hrough
nature, music, art. Look for Him there. "Every day one should either
look at a beautiful picture, or hear beautiful music, or read a
beautiful poem." The real danger of mysticism is not making it broad
enough.

Do not think that nothing is happening because you do not see yourself
grow, or hear the whir of the machinery. All great things grow
noiselessly. You can see a mushroom grow, but never a child. Paul said
for the comforting of all slowly perfecting souls that they grew
"from character to character." "The inward man," he says elsewhere,
"is renewed from day to day." All thorough work is slow; all true
development by minute, slight and insensible metamorphoses. The higher
the structure, moreover, the slower the progress. As the biologist
runs his eye over the long Ascent of Life, he sees the lowest forms of
animals develop in an hour; the next above these reach maturity in a
day; those higher still take weeks or months to perfect; but the few
at the top demand the long experiment of years. If a child and an ape
are born on the same day, the last will be in full possession of its
faculties and doing the active work of life before the child has left
its cradle. Life is the cradle of eternity. As the man is to the
animal in the slowness of his evolution, so is the spiritual man to
the natural man. Foundations which have to bear the weight of an
eternal life must be surely laid. Character is to wear forever; who
will wonder or grudge that it cannot be developed in a day?

To await the growing of a soul, nevertheless, is an almost Divine act
of faith. How pardonable, surely, the impatience of deformity with
itself, of a consciously despicable character standing before Christ,
wondering, yearning, hungering to be like that! Yet must one trust the
process fearlessly and without misgiving. "The Lord the Spirit" will
do His part. The tempting expedient is, in haste for abrupt or visible
progress, to try some method less spiritual, or to defeat the end by
watching for effects instead of keeping the eye on the Cause. A
photograph prints from the negative only while exposed to the sun.
While the artist is looking to see how it is getting on he simply
stops the getting on. Whatever of wise supervision the soul may need,
it is certain it can never be over-exposed, or that, being exposed,
anything else in the world can improve the result or quicken it. The
creation of a new heart, the renewing of a right spirit, is an
o