(Excerpt by Rev. Dr. Hugo Odhner)

Hope and trust in the Lord are indeed the forces of [spiritual] combat from within, by which a person is given power to resist. (Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven #6097.)

Hope, from trust in God's providing! These are the forces of combat from within. The Lord not only tempers the evil until it is "sufficient unto the day"; He provides also the heavenly manna-which is felt by the person as hope and trust; provides-for those who seek the kingdom of God-food "sufficient unto the day." And this is food which cannot be hoarded.

Like the manna in the desert it melts and disappears when the sun grows hot and human prudence begins its arduous tasks. Like the manna, which bred worms and became putrid if laid up for the morrow, our hope and trust is apt to turn into self-confidence or fatalism, and into the poison of a false security.

Hope and trust in Divine Providence must be renewed with the dawn of every day, must come like the dew upon Israel. It must not take the place of our work, but is meant to strengthen us in the task, whether in peace or in battle.

And when it is said that this manna cannot be stored up, what is meant is that it cannot be stored in our natural mind and long remain pure when our natural affections are called to the tasks of everyday life, evoking worldly and selfish delights. In a certain sense, even the manna has its proper storehouse, in our interiors, where the treasures of heaven are laid up.

It is the hope and trust of innocent childhood that are used by angels to temper our evils in later life. It is through such states impacting our life on earth that evil is restrained until it is only "sufficient unto the day" of our temptations. Even with the evil, who refuse to receive any angelic inflow, these states are yet used to temper and moderate their faults and passions, and to prevent their utter perversion.

It is often our prayer to be spared the trials of temptation. Yet the Lord does not lead into temptation. Temptation is of evil, of anxiety, of unworthy fears: and the Lord accepts our plea to lessen the burden of evil, so far as we trust in Him to provide enlightenment and strength in what His Divine Love and Wisdom requires us to do. This trust, this hope, is a faith in His own promises (from the Word). It is the only faith which can exalt and purify our love, until-in the day of testing - it casts out our fear!