But let us consider it a little further. Whatever it is that is thus stirring in your heart, it comes and it comes again; it lingers in your thoughts and feelings; it haunts, it impresses and awes you; it rises before you suddenly and stops you from some sin, or, if it fails to stop you, it turns the pleasure for which you craved into wretchedness; or it encourages and consoles you in some hour of weakness or sorrow. I suppose there is hardly one of you who has not had some such experience as this. And if you ask. What is it? It is, I repeat, the awakening of the soul in you--nothing less than this--and happy is it for you, if you recognise that it is the soul striving to win its proper place in the regulation of your life. When Moses saw the vision of the burning bush, and suddenly felt himself on holy ground; when Elijah heard the still, small voice calling, "What doest thou here, Elijah?" when Saul, on his way to Damascus, fell to the ground conscience-smitten, crushed, blinded, rebuked; when the child Samuel heard the Divine voice calling to him in the darkness of the night;--in each case it was the awakening or the reawakening of the soul--the uprising of the spiritual capacities, the vision of the higher life--and so exactly with all of _you_. Are you not sometimes conscious of the uprisings in you of a spirit calling upon you to recognise the angels' ladder that connects _your_ life also with the heaven above us? If so, there is this further thing to note about such moments of experience. This feeling of some spiritual capacity in you, this call to some higher view of life and duty, this uprising of the moral sense and the repulsion towards the lower forms of life which comes with it--this is God's personal gift to us, and we pray that you may possess it early; for it is not only a new consciousness, it is itself a new power in your life. You cannot have it, feeling its presence and hearing its suggestions, and debase your life in any way, as you might have done, but for its presence. It is so very true that, in the life of the Spirit, looking up means lifting up. As the plant turns to the sun, it grows towards the sun; as it looks up to the light, it grows towards the light; so it is with us. We feel that we are sons of God, and we tend to become so. Through some influence or other, we awake to a vivid consciousness that God has created us in His image, endowed us with Divine capacities, and this consciousness becomes a purifying and inspiring force in our life, and it is a new life in consequence. Pray that such influences may prevail around you here, and that you may hold them fast until they have blessed your life. XI. "MEMBERS ONE OF ANOTHER." "So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another."--ROMANS xii. 5.