Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 30:120 (Oct 1873)
Article: Temptation No Excuse For Transgression
Author: Laurens P. Hickok

BSac 30:120 (Oct 1873) p. 648

Temptation No Excuse For Transgression

Rev. L. P. Hickok

To tempt is, primarily and most comprehensively, to hold to or press toward a specific result. More commonly it applies in a bad sense, as urging to an evil result. But an examination of the particular case can alone determine the character of the issue intended.

Sometimes it is used as opening an intended occasion for eminently virtuous action, while the severity of the self-denial requisite opens also a dangerous liability to disobedience. In such cases it proves a test and trial of character, training and disciplining the disposition. The master may mean it for good, while the disciple must decide on his own responsibility whether the occasion shall not be perverted for evil. In such sense “God did tempt Abraham,’ in commanding the sacrifice of Isaac (Gen. 22:1). Such, also, is the meaning of the apostle James, when he says: “My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations, knowing that the trial of your faith worketh patience” (James 1:2-3; and of the apostle Peter, in writing to “such as are in heaviness through manifold temptations, that the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise, honor, and glory” (1 Peter 1:6-7. So parental and tutorial discipline is administered strictly and often severely for virtue’s sake, but when wisely tempered to condition and capacity the needed trial can be no excuse for any delinquency and perversion. When the training is selfish and malignant, exacting what is cruel and unjust, it becomes tyranny and oppression, and has itself no excuse for its exactions. Yet, even then, when deliverance cannot

BSac 30:120 (Oct 1873) p. 649

righteously be found, patient endurance of the persecution and martyrdom has its compensations, purifying the character and dignifying the disposition. The magnanimity which persists in its integrity while patiently enduring its imposed sufferings has within itself its own reward. Even the cruelty of the persecution cannot excuse an apostasy from truth and righteousness. The approbation of conscience and of God is more than deliverance by wrong action.

At other times the trial may be made to assume quite another form, and give an entirely new meaning to the temptation, as when the subject of the discipline turns back and puts the master himself to the proof. This may be done in various ways — by fretful complaints of his dealings, rash tests of his truth, or insolent arraignment of his faithfulness, and by covert a...