at can be moved to its depths
by the conscience, that grasp most strongly the certainty of the law of
duty. It is the man with the strongest and noblest aspirations, the man
who sees the beauty of humility, the man who feels most strongly the
deep peace of self-sacrifice, _that_ is the man who finds the voice
within most irresistible. It is not by any means always the man who
lives the most correct life; correctness of life may be due to natural
and not to spiritual causes. And the man whom we should find faultless
in point of morals may yet be wanting in spiritual depth, and not have
as yet, and perhaps may not have to the last, the spiritual faculty
strong within him. But the man, even if he have many and grievous
faults, who nevertheless is keenly susceptible of higher things, is the
one to whom the voice within speaks with authority not to be gainsaid,
and to him that voice is final.

It is this fact that the perception of things spiritual varies from man
to man, and depends on character, and involves action of the will, that
makes it always possible to represent our knowledge of the law of duty
as in itself standing on a less sure foundation than our knowledge of
scientific truth. Whether a man has or has not the necessary power of
mind to comprehend scientific reasoning is tested with comparative ease.
And if he have that power, the reasoning is certain in course of time to
be understood, and when it is understood it compels assent so long as it
keeps within its own proper domain. But the perception of spiritual
truth depends on a faculty whose power or weakness it is far more
difficult to test; and it involves the will which may be exerted on
either side. And for this reason men sometimes dismiss this truth as
being no more than an imagination, needed by some men to satisfy an
emotional nature, but having no substance that can be brought to an
external test. The believer in God knows that the truth which he holds
is as certain as the axioms of mathematics; but he cannot make others
know this whose spiritual faculty is not awake; and he is liable to be
asked for proof not of the spiritual but of the physical kind.

Now this much must be acknowledged, that we cannot but expect the claim
to supremacy over all things to show itself in some way in the creation
which has come from Him who makes that claim. It would, no doubt, be a
serious difficulty if things physical and things spiritual were cut off
from one another