THE KING’S BUSINESS
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names I need for characterizing the six attitudes in which men may stand to tempta tion. On the left there are three—first, the group of the left center, by which I mean thqse who are being tempted; second, the group of the left, by which are meant those who have fallen before temptation; third, the group of the extreme left, or those who are tempters of others. And on the right there,are three groups—the fourth group, that of the right center, containing those who are successfully resisting temptation; the fifth, the group of the right, or those who have outlived their temptation; and the sixth and last, the group of the extreme right, that is to say, those who are helping others to resist their temptation. Let me run rapidly over these six groups. I. T h e g ro u p of th e left c en ter, o r th o se w ho a re being tem p ted . With this one I begin, because we have all been in it. Whether we have been in the other groups or not, we have all been in this one: we have all been tempted. One of the first things we were told when we were quite young was that we should be tempted1—that we should have to beware of evil companions; and there is not one of us in whose case this prediction has not come true. There is, indeed, no greater mystery of providence than to understand the unequal proportions in which temptation is dis- tributeii ■ Some are comparatively little’ tempted; others are thrown into a fiery furnace of it seven times heated. There are in the world sheltered situations in which a man may be compared to a ship in the harbor,' where the wharves may sometimes heave a little, but a real stornj never comes; there are other men like the vessel which has to sail the high seas and face the full force of the tempest. Many here must know well what this means. Per haps you know it so well that you feel inclined to say to me, Preacher, you know nothing about it; if you had to live where
we live—if you had to associate with the companions whom we have to work with, and hear the kind of language which we have to listen to every hour of the day— you would know better the truth of what you are saying. Do not be too sure of that Perhaps my library is as dangerous a place for me as your workshop is for you. Solitude has its temptations as well as society. St. Anthony, before his conversion, was a gay and fast young man of Alex andria ; and, when he was converted, he found the temptations of the city so intoler able that he fled into the Egyptian desert and became a hermit; but he afterward confessed that the temptations of a cell in the wilderness were worse than those of the city. It would not be safe to exchange our temptations for those of another man; every one has his own. I believe, further, that every man has his own tempter or temptress. Every man on his journey through life meets with some one wbo deliberately tries to ruin him. Have you met your tempter yet? Perhaps he is sitting by your side at this moment. Perhaps it is some one in whose society you delight to be, and of whose acquaintance you are proud; but the day may come when you will curse the hour in which you ever saw that face. Some of us, looking back, can remember well who our tempter was; and we tremble yet, some times, as we remember how nearly we were over the precipice. One of the chief powers of temptation is the power of surprise. It comes when you are not looking for it; comes from the person and from the quarter you least sus pect. The day dawns which is to be the decisive one in our life; but it looks like any other day. No bell rings in the sky to give warning' that the hour of destiny has come. But the good angel that watches over us is waiting and trembling. The fiery moment arrives; do we stand; do we fall? Oh, if we fall, that good angel goes flying away to heaven, crying, fallen, fallen!
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