Page:Sermons on the Ten Commandments.djvu/96

 ever watchful love, seizing, as it were, the truth as a weapon, fights with the tempter and drives him away. Man is, indeed, required to do this as of himself, yet it is the Lord's love that prompts him to do it. Is the temptation presented, to deceive or defraud in business, the Lord rouses the truth in the mind, "Thou shalt not steal;" and then, conscience-stricken, the young man resists the temptation, and compels himself to act honestly. Thus is the evil inclination removed. So in all other cases; and it is in this way that man's new creation or regeneration is, little by little, effected. Love and truth conjoined are, as it were, the Father and Mother of the newborn soul.

This understood, we may now see the meaning of the command to honor father and mother, in the spiritual sense of those words; that is, to love Goodness and Truth above all things. For these, as before said, are the parents of the regenerate spirit: by these, and these alone, can man attain a state of heavenly order, and thereby of heavenly happiness. Truth he should prize as the most precious of treasures; for it is the means through which the Lord's love can act upon him, to purify and perfect him, and enable him to overcome temptation. He should therefore study the Divine Word regularly and carefully, and lay up in his memory those truths, which may be as weapons in his spiritual armory, whereby he may be ever armed for the combat. And he should at the same time look up daily in prayer to the Lord, that his mind may be kept open to the influx of His love and goodness, that