It is thus quite clearly, though perhaps even j-et not explicitly, recognized that will is something more than an impulse or a series of impulses, good or bad. It is the expression of the self, which, when bad, needs to be changed by an operation which has an external origin. Yet it is manifested in constant clioices and struggles. The Christian is conscious of a new power in him (Gal 2-°), seizing him (Ph 3'-); yet the result is to produce in him for tlie lirst time the true activity. Transformed conation becomes the central thing in his life.
There is another aspect of the subject which is familiar to modern psychologists, and is not as entirely neglected in the NT as might at first appear. Conation is often represented as being almost identical with deliberate attention. Fully developed conation demands that prolonged present ation of an object to consciousness whose basis is voluntarj' attention. For the cultivation of self- control and the building up of character this truth is of the greatest importance. In the NT tlu' chief elements in the growth of the Christian character are faith, hope, and love. To the new life, and therefore to the new will, these are vital. They have been regarded as being mainly emoti<mal qualities. But this is a mistake. Each involves
a trained and cultivated attention. Tliis is dearly tliu case with lie 11. Tlie psyc-lioloj^i.st niiglit well describe the conception of faith worked out in that famous chapter as the concentration of atten- tion on what would otherwi.-se be forced up to, or beyond, the margin of consciousness (esp. vv.^- ^^-'^- -' and 1'2'). A wider rOle is assigned to faitli in the I'auline Epistles, but the element of unswerving attention therein is clear from Ko 4-° and (ial 3, {passi7»). This is even more marked in the Epistles of St. John. There f;i,ith is spoken of as the weapon by whicli the world is overcome (1 Jn 5^- ''). But the nerve of this faith is the conviction that Jesus is the Son of God ; in other words, if the attention is concentrated on this object, the universe of evil around him is powerless to harm the Christian. In the Synoptic Gospels faith means confidence in the power of Jesus to do what He oilers or is asked to do ; but the demand for faith thus made involves the securing of attention by means of a strong suggestion. In Ph 4", St. Paul appears to recog- nize the value of wisely directed attention still more clearly.
It is not always easy to distinguish between faith .and hope in the apostolic writings ; hope, like faitli, is directed on the unseen, and it demands endurance (Ro 8^^-^), i.e. the deliberate holding of an idea before the mind ; indeed, the connexion of hope with endurance rather suggests that it is the part of faith to set the object before the atten- tion, and of hope to keep it there. Love, as St. Paul describes it in 1 Co 13, is very much more than an emotion ; it is distinctly an attitude ; the qualities mentioned in vv.''"" all point to attention directed to oljjects which most of us, especially under pro- vocation, find it very hard to bear in mind. In the Epistles of St. John, faith, love, and obedience form an insep.arable triad ; the Christian character is secured, and fulfilled, by lixing the mind on Christ's precepts and carrying them out. Of this process, love is both the pre-requisite and the end ; and, if this seemsa contradiction, we must remember that to the psychologist, as to the theologian, analysis is but a makeshift ; everything that appears in the course of the development of a conscious state was there at the beginning, or it could not have come into existence at all. Love is the going out of the whole soul to God, or to men in eager desire for their highest bliss ; but this is impossible apart from definite mental concentra- tion. The three Christian gTaces thus imply attention, and are all conative.
It is strange that all this was not analyzed further in the NT. But the main interest ot the writers, after all, lay in God's will, not in man's. The patience needed by the descriptive psychologist was impossible for men whose one desire was to express the highest rapture of their lives, the sense of the redeeming and sanctifying will of God surg- ing through every part of their being. And this constant turning of the attention to God led them to emphasize aspects of God's will which might seem to come near to fatalism, were it not that God's will is always thought of as acting through the good man, not outside of him. These aspects are four : a certain irresistible compulsion exjieri- enced by the Apostles, reminding one of Socrates' daimon, but going far beyond it (Ac W- ' ; cf. 18") ; a curious sense of the 'fated,' or Treirpuixivov, as a classical Greek might have called it, which especi- ally pervades Ac 20. 21. 27 ; the eschatological expectation, prominent in the earlier Epistles of St. Paul and in Rev. ; and, side by side with this cosmical aspect of the sovereign will of God, the recognition of a moral necessity, especially in the sufl'erings of the Messiah, which formed the great fulfilment of prophecy (Ac 3"- '>^, He 2"' 7='^). In fact, we may almost think of God's will as a kind