There I Plant My Foot

I was struck by the power of the scene of temptation depicted in Jane Eyre when Jane had to decide what to do after discovering, the day they were to be married, that her fiancé whom she loved dearly was already married. He explained to her the sad story of his life and how he was fettered to a woman he had never loved and who was insane and violent. But he could not legally separate himself from her and so he could not under the law get married again (as he had tried to do with Jane). He begged Jane to be as his wife and to be devoted to him, and they both loved each other deeply. He implored as she sought to leave him knowing they could not be legally joined together, “Oh, Jane, this is bitter! This—this is wicked. It would not be wicked to love me…. Give one glance to my horrible life when you are gone. All happiness will be torn away with you. What then is left? For a wife I have but the maniac upstairs: as well might you refer me to some corpse in yonder churchyard. What shall I do, Jane? Where turn for a companion and for some hope?” When she continued firm against his pleadings he said, “Then you condemn me to live wretched and to die accursed?... And what a distortion in your judgment, what a perversity in your ideas, is proved by your conduct! Is it better to drive a fellow-creature to despair than to transgress a mere human law, no man being injured by the breach? for you have neither relatives nor acquaintances whom you need fear to offend by living with me?” He was not really married in any sense of the term except for legally. His “wife” was possessed and had already tried to kill him and others. Jane had literally no one else and the two loved each other deeply. Could not this law be broken once in this extenuating circumstance?  

Jane described the inner struggle that followed: “This was true: and while he spoke my very conscience and reason turned traitors against me, and charged me with crime in resisting him. They spoke almost as loud as Feeling: and that clamoured wildly. ‘Oh, comply!’ it said. ‘Think of his misery; think of his danger—look at his state when left alone; remember his headlong nature; consider the recklessness following on despair—soothe him; save him; love him; tell him you love him and will be his. Who in the world cares for you? or who will be injured by what you do?’” But she held out strong against such thoughts: “Still indomitable was the reply—'I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad—as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth—so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane—quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot.’” And so she did. Despite his desperate attempts to get her to become his, she held fast to the laws given by God, and early the next morning she fled in secret even though she had nothing and nowhere to go. She followed her own words to him: “Trust in God and yourself. Believe in heaven. Hope to meet again there.”

I love the important principle taught in this powerful story about how to overcome temptation: we must hold fast to our principles and the laws of God that we decided to follow long before the moment of decision comes. We must plant our feet with our “foregone determinations” and hold fast with all our hearts to the covenants we have made with God, especially in the moments when reason begs us to break them, whether it relates to honesty or morality or the Word of Wisdom or anything else. God will provide the way for our escape if we hold fast, just as He promised: “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it” (1 Corinthians 10:13). I love the Savior’s words in our dispensation: “Behold, and hearken, O ye elders of my church, saith the Lord your God, even Jesus Christ, your advocate, who knoweth the weakness of man and how to succor them who are tempted” (Doctrine and Covenants 62:1). He is our advocate, He knows our weakness, and He knows how to succor and strengthen us in our temptations. We must cling to our covenants with Him in all situations and trust that as we put our faith in Him, He will fulfill this promise: “I prepare a way for their deliverance in all things out of temptation, and I have loved you” (Doctrine and Covenants 95:1).