han
any of these. As a brand which burns powerfully may at last ignite even
green wood, so divine faiths, alive and awake in one soul, may appeal to
the mere elements, to mere possibilities, of such faiths in other souls,
and at length evoke them by that appeal. The process is slow; it
requires a celestial heat and persistency in the moving spirit; it is
one of the "all things" that are possible only with God: but it occurs,
and it is the most sacred and precious thing in history.

Every human soul has the absolute soul, has the whole truth,
significance, and virtue of the universe, as its lawful and native
resource. Therefore says Jesus, "The kingdom of heaven is within you";
therefore Antoninus, "Look inwards, within is the fountain of truth";
therefore Eckart, "Ye have all truth potentially within you." All ideas
of truth dwell in every soul, but in every soul they are at first
wrapped in deep sleep, in an infinite depth of sleep; while the base
incense of brutish lives is like chloroform, or the fumes of some
benumbing drug, to steep them ever more and more in oblivion. But to
awaken truth thus sleeping in the soul is the highest use of discipline,
the noblest aim of culture, and the most eminent service which man can
render to man. The scheme of our life is providentially arranged with
reference to that end; and the thousand shocks, agitations, and moving
influences of our experience, the supreme invitations of love, the venom
of calumny, and all toil, trial, sudden bereavement, doubt, danger,
vicissitude, joy, are hands that shake and voices that assail the
lethargy of our deepest powers. Now it is in the power of truth divinely
awakened in one soul to assist its awakening in another. For as nothing
so quickly arouses us from slumber as hearing ourselves called upon by
name, so is it with this celestial inhabitant: whoever by virtue of
elder brotherhood can rightly name him shall cause his spirit to be
stirred and his slumber to be broken.

Let him, therefore, in whom any great truth is alive and awake,
enunciate, proclaim it steadily, clearly, cheerily, with a serene and
cloudless passion; and wherever a soul less mature than his own lies
open to the access of his tones, there the eye-fast angels of belief and
knowledge shall hear that publication of their own hearts, and, hearing,
lift their lids, and rise into wakefulness and power.

Seldom, indeed, is any voice, though it be in its origin a genuine voice
of