470 The Spiritual Man
Fourth. God has another objective in view. He purposes to train
our will. A genuine spiritual life is not one of feeling; rather, it is a
life of will. The volition of a spiritual man has been renewed already
by the Holy Spirit: it now awaits the spirit’s revelation before it
issues a command to the whole being. Unfortunately the will of quite
a few saints is often so weak that either it cannot carry through the
commands given it or, under the influence of emotion, it rejects
God’s will. To train and strengthen the will consequently becomes a
very essential step.
A Christian who is excited can easily advance because he has the
support of his high emotion. But if he grows despondent he finds the
going rough because he then has solely his will on which to rely.
God intends to make the volition strong but not to excite the emotion.
From time to time He permits His child to experience a kind of
weary, barren and insipid feeling so as to compel him to exercise his
will through the strength of the spirit to do precisely the same thing
as he would in a time of emotional stimulation. When stimulated,
emotion undertakes the work; but now God aims for the believer’s
will to work in lieu of emotion. The will gradually can be
strengthened through exercise only during periods of receiving no aid
from feeling. How many mistake sensation for the measure of
spiritual life. They erroneously construe the hour of strong feeling to
be their spiritual apogee and the hour bereft of such feeling as their
spiritual perigee. They are unaware of the fact that one’s true life is
lived by his spirit through the will. The position to which his volition
attains in the hour of barren sensation represents the reality of the
Christian’s attainment. The way he dwells amid drought is his
authentic life.
Fifth. Via such leading God longs to guide the Christian onto a
higher level of existence. If we carefully examine the Chrisitian’s
walk we shall realize that the Lord at each instance He has desired to
lead His own to a higher spiritual plateau first gave that one a taste of
such a life in his feeling. We may say that on every occasion that one