deepest support and
encouragement. The experience has clothed itself to the imagination in
the garb of this or that creed or climate. It is liable to debasements
and counterfeits, but no more liable than all other noble emotions and
experiences. Sometimes there is the culmination of a moral struggle,
and the whole course of life receives a new direction. Sometimes there
is an illumination and joy and peace. It is an exaltation of the soul
in which gladness blends with moral energy. No chapter of human life
is written in deeper letters than those which tell of victory over
temptation, strength out of weakness, radiance beside the grave,
through this divine uplift.

There is another experience, more common, less dependent on individual
constitution, which bears an inward message of soberer tone but of like
import. It is the peace which attends the consciousness of
right-doing. Wordsworth personifies it as the approval of Duty, "stern
daughter of the voice of God:"--

"Stern Lawgiver! Yet thou dost wear
The Godhead's most benignant grace;
Nor know we anything more fair
Than is the smile upon thy face."

The faithful child of duty, whatever his creed, whatever his
temperament, is naturally the possessor of a steady, calm assurance.
Somehow, he feels, it is well.

Reasonings about immortality lead to little result. Convinced or
unconvinced, we profit little by a mere opinion. We speculate, doubt,
reject, or hope; and in either case the moral conduct of life is,
perhaps, not much affected. But there come hours when to love and
aspiration the heavenly vision opens, and the sense of its own eternity
thrills the soul.

The crying need of the heart is always a present need. No promise of a
far-away satisfaction is sufficient for it. And answering to just that
need is the experience, sometimes given, that the human love once ours
is ours still in its fullness,--some richer fullness even than that of
days gone by. There are hours in which the heart's voice is,

"Though mixed with God and Nature thou,
I seem to love thee more and more."

The highest state of consciousness to which we attain is expressed by
the old phrase that man feels himself a child of God. His energy feels
back of it an infinite energy. His desires rest peacefully in some
all-sufficing good. All that is highest and purest in him mingles with
its divine source. He sees new and higher interpretations of his ow