A MAP OF UFE our body is very fond of meat. Between these two goods the will can choose. Its tendency, since the Fall, is to choose the more immediate, what we may call the nearer good — the one we like! To take a matter of more importance. If a married man falls in love with a woman who is not his wife, then two mutually exclusive courses of action will both seem to him, from different angles, good. To remain faithful to his own wife will seem good because God has forbidden adultery: to be faithless to her will seem good because his lower nature would find pleasure in the sin. Again the will must choose. And its tendency, against which it must struggle, is likely to be in ,the direction of the lower pleasure. Temptation — however tremendous — is not sin. It is not even venial sin. But for the will to yield to it, to choose the sin — even if it never proceeds to action — that is sin — as offence against God and a contradiction of one’s own nature. VOCATION What has been said so far in this chapter concerns law as an expression of God’s general will for all men equally. But there is likewise a will of God for each individual, what is called his vocation. Shall a man be a priest or a layman? If a priest, shall he be a secular priest or a member of a religious community? These questions are momentous. Within the priesthood there is almost every variety of way 98