Читать книгу The Warfare of the Soul: Practical Studies in the Life of Temptation - Shirley Carter Hughson - Страница 20

The spiritual warfare is intensely personal. Any consideration of it is a consideration of definite personalities, divine, angelic, human, Satanic,—God, the Angels, the Soul, and Satan. We speak commonly of great principles being at stake in this warfare, often forgetting that it is not possible for a moral or spiritual principle to exist apart from a person.

As we shall try to learn in the following pages, God—the three Persons of the Ever-Blessed Trinity—is always to be the first thought of the Christian warrior,—God, His Presence, His power, and His loving interest in our victory. But the well-trained soldier has an eye not to his own resources only; he seeks to learn something also concerning the Enemy he is to face. Next to the Presence of God, nothing is so necessary to the Christian soldier as to remember the presence of the Tempter; either in his own person or in that of one of his evil angels. Although God has revealed nothing directly to us on the subject, yet His revelation concerning Satan's work is such that we can hardly escape from the conclusion that, as each soul has a guardian angel, so each soul has assigned to him by Satan an attendant evil spirit, whose whole business is to seek to lead the soul into sin.

We see how in the conflict we have tremendous personalities to deal with, the Personality of the triune God,—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,—and the Personality of Satan and his innumerable fallen angels, who, though finite and created, possess a scope and power which are, perhaps, so great that our human thought cannot compass them. But immeasurably below any of these as it is, our own personality must not be forgotten, for let it ever be kept in mind that the issue of our individual battle depends on ourselves. The laws of this war are such that on the one hand the powerful personal will even of the arch-fiend himself has no power to control us, except in so far as our personal will, acting with complete freedom, permits it; and on the other hand, the infinite personal will of God never operates so as to compel us, unless again our will yield freely to His call. Satan cannot control or influence us against our wills, and God, reverencing His image in man, refrains His power and never forces man's love or service. The will of man is free, and this makes him the central factor in the spiritual warfare.