Walk in the spirit and you put yourself in such a position as to be unable to fulfil the lusts of the flesh. Meet the negation of sin with the affirmation of righteousness. When Satan challenges you to wrestle with him, turn about and wrestle with God for a blessing. (_c_) There is no reason to be afraid of temptation, that is to say if it is not a temptation into which we have entered unnecessarily, but one that is consequent upon the fulfilment of duty. God does not allow us to be tempted beyond our powers. But this is not all. Our fearlessness should show itself in our attitude. We must meet our temptations face to the foe. The temptations of Jesus never struck Him from behind but always smote Him in the face. There is only one kind of temptation which we are advised to run from, and that is the temptation to fleshly lust. Evasion is for the most part a sign of defeat, not of victory. The man who would gain freedom in temptation must be _One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward._ With this thought we leave the subject of temptation, that strange mystery which proves man and makes him less unworthy of friendship with God, which is at once an opportunity and a snare, glorious and commonplace. FOOTNOTES: [11] _Walter Pater._ Chapter VI _Knitting Broken Friendship_ But the best of us do not always rise to the opportunity which temptation presents. A gust comes for which we are not prepared, and we are swept off our feet. And the earliest penalty of sin visits the transgressor simultaneously with its committal--that depressing sense of loneliness and separation from God that has been the bitter experience of every one, and that is so graphically represented in the story of the first act of disobedience. Every one who does wrong, by the deed of wrong itself, hides himself from God just as Adam and Eve did. Sin is acting apart from God, a withdrawing of our allegiance from Him, an ignoring of His voice, a snapping of the bonds of friendship. When this unhappy experience occurs what are we to do to have the breach between ourselves and God filled up and fellowship with Him re-established? It would seem natural to answer that as soon as we perceive that we have fallen we should pick ourselves up and go on our way without further thought about the dead past. It is out of our reach; it cannot be recalled, and to dwell upon it is disastrous. A man who has exercised a wide influence over English thought declared sin to be "not a monster to be mused on, but an impotence to be got rid of. All thinking about it, beyond what is indispensable for the firm effort to get rid of it, is waste of energy and waste of time. We then enter that element of morbid and subjective brooding in which so many have perished. This sense of sin, however, it is also possible to have not strongly enough to beget the firm effort to get rid of it."[12]