y a score of years separates the infant of days from
the youth of full stature. Trained to expect the April seed to stand
close beside the August sheaf, it is not easy for man to accustom
himself to the processes of him with whom four-score years are but a
handbreadth and a thousand years as but one day.

To man, therefore, toiling upon his industry, his art, his government,
his religion, comes this reflection: Because the divine epochs are
long, let not the patriot or parent be sick with hope long deferred.
Let the reformer sow his seed untroubled when the sickle rusts in the
hand that waits for its harvest. Remember that as things go up in
value, the period between inception and fruition is protracted.
Because the plant is low, the days between seed and sheaf are few and
short; because the bird is higher, months stand between egg and eagle.
But manhood is a thing so high, culture and character are harvests so
rich as to ask years and even ages for ripening, while God's purposes
for society involve such treasures of art, wisdom, wealth, law,
liberty, as to ask eons and cycles for their full perfection.
Therefore let each patriot and sage, each reformer and teacher be
patient. The world itself is a seed. Not until ages have passed shall
it burst into bloom and blossom.

Troubled by the strifes of society, depressed by the waste of its
forces and the delays of its columns, he who seeks character for
himself and progress for his kind, oft needs to shelter himself beneath
that divine principle called the time-element for the individual and
the race. Optimists are we; our world is God's; wastes shall yet
become savings and defeats victories; nevertheless, life's woes, wrongs
and delays are such as to stir misgiving. The multitudes hunger for
power and influence, hunger for wealth and wisdom, for happiness and
comfort; satisfaction seems denied them. Watt and Goodyear invent,
other men enter into the fruit of their inventions; Erasmus and
Melanchthon sow the good seeds of learning; two centuries pass by
before God's angels count the bundles. In a passion of enthusiasm for
England's poor, Cobden wore his life out toiling for the corn laws.
The reformer died for the cotton-spinners as truly as if he had slit
his arteries and emptied out the crimson flood. But when the victory
was won, the wreath of fame was placed upon another's brow. One day
Robert Peel arose in the House of Commons and in the presence of an
indig