Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IL IN THE OBJECT OF LIFE. " For I came from, heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him, that sent me."— John vi. 38. No reasonable being acts without a motive. The veriest animal capable of choosing, is determined in his choice by something. It cannot be that man should live without an object to which his actions tend, in which his purposes terminate, which determines his path, :and impels him forward in it. Without this momentum communicated from without, the srational, deliberative spirit could no more choose a course and follow it, than the dead masses (of the material universe could find themselves an orbit and maintain their motion in it, without the restraining force of gravitation. These inert bodies move as they are driven, and if some counter-influence supervene, they cannot choose bat to leave their course and follow it. Man has a power of resistance, which these have not. He may choose, so to speak, the centre of his sphere: he may shun the influences which would withdraw him from it. He may strengthen by indulgence, or weaken by resistance, the motives that induce him to act, and determine his modes of acting. He may, by the deliberative will with which he is endowed, choose among the objects that are set before him, which he will pursue, for what he will live, to what he will direct his aims. I know this may be disputed, and may even be metaphysically disproved. It may be said, that man cannot choose in opposition to his nature, the will itself being under the influence of his passions, tastes, and feelings. He cannot choose a good object while a had one seems more desirable to him ;—he cannot prefer that which he does not love to that which possesses his affections;—he cannot, by mere volition, desire what he would not have, nor please hi...