Our elementary duty therefore as sane persons is to find what is the will of God in any given circumstances; there should be no action until there has been an effort to ascertain that will.  It were as sensible to set about building a house without ascertaining what strength of foundation would be needful, or without knowing the sort of material we were going to use.  One has heard of a house being built in which it turned out that there was a room with no doorway, or floor to which no stair led up; but we do not commend such exploits as the last word in architecture, nor would we commend a farmer who planted his crops without attention to the nature of the soil.  There are certain elementary principles of common sense which we pretty uniformly hold to in every matter with the exception of religion; that seems to be held to be a separate department of human activity with laws of its own, and in which the principles which govern life elsewhere do not hold.  We do not profess this theory, of course, but we commonly act upon it, while we still profess to respect the will of God.  It is strange too that after having habitually neglected that will, we are greatly disappointed, not to say indignant, when after a life of disobedience and scorn of God’s thought for us we do not find ourselves in possession of the fruits of righteousness.  If it were not so tragic it would be amusing to hear men declaim against the justice of a God whose existence they have habitually disregarded.

But, it is often said, it is not by any means easy to find out God’s will.  You talk about it as though it were as easy to know God’s will as it is to know the multiplication table.  Well, at least it can be said that one does not get to know the multiplication table without effort!  What objections as to the obscurity of the will of God will seem to mean is that it does take effort to ascertain it.  I do not know of any reason for regarding that as unjust.  If the will of God is what religion maintains that it is, of primary importance to our lives, we might well be glad that it is ascertainable at all, at the expense of whatever effort.

An Almighty God has implanted within every human heart the knowledge that His will exists and is important; that is, He has endowed every man with a conscience which is the certainty of the difference between right and wrong, and the conviction that we are responsible for our conduct to some power outside ourselves; that we are not at liberty to conduct life on any lines we will.  Having so much certainty, it surely becomes us to set about ascertaining the nature of the power and the details of the will.  The very nature of conscience, as a sense of obligation, rather than a source of information, should create a desire for a knowledge of what God’s will is in detail, that is, what is the content of the notion of right and wrong.