The carelessness about preparation before and thanksgiving after Communion, the irregularity of your attendances; the habit of Self-Examination, or of Confession, dropped—why? The Bible neglected.
Then the self-indulgences in the matter of sleep, food, drink, and purely wasted hours.
All these things are sapping the manhood and dignity of the will. Sometimes even more dangerously and insidiously than open sins, because with regard to these conscience does speak; but when we are merely drifting down the stream of time, the pleasant lapping of the ripples on the side of the bark lulls conscience into fatal sleep.
Look at your life, ask yourself the question, boldly and honestly, what is the principle upon which it is being lived, God or self? When the answer comes you will see clearly the first steps to take in the disciplining of the will.
Glorious examples of what can be done abound around you. Think you there has been no struggle on the part of those tens of thousands who have given up comforts, home, prospects, harmless pleasures, in exchange for the ghastly miseries of the trenches, the appalling risks by land, on or beneath the sea, in the air, all at the call of a stern, compelling duty, which told them that the life really worth living was the one spent, laid down if need be, for King and country?
Think too of the heroism of the wives, the mothers, the sweethearts, on whose lips there must have trembled over and again, "I will not, I cannot let you go." Yet the will was disciplined, the words remained unspoken, the tears were shed in secret, and these brave hearts, even in breaking, shall find their reward.
It was at Waterloo one afternoon, a young officer was being seen off for the front by father, brother, and fiancée. The two former bravely and cheerily said their good-bye, and withdrew a little to leave the young couple for their farewell; a kiss, a close embrace, outward smiles, but tears very near the eyes; and then as the officer got into the carriage just this one remark: "It's precious hard upon the women." What a world of meaning there was in that.
Above all, as your pattern and your power, look to Him Who said, "I came down from Heaven not to do mine own will but the will of Him that sent Me."
For suggested meditations during the week, see Appendix.