THE RE-AWAKENING

      I, Galahad, saw the Grail,

The Holy Grail, descend upon the Shrine: 
I saw the fiery face as of a child
That smote itself into the bread, and went;
And hither am I come; and never yet
Hath what my sister taught me first to see,
This Holy Thing, fail’d from my side, nor come
Cover’d, but moving with me night and day,
Fainter by day, but always in the night....

* * * * *

      And in the strength of this I rode,

Shattering all evil customs everywhere,
And past thro’ Pagan realms, and made them mine,
And clash’d with Pagan hordes, and bore them down,
And broke thro’ all, and in the strength of this
Come victor.

—­The Holy Grail. Tennyson.

VI

THE RE-AWAKENING

As despondency and a feeling of failure comes to every soul with the realization of its mistakes and sins, so there will some time come to all a period of Re-awakening.  This statement is the expression of a hope which is cherished in the face of much opposing evidence.  Nevertheless, that this hope is cherished by so many persons of all classes is a credit to humanity.  It is difficult to believe that in the end an infinitely wise and good God will fail of the achievement of His purpose in regard to a single one of His creatures.

The saddest fact in the ascent of the soul is sin.  However it may be accounted for, it cannot be evaded, but must be honestly and resolutely faced.  Sin is the deliberate choice to return to animalism, for a longer or shorter time, by a being who realizes that he is in a moral order, that he is free, and who has heard the far-off call of a spiritual destiny.  It is the choice, by a spirit, of the condition from which it ought to have forever escaped.  Imperfection and ignorance are not, in themselves, blameworthy and should never be classified as sins.  Weakness always palliates a wrong choice.  An evil condition is a misfortune; it does not justify condemnation.  Sin always implies a voluntary act.  That all men have sinned is a contention not without abundant justification.  The better the man the more intensely he is humiliated by the consciousness of moral failure.

After long-continued discipline, after much progress has been made, the soul again and again chooses evil; and, after it ought to have moved far on its upward career, it is found to be a bond-slave of tendencies which should have been forever left behind.  This is the solemn fact which faces every student of human life.  It is not a doctrine of an effete theology but a continuous human experience.  The consciousness of moral failure is terrible and universal.  This consciousness requires neither definition nor illustration.  Experience is a sufficient witness.  Who has been