of sequence.  This, however, can hardly be in the third case, which is when the will and the inclination are opposed, and the will is overpowered.  Although the inclination prevails, yet the struggle itself is an event of the most important kind, and is sure to leave traces on the character, and to be followed by consequences.  In this case we are distinctly conscious of a power to add force to that one of the contending opposites which is most identified with our very selves, and we know whether we have added that force or not.  And not only may we add this force directly from within; we may and we often do go outside of ourselves to seek for aids to add still more force indirectly, and we do for this purpose what we should not do otherwise.  We dwell in thought on the higher aims which are the proper object of will; we read what sets forth those higher aims in their full beauty; we seek the words, the company, the sympathy of men who will, we are sure, encourage us in this the higher path.  And, on the other hand, we turn away from the temptation which gives strength to the evil inclination, and if we cannot escape from its presence we endeavour to drive the thought of it from our minds.  All this action is not for the sake of anything thus done, but for the sake of its indirect effect on the struggle in which we are engaged.  Whenever there is a struggle, we are not only conscious that the will is free, but that it is asserting its freedom.  In these struggles there is not a mere contest between two inclinations.  We are distinctly conscious that one of the combatants is our very selves in a sense in which the other is not.  But, nevertheless, when all has been said, it still remains in this case that the will is beaten and inclination prevails, and the conduct in the main is determined by the inclination, which is under the dominion of the law of uniformity, and not by the will, which claims to be free.  The fourth case in which the will prevails may, of course, make a momentous breach in the uniformity of sequence of the conduct.  But in far the largest number of cases the struggle is very slight, and the difference between the will and the inclination is not, taken alone, of grave importance in the life.  And in those instances in which the struggle is severe and the resulting change is great, it is very often the case that the way has been prepared, as it were in secret, by the quiet accumulation of hidden forces of the strictly natural order ready to burst forth when the fit opportunity came.  In the great conversions which have sometimes seemed by their suddenness and completeness to defy all possibility of reduction to natural law, there are often nevertheless tokens of deep dissatisfaction with the previous life having swelled up slowly within the soul for some time, even for some long time beforehand.  The inclination to go on in evil courses has been broken down at last, not merely by the action of the will, but by the working of the machinery of the soul.