Page:Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne.djvu/81

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X. WHEAT-SIFTING.
67

assuredly be able to hold your own in the straight ways of God, without always believing that the Devil is at your side, it is a state of mind much to be dreaded, that you should not know the Devil when you see him there. For the probability is that when you do see him, the way you are walking in is not one of God's ways at all, but is leading you quite into other neighbourhoods than His. On His way, indeed, you may often, like Albert Durer's Knight, see the Fiend behind you, but you will find that he drops always farther and farther behind; whereas, if he jogs with you at your side, it is probably one of his own by-paths you are got on. And, in any case, it is a highly desirable matter that you should know him when you set eyes on him, which we are very far from doing in these days, having convinced ourselves that the graminivorous form of him, with horn and tail, is extant no longer. But in fearful truth, the Presence and Power of Him is here; in the world, with us, and within us, mock as you may; and the fight with him, for the time, sore, and widely unprosperous.