A very distinguished man was one day walking with a friend along a street in Edinburgh, when they came to one of the numerous wynds which lead from the main thoroughfare into the midst of huge and gloomy buildings.  There the man stopped and asked to be excused while he entered the wynd.  Returning, after a moment, he explained his act by saying that, in his young manhood, he had been tempted to do something which would have wrecked his life.  Just as he came to the place that he had visited there sounded in his ears such a vivid warning as made it morally impossible for him to proceed on his course of wrong-doing.  He felt sure that that voice was from above, for his whole nature, until that instant, seemed to have been set on what would have led to moral ruin.

Another person testified that he was once on the verge of doing what would have brought him undying disgrace when, as if she had been drawn out of the air, his mother stood before him, looking reproachfully at him.  Thus the fascination of temptation was broken by what he always believed to have been a veritable spiritual presence.

Another experience is perfectly attested.  A man in a distinguished position did wrong, and was in peril of still greater wrong when something, he could not have explained what, not only warned him but kept warning him and following him so that he could not escape.  If he closed his eyes his danger became more vivid; if he stopped his ears voices of reproach found their way in.  He loved his wrong and would move toward it, but then invisible hands seemed to hold him back until the time of danger was past, and he was confirmed in right ways.  Such experiences are too numerous and varied to be doubted.  No facts are better attested.  It may be said that they are only the usual warnings of conscience.  Be it so.  Then what is conscience?  The factors in the problem are not materially changed, for the phenomena of conscience are as remarkable, constant, and verifiable as light and heat.  Most men who have recorded their experiences, and who have observed with care the workings of their own faculties, have been conscious of being attended by some invisible presence warning them against evil.  The explanation of this phenomenon may be left for later consideration.

Closely allied to warnings against moral danger, which are so vivid as sometimes to be almost audible, are the evidences of what may be called spiritual protection.  The idea of guardian angels and tutelary deities arose naturally and inevitably.  Many who have been astonishingly delivered from spiritual peril have been able to find no other explanation of their escape.  Those who receive the confidences of their fellow-men have little difficulty in believing such a story as was once confided to me.  An able and prominent man who had, resolutely as he thought, turned from a course of conduct which threatened disaster, found himself drawn toward the evil from which he supposed that he had been forever