And men who are truly in earnest about faith and life, and who are
perplexed and distressed by the contradictions and insincerities that
meet them, must often be moved as he was.

And yet, when we look closer, and consider that the battle of spiritual
progress has this peculiarity attached to it, that it has to be fought
over again, in every generation, and in every separate individual soul,
the result is less surprising. Remembering this, we do not expect the
victory of the last generation to save us from defeat or failure.

And this has to be borne in mind equally in regard to the continuous
life of societies and to our own separate lives. Thus in such a society
as this, if our predecessors uplifted the standards of conduct,
inculcated high principles, and inspired their generation with a strong
pervading spirit, this should make it easier for us to do likewise; but
it does not insure our doing it. All this higher life will die in our
hands if the same regenerating spirit is not alive and working in our
hearts also. So, again, your individual victory over sin in the power of
the Spirit in you, does not save my life from having to fight the battle
for itself and win its own victories.

So that, however perplexing the phenomena of life may seem whilst we look
at them in the mass or from the outside, if we read the Gospel of Christ
as a message to our own souls a great deal of the perplexity disappears.
And it was with this personal message that Christ came, and there is no
hope of our understanding His mission, or of living in the light of His
transforming spirit, if we think of it in any other way than this.

The purpose of His revelation is to crucify the selfish instinct in us,
and to rouse us to the life of self-devotion, to the idea of consecrated