He who is sensitive to life can hardly survey this universal human struggle with undimmed eye or with unquestioning faith.  The young are driven here and there by heartless and, sometimes, almost furious passions; some are weak and fall because they are blind, and others because they love and trust; and many who desire to do good mistake and choose evil.  The strong often try to run away from themselves but can find no solitude in which to hide; and all the time right and truth shine in the darkness like stars.  What shall we say of these confusing conditions?  To ignore them is foolish; to insist that the struggle is but a delusion is nonsense.  The only sane course is to face facts and adjust our theories to them.

The battle between duty and inclination, between the ideal and the actual, will continue as long as life in the body endures.  It is not an unmixed evil.  In the end right is never worsted.  The way that leads to holiness is long and sometimes bloody; but it always develops strength and courage.  The fight, for each individual, will be ended only by the full and perfect choice of truth and virtue, which are always the will of God.  The victory will be secure long before it is fully won.  Enough for us to know that conformity to the will of God at last will be the end of strife.

It is not well to be overmuch troubled when we see those whom we love fighting a hard battle against inherited tendencies and an evil environment, for the fight, however fierce, is a good sign.  Those alone are to be pitied who are drifting, and not resisting.  Progress is ever by a steep and spiral pathway.  Sometimes the face of the ascending soul is toward the sun and sometimes it is toward the darkness.  No man can deliver his friend from the forces which oppose him.  Each must conquer for himself and none can evade the conflict.  From the hour when the soul awakens to a consciousness of its powers and possibilities, its movement, in spite of all hindrances and difficulties, must be to the heights.  Those only need cause anxiety who are not yet awake; or who, having been awake, have turned backward instead of pressing onward.

We are now face to face with a momentous inquiry.  When the soul is awake, when it realizes something of its descent from God and of its relation to Him and to other souls, what should be its environment?  Intelligent and otherwise sane people at this point have been strangely insane and blind.  We are always affected by influence more than by teaching.  Education by atmosphere is quite as effective as education by study.  Involuntarily all become like their ideals.  Personalities absorb characteristics from surroundings as flowers absorb colors from the light.  The awakened soul, therefore, from the first should have a spiritual environment.  Parents and friends should be helps, not hindrances, to its progress.  I once read a letter from one who had changed an old for a new home.  The letter was