become adjusted to the moral order. The moral order is the rule of right
in the sphere of thought, emotion, and choice. It is the government of
the soul as the physical order is the government of the body. It may be
best explained by analogy. There is a physical order ruled by physical
laws. If those laws are obeyed, strength, health, sanity result; but if
they are disobeyed, the consequences, which are inevitable and
self-perpetuating, are weakness, disease, insanity. If one violates
gravitation he is dashed in pieces; if he trifles with microbes their
infinitesimal grasp will be like a shackle of steel. No one can get
outside the physical universe and the sweep of its laws.

There is also a right and a wrong way to use thought, emotion, will. The
mind which has hospitality only for holy thoughts will become clearer,
and its vision more distinct; but the mind which harbors impure
thoughts, gradually, but surely, confuses evil with good, obscures its
vision, and becomes a fountain of moral miasm. If we choose to recall
and to retain feelings that are animal, and are the relics of animalism,
the natural tendency toward bestiality will gather momentum; but if
emotion is turned toward higher objects, and we are thrilled from above
rather than lulled from below, the sensibilities become sources of
enduring joy. The moral order is like the physical order in its
universality and in the remorselessness of the consequences which follow
choices.

How does the soul become adjusted to the moral order? This question is
difficult to answer. At the first there is sight enough to see that one
course is right and another wrong, but the vision is indistinct.
Gradually the ability to make accurate discriminations increases, and,
with time and other growth, the faculty of vision is enlarged and
clarified.