Of course, this is all very well known, very simple, very elementary, but yet there are some who never seem to understand it. They do not understand it who confound temptation with sin. This is a mistake often made, and by those too who ought to know better. If a man feels a strong inclination to evil, if an evil thought passes through his mind, or a doubt against the faith assails him, immediately he imagines that he has fallen under God's displeasure. {385} To state such an error is to refute it. Never, my brethren, fall in to this mistake. No: between temptation and sin there lies all that gulf that separates Heaven from Hell. Let the devil fill your mind with the most horrid thoughts, let all your lower nature be in rebellion, let you have temptations to unbelief, to despair, to blasphemy; yet if that queenly will of yours keeps her place, if she stand steadfast and immovable, not only have you not sinned, but you are purer, more spiritual, more full of faith and reverence than if you had had no such trial. When St. Agnes was before the heathen judge, he ordered her to be sent to the stews and thrown among harlots, but she answered: "I shall come out of that place virgin as I entered it." Yes, all the powers of earth and hell cannot make a resolute soul commit a single sin. It is said that the walls of that house of prostitution, to which the holy maiden was condemned, still stand, and form the walls of a church dedicated in her honor--a visible proof how the soul, faithful to itself and God, turns the very means and instruments of its temptations into trophies of its most magnificent victories.