The enemy of souls has laid many plans and has many devices to deceive people and harass their minds and thereby cause them to bring unnecessarily heavy burdens upon themselves. One of his common impositions is to make a person think that he has committed the unpardonable sin and that all hope of ever obtaining favor with God again is forever gone. When such persons are told that they are laboring under a delusion, and that there is hope for them; that others have felt the same way and formed the same conclusion, but afterwards learned that it was only a deception of the enemy, and were able to renounce the delusion and obtain a good experience and keep it, the answer in most cases is, "My case is different." "Had I taken advantage of past opportunities when I had a chance to do so, I might have been saved, but now it is too late." Time after time I have labored with those who were sure that their cases were "different" from that of any one else, and that hope was beyond their reach. The situation and feelings seemed so real that no amount of reasoning or evidence to the contrary could change their minds until they became submissive enough to submit themselves to the mercy of God and accept advice and counsel and act upon it. Then they were very soon liberated from the oppressions of the enemy and set free by the grace of God. One laboring under a deception frequently undergoes as deep suffering of mind and soul as if the situation and conditions were real. A lady once received what was supposed to be an authentic report that her son had been killed in a railway wreck. Circumstances were such that she could receive no communication from him, which apparently added evidence to the truthfulness of the story. Her mother-heart was grief-stricken. In the anguish of her bereavement she refused to be comforted. Later she was told that there was a possibility of his having escaped death, that he was probably yet alive, and that evidence had been received to that effect. No, her feelings were too real, her grief was too great, for her to be deceived, she declared. One day her son arrived home sound and well, and did not even know that there had been a train-wreck at the place whence the report came. The mother then found that her sorrow and grief had been groundless. She accepted the status of affairs, cast aside the false report and her bad feelings, and was happy.