(_c_) _Contempt of the law or Lawgiver._ An act done by man in disregard of God's law, with indifference to what God wills, is in itself mortally sinful. No man has any right to disregard God's law, which is the rule the Creator has impressed on His intelligent creatures, and no man may be indifferent to God, Who has given His law as the rule of well-being for the creatures He has made. To put God out of the thoughts, and to act as if there were no God Who has expressed His Will is practical Atheism. With the lips he who so acts may indeed confess Him but in acts deny Him. Neglect and disregard of God may, indeed, be due to circumstances over which man has no control--defective teaching in childhood, for instance--but of this we are not speaking, but of such cases where a man has been taught about God and His Will, and deliberately puts such considerations aside, and does not allow them to influence his conduct. (_d_) _The circumstances of the case._ An act, harmless or permissible in itself, may yet be sinful, and gravely sinful, if the circumstances be such as to make it the occasion of evil; for instance, if it lead on to the formation of a bad habit; or if it be the occasion of grave scandal. Such was the case of eating meat offered to idols. In itself it was innocent, but he who ate meat so offered before weak brethren, knowing that he was causing injury to their consciences, thereby defiled his own conscience. In the former case we have an act made sinful through disregard of the Lawgiver, in this through disregard of the consequences to ourselves or to others. [Illustration] Fourth Sunday in Lent. _ON FREE WILL._ 1. We have seen throughout how that the exercise of the Will is that which gives character to an act, stamping on it its mark of sin or righteousness, in as far as it affects the individual Conscience. We will now look at the Human Will, and consider how it operates. An object is presented to it, and it can determine with relation to it in three different ways. (_a_) It can _consent_ to it. If the object be evil, and it consent to it, then it becomes guilty, it sins. This is what has been insisted on throughout, that the Will of man is the determining quality making a thing to be sinful or not to the individual Conscience. The imagination or the intelligence presents to the Will a certain picture, proposes a certain act, and the Conscience then pronounces on the right or wrong of what is presented and proposed. Then the Will forms its decision. If it consents to what is suggested, and the Conscience has informed it that this is _wrong_, then it makes a deliberate act of separation from and revolt against God.