You were secretly lifted up with pride

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"Count it all joy, my brothers, when you fall into various temptations." James 1:2

You might have walked for some time in the ways of the Lord without any deep experience of the infidelity, blasphemy, rebelliousness, enmity, and horrid wickedness of your fallen nature. This being the case, you were secretly lifted up with pride and self-righteousness. You had not yet had that deep discovery of yourself which was needful to humble you in the dust.

You did, it is true, look in some measure to the Lord Jesus Christ, for salvation—but not knowing your utter ruin and the desperate wickedness of your heart, you looked with but half a glance—though you took hold of Him, it was but with one hand—and though you walked with Him, it was but with a limping foot.

The reason was that temptation had not yet—shorn your locks—bound you with fetters of brass—and put you to grind in the prison-house. But you suddenly fell into one of these "various temptations." The poisoned arrow is rankling in the heart.

There are temptations so thoroughly adapted to our fallen nature—snares so suited to our lusts—and Satan has such a way of seducing his victim little by little into the trap until it falls down upon him—that none can escape but by the power of God. None can deliver the soul from these snares of the fowler—except that mighty hand which brings up out of the horrible pit and out of the miry clay!