their vague outlines beneath the unrolled immensity filled with stars. He realizes his own. littleness before the vastness of his environment. The soul is sensitized so that it feels the impingement of the inner spirit of things, that is, the One Spirit who is in all things. It is one of those moments of which Emerson says, “There is a depth in them which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences." So awed is he by that which is without that his very flesh partakes of the sensation; as Dr. Finney once said of a mental experience, "I could feel as it were the soft touch of an angel's wing brushing my flesh,"-a phenomenon that physicians are familiar with in connection with certain states of nervous excitement. Eliphaz thus describes what happened to him,-" In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, fear came upon me and trembling which made all my bones to shake. Then a spirit passed before my face: the hair of my flesh stood up: it stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof: an image was before mine eyes. There was silence, and I heard a voice saying, Shall mortal man be just before God? Shall a man be pure before his Maker?" We can have but one explanation of this, the Creator Spirit that brooded over chaos, and laid there the beams of the natural order of the world is the same spirit that "convinces of sin, right eousness and judgment," and however He appears He performs his moral work. 66 Turn to another part of this wonderful psychological study, the Book of Job, a work that surpasses all other literature in indicating the subtle interaction of the various faculties of the soul. In chapter xlii the patriarch cries out, I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." But what led up to this penitential outburst? An address of Jehovah. But in this address we find not a single ethical statement, no charge of sin against Job, and no reference to Divine holiness. It is only a description of the Divine power as displayed in nature. God spoke out of the whirlwind; portrayed creation when "the morning stars sang together "; the varied beneficence that roars in the sea, gleams in the dawn, looses the reins of the wild ass, gives." goodly wings to the peacock" and scales of iron to the leviathan that "maketh the deep to boil as a pot." Yet all this crashes into the man's conscience: the inner citadel trembles and falls with the assault upon its outworks. Superficial critics say that something must have been lost between the verses. Not so, or the grand lesson itself would be lost. As the sun's rays have not only light and warmth which are perceived, but also a subtle actinic force in which is the secret of the chemical changes produced by them, so there is a moral actinism in all the displays of Divine power and presence. Truly there is an ethical spirit, as well as a spirit of beauty and sublimity, enshrined in the cascade, the ocean billows, among the mountains and stars; for God is everywhere, and man is always near to God, and as the Greek poet Menander said, "God is with man by conscience." Until one feels the grand "Imperative" he knows neither the real freedom nor the force of life. William Rufus had inherited the English throne from his father, The Conqueror. He was to receive the crown from the hands of Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury. The prelate, knowing the disposition of the prince, refused to proceed with the ceremony until the royal aspirant had taken a vow to administer the realm according to righteousness and patriotic duty. So King Edward VII. must be warned by the representative of the Church to shrieve and cleanse his conscience before his royal anointing. Thus over every man's head is the crown of an excellent and useful life; but Heaven withholds the benediction of power until, in the sacred chamber of the soul, the vow is taken to do the right and to smite the wrong. Then comes warranted confidence, against which there can be but one menace, that which Mary Lyon, the founder of Holyoke Seminary, wrote as her own epitaph, "There is nothing in the universe that I fear, except that I may not know all my duty, or may fail to do it." |