t forms. It increases steadily as we rise in the
scale. The inorganic world, to begin with, is rigid. A crystal of silica
dissolved and redissolved a thousand times will never assume any other
form than the hexagonal. The plant next, though plastic in its elements,
is comparatively insusceptible of change. The very fixity of its sphere,
the imprisonment for life in a single spot of earth, is the symbol of a
certain degradation. The animal in all parts is mobile, sensitive, free;
the highest animal, man, is the most mobile, the most at leisure from
routine, the most impressionable, the most open for change. And when we
reach the mind and soul, this mobility is found in its most developed
form. Whether we regard its susceptibility to impressions, its
lightning-like response even to influences the most impalpable and
subtle, its power of instantaneous adjustment, or whether we regard the
delicacy and variety of its moods, or its vast powers of growth, we are
forced to recognize in this the most perfect capacity for change. This
marvellous plasticity of mind contains at once the possibility and
prophecy of its transformation. The soul, in a word, is made to be
_converted_.

Second: The Life.

The main reason for giving the Life, the agent of this change, a
separate treatment, is to emphasize the distinction between it and the
natural man on the one hand, and the spiritual man on the other. The
natural man is its basis, the spiritual man is its product, the Life
itself is something different. Just as in an organism we have these
three things--formative matter, formed matter, and the forming principle
or life; so in the soul we have the old nature, the renewed nature, and
the transforming Life.

This being made evident, little remains here to be added. No man has
ever seen this Life. It cannot be analyzed, or weighed, or traced in its
essential nature. But this is just what we expected. This invisibility
is the same property which we found to be peculiar to the natural life.
We saw no life in the first embryos, in oak, in palm, or in bird. In the
adult it likewise escapes us. We shall not wonder if we cannot see it in
the Christian. We shall not expect to see it. _A fortiori_ we shall not
expect to see it, for we are further removed from the coarser
matter--moving now among ethereal and spiritual things. It is because it
conforms to the law of this analogy so well that men, not seeing it,
have denied its being. Is it hopel