Year: 1859

the smoking track over which the train Of
creative change has swept-it fades until
the sky Of the past eternity shuts down
upon the vision and i only know that far
beyond that point - infinitely far--that
train commenced its progress, and tbs, even
then, God only opened his hand to give
fight to thought that He had held i'm
prisoned from eternity


Bnt the old rocks tell us that there was
a time when animal life began-rude and
rudimentary typical and prophetic, if we
choose and, in sense, it undoubtedly is
so. But, to me, all these forms of animal
life are simply patient studies of man.
There seem to be parts of man in every
thing that went before him. As l find in
the studio of the artist who has completed
a great picture, studies of heads and hands,
and limbs and scenes which the picture en-
bodes-convenientp prisons of heeting ideas;
experiments in composition and eifect--so
do find in the records of pre-Adamic life
only a succession of studies having refer
euce to the great picture of humanity
God was in no haste TO get the world ready
| for man, and in no haste to make him
There was coal to lay upin exhaustless store
houses. There were continents to be up
heaved, seas to chain, river-channels to
carve. There was an infinite variety of
germs to be inyented aud made in heaven,
a soil to be prepared for their reception on
the earth's surface, and broadcast sewing
to be effected What infinite detail i
What intimate arrangement of special laws
that should not clash with one another !
How could the Creator wait so long to see
the being for whom oil this pains-taking
preparation was in progress


Well, when the process was at last COM
pleted when the marvellously beautiful
but diminutive form of Adam walked out
of Gods thought in the morning sunlight
of Eden - walked through flowers and
odors, and among animals that licked his
hand and gamboled around him unscared !;
when the impalpable forms of angels were
thick around him in an atmosphere uneasy
with its burden of vitality, how did the
| Creator regard him-the object of all this
patient working and waiting 1t was
what we should call "a great success" 1t
was very popular" with the observing host
The morning stars sang together, and all
the sons of God shouted for JOY but God
did not even say that it was Every good ("
He only "Saw" that it was so. No ruflc
of eXultation swept over the bosom of that
sublime patience, for even then he had only
made beginning He had only made a
place for his creatures to dwell in Before
Him stretched almost Infinite cycles of du-
ration. In the far perspective, He saw ma
tions rise and sink, civilizations blossom and
decay, the advent and the mission of j esus,
the struggles of good and evil, of light and
darkness, of truth and error and on the
remote pinnacle of destiny, family rising to
his eye in the eternity before him, the blaz-
ing windows and the white pillars and spires
of the Temple of Consummation !


Some people wonder how God can bear
as He does, with human frailty and wicked
ness. In effect, they ask why He does not
sweep the whole race out of existence, and
start again. As if the Being who had pa
tiently wrought and waited for myriads of
ages to prepare for man had not patience
to allow him to work ont his destiny All,
short-sighted mortals Has not God an
eternity to accomplish his ends in Is He,
before the eyes Of O universe, to relinquish
an experiment, and pronounce that to be a
failure on which He has expended such in
finite pains and patience? Not He and
the man must be idiotic who cannot draw
from this patience food for hope, even when
mercy seems exhausted.


But this divine element enters more or
less into human character, and it is with
this, that we have specially to do. There
is no well-doing-no gcd-like doing-that
is not patient doing, doing There is no
great achievement that is not the result of
patient working and waiting. There is no
royal road to anything One thing at
time--all things in succession. That which
grows fast, withers as rapidly that which
grows slowly, endures The silver-leafed
poplar grows in one decade, and dies in the
next the oak takes its century to grow in,
and lives and dies at leisure. This law runs
through all vegetation, through all Gre
alton, and through all human achievement.
A fortune won in day is lost in a day a
fortune won slowly, and slowly compacted,
seems to acquire from the hand that won
it the property of endurance. We all see
this, we oil acknowledge it, yet we are all
in hurry We are in haste for position :;
we are in haste for wealth we are in haste
for fame we are in haste for everything
that is desirable, and that shapes itself into
an object of life. In that worthest of all
struggles-the struggle for self-mastery and
goodness-we are far less patient with our
selves than God is with us. We forget,
too, in our impatence with others-with
their weakness and wrong doing - that
there is one who sees this weakness and
wickedness as we never can see it-yet is
unrufied by it, "Work and wait"--''work
and WATTS what God says to us in Gre
alton and in Providence. We work, and
that is godlike we get impatient, and
there crops out our human weakness.


Man of business, do the gains come in
slowly Do your neighbors outstrip you
in prosperity Do you hear of friends
grown suddenly rich by great speculations,
and is your heart discouraged with the
prospect before you? Does it seem to you
that your lot is hard beyond that of other
men 7 God is only trying to see how much
you are like Him how much Of His own
life is in you. If He is the kind father
take Him to be, He is quite as anxious to
bless you as you are anxious to be blest /;
i 4