without struggle or difficulty, if He would but do, for one moment, one
wrong thing. What temptation that would be to our Lord as God, I dare
not say. But that to our Lord as Man, it must have been the most
terrible of all temptations, I can well believe: because history shews
us, and, alas! our own experience in modern times shews us, persons
yielding to that temptation perpetually; pious people, benevolent people,
people who long to spread the Bible, to convert sinners, to found
charities, to amend laws, to set the world right in some way or other,
and who fancy that therefore, in carrying out their fine projects, they
have a right to do evil that good may come.

This is a very painful subject; all the more painful just now, because I
sometimes think it is the special sin of this country and this
generation, and that God will bring on us some heavy punishment for it.
But all who know the world in its various phases, and especially what are
called the religious world, and the philanthropic world, and the
political world, know too well that men, not otherwise bad men, will do
things and say things, to carry out some favourite project or movement,
or to support some party, religious or other, which they would (I hope)
be ashamed to say and do for their own private gain. Now what is this,
but worshipping the evil spirit, in order to get power over this world,
that they may (as they fancy) amend it? And what is this but self-
conceit--ruinous, I had almost said, blasphemous? These people think
themselves so certainly in the right, and their plans so absolutely
necessary to the good of the world, that God has given them a special
licence to do what they like in carrying them out; that He will excuse in
them falsehoods and meannesses, even tyranny and violences which He will
excuse in no one else.

Now, is not this self-conceit? What would you think of a servant who