their hopes. There are men with beautiful souls born with little
devil seeds in them somewhere that grow like immoral perennials and
poison the goodness in them. They are the people who backslide so
often, who repent so thoroughly, and who flourish like green bay trees
spiritually when they flourish at all. They are usually regarded as
moral weaklings, and it is the fashion of saints to despise them. This
is because some righteous people now, as in Christ's day, are the
meanest, narrowest-minded moral snobs the world can produce. Many of
them are too mean even to afford the extravagance of a transgression.
And rarely, indeed, do you see one with courage enough to erect himself
again, morally, once he has fallen or been discovered as fallen. But
among the backsliders of the class I have mentioned you will find the
bravest moral heroes of the spiritual world, men who have the courage
to repent and try again with an enthusiasm that is sublime in the face
of the lack of confidence expressed in them on all sides. They are a
distinct class, and as we went on in the itinerancy I learned to call
them God's annuals. And William never was more beautifully ordained or
inspired than when he was engaged in transplanting one of those out of
his sins again into the sweet soil of faith. He had a holy gardener's
gift for it that was as naive as it was industrious.

I recall one of these annuals on the Redwine Circuit. He was a slim,
wild young fellow, with a kind of radiance about him; sometimes it was
of angels and sometimes of the devil, but he always had it--an
ineffable charm. He was brown and blue-eyed, with a level look that
hero warriors have. And that was his trouble. He was made for
emergencies, not for the long, daily siege of life. He was equally
capable of killing an enemy or of dying for a friend, but he could not
live for himself soberly and well for more than forty days at a time.
Still, he had a soul. I never doubted it, though I have often doubted
if some of the ablest members in our church had them, and if they were
not wearing themselves out for a foolish anticipation if they expected
eternal life.

It is possible for a man to behave himself all the days of his life
without developing the spiritual sense. I do not say that such people
have not got souls, but if they get to Heaven at all it will be in the
form of granitoid nuts, and the angels will have to crack them with a
Thor hammer before they can