In the main these are three,
which, though they recur and intertwine in his experience, yet may be
fairly stated in their natural order and sequence as normal types of
such spiritual progress.
The first of these stages is a certain vague fear of evil, which seems
to be conscience hardly aware of itself as such. It is "the sense of
some unexplored evil ever dogging his footsteps," which reached its
keenest poignancy in a constitutional horror of serpents, but which is a
very subtle and undefinable thing, observable rather as an undertone to
his consciousness of life than as anything tangible enough to be defined
or accounted for by particular causes. On the journey to Rome, the vague
misgivings took shape in one definite experience. "From the steep slope
a heavy mass of stone was detached, after some whisperings among the
trees above his head, and rushing down through the stillness fell to
pieces in a cloud of dust across the road just behind him, so that he
felt the touch upon his heel." That was sufficient, just then, to rouse
out of its hiding-place his old vague fear of evil--of one's "enemies.
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