Note 7 — Chapter II · THE INNER LIGHT.

I do not, of course, forget that, going to the imperfection of human laws and human faculties, cases may and do occur in which Divine guidance must lead us in ways which run counter to them. The figure used above is intended only to illustrate the general correspondence between the map, as it were, which can be laid down by the reason of man, and that individual and immediate guidance which alone can show us a higher and a narrower, but yet freer, pathway—the pathway of that highest service which is perfect freedom. When, in exceptional cases, any contrariety really emerges between the human and the Divine guiding lines, we may surely still, without too much straining of our figure, say that it is a living power only which can free any human spirit from the too narrow fencing in of a morbid or unenlightened conscience, and guide it by paths running counter to the beaten track of conventional morality, or even in some rare instances authorize and enable and require it to overleap even the cliffs of actual law, trusting that in such cases, as experience has already taught us, the blood of the martyrs will still be the seed of the Church.