ing the tendencies which were born in him and which are an
inseparable part of his nature. He cannot be genial and urbane. Are not
some born moral cripples as others are born with physical deformities?
Are not some spiritually deaf, dumb, and blind from birth? It cannot be
doubted. We are all more or less what our fathers were, but our
surroundings do much to modify us. Many men seem to be driven on wings
of passion, as leaves by tornadoes; and yet we know that we are free,
and that all life and conduct, individual and social, must be ordered on
that hypothesis. Teach men that they are not free, and anarchy and chaos
will quickly follow. No freedom? Then there is no obligation. No one
feels that he ought to do what he cannot do, and no one will try to do
what he does not feel that he ought to do. If men are but machines,
moving only as the power is turned on, there is no moral quality in any
action. If we live in a moral world, whether we can understand it or
not, we must be free to choose for ourselves. The possibility of the
soul's expansion depends on its freedom. There is no right and no wrong,
no truth and no error, if it is a slave to the inheritance with which it
was born. What gives to the invitations of Jesus a quality so serious
and so solemn is the fact that they may be rejected. The power of
choice is the most sublime endowment which man possesses. When we have
learned to know ourselves as free a long step forward has been taken.
The soul grows by a right use of the power of choice.

How may it be adjusted to this knowledge? It will undoubtedly grow to
it, but the process will be slow. It may, however, be hastened by a use
of the experience of others. No man should be allowed to begin the
battle of life as ignorant as his father was. Each new soul should have
the benefit of the experience of all who have lived before. Children
should be taught by example and conversation, in the home and the
school, that the beginning of wisdom is a right use of the experience of
others. However this lesson may be learned, and however swift may be the
process of growth, the next step in the soul's progress, after its
realization that it is in a moral order, must be its adjustment to the
fact that it is a free agent and sovereign over its own choices.

No man is ever forced into any course of conduct. Character is the
resultant of many choices rather than of necessity. The moral law may be
obeyed or it may be violated. Its se