wakening of the
soul--the uprising of the spiritual capacities, the vision of the higher
life--and so exactly with all of _you_. Are you not sometimes conscious
of the uprisings in you of a spirit calling upon you to recognise the
angels' ladder that connects _your_ life also with the heaven above us?

If so, there is this further thing to note about such moments of
experience.

This feeling of some spiritual capacity in you, this call to some higher
view of life and duty, this uprising of the moral sense and the repulsion
towards the lower forms of life which comes with it--this is God's
personal gift to us, and we pray that you may possess it early; for it is
not only a new consciousness, it is itself a new power in your life.

You cannot have it, feeling its presence and hearing its suggestions, and
debase your life in any way, as you might have done, but for its
presence. It is so very true that, in the life of the Spirit, looking up
means lifting up. As the plant turns to the sun, it grows towards the
sun; as it looks up to the light, it grows towards the light; so it is
with us. We feel that we are sons of God, and we tend to become so.
Through some influence or other, we awake to a vivid consciousness that
God has created us in His image, endowed us with Divine capacities, and
this consciousness becomes a purifying and inspiring force in our life,
and it is a new life in consequence.

Pray that such influences may prevail around you here, and that you may
hold them fast until they have blessed your life.

XI. "MEMBERS ONE OF ANOTHER."

"So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one
of another."--ROMANS xii. 5.

There are some moral and spiritual truths which it seems to be almost
impossible to impress upon the practical life of the world, although they
meet with a sort of universal acceptance.

Men agree with them, they re-echo them, they applaud them; they do
everything, in fact, but exhibit them as the moving, inspiring, and
guiding truths of their daily practice.

And among these I fear we must still class that one which is expressed in
the text I have just read, a text which sets forth the fundamental fact
that whatever else Christianity may teach, it teaches as one of its first
and principal lessons that a Christian man has to live in Christ for his
neighbours.

If such a text means anything, it means that Christianity is essentially
a religion of soci