ritual leadership is
desirable, and then it concludes that that leadership is discernible. In
other words, sorrow, sin, relief, joy, truth, right, are only
imaginations born of other imaginations. If any are satisfied with such
reasoning the task of enlightening them is hopeless.

There is another explanation of the sublime, ancient, and world-wide
facts which are before us. It is the answer of Jesus, which is simple,
profound, rational, and satisfying. He told His disciples, when they
were grieving that they should see Him no more, that they would always
have with them the Spirit of Truth who would convict of sin, show things
to come, and lead into all truth. That Spirit in the Scriptures is
called by one of the sweetest and dearest names in the languages of
men--the Comforter. Some have wrongly imagined that the New Testament
teaches that the presence of the Comforter is a new event in human
history. Not so. The Spirit of Truth inspired and sustained the Apostles
and Martyrs as He had sustained the Patriarchs and Prophets and the same
Spirit which is represented as descending upon Jesus at His baptism
brooded upon the face of the waters when the earth was without form and
void.

Jesus teaches that God, as a Spirit, has never been absent from His
creation and never out of touch with the spirits of men. In the
beginning He created; later He inspired, supported, taught, comforted;
and always and everywhere He is present to sustain, to lead, to comfort,
to help, to save, and to bless. How simple, rational, and satisfying is
this interpretation of the phenomena of human history!

We study our own spiritual experiences and discover that when we have
been in danger of being contented with moral failure we have been made
ashamed and disgusted by it; that when we have been on the verge of
yielding to temptation we have been strangely and almost preternaturally
protected; that when sorrows have come which would have crushed our
unaided strength we have experienced strange peace and have had
undreamed-of strength; and that never for a moment have we found rest or
peace except as they have come to us in hand with truth and right. A
wider study shows us that our experiences are in harmony with the common
human experience. All forces and all events, in all ages, have been
working for the welfare of individuals, society, the whole world. A
steady, unfailing, universal attraction has been drawing the human race
away from animalism