gives for its enlightenment. The great critical events in the world's
history, the events that make epochs in the consciousness of men, are not
different in kind from those of our own obscure lives. They are, as it
were, our own familiar experience, written prophetically and written
large.

So the blindness that happened to Israel, and arrested their spiritual
growth, may be happening no less to any of us. As God gave them the
spirit of slumber, so it may be with our lives.

And the very thought of our possible risks in this respect is valuable to
us.

To be conscious that in regard to any of the higher and better things of
life our eyes may possibly be growing dim, and our ears dull of hearing,
and that God may be pressing upon us gifts of great price which we are
too dull to see or to accept--if our soul is sufficiently awake to feel
this, then the very feeling may of itself be the germ of new life in us.

And it is very certain, on the other hand, that if we are altogether
without any such feelings there is a risk, which even amounts to a
probability, that the hardening or deadening influences of custom and
tradition will sooner or later degrade our life. And if it should be
asked,--How comes it that we are so liable to be affected by this dulness
of spirit and of general habit?--we have to reply that it is because of
the sensitiveness of the human soul to surrounding influences.

It is because our souls are so receptive, so imitative, and in
consequence so easily perverted, darkened, blinded, or misled. I suppose
we are all of us conscious of this sensitiveness of the moral and