But the nature of the divine will and the particulars of our obligation
are not merely, perhaps one ought to say, not chiefly, to be assimilated
through our brains. The best preparation for the doing of the will of
God and the progressive entering into His mind, is an obedient life.
Purity of character will carry us farther on this path than cleverness
of brains. Our Lord's own rule is: _He that doeth the will shall know of
the doctrine._ In other words, we understand the mind of God and attain
to the illumination of the conscience, through sympathetic response to
the will so far as we have seen it. And each new response, in its turn,
carries us to a deeper and clearer understanding of the will. That is to
say, our conscience, by habitual response to God's will, so far as it
knows it, is so illumined as to be able to make trustworthy judgments on
new material submitted to it.

This is, of course, to be otherwise described as the working of God the
Holy Spirit. He is the Spirit that dwelleth in us and directs us to
right judgments if we will listen. Our danger is that self-will
constantly crops up and complicates the case by representing that the
line suggested by the Holy Spirit is not in reality in accord with our
interests. This opposition between the seeming interests suggested by
self-will, which indeed often contribute to our immediate gratification,
and our true interests as indicated by the monitions of the Holy
Spirit, constitutes the real struggle of the life during the period of
probation. The will of God in every circumstance is usually plain
enough; but it is silenced by the clamour of the passions and desires
demanding immediate gratification: and we are all more or less children
in our insistence on the immediate and our incapacity to wait. But I
must insist again that it is not knowledge that is wanting but sympathy
with the course that knowledge directs. We pursuade ourselves that we do
not know, when the real trouble is that we know only too well. One feels