while they are indeed giving way to pride and dislike. Watch your heart therefore in this: if you have reason to fear such an evil habit forming within you, fear greatly lest it prove a sign of the devil's returning, and set yourself at once to mortify it with all your might.

I need only just mention, that we should also try ourselves in our devotions. If prayer, whether in Church or at home, if considering our ways in the presence of God, if attending to good books, if fasting and other humiliations, above all, if the Holy Communion, be found to have grown, we hardly know how, more wearisome and less comfortable to us than at some former time, surely we have reason to dread lest Satan be gaining an advantage of us, we have need to rouse ourselves up and shake him off again before it be too late.

Few, if any, are qualified to be their own guides in so great and dangerous a work. But God offers us His holy Church as made known in the Prayer Book, for a guide, and His ministers for friends and helpers: and he that under such directions reads or hears and practises the holy word of our Saviour, he I trust, will be found sufficiently armed, when the evil day comes. Satan with all his seven evil spirits, will draw back from him disappointed: finding always that there is in the house One stronger than he to keep it, and that all his struggles do but end in his losing more of the little power he had left.

SERMON XIX.

DEADLY PEACE OF THE UNAWAKENED

CONSCIENCE.

THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT.

S. LUKE xi. 21.

"When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace."

THAT is, as long as the devil in his full power has possession of the soul of a man, the man is apt to be in a sort of peace and quiet, his conscience not disturbed, but well enough contented with himself.

This was plainly our Lord's meaning, because the words are part of what He said when He was discoursing with the Pharisees about a miracle which He had just wrought in casting an evil spirit out of a man. They in their profaneness and malice said, "He casteth out devils by Beelzebub the chief of the devils:" as if it were a sort of agreement between our Blessed Lord and the evil one, Satan consenting to seem to be cast out, in order that he might in the end have the more power through the people's faith which they should have in his false prophet, for such they blasphemously accounted our Saviour to be. With such a thought they said, "He casteth out

devils by Beelzebub." But our Lord shewed them that could not be, because Satan was too wise and crafty to be divided against himself. He, Jesus Christ, as they might plainly see, was altogether against the devil. They might plainly see it, if they would open their eyes and look. They might see that not only did He by His word drive away the unclean spirits, so that they could no longer hurt men's bodies, tear them to pieces, cast them into the fire, or the water, but also that by His holy teaching, if men would but receive and obey it, He would no less free their souls. The devil is an unclean spirit, but Jesus Christ is all for cleanness of heart and life: the devil is all cruelty and malice, but Jesus Christ is love: the devil is the father of lies, but Jesus Christ is the truth: the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour, but Jesus Christ went about doing good, seeking whom He might heal and save. Therefore they might plainly see that our Lord was against the devil, not only by His outwardly casting him out, but by the whole course and train of all His ways, and all His sayings.

After our Saviour had shewn them this, and so corrected their error, He goes on to tell them the true state of the case. "When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace: but when a stronger than he shall come upon him and overcome him, he taketh from him all his armour wherein he trusted, and divideth his spoils." Those who heard our Lord speak, would at once understand that He was describing the warfare between Himself and the evil one: how the devil inded was mighty,

but He, the Son of the Most High, was far mightier, so that when He came upon him, He would at once overcome him: He, the true Seed of the woman, God the Son, made man in the womb of the blessed Virgin Mary, would, in His own good time, bruise the head of the tempting and corrupting serpent. He, the true David, would cast down the true Goliah, would take from him all his armour wherein he trusted, his coat of mail, his sword, his spear and his shield; and would divide his spoils, that is, would deliver out of his hand, the unhappy souls of whom he had made spoil, and would appoint each one of those souls to do some work in the service and kingdom of God. This is called "dividing the spoils," because in war it was usual for the conqueror to take all the armour and precious things of the conquered, and divide them among his soldiers and followers: and so our Lord having overcome the devil, and taken out of his power all the precious things of this world, will employ them all, sooner or later, to His Father's Glory, in one way or another. It is a short way of describing the great victory, of which we read so much in the book of the Revelations: in which the kingdoms of this world were to become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He to reign for ever and ever.

This is the general meaning of the parable; but I wish now to draw your attention to one particular expression in it: viz. the saying that the strong man's goods are in peace, so long as he, in his armour, is allowed to keep his palace. We shall find a serious warning in this if we consider it earnestly. For the strong man armed, as I said, is the great

enemy. He is strong, for he is a mighty angel, and although for his sin cast down from Heaven, yet he is still permitted to retain a great deal of the strength and subtlety, in which he was at first created. He is therefore a strong one, strong to make war against us: and he is armed, for besides the power and cunning, which as I said was left him at his fall, he is more able to do us harm in consequence of our fall. We have ourselves armed him against us. He has seen, and knows too well, how frail and weak we are, and in what respects-he is like a soldier who has won one victory, and is afterwards called to fight against the same enemy. Something like this has been the case with Satan ever since he won that first victory over our parents, Adam and Eve: he has come to each fresh temptation in more and more hope of prevailing, because of each fresh sin which he has prevailed on us to commit. This is his armour, wherein he trusteth, the wilful sin and wickedness of men: and because this has so abounded in all generations since the fall, therefore the strong one has kept his palace, i. e., Satan has kept in a manner for his own, this fallen and corrupt world. God indeed made it very good, there was no spot of evil, nor poison of sin and death in it: but by man's frailty and Satan's wickedness, sin too quickly entered into it, and it went on from bad to worse, until that became true which S. John writes, "The whole world lieth in wickedness," and he was in a certain sense, the prince of this world; the wicked world was his palace and castle, his stronghold, which he held so firmly, that in order to dispossess him it was needful for God the

a S. John v. 1.