The soul is not only a witness concerning its own origin, but it is also a prophecy concerning its destiny.  The more thoroughly it is studied the more convincing becomes the evidence that it must some time reach its perfected state.  The perfection of intelligence, love, and will require endless growth.  The great words of Pascal can hardly be recalled too frequently: 

“Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed.  It is not necessary that the entire universe arm itself to crush him.  A breath of air, a drop of water suffices to kill him.  But were the universe to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which kills him, because he knows that he dies; and the universe knows nothing of the advantage it has over him.”

We can as yet hardly begin to comprehend that for which we were created;—­now we see through a glass darkly.  A caterpillar on the earth cannot appreciate a butterfly in the air.  Jesus was the typical man, as well as the revelation of God.  St. Paul has set our thoughts moving toward the “fullness of Christ” as the final goal of humanity.  We may not, for many milleniums, know all that is contained in that phrase “the fullness of Christ;” but no one ever attentively listened to the voices which speak in his own soul, no one has even asked himself the meaning of the fact that nothing earthly ever completely satisfies, no one ever saw another in the ripeness of splendid powers growing more intelligent, loving, and spiritually beautiful, without feeling that if death were really the end no being is so much to be pitied as man, and no fate so much to be coveted as a short life in which the mockery may go on.

Our souls themselves assure us that they have come from a fountain of spiritual being—­that is, from God; and they are also prophecies of a perfection which has never yet been realized on the earth and which will require eternity to complete.  But all are not conscious of themselves as spiritual beings and children of eternity, and many come slowly to that consciousness.  Our next inquiry, therefore, will concern the Soul’s Awakening.

THE AWAKENING OF THE SOUL

There’s a palace in Florence, the world knows well,
And a statue watches it from the square,
And this story of both do our townsmen tell.

Ages ago, a lady there,
At the farthest window facing the East
Asked, Who rides by with the royal air?

* * * * *

That selfsame instant, underneath,
The Duke rode past in his idle way
Empty and fine like a swordless sheath.

* * * * *

He looked at her, as a lover can;
She looked at him as one who awakes: 
The past was a sleep, and her life began.

—­The Statue and the Bust. Browning

II