or from the consciousness of its relation to the One mighty to save.  This does not mean that there may not be repeated and awful moral lapses.  The soul’s realization of God does not imply that it has become perfected.  It has taken a long step in its ascent; it is now conscious of its destiny, and of the power which is working in its behalf; but far away stretch the spiritual heights and, before they can be reached, many a cliff must be scaled and many a glacier passed; and few reach those altitudes without many a savage fall, and without frequent hours of weariness, doubt, and despair.  The sufferings and the chastisements of those who have come to this altitude often increase as the vision becomes clearer.

The difference between the former condition and the present is this:  in the former there was growth toward God without the conscious choice of God; but in the latter the soul sees and chooses for itself that toward which it has, heretofore, been impelled by the “cosmic process.”

That is a solemn and glad moment when, in the midst of the confusion, the soul hears faint and far the call of its destiny; but the one in which it realizes that it is related to God, and chooses His will for its law, is far more glad and solemn.  That consciousness may be obscured, but never again will it utterly fail.  The soul that knows that it came from God, and is moving toward God, never can lose that knowledge, nor long cease to feel the power of that divine attraction.

A practical question at this stage of our inquiry concerns the relation of one soul to another.  May those who have realized this experience help others to attain to it so that the process may be hastened and made easier?  Must those who have been enlightened wait for those who are dear to them to be awfully humiliated by sin, or terribly crushed by sorrow, before the light can fall upon their pathway?  Is there no way by which a soul may be brought to the knowledge of God except by bitter trials?

One individual may help another to acquire other knowledge,—­must it make an exception of things spiritual?  That cannot be.  What one has learned, in part at least, it may communicate to another, and the constant and growing passion with those who know God is to tell others of Him.  All plans of education should include the communication of the highest knowledge.  He who seeks the physical or mental development of his boy and cares not to crown his work by helping him to a realization that he is a child of God, and a subject of His love, has sadly misconceived the privilege of education.  All curricula should move toward this consciousness as their consummation and culmination.  Geology, biology, physiology, the languages, philosophy, the science of society should be so studied as to lead directly to Him in whom all live and move and have their being.  The home, the school, the church should be organized so as to obviate, in great measure, the necessity of learning the deepest truths in the school of suffering.