ABSTRACT
Life has been given to us for moral ends, and man is, above everything, a moral creature. Duty is the law of his being. But duty necessarily means freedom. A law can be given only to those who have the power to obey it. Man, says the Bible, is a free agent. In the moral sense man is his own maker. This conviction of human free-will is the one safeguard not only of religion but of morality. Human freedom is not absolute. It is limited. Human freedom is a cherished principle of the Jewish religion. Judaism utterly repudiates such a doctrine as that of Original Sin, which declares that there is something inborn in all men which forces them to do wrong whether they wish it or not. That the inclination of man’s heart is evil from his youth is a fact which, far from disproving the reality of free will, on the contrary affirms it.
