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Page 7
In this chapter we are to study the process of the soul's awakening to a
consciousness of its powers, and in a subsequent chapter that
re-awakening which is so radical as to merit the name it has usually
received, viz., the new birth.
There is a time when the soul first realizes itself as a personality
with definite responsibilities and relations. This experience comes to
some earlier, and to some with greater vividness, than to others. So
long as we are blind to our powers, responsibilities, relations, we can
hardly be said to be spiritually awake. He only is awake who knows
himself as a personality; who has heard the voice of duty; who, to some
extent, appreciates the fact that he is dependent on a higher
personality or power; and who recognizes that he is surrounded by other
personalities who also have their rights, responsibilities, and
relations. I think, I choose, I love, I know that I am dependent upon a
Being higher than myself. I see that I am related to other personalities
with rights as sacred as my own, and, therefore, that I must choose,
think, love so as to be acceptable to the One to whom I am responsible,
and harmonious with those by whom I am surrounded.
The soul's awakening is primarily a recognition and an appreciation of
its responsibility. It may think, choose, love, without realizing
responsibility, and, therefore, live as if it were the only being in the
universe; but the moment it recognizes responsibility it also discerns a
higher Person, and other persons, since responsibility to no one, and
for nothing, is inconceivable.
The soul's awakening, therefore, carries with it the idea of obligation,
and that includes the recognition of God, of duty, of right and wrong,
in short, of a moral ideal. I do not mean to insist that every one
appreciates all that is implied in consciousness of responsibility.
There are degrees of alertness, and some men are wide awake and others
half asleep.
However it may have come to its self-realization, that is a solemn and
sublime moment when a human soul understands, ever so dimly, that it is
facing in the unseen Being one on whom it knows itself to be dependent;
and when it discerns the hitherto invisible lines which bind it to other
personalities, in all space and time. At that moment life really begins.
Henceforward, by various ways, over undreamed-of obstacles, assisted by
invisible hands, hindered by unseen forces, in spite of foes within and
enemies without, the course of that soul must ever be toward its true
home and goal, in the bosom of God.
The difficulties in the way of such a faith for the thoughtful and
sensitive are many and serious. Not all blossoms come to fruitage; not
all human beings are fit to live; processes of degeneration seem to be
at work in nature, in society, and in the individual life.
Apparently true and time-honored interpretations of Scripture are quoted
against the faith that in some way, and by some kind of discipline, the
souls of men will forever approach God; while the belief of the church,
so far as it has found expression in the creeds is urged in opposition.
But when I see how timidly the creeds of the church have been held by
many in all ages, how large a number of the most spiritual and morally
earnest have questioned them at this point, and how often they have been
rejected in whole, or in part, by those who have dared to trust their
hearts; when I remember that the Scripture quoted as opposing is
susceptible of another interpretation, when I remember that blossoms are
not men, and, most of all when I see the God-like possibilities in
every human being, I cannot resist the conviction that every soul of man
is from God, and that, sometime and somehow, it may be by the hard path
of retribution, possibly through great agonies and by means of austere
chastisements and severe discipline as well as by loving entreaty, after
suffering shall have accomplished all its ministries it will reach a
blissful goal and the "beatific vision."
The awakening of the soul is its entrance upon an appreciation of its
powers, relations, possibilities, and responsibilities.
What awakens the soul? The answer to that question is hidden. The wind
bloweth where it listeth. Elemental processes and forces are all silent
and viewless. The stillness of the sunrise is like that of the deeps of
the sea. No eye ever traced the birth of life, and no sound ever
attended the awakening of the soul; and yet this subject is not
altogether mysterious. A few rays of light have fallen upon it. I
venture suggestions which may help a little toward a rational answer to
this question.
The soul awakens because it grows, and its growth is sure. Everything
that is alive must grow; only death is stationary. It is as natural for
us sometime to know ourselves as having relations both to the seen and
the unseen as for our bodies to increase in stature. The Confession of
Augustine[3] is true of all, "Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart
is restless until it repose in Thee."
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