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Page 22
Another way is simply to confess ignorance. Out of the darkness no
voice has come. The veil over the statue of the god of the future has
never been lifted, and inquiry concerning such subjects is folly. To
this I reply agnosticism is consistent, but it is not wise. Because it
cannot explain all things it turns from the clues which may yet lead out
of the labyrinth.
The other course, and the wiser, is to use all the light that has yet
been given and from what is known to draw rational conclusions
concerning what has not yet been fully revealed. Deep in the heart of
things is a beneficent and universal law. In accordance with that law
hindrances are made to minister to the soul's growth, the opposition of
enemies is transmuted into strength, and moral evil resisted becomes a
means of spiritual expansion and enlightenment.
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 able exhaustively to delineate the soul's humiliation?
�schylus and Sophocles, Shakespeare and Goethe, Shelley, Tennyson, and
Browning have but skimmed the surface of the great tragedy of human
life. Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth, Faust, and Wilhelm Meister, Beatrice Cenci,
the sad, sad story of Guinevere, and the awful shadows of the Ring and
the Book--how luridly realistic are all these studies of the downfall of
souls and the desolation of character! If they had expressed all there
is of life it would be only a long, repulsive tragedy; but happily
there is another side. To that brighter phase of the growth of the soul
we turn in this chapter.
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