VOLUNTARY ACTION
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��acteristic processes of the will and left the personality weaker than before. We may say without exaggeration that in overt responses to religious appeals everything depends upon the character of the mental processes which lead to these responses. Are the responses intelligent? Do they represent the personality? To insist that they be rational, the outcome of deliberation, personal in the true meaning of the word, is not to reduce religious experience to a cold and colourless intellectual calculation. I do not hesitate to say that to exclude feeling from religious experience is to de stroy its character as religious; but to exclude intelligent deliberation and choice is to reduce it to a mere blind re action without ethical significance. It was characteristic of the Founder of Christianity that, while making powerful appeals to the deep emotions, he refused to accept a follow ing which was not the result of serious deliberation and choice. " For which of you, desiring to build a tower, doth not sit down first and count the cost, whether he have wherewith to complete it? Lest haply when he hath laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all that behold begin to mock him, saying, this man began to build and was not able to finish. Or what king as he goeth to encounter an other king in war, will not sit down first and take counsel whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand ? " A And it is certain that no religion can ever be a potent factor in the promotion of the ethical life which does not put heavy em phasis just here. The emotion is valuable only as it re sults in intelligent decision.
It is in voluntary action that the real man functions, and the preaching that does not secure this is useless or worse than useless. If the preacher is conscientious, then the more intelligent he is the less will he value superficial and temporary emotional effects, however dramatic and sensa tional they may be. The transient and meretricious glory in which they envelop him will but add to his repugnance
1 Luke 14 : 28-31.
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