ral disease, and disease always tends toward death, while life
always and of necessity presses toward larger, more beautiful, and more
beneficent being.

Here let us rest. Many things are dark and impossible of explanation,
but we have already been taught a few lessons of superlative importance.
We have learned that the soul is made for the light; that it can be
satisfied only with love and truth; that every hindrance may be
overcome; that the animal was made to be the servant of the spirit; that
the body makes a good servant but a poor master; that strength comes to
those who refuse to submit to the clamors of appetite: thus we have been
led to see something of the way along which the soul has moved from
animalism toward freedom and victory.

And we have learned one thing more, viz., that the Over-soul is not a
dream, but a reality; that the individual may be in correspondence with
the Over-soul and from it be continually reinforced. Or, to put our
faith in sweeter and simpler form, we have learned by experience which
cannot be gainsaid that God is a personal spirit, interested in all that
concerns His children, and anxious for their growth; and that He can no
more allow His love for them to be defeated than He could allow the
suns and planets to break from their orbits. How much more is a man
than a sun! Therefore, since God is in His heaven, all must be right
with the world and with man, and some time all the hindrances will be
changed into helps, all obstacles be converted into strength, and "all
hells into benefit."

THE AUSTERE

We cannot kindle when we will
The fire which in the heart resides;
The Spirit bloweth and is still,
In mystery our soul abides.
But tasks in hours of insight will'd
Can be through hours of gloom fulfill'd.

With aching hands and bleeding feet
We dig and heap, lay stone on stone;
We bear the burden and the heat
Of the long day, and wish 'twere done.
Not till the hours of light return,
All we have built do we discern.

--_Morality._ Matthew Arnold.

V

_THE AUSTERE_

The soul has discovered that it is in a moral order, that it is a free
agent, and that it has mysterious affinities with truth and right. It
has taken a few steps, and with them has learned that its upward
movement will not be easy.

It next discovers that it has no isolated existence, but that it is
surrounded by countless other similar beings