the powers which acquire knowledge, withhold from the emotions persons worthy of affection, and make the range of objects of choice poor and pitiful.  The soul has often been compared to a bird in a cage,—­fitted for broad horizons but confined within narrow spaces.  This hindrance is a very real one.  The man who grows swiftly must be in the open world with beings to love and to serve ever within his reach.  Hence the life beyond death is often called the unhindered life because of its freedom from the body.  The old story of “Rasselas” is symbolical.  In the Happy Valley a man might be as good, but he could not be as great and wise, as in the larger world.  The soul will meet fewer temptations there, but those it does encounter will be more insistent and harder to escape.  He who would respond to a call to service must needs have about him those whom he may serve.  Large views are for those who are able to rise to the heights.  He who lives in a cave may be true to his little light, and surely is responsible for no more, but he will see far less than the one whose home is on the mountaintop.  Thus even bodily limitations, to which are attached no moral qualities, are hindrances to the growth of the being, whose destiny is not only purification but expansion:—­its movement is not only toward goodness but also toward greatness; not only toward virtue but also toward power.

The animal entail is one of the greatest mysteries of our mortal life.  The soul in its moments of illumination feels that it is related to some person like itself, but far higher, and aspires to it.  Sir Joshua Reynolds’ figure of “Faith” in the famous window in the chapel of New College, Oxford, suggests the attitude of the newly awakened soul.  In freshness and beauty it is turning toward the light.  But in human experience something occurs which Sir Joshua has not tried to depict.  A clammy hand reaches up from the deeps out of which rise suffocating clouds, and that pure spirit finds itself enveloped in darkness and fastened to the earth.  The humiliation is complete.  What has occurred?  Only what has happened again and again; and what will continue to happen for no one knows how long.  The animal has gotten the better of the spirit.  The soul has sinned—­for sin is little, if anything, but a spirit allowing itself to return to the fascinations of the animal conditions out of which it has been evolved, and from which it ought to have escaped forever.  The animal entail is the chief hindrance to the aspiring spirit.  The animal lives by his senses.  He is content when they are satisfied.  It can hardly be said that animals are ever happy.  Happiness is a state higher than contentment.  Paul said he had learned in whatsoever state he was to be content, but even he never said that in all states he had learned to be happy.  Animals are contented when their senses are gratified and they are savage when their senses are clamorous.  Lions and bears are dangerous when they are hungry, and cruel when other desires are obstructed.