dropped by accident in one
of our gardens, finds itself trying to grow and blow into flower among
the homely roots and the hardy shrubs that surround it. There is no
question that certain persons who are born among us find themselves many
degrees too far north. Tropical by organization, they cannot fight for
life with our eastern and northwestern breezes without losing the color
and fragrance into which their lives would have blossomed in the latitude
of myrtles and oranges. Strange effects are produced by suffering any
living thing to be developed under conditions such as Nature had not
intended for it. A French physiologist confined some tadpoles under
water in the dark. Removed from the natural stimulus of light, they did
not develop legs and arms at the proper period of their growth, and so
become frogs; they swelled and spread into gigantic tadpoles. I have seen
a hundred colossal human tadpoles, overgrown Zarvce or embryos; nay, I am
afraid we Protestants should look on a considerable proportion of the
Holy Father's one hundred and thirty-nine millions as spiritual larvae,
sculling about in the dark by the aid of their caudal extremities,
instead of standing on their legs, and breathing by gills, instead of
taking the free air of heaven into the lungs made to receive it. Of
course we never try to keep young souls in the tadpole state, for fear
they should get a pair or two of legs by-and-by and jump out of the pool
where they have been bred and fed! Never! Never. Never?

Now to go back to our plant. You may know, that, for the earlier stages
of development of almost any vegetable, you only want air, water, light,
and warmth. But by-and-by, if it is to have special complex principles
as a part of its organization, they must be supplied by the soil;--your
pears will crack, if the root of the tree gets no iron,--your
asparagus-bed wants salt as much as you do. Just at the period of
adolescence, the mind often suddenly begins to come into flower and to
set its fruit. Then it is that many young natures, having exhausted the
spiritual soil round them of all it contains of the elements they demand,
wither away, undeveloped and uncolored, unless they are transplanted.

Pray for these dear young souls! This is the second natural birth;--for
I do not speak of those peculiar religious experiences which form the
point of transition in many lives between the consciousness of a general
relation to the Divine natur