I warn you of all this, my friends, because if you go to live in large towns, as many of you will, you will hear talk enough of this sort before your hairs are grey, put cleverly and eloquently enough; for, as a wise man said, “The devil does not send fools on his errands.” I pray God, that if you ever do hear doctrines of that kind, some of my words may rise in your mind and help to shew to you the evil path down which they lead. We may believe, then, from the plain words of Scriptures, that there are vast numbers of evil spirits continually tempting men, each of them to some particular sin; to worldliness, for instance, for we read of the spirit of the evil world; to filthiness, for we read of unclean spirits; to falsehood, for we read of lying spirits and a spirit of lies; to pride, for we read of a spirit of pride;—in short, to all sins which a man _can_ commit, to all evil passions to which a man can give way. We have a right to believe, from the plain words of Scripture, that these spirits are continually wandering up and down tempting men to sin. That wonderful story of Job’s temptation, which you may all read for yourselves in the first chapter of the book of Job, is, I think, proof enough for any one. But next, and I wish you to pay special attention to this point: We have no right to believe,—we have every right _not_ to believe, that these evil spirits can make us sin in the smallest matter against our own wills. The devil cannot put a single sin into us; he can only flatter the sinfulness which is already in us. For, see; this pride, lust, covetousness, falsehood, and so on, to which the Bible tells us they tempt us, have roots already in our nature. Our fallen nature of itself is inclined to pride, to worldliness, and so on. These devils tempt us by putting in our way the occasion to sin, by suggesting to us tempting thoughts and arguments which lead to sin; so the serpent tempted Eve, not by making her ambitious and self-willed, but by using arguments to her which stirred up the ambition and self-will in her: “Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil,” the devil said to her.