LECTURE VII.

"And lead us not into temptation."

MATTHEW, VI. 13.

THE language of the petition preceding this is that of confessed guiltiness. The request now before us is that of conscious weakness, imploring help against itself and its many foes, lest guilt return and remain upon us. When we cry to God "Forgive us," we put ourselves in the place, and avow the feelings of the Prodigal restored. From the father's board we look back to our riot and exile, and fluttering rags, and gnawing hunger, as we stood beside the trough amid the husks, around which crowded a noisy, jostling herd of unclean beasts. When we go on, to im

plore of Him that He should "lead us not into temptation," we entreat that we may not be abandoned, lest we become the Prodigal Relapsed-apostates, whose conscience has only become vitrified by the Truth and the Grace, by which it should have been melted. True penitence for the follies of the PAST, implies a keen vigilance against the snares of the

FUTURE.

The rescued prisoner dreads the return and

plottings, and ambushments, and surprises of his old captors. But do we ascribe to GOD the work of Satan; and do we make the Holy One of Israel the ensnarer and corrupter of His creation? Is man's Maker man's Tempter? No,-as one of Christ's hearers at the very time when this prayer against temptation was given, the Apostle James, years after, wrote, "God tempteth no man, nor can Himself be tempted of evil." From the poverty of human language, however, many words have more than one meaning; and temptation is a term of this very class. In one of its significations, the sense of alluring to sin, God is incapable of it. In another, however, the sense of trying and displaying character, God, as the Judge of the earth, is and must be, whilst this life of probation lasts, pledged to continue this application of the probe and the crucible to human character. So he tempted Abraham, when testing the strength of his faith and guaging the depth of his love to God, by asking the sacrifice of Isaac. So he tried Israel in the wilderness, to prove them, and to know what was in their hearts. So he lets affliction and prosperity, and the changing events of changing times go over us, to develope and reveal us to ourselves and to others. But if He does, in this latter sense of the term, subject every heart and character to the scrutiny of His providential tests, and trials, why, it may be asked, should we here deprecate it? Ought we not rather to court it, and welcoming it, as the same apostle bids us, "count it all joy to fall into divers temptations?" And then, should we not invoke rather than deplore these needful and profit