t to turn his
lower nature into the changed course, is much distress and disturbance.
The habits formed under the impacts of the old views resist stubbornly
the impulses flowing from the new, and a bitter conflict arises.
Gradually the consciousness working in the brain accepts the decision
made on higher planes, and then "becomes conscious of sin" by this very
recognition of the law. The sense of error deepens, remorse preys on the
mind; spasmodic efforts are made towards improvement, and, frustrated by
old habits, repeatedly fail, till the man, overwhelmed by grief for the
past, despair of the present, is plunged into hopeless gloom. At last,
the ever-increasing suffering wrings from the Ego a cry for help,
answered from the inner depths of his own nature, from the God within as
well as around him, the Life of his life. He turns from the lower nature
that is thwarting him to the higher which is his innermost being, from
the separated self that tortures him to the One Self that is the Heart
of all.

But this change of front means that he turns his face from the
darkness, that he turns his face to the light. The light was always
there, but his back was towards it; now he sees the sun, and its
radiance cheers his eyes, and overfloods his being with delight. His
heart was closed; it is now flung open, and the ocean of life flows in,
in full tide, suffusing him with joy. Wave after wave of new life
uplifts him, and the gladness of the dawn surrounds him. He sees his
past as past, because his will is set to follow a higher path, and he
recks little of the suffering that the past may bequeath to him, since
he knows he will not hand on such bitter legacy from his present. This
sense of peace, of joy, of freedom, is the feeling spoken of as the
result of the forgiveness of sins. The obstacles set up by the lower
nature between the God within and the God without are swept away, and
that nature scarce recognises that the change is in itself and not in
the Oversoul. As a child, having thrust away the mother's guiding hand
and hidden its face against the wall, may fancy itself alone and
forgotten, until, turning with a cry, it finds around it the protecting
mother-arms that were never but a handsbreadth away; so does man in his
wilfulness push away the shielding arms of the divine Mother of the
worlds, only to find, when he turns back his face, that he has never
been outside their protecting shelter, and that wherever he may wande