the privilege of Christ’s disciples to rise to a much higher state of holy love, assurance, and rest of soul than the most of them seem ever to reach in this world; and further, that such a spiritual uplifting may come, and sometimes does come, in the way of a sudden and extraordinary experience.  But it is never without a history.  She gives a beautiful picture of such an experience in the case of Stephanas, who was “as gay as any boy,” and then adds:  “Now, the descent of the blessing was sudden and lifted him at once into a new world, but the preparation for it had been going on ever since he learned to pray.”

But while agreeing with the advocates of the Higher Life doctrine in some points, she was far from agreeing with them in all.  And her disagreement increased and grew more decided in her later years.  The subject is often alluded to in her letters to Christian friends; and should these letters ever be published, they will answer your inquiry much better than I can do.  The points in the “Higher Life” and “Holiness through Faith” views which she most strongly dissented from, related to the question of perfection.  The Christian life—­this was her view—­is subject to the great law of growth.  It is a process, an education, and not a mere volition, or series of volitions.  Its progress may be rapid, but, ideally considered, each new stage is conditioned by the one that went before:  first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.  It embraces the whole spirit and soul and body; and its perfect development, therefore, is a very comprehensive thing, touching the length and breadth, the depth and height of our entire being.  It is also, in its very nature, conflict as well as growth; the forces of evil must be vanquished, and these forces, whether acting through body, soul, or spirit, are very subtle, treacherous, and often occult, as well as very potent; the best man on earth, if left to himself, would fall a prey to them.  No fact of religious experience is more striking than this, that the higher men rise in real goodness—­the nearer they come to God, the more keen-eyed and distressed are they to detect evil in themselves.  Their sense of sin seems to be in a sort of inverse ratio to their freedom from its power.  And we meet with a similar fact in the natural life.  The finer and more exalted the sentiment of purity and honor, the more sensitive will one be to the slightest approach to what is impure or dishonorable in one’s own character and conduct.  Such is substantially her ground of dissent from the “Higher Life” theory.  Her own sense of sin was so profound and vivid that she shuddered at the thought of claiming perfection for herself; and it seemed to her a very sad delusion for anybody else to claim it.  True holiness is never self-conscious; it does not look at itself in the glass; and if it did, it would see only Christ, not itself, reflected there.  This was her way of looking at the subject; and she came