appears to have as much freedom of entrance as God Himself. It begins as
early. In the heart of every little child God works, but they who next to
God have most right there, the father and the mother, know that something
else has had, with God, precedence of themselves. As the years go on, and
the knowledge of good and evil grows, becoming ever more jealous and
expert a sentinel, it still finds its watch and fence of the outside world
mocked by the mysterious upburst of sin within. The whole mystery of
temptation is to have sins suggested to us, and to be swept after them by
a sudden enthusiasm, which sometimes feels as strong as the Spirit of God
ever made in us the enthusiasm for virtue. 'There are moments when our
passions speak and decide for us, and we seem to stand by and wonder.
They carry in them an inspiration of crime, that in an instant does the
work of long premeditation.'[2] 'An inspiration of crime,' that is the
_oracle of sin_. From that come the panic and the despair of temptation.
The heart, which has still left in it some loyalty to God, is horrified by
the ease and the surprise of evil. Yet the greater horror is that this
horror may be lost: that men and women do continually exchange it for a
complacent and careless temper toward the besetting sin which they have
once felt to be worse than death. From being panic-stricken at the rise
and surge of temptation, they will (and there is no more marvellous change
in all fickle man's experience) grow easy and scornful about it, time
after time permitting it to overcome them, in the delusion that they may
reassert themselves when they will, and put it beneath their feet. The
rest is certain. Falsehood becomes natural to him who was born loyal,
audacity to him who grew up timid and scrupulous. The impulsive lover of
good, who has fallen through the very warmth of his nature, develops into
the deliberate sensualist. Natures sensitive and enthusiastic grow
absolutely empty of power to revolt against what is unjust or foul. A
great writer once said of himself in middle life: 'I am proud and
intellectual, but forced by the habits of years to like the base and