284 PRESENT-DAY RATIONALISM 



maton he would yield ; but he gets the mastery by his 

 Volition, and so acquires the character and the reputation 

 for honesty. All through the struggle there was the 

 consciousness of the power to choose. The abstract ideas 

 of " honour," "honesty" are continually forcing them- 

 selves upon his attention. All this and much more may 

 form motives, before he has deliberately " made up his 

 mind " to be always honest. 



Something like this appears to have been the process 

 our Lord's mind went through in His temptation in the 

 wilderness. " This," writes Sir John Seeley, the late 

 author of Ecce Homo, " was the excitement of His mind 

 which was caused by the nascent consciousness of super- 

 natural power." ..." He is awe-struck rather than 

 elated by His new gifts ; He declines to use for His own 

 convenience what He regards as a sacred deposit com- 

 mitted to Him for the good of others. In His extreme 

 need He prefers to suffer rather than to help Himself from 

 resources which He conceives placed in His hands in 

 trust for the kingdom of God. Did ever inventor or 

 poet dare to picture to himself a self-denial like this ? 

 The chief point in His temptations was to use force (as 

 was expected of the Messiah of the Jews) in the establish- 

 ment of His kingdom." 



No one can read that wonderful " Temptation in the 

 Wilderness " and regard it merely as a piece of automat- 

 ism on the part of Christ. Attention, concentration of 

 mind, powerful, abstract motives, circumstances. Con- 

 scious Power of Choice, firm deliberation and final issue, 

 all conspire to illustrate one of the most powerful displays 

 of Volition that the world has ever heard of. 



Mr. Mallock says : " Any act which we consciously 

 will to perform and do not perform automatically, or 

 under presence of physical coercion, we perform and will 



