to immerse our whole nature in vile and corrupting influences. The
angels, on the other hand, act upon all that is innocent, true, and good
in us. They call up truths from the memory and present them bright and
clear to our awakened attention; they breathe warmth and life into our
languid spiritual affections, and by the attractions of their love they
lift us up and draw us toward heaven and the Lord.
These opposing forces take effect upon us and draw us in two opposite
directions; they come to our consciousness as distinctly as do opposing
forces acting upon the body, and seem to us to spring up spontaneously
within us and to be our own in their causes as well as in their effects.
They are felt as doubts and fears, as anxieties and pains of conscience
and stings of remorse. When these opposing forces which are struggling
for dominion are powerful, and the theatre of the conflict is the more
interior and sensitive planes of our nature, the pain is intense; we
become distracted, literally drawn asunder; we are in agony, and fall
into despair. Such was the experience of our Lord in Gethsemane and upon
Calvary. This conflict and all the pain of it is caused wholly by evil,
or by the evil spirits who seek to gain possession of our souls. They
are the cause of all our pain, suffering, and sorrow of every kind.
There is no abstract evil; there are no abstract causes. Evil is not a
vague, indefinite, and unsubstantial entity. It has its origin in
personal beings; it has no existence separate from them. There can be no
murder without a murderer; there can be no theft without a thief; there
can be no drunkenness without drunkards; there can be no envy, malice,
pride, hatred, cruelty, or vice of any kind without human beings who
exercise these evils. So there can be no temptation without personal and
intelligent beings who tempt. Whenever we feel the movements of any
desire to think falsely, or to act wickedly, if we attributed it to the
influence of some evil being who was near us, inciting us to sin, we
should regard the temptation in a very different manner from what we do
when we think of it as a spontaneous action of the soul. If a man or
woman met us on the street and openly solicited us to do what sometimes
comes to us in inclination and thought, we should shrink with horror
from the tempter. But the inclination and thought is as surely due to
personal influence by personal beings, by men or women who have put off
the garment of the material body and can now approach us directly on the
spiritual side of our nature, as the temptations which come from human
beings in a material body. They are all due to evil spirits, though in
one case they are clothed in a material body, and in the other they are
not.
With this idea of the personal nature of sin we can see the force of the
petition, “Deliver us from evil.” We do not look off into vacuity for
some vague and incomprehensible help for deliverance from some abstract
enemy. We go to a personal Being and implore help to rescue us from the
power of personal enemies. There is something tangible, substantial, and
definite for the thought to rest upon. If your little son or daughter
had been stolen from you and carried into some den of infamy and
cruelty, where it would become polluted and destroyed body and soul,
your prayer for that child would not be a mere formality for its
deliverance from some vague and imaginary danger. You would not be
content to offer a petition in a cold and formal manner to some abstract
power called the state, or the police. You would go to persons who are
the embodiment of the power you invoke. Our sons and daughters are beset
by spiritual enemies who are seeking to decoy them from their Father’s
house, to rob them of their inheritance of heavenly possessions, and
make them the miserable slaves of sin. If we believed this, should we
not pray in a more direct and effective manner for their deliverance
from the power of these enemies?
Every human being must desire to be delivered from evil, but there is
the widest diversity of opinions concerning what evil is. Every one
judges from his own point of view, and that point of view is his
dominant love, or principle of action. Everything which opposes this
love, or the essential end for which he lives, he regards as evil, and
every being who stands in the way of the attainment of that end he
regards as an enemy. We cannot, therefore, make any human standard the
absolute criterion of good or evil; we must have a universal and
immutable and perfect rule. Such a standard can only be found in the
Lord, who is “the way, the truth, and the life,” and who “is the same
yesterday, today, and forever.” “I am the Lord; I change not.” Let us
then regard the subject, as far as possible, from a Divine point of view
as revealed in the Sacred Scriptures, and in the doctrines of the New
Church which are derived from them. So far as we can do this we shall
come to just conclusions.
As the Lord is infinite love and wisdom, His final end in the creation
of the material universe and of intelligent beings, must be the
communication of happiness to them in the largest measures and the most
excellent forms. Love could have no other end and wisdom could provide
no other means than those which would conduce in the most direct and
efficient manner to its accomplishment. The human mind must be organized
to receive the good the Lord desires to communicate, and every material
and spiritual substance and form must be created and perfectly adapted
to be an instrument in communicating it. There must be a perfect order
according to which all things and beings are related, and a perfect
method according to which they act and react upon each other. Everything
which stands in this order, and acts according to the method prescribed
in the Divine mind, is good; everything which is contrary to this order,
and tends in any way to oppose and prevent the Divine purpose, is evil.
Evil, therefore, is disorder in the relations and activities of the
human and Divine forces; it is discord in their action and reaction upon
one another; it is the inversion and perversion of the forms of the
human mind which was created to receive life and power from the Lord.
Its organic forms are distorted, and the influx of life from the Lord is
obstructed. Instead of flowing on in smooth and orderly currents,
filling every organic form of the mind with power, life, and delight,
they are turned out of their course, the inmost forms of the affections
obstruct them, react against them, and this collision of opposing forces
causes disease, misery, and spiritual death.
Evil in the mind is caused in the same way as disease in the body. The
mind or spirit is a body in the human form; it contains in distinct
order all the organic forms within and without which belong to the
material body. Life is not a mere idea or an emotion; it is a substance
and force flowing into the arteries and nerves and veins of the
spiritual body as the nervous fluid and the blood flow through the
channels of the nerves and arteries of the material body. Disease, which
is evil in the physical plane of man’s being, is caused by the
derangement, obstruction, or excessive and abnormal action of some of
the organic forms of the body The result is pain and weakness, and
unless the normal order which we call health is restored, the body
becomes wholly incapable of performing its functions, and the spiritual
body throws it off as we do a worn-out garment. Moral and spiritual evil
is of exactly the same nature in the spiritual plane of our being, with
only this difference in the results. Spiritual death is not the actual
dissolution of the spiritual body. It is only such a change in its
organization that it does not act in harmony with the forces of life
which operate upon it. It is like a weak or inflamed nerve, or a
congested muscle, or a constricted blood-vessel, or an ulcerated fibre.
The forces of life still press upon every part of the spirit, as the
light upon the eye or the atmosphere upon the lungs. As the spiritual
body is diseased, the forces which give it life and preserve its
existence, so far as they gain entrance, are opposed, turned out of
their course; the vessels of the mind do not act in harmony with them,
and the result is spiritual weakness, blindness, fear, sorrow, and those
insane hallucinations which flow from the supreme love of self and the
world, and lead us to regard the dust of sensual delights and the
transitory possessions of natural life as more precious than heavenly
and imperishable treasures. The faculties of the mind become so deranged
that one wars upon another, and there is discord, confusion,
distraction, and the wildest conflict; or indifference, stupidity, and
unconsciousness of the most excellent and distinctly human qualities of
our nature. We even lose the noblest and most beautiful features of the
human form, and become debased into reptiles and beasts.
In the degree that the organization of the mind becomes deranged and
departs from the perfection of its original order, all its relations to
other human beings and to the outward world are disturbed. Here again
the analogy between the spiritual body and the material body is perfect.
When the eye is inflamed, the light becomes a torment to it; when its
various parts are diseased, or so deranged that they cannot act in
harmony, the vision becomes dim, the images of objects are no longer
seen in their true form, and all relations to the outward world are
disturbed. Analogous results take place when the understanding, which is
the spiritual eye, becomes diseased. When it is inflamed by passion, all
the laws of the Divine order appear distorted. The Lord who is love and
mercy appears as the direst enemy. It cannot bear the clear light of
truth; it can only see its shadows in distorted forms. It cannot see in
man a brother who is to be loved and helped, and whose interests are to
be regarded and cherished as our own. He appears as an enemy, rather,
whom we are to assail and subject to our own will. Hence arise the
gigantic evils of war which have stained the earth with blood, filled
nations with widows and orphans, with famine and pestilence, with
desolation and woe. All social strife, the fierce competition between
labor and capital, the destructive rivalries in every employment and
phase of human action originate in these insanities, and cause such
misery that men of cultivated minds seriously discuss the question
whether life, which the Lord intended to be full of contentment, peace,
and joy, is worth living. The mind is so darkened that it cannot see the
higher uses and loveliest forms of the material world, and the
affections have become so torpid that they are unconscious of the finer
attractions and harmonies which pervade nature, and which were intended
to lift us above the material plane of life and win our souls to a
higher knowledge, to purer more exquisite joys.
All evil of every degree and form is, in its cause, a departure from the
Divine order into which man and the universe were created. You cannot
conceive of a physical or a spiritual evil which it is possible for a
human being to suffer which did not originate, and whose existence is
not continued, by a violation of the Divine order organized and embodied
in man. There is not a domestic or social evil, a corrupt influence, a
foolish or wicked custom or practice which is not caused by some
derangement and violation of domestic and social life. Labor is a
weariness, a slavery, and a curse, because selfishness and worldliness
make it so. Civil life has been the theatre of ambition, rivalry,
hatred, cruelty, and deadly conflict from the love of power and glory;
and even the church has been corrupt, ignorant, contentious,
domineering, worldly, and neglectful of her high mission. The fiercest
of human passions have found refuge and full scope for their exercise
within her fold. Every human relation has been the subject of evil, and
become so by a violation of those laws of the Divine order which,
obeyed, would have made them ministers of good. Such is the nature of
evil when regarded from the point of view of the Divine order.
But this is not the point of view of the natural, unregenerate man.
Every human being has a supreme, dominant love, which is the centre of
his life. That love is the end which he seeks, and to which he makes
every possession, force, and circumstance bend; it is his watch-tower
from which he observes everything within his horizon; it is his oracle
which he consults in every undertaking; it is the standard by which he
measures every value, and determines every relation. Everything is good
which favors that love, every obstacle to its attainment is a
misfortune; every man, woman, spirit, angel, and even the Lord Himself,
is regarded as an enemy who opposes it. That love is the god we worship,
and bow down to, and to whom we delight to sacrifice all that we
possess. This prayer, “Deliver us from evil,” is the constant aspiration
of every man, woman, and child; of every devil and angel. He who loves
himself supremely offers it with devout and sincere devotion. He is not
content with the prayer of the lips; he enters into his closet, and
shuts the door upon every other motive, and prays in secret. The fire of
self-love is constantly burning upon his altar. But he not only prays
with his lips and his heart; he prays with his hands, and with every
physical and intellectual faculty. Those who love the world supremely
are equally loyal to their god, and devout in their worship. They
observe no dead formalities, they employ no obsolete and useless
rituals; they do not pray as the hypocrites except when they come into
the churches; they do not expect to be heard for much speaking. Their
hopes are based upon vigorous action.
But there is a fatal principle in their worship. They regard every
being, possession, and relation from a wrong point of view; they
estimate all values by a false standard which reverses the order, the
quality, and use of every being and thing in the universe. They make the
instrumental primary, as though a mechanic should worship his tools
instead of using them to do his work; they mistake the shadow for the
substance; they invert the Divine order in the universe and in the human
mind, regarding that as first which the Lord made to be last; they
esteem that the lowest which He intended to be highest, the most
precious that which, weighed in the balances of infinite wisdom, is the
least valuable. They mistake the fleeting appearances and the wild
illusions of the senses for the most substantial realities and genuine
wisdom. In a word, they put darkness for light and light for darkness;
error for truth and truth for error; evil for good and good for evil.
They pray for that which, if obtained, will be their ruin, and ask to be
delivered from the means and conditions which will secure their eternal
joy and blessedness.
As we all are in some degree in this unregenerate state, and subject to
these natural illusions, it is a question of vital importance how to
gain the true point of view, and offer the effective prayer for
deliverance from evil. We must know what evil is when measured by the
Divine standards, and how to escape from it. We can only gain the right
point of view and secure a perfect criterion of judgment by a knowledge
of Divine truth. We cannot find it in our own understanding for that has
become perverted, its vision impaired, its judgment warped by the
influence of a depraved will. We cannot find it in our natural desires
and affections, for they are the offspring of the same blind and corrupt
parent as the understanding. We cannot find it in ourselves; we must go
out of ourselves; we must rise above ourselves; we must deny ourselves;
we must distrust our own judgment; we must go contrary to our natural
desires. We must go to the Lord and put our trust in Him. We must learn
Divine truth from Him, and then we must make it the guide of our lives.
This is old and trite advice, it may be said: Can you give no other? No.
There is no other. Divine truth is the sum and substance of the Divine
order; it is the law of the creation. Its principles are organized in
the human mind; it is the Divine method of bestowing happiness upon man;
it is the embodiment of the Divine harmonies; it has its origin in the
Divine nature; it is the form of the Divine love and the embodiment of
every principle of order and harmony; it is the path and the only path
that leads to heaven and the Lord. What other directions can be given?
There are no other that can be trusted. So far as our wills and
affections become subject to the Divine truth they come into harmony
with the Divine will, and our hearts beat in harmony with the Divine
heart. We are in the currents of the Divine order and we are lifted up
and carried on in them toward the infinite ocean of Divine love.
We must, therefore, learn the Divine truth from the lips of the Lord as
He has spoken it in the Sacred Scriptures? Have you ever thought of it
in this simple, practical way? Have you ever seriously reflected upon
the comforting truth that the sure way and the only way of gaining
deliverance from every evil is clearly revealed in the Bible? Are you
not indulging the secret hope, almost unknown to yourself, perhaps, that
there is some other way?—that you can regulate your affections and guide
your actions by false principles, and yet escape their consequences? The
natural degree of the mind is the embodiment of false principles, it is
immersed in evils and inflamed by them, and there is no hope of
deliverance in any other way than that pointed out by Divine truth. We
are spiritually blind; the truth alone can restore our sight. We have
wandered from the true path, and are lost in the mazes of error; the
truth alone can show us the way, because it is the way. We are wearied
with labor; we are distracted by conflicting desires; our hearts are
full of unsatisfied aspirations; we are sick and dying; the truth will
lift our burdens, appease our longings, heal our diseases, and raise us
up from the grave. Truth is the way that leads from confusion to order;
truth is the light that shines with clear and steady radiance upon the
way. Truth is power adequate to all our wants. Truth is freedom and
health. Divine truth is order, and leads to every possible good. If,
then, we desire to be delivered from evil, we must learn the way of
deliverance, and that way is revealed to us in the commandments. It is a
way so plain that “the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err
therein.”
But, it may be said, there are so many conflicting opinions, theories,
and doctrines concerning sin and salvation that we do not know which to
believe. There is such a complicated maze of paths each of which is
declared to be the only true one, that we are lost in our efforts to
find the way. But the Lord does not require us to adopt any special
theory of salvation. He does not say that we must conform to any special
ritual. The splendid and complicated offices of the Roman Catholic
Church and the hard and naked forms of the Quakers are alike powerless
to deliver us from evil. The Lord has given us a few simple rules which
every one can understand, and He tells us to follow them. He does not
ask us to form opinions or construct theories, but simply to do what He
commands. He says to every one of us, “If thou wouldest enter into life,
keep the commandments;” “Cease to do evil, learn to do well,” and
“Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though
they be red like crimson, they shall be white as wool.”
Here then is the practical way to offer this prayer. We must learn the
truths which show us what our evils are, give us weapons to combat them,
and then we must do what the truths teach us. This is so self-evident
that it seems almost absurd to say it; and yet it is necessary to say
it, and if it could be said in a way to awaken attention and lead to
action, it would move the world to its centre. “The children of this
world,” our Lord has told us, “are wiser in their generation than the
children of light.” If we desire to see how men who really believe in
their religion pray to be delivered from evil, we have only to look
around us, or to reflect upon our own motives, and the efforts we make
to gain deliverance from evils which hinder the attainment of the ends
we seek. Look at those who seek to excel in physical strength, the
pugilist, the runner, the oarsman. How severe the training to which they
submit! How diligently they practice! How rigid in their diet! How
vigilant in guarding against every evil which may endanger their
success! and how almost superhuman their efforts for victory. Think of
those who excel in art or song, or stand foremost in the world as
musical performers. The excellence they reach is only gained by years of
constant devotion and practice. They put themselves under the direction
of the best masters; they shun the evils they point out, they follow the
directions they give. They do not wrangle about opinions, they do not
complain that the lessons are difficult; they do not expect to gain
perfection by one effort. They are content if they find some advance
from month to month. Look at those who seek for place or power, the
devotees of fashion and pleasure! How they labor! what sacrifices they
make! what devotion they practice! How loyal they are to the god they
worship!
We may learn from them how to offer this petition and seek deliverance
from the evils of sin and error. The mere utterance of the words has no
power. We must learn what our specific evils are one by one. A general
acknowledgment that they do exist will not save us. We must put our
finger upon one and another, and avoid it. We must fight against it and
try to overcome it as we would strive to overcome any false method or
evil practice in our natural work. We must watch the tendencies of our
affections and desires, the currents of thought into which we easily
glide and delight to indulge. If we find them selfish, worldly, or evil
in any of their tendencies or forms, we must change them. They are the
effects of our spiritual enemies, who are constantly on the watch to
work our ruin, and they are near us and their presence affects us
because they find something in our natures which is congenial to them.
They have found their way into the citadel of life, and we ought to take
alarm at once and vigorously resist them. We must watch against them,
and when discovered we should drive them away with the scourge of Divine
truths as our Lord drove those out of the temple who made it a house of
merchandise.
Especially should we guard against giving form and permanence to any
evil suggestions by word or deed. We cannot prevent evil thoughts and
affections from entering the mind, but we can reject them when they do
come, and refuse to act according to them. When we accept an evil
affection or a false thought as our own and act according to it, we make
it our own; we adopt it, and it becomes a part of our being, as the food
we have digested and assimilated becomes a part of our material bodies.
We have built a home for evil spirits to dwell in, a citadel in which
they intrench themselves, and from which they sally forth to renew their
attacks upon us. A wicked deed is not a simple and single thing by
itself. It is the concretion and embodiment of innumerable evil forces
which lie behind it and dwell in it. As a plant or a mineral contains
myriads of forms and forces, and by the finer laws which interpenetrate
all things and bind them together, is connected with all other material
objects, so a false thought or a wicked deed is the embodiment of
myriads of evil forces and evil beings, and it conjoins us with them.
When we commit an evil deed we open the doors to a myriad of evil
influences and permit them to become anchored in our natures. On the
other hand, when we shun a wicked act, we shun, we reject, and repel the
hosts of wicked spirits and evil influences which were the cause of it.
When we do this we pray in a most effectual manner to be delivered from
evil.
Man in and of himself has no power to resist the evil spirits who are
seeking to destroy him. They can refute his arguments; they can draw him
on into sin by allurement which he has no desire to resist; they can
approve his scruples by convincing him for the moment that there is no
harm in the evil they solicit him to commit; they can quiet his fears by
keeping his attention fixed on the immediate delight, and concealing
from him the more remote but inevitable consequences. Good resolutions,
formed in our own strength, are no barrier to their power.
What then can we do? Must we remain passive? By no means. We must do
what we would if we were in the presence of natural enemies who were too
powerful for us. We must avoid the outward occasions of their influence.
We must shun the companions who are their instruments; we must avoid the
sights and sounds which they use to beguile us. We must fortify and arm
ourselves with those Divine truths which take effect upon them. And when
they make an assault upon us, we must call upon the Lord to protect and
defend us. But we must not rely upon our own strength; if we do we shall
utterly fail.
Our doctrines teach us that when we shun an evil in outward act, the
Lord can remove the myriads of evils which lay behind it. When we shun
evil we put ourselves into the Lord’s hands; He can bring His Divine
power to bear upon our spiritual enemies, and He can deliver us. But He
can only work this deliverance for us as we cooperate with Him. When we
do our part He will not fail to do His. It is a work on which hangs our
eternal destiny. All other gains, all other deliverances are nothing. As
we are cleansed from evil good will take its place. All the influences
which disturb our peace and cause us pain will be removed. We shall be
“delivered from the hands of our enemies and all who hate us,” the
angels will draw near to us, and we shall come more fully into the
light, the joy, and the peace of heaven. |
