llution to their
finer sensibilities, for finer sensibilities ought to be attended by
untarnished characters. It is, perhaps, best not even to mention their
names lest, thereby, we dull the appreciation of noble masterpieces
which represent the better moods of the men. One of imperial genius was
a slave to wine, another to lust, another was too envious to detect any
merit in the work of others of his craft. There are statesmen of whose
achievements we speak, but never of the men themselves; and there have
been ministers of the Gospel, unhappily not a few, who have suddenly
disappeared and been heard of no more. Into a kindly oblivion they have
gone, and that is all that any one needs to know. What do such facts
signify? That many, or most, of these men have been essentially and
totally bad? Or that they are moral failures? They signify only that
they have not yet risen above the hindrances which they have found in
their pathways. The world knows of the temporary obscuration of a fair
fame; it does not see the grief, the tears, the gradual gathering of the
energies for a new assault upon the obstacles in the road; and it does
not see how tenderly, but faithfully, Providence, through nature, is
dealing with them. Some time they will be brought to themselves--The
Eternal Goodness is the pledge of that. It is not with this unseen and
beneficent ministry of restoration, however, that I am now dealing, but
with the awful wrecks and failures which are so common in human history,
and concerning which most men know something in their own experiences.
How shall they be explained?--since to evade them is impossible. In
other words when a man is awake, when he feels that he is in a moral
order, is free, and hears the call of his destiny, why is his progress
so slow and difficult? No one has ever delineated this period in the
soul's growth with greater vividness than Bunyan. The Valley of
Humiliation, the Slough of Despond, Giant Despair, Doubting Castle are
all pictures of human life taken with photographic accuracy. What are
some of these hindrances?

The soul is free, but its abode is in a limited body. The movement of
the soul is swift and unconstrained as thought. It is not limited by
time. It may project itself a thousand years into the future or travel a
thousand years into the past; but it dwells in the body and is more or
less restrained by it. Bodily limitation narrows experience and compels
ignorance. It makes large acqua