At His birth Jesus bids the Angels sing that peace belongs to men of good will (Luke ii. 14); later He will declare that His meat is to do the will of His Father (John iv. 34); that He seeks not His own will, but the will of Him Who sent Him (John v. 30); that He came down from heaven to accomplish it (John vi. 38); and when face to face with death He will still pray that the Father's will be done, not His (Matt. xxvi. 39; Luke xxii. 42). Over and over again, in the Gospel, do we find Him using the same language. He would have His disciples act in the same manner. It is not the man, He tells us, who repeats the words: "My Father, my Father," who shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of God (Matt. vii. 21; Rom. ii. 13; Jas. i. 22); and in the prayer which He dictates to us He bids us ask for the accomplishment of this will as the means of glorifying God, and of sanctifying our souls (Matt. vi. 10). Finally, He tells us that if we conform ourselves to this sovereign will, we shall be His brethren (Matt. xii. 50; Mark iii. 35). When certain persons, pious or otherwise, confusing sentiment with true love, ask themselves if they love God, or if they will be able to love Him always, we have only to ask them the same question in other words: Are they doing the will of God? can they do it?--_i.e._, can they perform their duty for God's sake? Put thus, the question resolves itself. The reason for such a doctrine is very simple: to love anyone is to wish him well; that, in the case of God, is to desire His beneficent will towards us. Our Lord and Master recalled this principle when He said to His disciples, "You are My friends, if you do the things that I command you" (John xv. 14). [57] We must, in virtue of the same principle, keep a firm hold of the truth, as indisputable as it is frequently forgotten, that we have the merit of the good which we will to carry out and are unable to accomplish, as we have also the demerit of the evil we should have done and could not. [58] "Upon the will depends our future of Heaven or hell," because, given the knowledge of God, the will attaches itself to Him by love, or hates Him with obstinacy. [59] We may notice, in particular, a three-fold benefit: first, temptation calls for conflict, and so strengthens virtue; then it obliges a man to adhere deliberately to that virtue which is assailed by the temptation, and so gain a further perfection; finally, there are necessarily included in both the conflict and the adherence to good numerous virtuous, and therefore meritorious, acts. Thus we may reap advantage from temptation both in our dispositions and our acts. [60] Job vii. 1. [61] 1 John iv. 8. [62] Cant. viii. 6. [63] The author is speaking here of the soul in so far as it is human, and it is as such that it is more where it loves than where it gives life.