A simple illustration will show how discouraging such a course will be to the tempter. Suppose whenever you had occasion to ask a certain acquaintance to do something for you, instead of complying with your request, he did just the contrary thing, and that with a precision and regularity that gave evidence of a deliberate plan and policy. Suppose again that this contrary thing was the very act that he knew was most displeasing to you. How long would you persist in your applications to him? Surely, not for long. So will it be with Satan. He is far too intelligent a creature, and knows and serves his own interests all too faithfully, to continue his efforts long under such conditions. {142} V. _Scorning the Tempter_ A most excellent method, which can often, though not always, be applied, is that of ignoring the tempter. It is a helpful thing in the Christian warfare to remember always that Satan is the embodiment of pride. Nothing cuts the proud soul so deeply as being ignored. It can endure opposition, even defeat, but the thing that is intolerable is to be taken no account of. So when Satan attacks, in not a few instances, the resistance that to him will be the most cruel will be to go calmly on one's way, ignoring him. As St. Francis de Sales says: "You should not answer, or seem even to hear, what the enemy says. Let him hammer as he will at the door; do not you even say so much as, Who is there?... Beware that you never open the door, either to peep out and see what it is, or to drive away the clamour."[24] An illustration similar to the one employed in our discussion of resisting by doing the thing contrary to the temptation will help us here. Imagine yourself having occasion frequently to apply to a certain person for a service. Imagine such a person deliberately ignoring you whenever you spoke, pretending not to hear you, {143} gazing with feigned absent-mindedness out of the window. Do you think you would long continue your application to such an one? Indeed you would not. Pride, even right-minded self-respect, would forbid it; and you can be sure Satan, acting on the same principle, will soon cease to annoy you when he finds himself the object of so studied a contempt. Since the human mind, however, always demands something upon which to be engaged, we can much more successfully ignore Satan's addresses if we divert the mind by an act of the will into some totally different channel. "Temptations," says Walter Hilton, "vex the soul indeed, but do not harm it, if so be a man despise them and set them at naught; for it is not good to strive with them, as if thou wouldst cast them out by mastery and violence, for the more they strive with them, the more they cleave to them. And therefore they shall do well to divert their thoughts from them as much as they can, and set them upon some business."[25]