one century, to know that not until another century hath passed will the precious harvest be reaped.  Man is accustomed to brief intervals.  Not long the space between January’s snowdrifts and June’s red berries.  Brief the interval between the egg and the eagle’s full flight.  Scarcely 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 indignant party and an astounded country, proudly said:  “I have been wrong.  I now ask Parliament to repeal the law for which I myself have stood.  Where there was discontent, I see contentment; where there was turbulence, I see peace, where there was disloyalty, I see loyalty.”  Then the fury of party anger burst upon him, and bowing to the storm, Robert Peel went forth while men hissed after him such words as “traitor,” “coward,” “recreant leader.”  Nor did he foresee that in losing an office he had gained the love of a country.