Page:What Religion Is (1920).djvu/61

46 abolish. Thus the very working out of the good is a battle, in which our will actually fights against itself. The false will, which is disowned and condemned, which faith rejects and repels, none the less is there in fact, and opposes the will of faith in which the soul is saved and at home through religion. And this is sin; for it is the persistence in the religious man of the very will which as religious he disowns.

Again we must avoid dissecting the plain and sure experience. In the religious unity, we find, a contradiction appears which would be impossible but for that unity, and which actually depends upon it. The same will, the same impulse to self-completion and satisfaction, which in religious faith is made one with perfection, has a detailed existence in fact which contradicts this perfection. Any experience, entertained or pursued in a way hostile to