By what sort of experience are we led to the conviction that spirit exists? On the whole, by searching, painful experience. The rose Religion grows on a thorn-bush, and we must not be afraid to have our fingers lacerated by the thorns if we would pluck the rose. For instance, a person who endures great bodily suffering with fortitude will discover that there is something in him which physical agony cannot overcome, something not of the senses, which all the assaults of the senses are powerless to affect.

Why in this world of ours there should be so much suffering no one knows. But this we know; that, evil existing, the world being such as it is, we can win from evil, if we choose, an inestimable good, namely—the conviction that there is in us a power not of the senses, the conviction that spirit exists, and exists in us.

A sceptic may say that in a world ideally conceivable we might have secured this precious conviction without the necessity of undergoing the ordeal of pain. To which the reply is: that in a world ideally conceivable what he says may be true; but in the world as it is, with which alone we are concerned, we have ample cause for gratitude that we can turn suffering to such far-reaching account, that we can distil from the bitter root this divine elixir; that by manfully bearing the pains of the senses, inexplicable though they be, we are able to gain the certainty that a power not born of the senses exists in us, operates in us. It is this effect of pain that accounts for the serenity and peace of many patient sufferers, a peace and a serenity which surround their bed of misery with a kind of halo.

The same is true of moral pain. The experience of Guilt, for instance, if it leads us to pitilessly honest self-scrutiny and self-judgment, will at the last disclose the marvellous fact that even in the most desperate cases there remains a part of our nature unspoiled by the guilt. We become aware of a power within us, to slough off the guilt as the serpent sloughs off its skin; to triumph over the evil we have done as well as over the evils we suffer. We realise that there is in us a fount of inexhaustible moral rejuvenation.

What, then, are the compensations of Sin? In the first place, a truer insight into the moral order of the universe, a more adequate realisation of the authority of those holy ordinances against which we have offended; and then the conviction that the soul can ever rise again by its own efforts. The tree may fall, but the root remains indestructible; the spring of moral endeavour may appear to be dried up, but there are hidden subterranean streams from which it can ever be fed anew.

The stages of the progress of mankind may be compared to a series of mountain ranges. First the foothills, then the higher hills, then mountain range on mountain range beyond them. As we gain the loftier eminences we see the snowy summits before us, touched by the light of the moral ideal, transforming themselves before our eyes into what appear to be the ramparts and the spires of the Golden City. We climb still higher, and the vision travels with us, lighting on the next succeeding range. And so, on and on, as we ascend.

We live in our activities, in our influence. The success or failure of life is determined, not by our conditions, but by the effort we put forth despite our conditions. A man who, though himself poor, labours to keep alive the higher life in his fellows, to inspire them with the courage to strive for the better, and with patience to bear the evils which are for the time being unavoidable, is a spiritual hero and a nobler benefactor than many of the so-called benefactors who invade the slums.

When human nature fights in the last ditch, when it is pressed against the wall, when the clutch of circumstances is about its throat and threatens to choke it, then human nature, by way of reaction, exhibits a power which we call spiritual. This is rarely displayed in prosperous circumstances. It is the compensation of adversity that it elicits in manifold ways this spiritual power and makes man’s life in a spiritual sense a success.