explain the appalling humiliation of a man
when, as if a star had fallen from heaven, he sinks into awful and
inexplicable selfishness or sensuality? It is not necessary that we
explain, but we should remember that the goodness of God has so ordered
things that even disgrace may lead to stronger faith, clearer vision,
and tenderer sympathy.

Austere ministries are still needed; only fire will consume the dross.
The re-awakening of a soul is not its perfecting; but it is its
realization that the process of perfecting must go on, and will go on,
if need be along a pathway of shame and agony, until all that attracts
to the earth and sensuality has disappeared, and the spirit, like a bird
released, rises toward the heavens.

The law that whatsoever a man soweth that shall he reap will never be
transcended, and if an enlightened spirit ever chooses to sink once more
into the slime it may do so; but it will at the same time be taught
with terrible intensity the moral bearing of the physical law that what
falls from the loftiest height will sink to the deepest depth.

At last the soul realizes that it is in the hands of a sympathetic,
holy, and loving Person, a Being who cannot be defeated, and who, in His
own time and way, will accomplish His own purposes. That vision of God
is the re-awakening, an inevitable and glorious reality in spiritual
progress.

What are the causes of this re-awakening? The causes are many and can be
stated only in a general way. Moreover, spiritual experiences are
individual, and the answer which would apply to one might not to
another.

The shock which attends some terrible moral failure, not infrequently,
is the proximate cause of the re-awakening of the soul. There is a deep
psychological truth in the old phrase, "conviction of sin." Men are
thus convicted. Some act of appalling wrong-doing reveals to them the
depths of their hearts and forces them in their extremity to look
upward. Hawthorne, in his story, "The Scarlet Letter," has depicted the
agony of a soul, in the consciousness of its guilt, finding no peace
until it dared to do right and to trust God. In the "Marble Faun," in
the character of Donatello, the same author has furnished an
illustration of one who was startled into a consciousness of manhood and
responsibility by his crime. It is the revelation of a soul to itself,
not of God to the soul. In Donatello we see a soul awakened to
self-consciousness and responsibility, but in