You know the history of their doubt, and can take it for what it is worth—its origin in the suggestion, which, once admitted, must needs reach a logical conclusion even to the bitter end. “Take heed that ye enter not into temptation,” He said, Who needed not that any should tell Him, for He knew what was in men.
If man is the creature of those habits he forms with care or allows in negligence, if his very thoughts are involuntary and his conclusions inevitable, he ceases to be a free agent. One might as well concede at once that “thought is a mode of motion,” and cease to regard man as a spiritual being capable of self-regulation!
It is hardly possible to concede too wide a field to biological research, if we keep well to the front the fact, that man is a spiritual being whose material organs act in obedience to spiritual suggestion; that, for example, as the hand writes, so the brain thinks, in obedience to suggestions.
Is the suggestion self originated?
Probably not; it would appear that, as the material life is sustained upon its appropriate food from without, so the immaterial life is sustained upon its food,—ideas or suggestions spiritually conveyed.
May the words “idea” and “suggestion” be used as synonymous terms?
Only in so far as that ideas convey suggestions to be effected in acts.
What part does the man himself play in the reception of this immaterial food?
It is as though one stood on the threshold to admit or reject the viands which should sustain the family.
Is this free-will in the reception or rejection of ideas the limit of man’s responsibility in the conduct of his life?