I used to pass daily a very pretty and well-formed tree. I admired it so
much and saw it so often that, at length, I came to feel toward it as
though it were a friend. I often reflected that the reason why it was so
lovely a thing was the fact that it had not possessed the power to refuse
to obey the bidding of its Maker.
I thought that if a man were will-less, as is a tree or a flower, his life
would be as harmonious and as beautiful as theirs. But there is within him
that voice which so often speaks against the divine command that he is
robbed of much that is godlike within him. I thought that the dictates of
that stubborn and willful voice had spoiled so many of God’s plans and
man’s prospects that we might all be better without it.
One morning, after there had been a windstorm during the night, I walked
as usual past the tree. It lay prostrate and helpless on the ground. I was
surprised to see that what had been so well-formed without had been hollow
and rotten within. This had so weakened it that, when the test came, it
had been the first to fall. Others—not so lovely—had stood because they
were sound.
The tree had possessed no will with which to disobey its Creator. Neither
had it possessed a will with which to stand in the face of the storm.
Least of all had it possessed a will to rise again.
I had seen men have the will to disobey, yet when they had wandered into a
far country and had become sick of the husks of sin, I had seen them have
the will to come back again and give themselves to a noble purpose. The
will of man is not only his danger, but it is also his hope. By it he may
fall, but by it he may rise again to better things. It may whisper to him
the word of temptation, but it may also become his strength for an hour of
triumph. He needs not a life without a will which can lead him astray. He
needs a will subjected to a high ideal and to the traversing of the
highway of truth and right.