lf on the green
stem, and every day the roll becomes larger and harder. The green stalk
never questions, though for a time her face is veiled. She lives in the
waiting silence, content with what is. One bright day she looks at her
ugly bud and finds it a rare blossom of surpassing beauty and sweetest
fragrance. Thus is born the fair-robed lily, pure emblem of the child of
God.

"But we have many and various symbols of divine thought in the many and
various flowers, from which we learn divine lessons. There are the
violets that come so early in the spring, with their wildwood fragrance
and dainty blue cloaks, and the lovely roses of summer, the goldenrods
and asters of autumn, while among the rarer kinds we have the
night-blooming cereus, the beautiful but slow blossoming century plant,
and many others. These are types and symbols of ourselves and our
process of birth and unfoldment.

"The new birth is a development from material to spiritual knowledge.
The individual corresponds to one or another plant, but none may know at
what particular stage.

"Some blossom early, some late, some manifest a nature like the violet,
others the rose, the water lily or the century plant. I can not tell,
you can not tell, none can tell. Even the Master said, 'The wind bloweth
where it listeth and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell
whence it cometh or whither it goeth, so is every one that is born of
the spirit.'

"The wonderful seed (desire for truth) we have planted must be moistened
by the water of right words, warmed by the sunshine of faith, fed by the
dew of patience.

"Our trials will be similar in character to the flowers, and the outcome
will be the same in proportion as we follow their example of
unquestioning faithfulness.

"The very desire to grow is a challenge to the elements that _seem_ to
oppose growth, but the plant overcomes all obstacles by its
non-resistance, and herein lies one of our most valuable lessons.

"In our progress we meet with many conditions and circumstances that try
us, that seem indeed to call in question our earnestness in thus
starting out, with new assumptions. Sometimes these adverse conditions
are called trials of faith and they may come to us in one way or
another, sometimes in sickness, sometimes in misunderstandings,
sometimes in grief, sometimes in disagreeable duties.

"Peculiarities of disposition that we thought overcome, may manifest
themselves very unexpectedly a