y of the austere; but once they are reached the horizon expands,
and the soul finds in the clearer light peace if not joy.

This course of reasoning does not make the mistake of regarding sin as
less than dreadful. Every sin has hidden in its heart a blessing; but
sin as such is never a blessing. It may be necessary for Providence to
allow a spirit to sink again into animalism in order that it may be
taught its danger, and made to realize that only through struggle can
its goal be reached--but the animalism in itself is never beneficent.

When we say that the process by which a man rises may be justified, we
do not mean that all his choices are justifiable. The process of his
growth provides for his fall, if he will learn in no other way, but it
does not necessitate his fall; that is ever because of his own choice. A
spirit may choose to return to the slime from which it has emerged. That
choice is sin, but it can never be made without the protests of
conscience which will not be silenced, and it is by those protests that
a man is impelled upward again, and never by the sin in itself. No one
was ever helped by his sin, but millions, when they have sinned, have
found that the misery was greater than the joy, and this perpetual
connection of sin and suffering is the blessed fact. Sin is never
anything but hideous. The more unique the genius the more awful and
inexcusable his fall. Even out of their sins men do rise, but that is
because there sounds in the deeps of the soul a voice which becomes more
pathetic in its warning and entreaty, the more it is disregarded. Those
who desire to justify sin say that it is the cause of the rising. It may
be the occasion, but it is never the cause. The occasion includes the
time, place, environment,--but the cause is the impelling force; and sin
never impels toward virtue. Satan has not yet turned evangelist.

Because in the past the soul has risen, one need not be unduly
optimistic to presume that, in spite of opposition, it will meet no
enemies which it will not conquer, and find no heights which it will not
be able to scale. Prophecy is the art of reading history forward. The
spirit having come thus far, it is not possible to believe that it can
ever permanently revert to the conditions from which it has emerged;
neither can we believe that it will fail of reaching that development of
which its every power and faculty is so distinct a prophecy.

No light has ever yet penetrated fa