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Quite likely the form of the tempter's words suggests the upper current of Jesus' thought. "If thou be the Son of God." Jesus was likely absorbed with His peculiar relation to His Father, with all that that involved. The tempter cunningly seeks to sweep Him off of His feet by working on His mood. It is ever a favorite method with the tempter to rush a man.
"Is it hard to decide?" the lawyer asked, noting his hesitation and preoccupied air. "Yes, it is. I wish to do what is fair. The tempter's advice is to get even now for the injury that has been done. But a nobler voice bids me to rise above such a feeling and do nothing in the spirit of revenge, but merely for the welfare of Rixton." "But should not the Stubbles be taught a severe lesson?
Harland gave way, and she would have fallen to the earth, but for the supporting arm of her husband. For a few moments they walked on in silence, when Mr. Harland said, in a voice choked with emotion, "You have been my good angel, Mary, for your hand it was which saved me from violating a solemn oath; but I now feel an assurance that I have broken the tempter's chains forever."
The tempter had so far gained his end that he had made Frank disinclined to join himself at present to the body of stanch abstainers. He would wait and see he preferred moderation, it was more manly, more self-reliant. Ah, there was his grievous mistake. Self-reliant! yes, but that self was blinded, cheated by Satan; it was already on the tempter's side.
No! for even had she no other scruples, a host of holy memories encircled her heart, as a shield of power against the tempter's wiles, the memory of home, of the two loved beings she had left there, of former happiness in a more elevated sphere; and of a gentle mother, whose beauty and virtues she had inherited, whose counsels she remembered, and who was sleeping in the churchyard.
"I know that you weep; but your tempter's lying heart shall shed drop for drop!" A knock sounded on the door. "Their Excellencies the Prince and Princess Delgrado," announced Bosko, whose jaws underwent strange contortions at being compelled to utter so many syllables consecutively. Alec thrust the sword into its scabbard.
The lesson is surely to resist at the very outset: so much depends upon the first step. We must not give place to even the first thought of evil: nor listen to the tempter's whisper, whisper he ever so softly. How many, as they look back upon a downward career, can trace its beginning to some idle or vain thought, or to some hasty or careless word! We learn that a divided service is not possible.
She resolved to sacrifice the safety and shelter of the home assured her. She resolved to come back and share Leonard's penury and struggles, and save the old room, wherein she had prayed for him, from the tempter's danger ous presence. Should she burden him? No; she had assisted her father by many little female arts in needle and fancy work.
It is very silent; individually, somewhat snappy; inclined to grumble with its food, also with most other things; the atmosphere charged with compressed irritability seeking its vent. In the evening the Tempter's voice is heard: "I think if we got off by half-past six, sharp, that would be time enough?" The voice of Virtue protests, faintly: "It will be breaking our resolution."
Elias spent seventy years in solitude on the borders of the Arabian desert near Antinoopolis. Apelles was a blacksmith near Achoris; he was tempted by the devil in the form of a beautiful woman, but he scorched the tempter's face with a red-hot iron. Dorotheus, who though a Theban had settled near Alexandria, mortified his flesh by trying to live without sleep.
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