The Discipline of War

The Discipline of the Will

ASH WEDNESDAY

Isaiah lviii. 6

"Is not this the fast that I have chosen?"

Discipline is the central idea of the observance of Lent. An opportunity, rich in its splendid possibilities, comes before us this year. Much of the discipline of this Lent is settled for us by those tragic circumstances in which we find ourselves placed.

God seems to be saying to us, in no uncertain tones, "Is not this the fast that I have chosen?"

Our amusements are already to a large extent curtailed, maybe by our own individual sorrows or anxieties; maybe by the feeling of the incongruity of enjoying ourselves while anguish and hardship reign supreme around us.

Our self-denials are already in operation, under the stress of straitened means, or the vital necessity of helping others less favoured than ourselves.

Our devotions have already been increased in frequency and in earnestness, for the call upon our prayers has come with an insistence and an imperiousness that brook no denial.

To this extent, and further in many directions, our Lent has been taken out of our own hands; ordered and pre-arranged by that inscrutable, yet loving, Providence which has permitted the War to come about.

Thus, at the very outset, we are brought into harmony with the central idea of discipline-not my will, but God's will.

Broadly, discipline is defined as "Mental and moral training, under one's own guidance or under that of another": the two necessarily overlap, and therefore we shall speak of God's discipline, acting upon us from outside, and of our own co-operation with divine purposes, which is our discipline of self from within.

In the forefront of the subject, and including every aspect of it upon which we shall touch, stands that tremendous word-will.

Have you ever attempted to gauge the mystery, to sound the depth of meaning implied in the simple sentence "I will"?

First of all what is the significance of "I"? You are the only one who can say it of yourself. Any other must speak of you as "he" or "she"; but "I" is your own inalienable possession.

This is the mystery of personality. That accumulation of experience, that consciousness of identity which you possess as absolutely, uniquely your own; which none other can share with you in the remotest degree. "A thing we consider to be unconscious, an animal to be conscious, a person to be self-conscious."

This leads on to a further mystery, alike concerned with so apparently simple a matter that its real complexity escapes us.

"I will": I, the self-conscious person, have made up my mind what I am going to do, and, physical obstacles excepted, I will do it.

The freedom of man's will has been the subject of endless dispute from every point of view, theistic, atheistic, Christian and non-Christian.

Merely as a philosophic controversy it has but little bearing upon daily life. The staunchest necessitarian, who argues theoretically that even when he says "I will" he is under the compulsion of external force, yet acts practically in exactly the same fashion as the rest of mankind.

When the freedom of the will is considered in relation to religion, then it bears a totally different aspect. If the will be not free, religion, as a personal matter, falls to the ground, for its very essence is man's voluntary choice of God.

Here too those who deny the freedom of man's will doctrinally yet accept it as a working fact. Calvin, whose theory of Predestination and Irresistible Grace seems to exclude man from any co-operation in his own salvation, yet preached a Gospel not to be distinguished from that of John Wesley!

For us Christians the freedom of the will is absolutely settled by Him Who says, "Whosoever will let him come."

If you are sometimes troubled by certain passages in Scripture which seem to imply that God's predestination overrides man's will, remember, that whenever we are considering any question which concerns both God's nature and man's nature, difficulty must arise, from the very fact that our finite mind can only comprehend, and that but imperfectly, man's side of the transaction. Things which now seem incompatible, such as prayer and law; miracle and, what we are pleased to call, nature; God's foreknowledge and man's free-will in the light of eternity will be seen as only complementary parts of one divine whole.

Remember too that you must take the general bearing of Scripture; not isolated passages in which, for the necessity of the argument, one side is strongly emphasised. The Apostle who, thinking of the boundless power of God's grace, says, "So then it is not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy" (Rom. ix. 16) is the one who says "He willeth that all men should be saved" (1 Tim. ii. 4).

The love by which the Father gave up His Son; the life and death of that Son; the ministry of God the Holy Ghost; the whole dispensation of the Catholic Church, form one great tender appeal to the free-will of man. Your free-will, my free-will, before which is placed the tremendous responsibility of choosing or rejecting.

And now from the broad thought of will, at its highest point, occupied with eternal choices and spiritual decisions, we turn to will as the governing power in our lives.

It is, to a certain extent, self in action, for before even the slightest movement of any part of the body, there must have gone, automatically and unconsciously, an act of will.

Before every deliberate action there takes place a discussion, which ultimately decides the attitude of the will, that is your final purpose. Put quite simply, the motives determine the will, and are themselves decided by the principles at the back of them.

Let us make this plain by an illustration. It is pouring with rain, you are sitting cosily over the fire with an interesting book. The thought comes into your mind, I ought to go and see my sick friend. Then follows the deliberation: the flesh says, "To-morrow will do just as well." The spirit says, "No, it won't; you may both be dead to-morrow." The flesh says, "Perhaps I shall catch a cold"; the spirit says, "That fear wouldn't keep you from going to a Picture Palace." The flesh says, "Perhaps he won't care to see me to-day"; the spirit replies, "It's a dull, wet afternoon, and he's very likely to be alone."

Now notice that at the back of each set of motives is a vital principle. In the one case the lower self, in the other the higher self, that is to say "I" and "God."

The purely natural, human side of even the greatest saint would prefer to sit over the fire; but then our nature is not left unassisted, and even in a simple thing like this God the Holy Ghost comes to our aid with His suggestions of the higher course, and illuminates the path of duty. That is one of the most blessed features of the ministry of the Spirit; He enlightens, He persuades, He never compels: if He did, your will would not be free.

This explains what the discipline of the will really means. It is just the laying of ourselves open to the voice of the living God, speaking within us.

As we do this, day by day, the will itself becomes braced and strengthened, so that the struggle against the lower nature grow less and less fierce, the power of choosing the higher course more and more easy.

Here is our first practical thought for this Lent.

Watch yourself and your life, especially in those particulars in which you know that you have been getting out of hand. The prayers omitted, curtailed, said carelessly, said or attempted in bed, instead of on your knees: what a grievous failure, isn't it?

The carelessness about preparation before and thanksgiving after Communion, the irregularity of your attendances; the habit of Self-Examination, or of Confession, dropped-why? The Bible neglected.

Then the self-indulgences in the matter of sleep, food, drink, and purely wasted hours.

All these things are sapping the manhood and dignity of the will. Sometimes even more dangerously and insidiously than open sins, because with regard to these conscience does speak; but when we are merely drifting down the stream of time, the pleasant lapping of the ripples on the side of the bark lulls conscience into fatal sleep.

Look at your life, ask yourself the question, boldly and honestly, what is the principle upon which it is being lived, God or self? When the answer comes you will see clearly the first steps to take in the disciplining of the will.

Glorious examples of what can be done abound around you. Think you there has been no struggle on the part of those tens of thousands who have given up comforts, home, prospects, harmless pleasures, in exchange for the ghastly miseries of the trenches, the appalling risks by land, on or beneath the sea, in the air, all at the call of a stern, compelling duty, which told them that the life really worth living was the one spent, laid down if need be, for King and country?

Think too of the heroism of the wives, the mothers, the sweethearts, on whose lips there must have trembled over and again, "I will not, I cannot let you go." Yet the will was disciplined, the words remained unspoken, the tears were shed in secret, and these brave hearts, even in breaking, shall find their reward.

It was at Waterloo one afternoon, a young officer was being seen off for the front by father, brother, and fiancée. The two former bravely and cheerily said their good-bye, and withdrew a little to leave the young couple for their farewell; a kiss, a close embrace, outward smiles, but tears very near the eyes; and then as the officer got into the carriage just this one remark: "It's precious hard upon the women." What a world of meaning there was in that.

Above all, as your pattern and your power, look to Him Who said, "I came down from Heaven not to do mine own will but the will of Him that sent Me."

For suggested meditations during the week, see Appendix.