e thought of it from our minds. All this action is
not for the sake of anything thus done, but for the sake of its indirect
effect on the struggle in which we are engaged. Whenever there is a
struggle, we are not only conscious that the will is free, but that it
is asserting its freedom. In these struggles there is not a mere contest
between two inclinations. We are distinctly conscious that one of the
combatants is our very selves in a sense in which the other is not. But,
nevertheless, when all has been said, it still remains in this case that
the will is beaten and inclination prevails, and the conduct in the main
is determined by the inclination, which is under the dominion of the law
of uniformity, and not by the will, which claims to be free. The fourth
case in which the will prevails may, of course, make a momentous breach
in the uniformity of sequence of the conduct. But in far the largest
number of cases the struggle is very slight, and the difference between
the will and the inclination is not, taken alone, of grave importance in
the life. And in those instances in which the struggle is severe and
the resulting change is great, it is very often the case that the way
has been prepared, as it were in secret, by the quiet accumulation of
hidden forces of the strictly natural order ready to burst forth when
the fit opportunity came. In the great conversions which have sometimes
seemed by their suddenness and completeness to defy all possibility of
reduction to natural law, there are often nevertheless tokens of deep
dissatisfaction with the previous life having swelled up slowly within
the soul for some time, even for some long time beforehand. The
inclination to go on in evil courses has been broken down at last, not
merely by the action of the will, but by the working of the machinery of
the soul.

To this it must be added that the action of the will is such that it
very often happens that, having been exerted once, it need not be
exerted again for the same purpose. A custom is broken down, an
exceedingly strong temptation has been overpowered, and its strength so
destroyed that its return is without effect. Or sometimes the act of the
will takes the form of deliberately so arranging the circumstances of
life that a dreaded temptation cannot return, or if it return cannot
prevail; the right eye has been plucked out, the right hand cut off, and
the sin cannot be committed even if desired. While therefore the will