faith--faith being not the mere expectation that a thing is going to
take place, but the inner eye that sees into the heart of things, and
knows that its desire must inevitably take place, and why. This sort of
faith, be it in a tiny or great nature, comes triumphantly in actual
fact to what it predicts; but the little heart comes to it easily and
produces trivial prayers, while the big heart, thinking to arrive with
the same ease at the same measure of triumph, is beaten back time and
time and again.

Probably the explanation is that the smaller mind has not the same
germinating power; there is not enough in it to cause the long, slow
growth of root and stem, and therefore it soon puts forth its little
blossom. These things all happen, of course, according to eternal law of
inward development; they are not altered by any force from without,
because nothing is without: the sun that makes the daisy to blossom is
just that amount of sun that it absorbs into itself, and so with the
acorn or the pine-cone. These latter, however, do not produce any bright
immediate blossom, though they ultimately change the face of all that
spot of earth by the spread of their roots and branches.

After praying a long time Bart Toyner relapsed into meditation,
endeavouring to contemplate those attributes of his God which might
bring him the strength which he had not yet attained, and just here came
to him the subtlest and strongest reinforcement to all those arguments
which were chiming together upon what appeared to him the side of evil.
The God in whom he had learned to trust was a God who, moved by pity,
had come out of His natural path to give a chance of salvation to wicked
men by the sacrifice of Himself. To what did he owe his own rescue but
to this special adjustment of law made by God? and how then was it right
for him to adhere to the course the regular law imposed on him and to