Читать книгу The Warfare of the Soul: Practical Studies in the Life of Temptation - Shirley Carter Hughson - Страница 28

The hopelessness of Satan's warfare is shown in its final issue. Sin entered into the world through Satan, and by sin came death.[8] Death seems, when we first consider it, Satan's triumph; but in reality it is his destruction. He pursues a soul through life, but the hour of death marks the absolute cessation of his power and influence. The faithful departed in the Church Expectant are in the hand of God, and nevermore can the torment of temptation touch them. The very act of wreaking the utmost of his power is the act which places them forever beyond even the possibility of communication with him. So both prophet and apostle cry out in an ecstasy of triumph, as the Holy Spirit leads them to this conclusion,—"O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?"[9]

So also is it with "the spirits of just men made perfect,"[10] who, having been purged of all stain of sin, stand in the glory of the Beatific Vision in Paradise. Satan thought by means of death to make eternal life with God impossible; but by the divine overruling death is made the gateway of everlasting life. He watches the progress of the effect of sin; he sees the bodily weakness which he introduced into the race when he induced our first parents to sin, increasing, only to realize that the supreme result of evil in the world is to remove the soul he has been pursuing with malignant hate, forever from the sphere of his action.

Even with the lost the same holds good. With infernal glee he watches by the deathbed of a reprobate soul, of one that has yielded himself to his rule. He sees the last hour approaching; the dread coma of death settles down on the mind and heart where Satan's seat is; and he watches for the rending of soul and body asunder which will seal for eternity his claim to his possession of the sinner. The hour strikes; the horrible spasm of death seizes the frame and passes; the Evil One clutches with hellish eagerness the liberated spirit that is now his forever. The lost soul with the swiftness of thought is judged, Satan's claim is granted, and the lost wretch flees into outer darkness, the eternal slave of hell. But what a difference now transpires! for such a soul can no longer be used as the active instrument of the divine dishonour, and Satan finds satisfaction in possessing a soul only when he can use it as a co-worker with himself in his warfare with God.