ermitted the War to come about.

Thus, at the very outset, we are brought into harmony with the central
idea of discipline--not my will, but God's will.

Broadly, discipline is defined as "Mental 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!