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child. The theologian in his study reads Jonathan Edwards on the Will, and convinces himself that the Infinite Sovereignty- leaves no room for human freedom in the scheme of things ; but he takes up his newspaper and his heart goes with every sentence meted out to a crime. /
^ The soul in its consciousness of freedom repudiates deter- y minism. Man as a moral agent is free — free to choose, free to think, free to act. Hence the exhortations of Scripture : " Choose you this day whom ye will serve " — " I have set before you life and death, therefore choose life" — "Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good." Power of choice implies free will and therefore responsibility. Christ in addressing men always ^ assumed their freedom of choice — "Follow me" — "Come unto me " — " Ye will not come to me, that ye might have life." And the Apostolic injunction, " Quench not the Spirit," has no meaning unless we are able to do so. Our destiny is thus largely, if not wholly, in our own hands. " I can — I ought — I will." We are not feathers in the wind, or straws on the stream, but men with souls / and wills and consciences, and as men we fix our destiny by our character, and we fix our character by our actions.^
^ The will in man, like some small independent nation, such as Switzerland or Holland, seems to maintain itself by means of great toil and effort. Bordered on all sides by strong encroach- ing nations, which threaten to absorb its very life within them, and menaced by a rude unfriendly nature, with which it must keep up a constant war, it yet continues, by the very fact of its existence, to utter a protest for man's inviolable right of freedom. Often must the will exclaim —
Oh, mother Nature, broad indeed thy feast. Widespread thy table, pasture for the beast And death to man, most like the fruit whose thin Smooth shining golden rind shows fair within Its crimson gleaming seeds deep-hearted hid Harmful, whereon, a harmless guest unhid, The sweet bird feeds.^
^ Henry Ward Beecher's father, old Dr. Lyman Beecher, was quite as remarkable as his distinguished son and his distinguished daughter, Harriet Beecher Stowe. One day Dr. Lyman Beecher had an exchange with a Methodist brother. Dr. Beecher believed in fore-ordination. The two men met on a hillside, each going to
^ D. Watson, Th£ Heritage of Youth, 35. ^ Dora Greenwell, Liber Humanitatis, 66.
142 THE CHOICE OF A MASTER
his place of worship, according to the way that was common in those days, riding his own horse. " Now," said Dr. Beecher, " you see my doctrine is right, you see that it was fore-ordained from the foundation of the world that we should make this exchange, and we have met here on the crest of this hill, you going to my church and I going to your church." " Very well," said the Methodist preacher, " if it was fore-ordained from the foundation of the world that we were to make this exchange, I will break the fore-ordination," and he deliberately turned round and went back to his own church. Now that seems to be only toying with a profound and very perplexing principle, but underneath we come to this very simple fact, that every man must be loyal to his own conscience, and when we are discussing the fact as to whether we have the power to choose or not we get back to this, " I know I could have done dijfferently."
3. Eeligion, no less than the other interests to which we give ourselves in life, is the subject-matter of human choice. We sometimes look upon it as pre-determined by language, climate, tradition, and ancestry. Max Miiller speaks as though the idolatry of the Aryans grew out of their habits of speech. St. Paul perhaps displays a deeper insight into human nature when he looks upon idolatry as the product of fatuous and evil acts
• of choice. The best religion is always that which men, after due inquiry and full counsel with their own consciences, choose for them- selves. It has greater binding power than a religion which is merely prescribed. It is true even in common things that, after we have reached years of maturity, the best decisions are the dispassionate decisions we make for ourselves. The choice other people may make for us is of passing value only, and cannot command us like the choice we make in the exercise of our just f/personal liberty. Genuine religion begins with the exercise of individual judgment, although of course that judgment, when once formed, must ally itself with kindred judgments in the community and so acquire accumulative intenseness.
^ I think full vision prevents the exercise of choice between good and evil, and the fact of our being conscious of a power to choose between the two shows that we are in the dark — we could not choose evil if we really saw it to be only evil. In the case of a temptation, the very force of the temptation lies in the fact
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that the thing does appear good, pleasant to look upon, and likely to advance our knowledge. I would venture to suggest that you should criticize your notion of choice under the remem- brance of the conditions in which we start and move in this existence. " Consent," I think, is a better word than " choice " in relation to man's so-called "free will." True, when we are standing in the natural or old Adam, it seems a choice to us; but when we come to stand in the spiritual or new Adam, we discover that our free will is not exercised in the way of choice as between two alternatives, but in the free consent to the Will of God that it is " good and acceptable and perfect." I incline to think that in the distinction between the natural and spiritual perceptions the solution of the perplexity will be found in the question of so-called free will.^