accusing the All-merciful, even by implication, of being the cause of your continuing in sin, and examine carefully into the nature of those prayers which you complain have never been answered. The Scripture reason for such disappointments is clearly and distinctly given: "Ye ask and receive not, because ye ask amiss."27 Examine, then, in the first place, whether you yourself are asking "amiss?" What is your primary motive for desiring the removal of this besetting sin? Is it the consideration of its being so hateful in the sight of God, of its being injurious to the cause of religion? or is it not rather because you feel that it makes you unloveable to those around you, and inflicts pain on those who are very dear to you, at the same time lessening your own dignity and wounding your self-respect? These are all proper and allowable motives of action while kept in their subordinate place; but if they become the primary actuating principle, instead of a conscientious hatred of sin because it is the abominable thing that God hates,28 if pleasing man be your chief object, you have no reason to complain that your prayers are unanswered. The word of God has told you that it must be so. You have asked "amiss." There is also a secondary sense in which we may "ask amiss:" when we pray without corresponding effort. Some worthy people think that prayer alone is to obtain for them all the benefits they can desire, and that the influences of the Holy Spirit will, unassisted by human effort, produce a transforming change in the temper and the conduct. This they call magnifying the grace of God, as if it could be supposed that his gracious help would ever be granted for the purpose of slackening, instead of encouraging and exciting, our own exertions. Do not the Scriptures abound in exhortations, warnings, and threatenings on the subject of individual watchfulness, diligence, and unceasing conflicts? "To the law and to the testimony, if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them."29 Perhaps you have prayed under the mental delusion I have above described; you have expected the work should be done for you, instead of with you; that the constraining love of Christ would constrain you necessarily to abandon your sinful habits, while, in fact, its efficacy consists in constraining you to carry on a perpetual struggle against them.
Look through the day that is past, or watch yourself through that which is to come, and observe whether any violent conflict takes place in your mind whenever you are tempted to sin. I fear, on the contrary, that you expect the efficacy of your prayers to be displayed in preserving you from any painful conflict whatever. It is strange, most strange, how generally this perversion of mind appears practically to exist. Notwithstanding all the opposing assertions of the Bible, people imagine that the Christian's life, after conversion, is to be one of freedom from temptation and from all internal struggles. The contrary fact is, that they only really begin when we ourselves begin the Christian course with earnestness and sincerity.
If you would possess the safety of preparation, you must look out for and expect constant temptations and perpetual conflicts. By such means alone can your character be gradually forming into "a meetness for the inheritance of the saints in light."30 Whenever your conflicts cease, you will enter into your glorious rest. You will not be kept in a world of sin and sorrow one moment after that in which you have attained to sufficient Christian perfection to qualify you for a safe freedom from trials and temptations: but as long as you remain in a temporal school of discipline, "your only safety is to feel the stretch and energy of a continual strife."31
If I have been at all successful in my endeavours to alter your views of the manner in which you are first to set about acquiring a permanent victory over your besetting sin, you will be the more inclined to bestow your attention on the means which I am now going to recommend for your consequent adoption. They have been often tried and proved effectual: experience is their chief recommendation. They may indeed startle some pious minds, as seeming to encroach too far on what they think ought to be the unassisted work of the Spirit upon the human character; but you are too intelligent to allow such assertions, unfounded as they are on Scripture, to prove much longer a stumbling-block in your way. I would first of all recommend to you a very strict inquiry into the nature of the things that affect your temper, so that you may be for the future on your guard to avoid them, as far as lies in your power. Avoidance is always the safest plan when it involves no deviation from the straightforward path of duty; and there will be enough of inevitable conflicts left, to keep up the habits of self-control and watchfulness. Indeed, the avoidance which I recommend to you involves in itself the necessity of so much vigilance, that it will help to prepare you for measures of more active resistance. On this principle, then, you will shrink from every species of discussion, on either practical or abstract subjects, which is likely to excite you beyond control, and disable you from bearing with gentleness and calmness the triumph, either real or imaginary, of your opponent. The time will come, I trust, when no subject need be forbidden to you on these grounds, but at present you must submit to an invalid regimen, and shun every thing that has even a tendency to excitement.
This system of avoidance is of the more importance, because every time your ill-temper acquires the mastery over you, its strength is tenfold increased for the next conflict, at the same time that your hopes of the power of resistance, afforded either by your own will or by the assisting grace of God, are of course weakened. You find, at each fall before the power of sin, a greater difficulty in exercising faith in either human or divine means of improvement. You do not, indeed, doubt the power of God, but a disbelief steals over you which has equally fatal tendencies. You allow yourself to indulge vague doubts of his willingness to help you, or a suspicion insinuates itself that the God whom you so anxiously try to please would not allow you to fall so constantly into error, if this error were of a very heinous nature. You should be careful to shun any course of conduct possibly suggestive of such dangerous doubts. You should seek to establish in your mind the habitual conviction that, victory being placed by God within your reach, you must conquer or perish! None but those who by obedience prove themselves children of God, shall inherit the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world.32
I have spoken of the vigilance and self-control required for the avoidance of every discussion on exciting subjects; but this difficulty is small indeed when compared with those unexpected assaults on the temper which we are exposed to at every hour of the day. It is to meet these with Christian heroism that the constant exertion of all our inherent and imparted powers is perpetually required. Every device that ingenuity can suggest, every practice that others have by experience found successful, is at least worth the trial. One plan of resistance suits one turn of mind; an entirely opposite one proves more useful for another. To you I should more especially recommend the habitual consideration that every trial of temper throughout the day is an opportunity for conflict and for victory. Think, then, of every such trial as an occasion of triumphing over your animal nature, and of increasing the dominion of your rational will over the opposing temptations of "the world, the flesh, and the devil." Consider each vexatious annoyance as coming, through human instruments, from the hand of God himself, and as an opportunity offered by his love and his wisdom for strengthening your character and bringing your will into closer conformity with his. You should cultivate the general habit of considering every trial in this peculiar point of view; thinking over the subject in your quiet hours especially, that you may thus have your spirit prepared for moments of unexpected excitement.
To a person of your reflective turn of mind, the prudent management of the thoughts is one of the principal means towards the proper government of the temper. As some insects assume the colour of the plant they feed on, so do the thoughts on which the mind habitually nourishes itself impart their own peculiar colouring to the mental and moral constitution. On your thoughts, when you are alone, when you wander through the fields, or by the roadside, or sit at your work in useful hours of solitude, depends very much the spirit you are of when you again enter into society. If, for instance, you think over the trials of temper which you are inevitably exposed to during the day as indications of the unkindness of your fellow-creatures, you will not fail to exaggerate mere trifles into serious offences, and will prepare a sore place, as it were, in your mind, to which the slightest touch must give pain. On
James iv. 3.
Jer. xliv. 4.
Isa. viii. 20.
Col. i. 12.
Archdeacon Manning.
Matt. xxv. 24.
