life, like a radiant angel. It is no fiction of the brain: it is a stern fact, a splendid vision of what I should be and do. I know not but it is the Quaker's "inner light," or the "daemon" of Socrates, or the "voice" that came to Joan of Arc. Have you never heard

that voice?

"I hear it often in the dark,

I hear it in the light.

Where is the voice that calls to me
With such a quiet might?

"O sweet surprise of inner skies,
These voices still and strong!

They fill my inward silences

With music and with song.

"They send me challenges to right,
And loud rebuke my ill;

They ring my bells of victory,

They breathe my 'Peace, be still!

That "still, small voice" is the voice of my "Saviour." No man, nor body of men, can crucify that. I am the only man who can wrong it. The Jesus of history might fade from the memory of men, but my "flying ideal" abides with me, yet leading on, forever. You may slash the knife of Biblical criticism into the heart of the Gospels and let out every drop of the life-blood of the historic Jesus, and leave nothing but the bleaching skeletons of dead traditions whitening the desert of faith, but my beautiful ideal is not touched thereby. It rises, as on wings, above all the accidents of history, above the death of religious forms, above the graves of sweet illusion. No, no, conscience never dies. The voice within you can never quite smother. This higher self, "the Christ" in your own soul, you may deny like Peter, betray like Judas, but you can never crucify it to the death. Oh, how can we look up into that pure Face, and do wrong! We cannot. It is only when we put up our

hand to hide it that we dare to sin. But our little hands cannot cover our guilt. Those eyes see between our fingers, and read the shame on our cheeks. Do what we will, sin as we may, that calm, sweet Face is there. Do what we will, sin as we may, that divine-like Voice we hear. Happy the soul that obeys this inner Saviour. When it bids us "cease to do evil and learn to do well," and our lower nature comes up and clasps hands with our higher, and that Face smiles its blessings, and the two natures in us are one, then we experience the truth in the atonement; for we realize in ourselves the at-one-ment.

THE INDEX

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WILLIAM J. POTTER, Editors.
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