Above Lifes Turmoil | Page 5

this is in the desire of the one tempted. If the cause existed in the
object, all men would be tempted alike, temptation could never be

overcome, and men would be hopelessly doomed to endless torment;
but seated, as it is, in his own desires, he has the remedy in his own
hands, and can become victorious over all temptation by purifying
those desires. A man is tempted because there are within him certain
desires or states of mind which he has come to regard as unholy. Thes
desires may lie asleep for a long time, and the man may think that he
has got rid of them, when suddenly, on the presentation of an outward
object, the sleeping desire wakes up and thirsts of immediate
gratification; and this is the state of temptation.
The good in a man is never tempted. Goodness destroys temptation. It
is the evil in a man that is aroused and tempted. The measure of a man's
temptations is the exact register of his own unholiness. As a man
purifies his heart, temptation ceases, for when a certain unlawful desire
has been taken out of the heart, the object which formerly appealed to it
can no longer do so, but becomes dead and powerless, for there is
nothing left in the heart that can respond to it.The honest man cannot be
tempted to steal, let the occasion be ever so opportune; the man of
purified appeties cannot be tempted to gluttony and drunkenness,
though the viands and wines be the most luscious; he of an enlightened
understanding, whose mind is calm in the strength of inward virtue, can
never be tempted to anger, irritability or revenge, and the wiles and
charms of the wanton fall upon the purified heart as empty meaningless
shadows.
Temptation shows a man just where he is sinful and ignorant, and is a
means of urging him on to higher altitudes of knowledge and purity.
Without temptation the soul cannot grow and become strong, there
could be no wisdom, no real virtue; and though there would be lethargy
and death, there could be no peace and no fulness of life. When
temptation is understood and conquered, perfection is assured, and such
perfection may bcome any man's who is willing to cast every selfish
and impure desire by which he is possessed, into the sacrificial fire of
knowledge. Let men, therefore, search diligently for Truth, realising
that whilst they are subject to temptation, they have not comprehended
Truth, and have much to learn.

Ye who are tempted know, then, that ye are tempted of yourselves.
"For every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lusts,"
says the Apostle James. You are tempted because you are clinging to
the animal within you and are unwilling to let go; because you are
living in the false mortal self which is ever devoid of all true
knowledge, knowing nothing, seeking nothing, but its own immediate
gratification, ignorant of every Truth, and of every divine Principle.
Clinging to that self, you continually suffer the pains of three separate
torments; the torment of desire, the torment of repletion, and the
torment of remorse.
_"So flameth Trishna, lust and thirst of things.
Eager, ye cleave to shadows, dote on dreams;
A false self in the midst ye plant, and make
A World around which seems;
Blind to the height beyond; deaf to the sound
Of sweet airs breathed from far past Indra's sky;
Dumb to the summons of the true life kept
For him who false puts by,
So grow the strifes and lusts which make earth's war,
So grieve poor cheated hearts and flow salt tears;
So wax the passions, envies, angers, hates;
So years chase blood-stained years
With wild red feet."_
In that false self lies the germ of every suffering, the blight of every
hope, the substance of every grief. When you are ready to give it up;

when you are willing to have laid bare before you all its selfishness,
impurity, and ignorance, and to confess its darkness to the uttermost,
then will you enter upon the life of self-knowledge and self-mastery;
you will become conscious of the god within you, of that divine nature
which, seeking no gratification, abides in a region of perpetual joy and
peace where suffering cannot come and where temptation can find no
foothold. Establishing yourself, day by day, more and more firmly in
that inward Divinity, the time will at last come when you will be able
to say with Him whom millions worship, few understand and fewer still
follow, - "The Prince of this world cometh and hath nothing in me."
The Man of Integrity
There are times in the life of every man who takes his stand on high
moral principles when his faith in,