'forever' within
our bosom, {81} 'ein Gott in unserer Brust,'[14] as Goethe says, which
reminds us that even while denizens of this earth we are citizens of
heaven and the sharers of an eternal life. Like another John the
Baptist, conscience points to one greater than itself. It emphasises
the discord that exists between the various parts of man's nature, a
discord which it condemns but cannot remove. It can judge, but it
cannot compel. Hence it places man before Christ, and bids him yield
to the sway of a new transforming power. As one has finely said, 'He
who has implanted in every breast such irrefragible testimony to the
right, and such unappeasable yearnings for its complete triumph, now
comes in His own perfect way to reveal Himself as the Lord of
conscience, the Guide of its perplexities, the Strength of its weakness
and the Perfecter of its highest hopes.'[15]

[1] Davidson, _The Christian Conscience_.

[2] Cf. Symonds, _Studies of Greek Poets_, first series, p. 191.

[3] _Antigone_, Plumptre's Trans., 455-9.

[4] Cf. Bunsen, _God in History_, vol. ii. p. 224; also Campbell,
_Religion in Greek Literature_.

[5] Cf. Wundt, _Ethik_, vol. ii. p. 66.

[6] _Data of Ethics_, p. 18.

[7] _Proleg._, section 83.

[8] Browning.

[9] _Proleg._, section 321.

[10] _Ethik_, vol. ii. p. 66.

[11] _Idem_.

[12] Cf. Wundt, _Ethik_, vol. ii. pp. 67-74.

[13] Lemme, _Christliche Ethik_, vol. i.

[14] _Tasso_, act iii. scene 2.

[15] Davidson, _The Christian Conscience_, p. 113.

{82}

CHAPTER VI

'THE MIRACLE OF THE WILL'

Closely connected with the conscience as a moral capacity is the power of
self-determination, or as it is popularly called--free-will. If
conscience is the manifestation of man as knowing, will is more
especially his manifestation as a being who acts. The subject which we
now approach presents at once a problem and a task. The nature of
freedom has been keenly debated from the earliest times, and the history
of the problem of the will is almost the history of philosophy. The
practical question which arises is whether the individual has any power
by which the gulf between the natural and the spiritual can be
transcended. Can man choose and decide for a spiritual world above that
in which he is by nature involved? The revelation of the good must,
indeed, precede the activity of man. But at the same time the change
cannot merely happen to him. He cannot simply be