ne.' But the will is not a
separate faculty; it is the whole man. And the obedience of the will
is nothing less than the response of our entire manhood to the will of
God.

(3) Finally, obedience is a _growing power of assimilation_ to Christ.
We grow in the Christian life according to the measure of our faith and
the exercise of our love. The spiritual world is potentially ours at
the beginning of the Christian life, but it has to be worked out in
daily experience. Like every other form of existence spiritual life is
a growth which only attains to strength and fruition through continual
conflict and achievement. The soul is not a finished product. In
patience it is to be acquired.[23] By trial and temptation, by toil
and expenditure, through all the hardships and hazards of daily life
its value is determined and its destiny shaped. And according to the
measure in which we use these experiences, and transmute them by
obedience to the will of God into means of good, do we grow in
Christian character and approximate to the full stature of the perfect
Man.

To this self-determining activity Eucken has given the name of
'Activism.' 'The basis of a true life,' says this writer, 'must be
continually won anew.'[24] Activism acquires ethical character
inasmuch as it involves the taking up of the spiritual world into our
own volition and being. Only by this ceaseless endeavour do we advance
to fresh attainments of the moral life, and are enabled to assimilate
the divine as revealed to us in Christ. Nor is it merely the
individual self that is thus enriched and developed by obedience to the
will of God. By personal fidelity to the highest we are aiding the
moral development of mankind, and are furthering the advancement of all
that is good and true in the world. Not only are we making {180} our
own character, but we are helping to build up the kingdom of God upon
the earth.

Repentance, Faith, and Obedience are thus the human factors of the new
life. They are the moral counterparts of Grace. God gives and man
appropriates. By repentance we turn from sin and self to the true home
of our soul in the Fatherhood of God. By faith we behold in Christ the
vision of the ideal self. By obedience and the daily surrender of
ourselves to the divine will we transform the vision into the reality.
They are all manifestations of love, the responsive notes of the human
heart to the appeal of divine love.

[1] Irenaeus