If you cannot at once and always feel the play of His life upon yours, watch for it also indirectly.  “The whole earth is full of the character of the Lord.”  Christ is the Light of the world, and much of his Light is reflected from things in the world—­even from clouds.  Sunlight is stored in every leaf, from leaf through coal, and it comforts us thence when days are dark and we cannot see the sun.  Christ shines through men, through books, through history, through 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 omnipotent work of God.  Leave it to the Creator.  “He which hath begun a good work in you will perfect it unto that day.”