if you come in here and tell me that there is a baby over yonder in the next square, that is three weeks old, and can talk Greek and Latin, and Spanish and Italian, and solve all the problems in mathematics, I will tell you that that is a monstrosity, and you don’t want that kind of babies in your house:  they will turn you out in a few days.  So, if you come in here and tell me that you have, down in your prayer-meeting, a spiritual baby three or four weeks old, that can teach all the old saints, and can tell them all about God, and heaven, and faith, and theology, and all about everything in the Church, I will tell you that that is a monstrosity.  And you don’t want that kind in your prayer-meeting; they will turn you out before a great while.  St. Paul says:  “Ye are born babes, and ye are fed on milk”; and the trouble with too many of us is that we keep on that diet when we ought to be eating meat.  The Master says:  “First the blade, then the ear; after that, the full corn in the ear.”  So I am free to say that God’s plan of making saints is to give them the divine germ—­if you please, the supernatural principle; or, as our scientists would say, with proper environments, “That have the divine initial impulse,” but as our fathers would have said, “They got through at the altar”; born of God, and then cleansed of God in the true process of education and faith, they matured at the harvest.  God gives us the start and the cleansing, and we have to do all the rest of it.  He will give us opportunity for growth by loading and goading us, by setting on our track every sort of force to test us—­to “polish us,” as the old Hebrew word means.  When Abraham was tested he was “polished.”  He will put us on such lines that, if we stand true to our convictions and walk according to the light we have, He will bring us on to manhood.

See how wonderfully the Word of God fits down upon this?  Take that remarkable passage that, to me, is as beautiful as anything can be, where He says:  “Come unto Me, all ye that labor”—­I know what that means in the struggle under sin—­“all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give”—­I will give:  it is mine.  You cannot earn it:  you cannot buy it; you cannot find it; you cannot dig it out.  It is mine—­“I will give you rest”—­the blest pardon that only God can give.  Then, in the very next second and breath, He says:  “Take my yoke upon you”—­that means work—­“and learn of me”—­that is more work—­and, “For I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find”—­that is yours; I do not give that to you; that is not mine to give; that is yours.  “Ye shall find rest to your souls.”  That is the rest that comes from the crystallization of the character in righteousness; that comes from the habit of believing, and the habit of obeying, and the habit of praying; from the habit of righteousness, until the old saint is ready for any struggle, and never expects to be turned aside.  That, I take it, is God’s plan of building up saints, and for fitting them for the rest that is in God, that abides.