The will is an inviolable shrine.  Men may circumvent, attack, seduce and weaken it.  But it cannot be forced.  The power of man and devil cannot go so far.  Even God respects it to that point.

In all cases of pressure being brought to bear upon the moral agent for an evil purpose, when resistance is possible, resistance alone can save him from the consequences.  He must resist to his utmost, to the end, never yield, if he would not incur the responsibility of a free agent.  Non-resistance betokens perfect willingness to act.  The greater the resistance, the less voluntary the act in the event of consent being finally given; for resistance implies reluctance, and reluctance is the opposition of a will that battles against an oppressing influence.  In moral matters, defeat can never be condoned, no matter how great the struggle, if there is a final yielding of the will; but the circumstance of energetic defense stands to a man’s credit and will protect him from much of the blame and disgrace due to defeat.

Thus we see that the first quality of the acts of a moral agent is that he think, desire, say and do with knowledge and free consent.  Such acts, and only such, can be called good or bad.  What makes them good and bad, is another question.

CHAPTER III.  CONSCIENCE.

The will of God, announced to the world at large, is known as the Law of God; manifested to each individual soul, it is called conscience.  These are not two different rules of morality, but one and the same rule.  The latter is a form or copy of the former.  One is the will of God, the other is its echo in our souls.

We might fancy God, at the beginning of all things, speaking His will concerning right and wrong, in the presence of the myriads of souls that lay in the state of possibility.  And when, in the course of time, these souls come into being, with unfailing regularity, at every act, conscience, like a spiritual phonograph, gives back His accents and reechoes:  “it is lawful,” or “it is not lawful.”  Or, to use another simile, conscience is the compass by which we steer aright our moral lives towards the haven of our souls’ destination in eternity.  But just as behind the mariner’s compass is the great unseen power, called attraction, under whose influence the needle points to the star; so does the will or Law of God control the action of the conscience, and direct it faithfully towards what is good.

We have seen that, in order to prevaricate it is not sufficient to transgress the Law of God:  we must know; conscience makes us know.  It is only when we go counter to its dictates that we are constituted evil-doers.  And at the bar of God’s justice, it is on the testimony of conscience that sentence will be passed.  Her voice will be that of a witness present at every deed, good or evil, of our lives.