Page:Sermons on the Lord's Prayer.djvu/105

 walks about, even at noon-day, as in a mental night, his spirit wrapped as in a shroud, and bound hand and foot! God and heaven seem to be blotted out, and the whole universe appears a blank. And then, in the darkness, lurid fires of lusts are kindled in the heart, and the man is invited to seek relief in sensuality and sin, and sometimes even in self-murder. All this the man fancies to be a course of operations going on in his own mind; he supposes it all to be of his own doing,—mere natural changes of state within his proper self. He does not see the fiends that are blowing the fires; he does not discern the active infernals that are spreading the dark pall over his soul: but they are there; and could he but see them, he would cry out in terror,—"Lord Jesus, save me, lest I perish."

And now, in conclusion, we are to consider the uses of such temptations—why they are permitted, and what spiritual ends they accomplish. On this point, the Doctrine of the New Church thus speaks:—"What good is effected by temptations or the combats of temptations, scarcely any one knows. They are the means by which evils and falses are loosened and dispersed in man, and by which horror is excited for them, and by which moreover the conscience is formed and strengthened, and thus man is regenerated. This is the reason why those who become regenerated, are let into combats, and undergo temptations; which, if not done in the life of the body, takes place in the other life with such as can be regenerated.