there may not be repeated and awful moral
lapses. The soul's realization of God does not imply that it has become
perfected. It has taken a long step in its ascent; it is now conscious
of its destiny, and of the power which is working in its behalf; but far
away stretch the spiritual heights and, before they can be reached, many
a cliff must be scaled and many a glacier passed; and few reach those
altitudes without many a savage fall, and without frequent hours of
weariness, doubt, and despair. The sufferings and the chastisements of
those who have come to this altitude often increase as the vision
becomes clearer.

The difference between the former condition and the present is this: in
the former there was growth toward God without the conscious choice of
God; but in the latter the soul sees and chooses for itself that toward
which it has, heretofore, been impelled by the "cosmic process."

That is a solemn and glad moment when, in the midst of the confusion,
the soul hears faint and far the call of its destiny; but the one in
which it realizes that it is related to God, and chooses His will for
its law, is far more glad and solemn. That consciousness may be
obscured, but never again will it utterly fail. The soul that knows that
it came from God, and is moving toward God, never can lose that
knowledge, nor long cease to feel the power of that divine attraction.

A practical question at this stage of our inquiry concerns the relation
of one soul to another. May those who have realized this experience help
others to attain to it so that the process may be hastened and made
easier? Must those who have been enlightened wait for those who are dear
to them to be awfully humiliated by sin, or terribly crushed by sorrow,
before the light can fall upon their pathway? Is there no way by which
a soul may be brought to the knowledge of God except by bitter trials?

One individual may help another to acquire other knowledge,--must it
make an exception of things spiritual? That cannot be. What one has
learned, in part at least, it may communicate to another, and the
constant and growing passion with those who know God is to tell others
of Him. All plans of education should include the communication of the
highest knowledge. He who seeks the physical or mental development of
his boy and cares not to crown his work by helping him to a realization
that he is a child of God, and a subject of His love, has sadly
misconceived the pri