all the sign of the future tense as it looks. It is
not connected with the word do at all, but a sep-
arate verb altogether, meaning " is willing," or
" wills." If any man wills, or if any man is will-
ing, to do, he shall know.

Now notice the difference this makes in the
problem. Before, it looked as if the doing were
to come first and then the knowing His will ; but
now another element is thrown in at the very be-
ginning. The being willing comes first and then
the knowing ; and thereafter the doing may fol-
low — the doing, that is to say, if the will has
been sufficiently clear to proceed.

The whole stress of the passage therefore turns
on this word will. And Christ's answer to the
question, How to know the will of God? may be



314 TO KNOW THE WILL OF GOD

simply stated thus : " If any man is willing to do
God's will he shall know," or, in plainer language
still, " If any man is sincerely trying to do God's
will, he shall know."

The connection of all this with obedience is
just that being willing is the highest form of
obedience. It is the spirit and essence of obedi-
ence. There is an obedience in the world which
is no obedience, because the act of obedience is
there, but the spirit of submission is not.

" A certain man," we read in the Bible, " had
two sons; and he came to the first, and said,
• Son, go work to-day in my vineyard.' He an-
swered, 'I will not': but afterward he repented and
went. And he came to the second, and said like-
wise. And he answered, ' I go, sir ' : and went not.
Whether of them twain did the will of his father?"
Obedience here comes out in its true colours as a
thing in the will. And if any man have an obey-
ing will, a truly single and submissive will, he
shall know of the teaching, or of the leading,
whether it be of God,

If we were to carry out this principle into a
practical case, it might be found to work in some
such way as this. To-morrow, let us say, there is
some difficulty before us in our path. It lies
across the very threshold of our life, and we can-
not begin the working week without, at least,
some notice that it is there. It may be some
trifling item of business life, over which unac-
countable suspicions have begun to gather of



TO KNOW THE WILL OF GOD 315

late, and force themselves in spite of everything
into thought and conscience, and even into prayer.
Or, it may be, some change of circumstance is
opening up, and alternatives appearing, and de-
manding choice of one. Perhaps it is some prac-
tice in our life, which the clearing of the spiritual
atmosphere and increasing light from God is
hinting to be wrong, while reason cannot coin-
cide exactly and condemn. At all events there
is something on the mind — something to do,
to suffer, to renounce — and these are alterna-
tive on the mind to distinguish, to choose from,
to reject. Suppose, indeed, we made this case a
personal as well as an illustrative thing, and in
view of the solemn ordinance to which we are
shortly called, we ran the lines of our self-exam-
ination along it as we proceed — the question
rises, How are we to separate God's light on the
point from our own, disentangle our thoughts on
the point from His, and be sure we are following
His will, not the reflected image of ours?

The first process towards this discovery natur-
ally would be one of outlook. Naturally we would
set to work by collecting all the possible materials
for decision from every point of the compass,
balancing the one consequence against the other,
then summing up the points in favour of each by
itself, until we chose the one which emerged at
last with most of reason on its side. But this
would only be the natural man's way out of the
dilemma. The spiritual man would go about it



3i6 TO KNOW THE WILL OF GOD

in another way. This way, he would argue, has
no religion in it at all, except perhaps the ac-
knowledgment that reason is divine ; and though
it might be quite possible and even probable that
the light should come to him through the medium
of reason, yet he would reach his conclusion, and
likely enough a different conclusion, quite from
another side.

And his conclusion would likewise be a better
and sounder conclusion, for the insight of the
non-religious method would be impaired, and the
real organ of knowing God's will so out of order
from disuse, that even reason would be biassed in
its choice. A heart not quite subdued to God is
an imperfect element, in which His will can never
live; and the intellect which belongs to such a
heart is an imperfect instrument and cannot find
God's will unerringly — for God's will is found in
regions which obedience only can explore.

Accordingly, he would go to work from the
opposite side from the first. He would begin not
in out-look, but in in-look. He would not give
his mind to observation. He would devote his
soul to self-examination, to self-examination of the
most solemn and searching kind. For this prin-
ciple of Christ is no concession to an easy life, or
a careless method of rounding a difficult point.
It is a summons rather to learn the highest and
most sacred thing in Heaven, by bracing the heart
to the loftiest and severest sacrifice on earth —
the bending of an unwilling human will till it



TO KNOW THE WILL OF GOD 317

breaks in the will of God. It means that the heart
must be watched with a jealous care, and most
solemnly kept for God. It means that the hidden
desires must be taken out one by one and regen-
erated by Christ — that the faintest inclination of
the soul when touched by the spirit of God, be
prepared to assume the strength of will and act
at any cost. It means that nothing in life should
be dreaded so much as that the soul should ever
lose its sensitiveness to God; that God should
ever speak and find the ear just dull enough to
miss what He has said; that God should have
some active will for some human will to do, and
our heart not the first in the world to be ready to
obey.

When we have attained to this by meditation,
by self-examination, by commemoration, and by
the Holy Spirit's power, we may be ready to make
it our daily prayer, that we may know God's will;
and when the heart is prepared like this, and the
wayward will is drilled in sacrifice and patience to
surrender all to God, God's will may come out
in our career at every turning of our life, and be
ours not only in sacramental aspiration but in act.

To search for God's will with such an instru-
ment is scarce to search at all. God's will lies
transparently in view at every winding of the
path; and if perplexity sometimes comes, in such
way as has been supposed the mind will gather
the phenomena into the field of vision, as care-
fully, as fully, as laboriously, as if no light would



318 TO KNOW THE WILL OF GOD

come at all, and then stand still and wait till the
wonderful discerning faculty of the soul, that eye
which beams in the undivided heart and looks
right out to God from every willing mind fixes
its gaze on one far distant spot, one spot perhaps
which is dark to all the world besides, where all
the lights are focussed in God's will.

How this finite and this infinite are brought to
touch, how this invisible will of God is brought
to the temporal heart must even remain unknown.
The mysterious meeting-place in the prepared and
willing heart between the human and divine —
where, precisely, the will is finally moved into
line with God's — of these things knoweth no man
save only the Spirit of God.

The wind bloweth where it listeth. " We hear
the sound thereof, but cannot tell whence it cometh
or whither it goeth." When every passion is
annihilated, and no thought moves in the mind,
and all the faculties are still and waiting for God,
the spiritual eye may trace, perhaps, some delicate
motion in the soul, some thought which stirs like
a leaf in the unseen air and tells that God is there.
It is not the stillness, nor the unseen breath, nor
the thought that only stirred, but these three
mysteries in one which reveal God's will to me.
God's light it is true does not supersede, but
illuminate our thoughts. Only when God sends
an angel to trouble the pool let us have faith for
the angel's hand, and believe that some power of
Heaven has stirred the waters in our soul.



TO KNOW THE WILL OF GOD 319

Let us but get our hearts in position for know-
ing the will of God — only, let us be willing to
know God's will in our hearts that we may do
God's will in our lives, and we shall raise no
questions as to how this will may come and feel
no fears in case the heavenly light should go.

But let it be remembered, as already said, that
it requires a well-kept life to will to do this will.
It requires a well-kept life to do the will of God,
and even a better kept life to will to do His will.
To be willing is a rarer grace than to be doing
the will of God. For he who is willing may some-
times have nothing to do, and must only be will-
ing to wait : and it is easier far to be doing God's
will than to be willing to have notJmig to do — it
is easier far to be working for Christ than it is to be
willing to cease. No, there is nothing rarer in the
world to-day than the truly willing soul, and there
is nothing more worth coveting than the will to
will God's will. There is no grander possession
for any Christian life than the transparently simple
mechanism of a sincerely obeying heart. And if
we could keep the machinery clear, there would
be lives in thousands doing God's will on earth
even as it is done in Heaven. There would be
God in many a man's career whose soul is allowed
to drift — a useless thing to God and the world —
with every changing wind of life, and many a
noble Christian character rescued from wasting
all its virtues on itself and saved for work for
Christ.



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320 TO KNOW THE WILL OF GOD

And when the time of trial would come, and
all in earth and heaven was dark and even God's
love seemed dim : what is there ever left to cling
to but this will of the willing heart, a God-given,
God-ward bending will, which says amidst the
most solemn and perplexing vicissitudes of life,

" Father, I know that all my life,

Is portioned out by Thee,
And the changes that are sure to come

I do not fear to see :
But I ask Thee for a present mind,

Intent on pleasing Thee."