nothing: God ceases to be present to them.
Generosity on our part is required. It works out in experience to be
always the same thing that is needed for our perfect health and
happiness--reciprocity. Without we maintain this reciprocity we
shall experience _extraordinary disappointment._

IV

The soul is now blind: we know this by experience; but do we know
that she ever had sight? If she did not, but was created imperfect,
and was so created in order that only by work and merit she should
arrive at completion and perfection and Behold God (instead of
merely, as now in this world, being able only to apprehend Him by
the retrospect of His effect upon her), then she was always below
angels. If through work and obedience she becomes so raised that
she merits sight and the actual Beholding of God, then she becomes
equal to angels because of this Beholding; and so Christ tells us that
she does as the Child of the Resurrection.

It is the inability of the soul to comprehend, after experiencing the
bliss of Union with God, how she came to embark upon this
wandering and separation, which so presses the Reason for an
explanation of the fall of the soul.

It may be that not all souls are fallen, but that some are merely in
process of progressing to sight. These are Righteous Souls. But there
are more souls also created sightless, who are fallen by curiosity, by
infidelity or plain self-will and forgetfulness--these it is who need
the Redeemer: "I come not to call the Righteous, but sinners to
repentance." From this it would seem that there are souls who,
though they are in this world, are yet fundamentally righteous: not
fallen, but working to receive sight. It is inconceivable to the soul
that, had she ever Beheld God, she could have left Him, but not
inconceivable to her that, having never Beheld Him, she may have
been unfaithful on her road to Sight. She understands this awful
possibility after coming to Union with Him from this earth, because
then she learns the immense difficulties of maintaining this sightless
Union.

She knows the terrible solitude and testing it entails, and the
innumerable temptations when low-spirited and lonely to turn to
interests and consolations apart from God; for God will frequently,
in the later stages of progress, withhold every consolation and
comfort from the soul, leaving her solitary. Will she stay? Will she
go?

V

We hope for much from "education"; but what education is it that