great tragedy of human
life. Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth, Faust, and Wilhelm Meister, Beatrice Cenci,
the sad, sad story of Guinevere, and the awful shadows of the Ring and
the Book--how luridly realistic are all these studies of the downfall of
souls and the desolation of character! If they had expressed all there
is of life it would be only a long, repulsive tragedy; but happily
there is another side. To that brighter phase of the growth of the soul
we turn in this chapter.

What is the difference between the awakening of the soul and its
re-awakening? Are they two experiences? or different phases of the same
experience? The awakening is nearly simultaneous with the dawn of
consciousness. It is the adjustment of the soul to its environment--the
realization of its self-consciousness as free, as in a moral order, and
as possessing mysterious affinities with truth and right. This
realization is followed by a period of growth, during which many
hindrances are overcome, and in which the ministries of environment,
both kindly and austere, help to free it from its limitations and to
promote its advance along the spiritual pathway. But while the soul
dimly hears voices from above it has not yet, altogether, escaped from
the influence of animalism. It dwells in a body whose desires clamor to
be gratified. It is like a bird trying to rise into the air when it has
not yet acquired the use of its wings. Malign influences are still about
it, and earthly attractions are ever drawing it downward. It falls many
times. I do not mean that it is compelled to fall, but that, as a matter
of fact, its lapses are frequent and discouraging. In the midst of this
painful movement upward, there sometime comes to the soul a realization
of a presence of which it has scarcely dreamed before. It begins to
understand that it is never alone, that its struggle is never hopeless
because God and the universe, equally with itself, are concerned for its
progress. It is humiliated by its failures, but it has learned that,
however many times it may fail and however bitter its disappointment, in
the end it must be victorious because neither principalities nor powers,
neither things on the earth nor beyond the earth, can forever resist
God. Thus hope is born, and he who one moment cries, Who shall deliver
from this body of death? the next moment with exultation exclaims, I
thank God through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

The light which shines into the soul from Jesus C