The Discipline of War | Page 2

and moral training, under
one's own guidance or under that of another": the two necessarily
overlap, and therefore we shall speak of God's discipline, acting upon
us from outside, and of our own co-operation with divine purposes,
which is our discipline of self from within.
In the forefront of the subject, and including every aspect of it upon
which we shall touch, stands that tremendous word--will.

Have you ever attempted to gauge the mystery, to sound the depth of
meaning implied in the simple sentence "I will"?
First of all what is the significance of "I"? You are the only one who
can say it of yourself. Any other must speak of you as "he" or "she";
but "I" is your own inalienable possession.
This is the mystery of personality. That accumulation of experience,
that consciousness of identity which you possess as absolutely,
uniquely your own; which none other can share with you in the
remotest degree. "A thing we consider to be unconscious, an animal to
be conscious, a person to be self-conscious."
This leads on to a further mystery, alike concerned with so apparently
simple a matter that its real complexity escapes us.
"I _will_": I, the self-conscious person, have made up my mind what I
am going to do, and, physical obstacles excepted, I will do it.
The freedom of man's will has been the subject of endless dispute from
every point of view, theistic, atheistic, Christian and non-Christian.
Merely as a philosophic controversy it has but little bearing upon daily
life. The staunchest necessitarian, who argues theoretically that even
when he says "I will" he is under the compulsion of external force, yet
acts practically in exactly the same fashion as the rest of mankind.
When the freedom of the will is considered in relation to religion, then
it bears a totally different aspect. If the will be not free, religion, as a
personal matter, falls to the ground, for its very essence is man's
voluntary choice of God.
Here too those who deny the freedom of man's will doctrinally yet
accept it as a working fact. Calvin, whose theory of Predestination and
Irresistible Grace seems to exclude man from any co-operation in his
own salvation, yet preached a Gospel not to be distinguished from that
of John Wesley!

For us Christians the freedom of the will is absolutely settled by Him
Who says, "Whosoever will let him come."
If you are sometimes troubled by certain passages in Scripture which
seem to imply that God's predestination overrides man's will, remember,
that whenever we are considering any question which concerns both
God's nature and man's nature, difficulty must arise, from the very fact
that our finite mind can only comprehend, and that but imperfectly,
man's side of the transaction. Things which now seem incompatible,
such as prayer and law; miracle and, what we are pleased to call, nature;
God's foreknowledge and man's free-will in the light of eternity will be
seen as only complementary parts of one divine whole.
Remember too that you must take the general bearing of Scripture; not
isolated passages in which, for the necessity of the argument, one side
is strongly emphasised. The Apostle who, thinking of the boundless
power of God's grace, says, "So then it is not of him that willeth nor of
him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy" (Rom. ix. 16) is the
one who says "He willeth that all men should be saved" (1 Tim. ii. 4).
The love by which the Father gave up His Son; the life and death of
that Son; the ministry of God the Holy Ghost; the whole dispensation
of the Catholic Church, form one great tender appeal to the free-will of
man. Your free-will, my free-will, before which is placed the
tremendous responsibility of choosing or rejecting.
And now from the broad thought of will, at its highest point, occupied
with eternal choices and spiritual decisions, we turn to will as the
governing power in our lives.
It is, to a certain extent, self in action, for before even the slightest
movement of any part of the body, there must have gone, automatically
and unconsciously, an act of will.
Before every deliberate action there takes place a discussion, which
ultimately decides the attitude of the will, that is your final purpose. Put
quite simply, the motives determine the will, and are themselves
decided by the principles at the back of them.

Let us make this plain by an illustration. It is pouring with rain, you are
sitting cosily over the fire with an interesting book. The thought comes
into your mind, I ought to go and see my sick friend. Then follows the
deliberation: the flesh says, "To-morrow will do just as well." The spirit
says, "No, it won't; you may both be