M. G. Pearse on Genesis 2:
One thing is quite certain — get where we may in this world, we cannot get beyond temptation.
Do you think that life would have been a great deal better if there had been no possibility of evil? Certainly we might have been made without any will, blindly obeying instinct, an animated machine. Then we should never have fallen.
But as certain is it that then we could never have risen.
Or we might have been placed in circumstances where the will could never have exerted itself; where no temptation could have met us. Then, again, we could not have fallen; and then, again, we should not have risen.
Innocence is not a virtue until it has had temptation and opportunity to sin; then innocence is strengthened by resistance, and exalted by victory into virtue. Everywhere and in everything that is a poor, languid, sickly kind, . . . is he who has never had a chance of overcoming.
Temptation overcome is the way, the only way, to the very throne of God.
Blessings.
One thing is quite certain — get where we may in this world, we cannot get beyond temptation.
Do you think that life would have been a great deal better if there had been no possibility of evil? Certainly we might have been made without any will, blindly obeying instinct, an animated machine. Then we should never have fallen.
But as certain is it that then we could never have risen.
Or we might have been placed in circumstances where the will could never have exerted itself; where no temptation could have met us. Then, again, we could not have fallen; and then, again, we should not have risen.
Innocence is not a virtue until it has had temptation and opportunity to sin; then innocence is strengthened by resistance, and exalted by victory into virtue. Everywhere and in everything that is a poor, languid, sickly kind, . . . is he who has never had a chance of overcoming.
Temptation overcome is the way, the only way, to the very throne of God.
Blessings.
