Forgiveness does not at once and wholly annihilate the tendency to transgress.  True, the belief that God has forgiven supplies the strongest motives for holiness, and the new life which comes to every man who so believes will by degrees conquer all the lingering garrisons of the Philistines which hold scattered strong-posts in the land.  But though this be so, still the purifying process is a slow and gradual one, and evil may be forced out of the heart while yet it is in the blood.  The central will may be cleansed while yet habits continue to be strong, and the power of resistance, new-born as it is, may be weak in act though omnipotent in nature.  All sin leaves some tendency to recurrence.  The path which one avalanche has hollowed lies ready for another.  It is true, on the one side, that no purity is so bright and no obedience so steadfast as that of the man who has been cleansed and reclaimed from rebellion.  But it is also true that, on the road to that ultimate purity, a pardoned man has to struggle daily with the bitter relics of his old self, to wage war against evils the force of which he never knew till he tried to resist them, against sins which were all sleek, and velvety, and purring, as long as he fondled and stroked them, but which flash out sharp claws when he would fling them from their dens in his heart.  Forgiveness does not at once conquer sin, and forgiveness leads to deeper consciousness of sin.  Hence the order of petitions here.  Following on the prayer for pardon, comes that for shelter from and in temptation which arises from deep consciousness of our own weakness and liability to fall.

Temptation has two parts in it—­the circumstances which lead to sin, the desire which is addressed by them.  There must be tinder as well as spark, if there is to be flame.  Fire falling on water or upon bare rock will kindle nothing.  God sends the one, we make the other.

The Prayer:—­

I. Expresses our recognition of God as ordering all circumstances.

There is the general faith that His Providence orders our lot, and the specific that God orders and brings about temptations.

To tempt is to present inducements to sin, but a secondary significance is to do so maliciously, and with desire that we should fall.  It is in this secondary sense that James denies that God tempts any man.  We tempt ourselves, or evil tempts us.  But God does tempt in so far as He presents outward circumstances which become occasions of falling or of standing, as we take them.  He sends temptations, He sends trials, and the two only differ in name, and in what is implied in the word, of the disposition of the sender.  Christ was led into the wilderness by the Spirit to be tempted.  If God does not in malice tempt, still He does in mercy try.  God sends trials; we make them temptations.

II.  Implies that our chiefest wish is holiness, our greatest dread sin.

This is the only negative petition.