I suppose that man to be tried by a
temptation to wickedness, out of the common; and I show, to the best of my ability, how completely the moral and mental neglect of himself, which the present material tone of public feeling in England has tacitly encouraged, leaves him at the mercy of all the worst instincts in his nature; and how surely, under those conditions, he must go down (gentleman as he is) step by step--as the lowest vagabond in the streets goes down under his special temptation--from the beginning in ignorance to the end in crime.
I have always felt proud, whenever I think of the incident, that my mother had strength of character enough not to be led into the temptation of seeming to be that which she was not--of trying to impress my schoolmates and others with the fact that she was able to buy me a "store hat" when she was not.
More than once I have tried to picture myself in the position of a boy or man with an honoured and distinguished ancestry which I could trace back through a period of hundreds of years, and who had not only inherited a name, but fortune and a proud family homestead; and yet I have sometimes had the feeling that if I had inherited these, and had been a member of a more popular race, I should have been inclined to yield to the temptation of depending upon my ancestry and my colour to do that for me which I should do for myself.
'Your reverence, I left the world to save myself from temptation,' said Father Sergius, turning pale and with quivering lips.
He wrote that he felt his weakness and incapacity to struggle against temptation without his help and penitently confessed his sin of pride.
'Yes, but the surest means will be to endeavour to fortify him against
temptation, not to remove it out of his way.'
You must have had some
temptation; I will do you the justice to suppose it was a strong one.
And opportunity I here have had To try thee, sift thee, and confess have found thee Proof against all
temptation, as a rock Of adamant and as a centre, firm To the utmost of mere man both wise and good, Not more; for honours, riches, kingdoms, glory, Have been before contemned, and may again.
He told the story which Caedmon a thousand years before had told of the war in heaven, of the
temptation and fall of man, and of how Adam and Eve were driven out of the happy garden.
Rough and steep was the path indicated by divine suggestion; mossy and declining the green way along which
Temptation strewed flowers; but whereas, methought, the Deity of Love, the Friend of all that exists, would smile well-pleased were I to gird up my loins and address myself to the rude ascent; so, on the other hand, each inclination to the velvet declivity seemed to kindle a gleam of triumph on the brow of the man-hating, God-defying demon.
But let not a man trust his victory over his nature, too far; for nature will lay buried a great time, and yet revive, upon the occasion or
temptation. Like as it was with AEsop's damsel, turned from a cat to a woman, who sat very demutely at the board's end, till a mouse ran before her.
She tried to translate his
temptation into her own language, and her brain reeled.