and examine such objects for years.

'And so it is with mental and moral vision. Something more than a mind,
and instruction, and mental objects are necessary to enable a man to
understand religion and duty. Attention, study, comparison, continued
with calmness, and candor, and patience, for days, for months, or for
years, may be necessary to enable a skeptic to understand, to believe,
and to feel like those who have long been disciples of Christ.

'And a change of habits, continued till it produces a change of tastes
and desires, is necessary to prepare the sensualist to judge correctly
with regard to things moral and religious. We must not therefore expect
a good lecture, or an able book, to cure a skeptic of his doubts at
once. It may produce an effect which, in time, if the party be faithful
to duty, will _end_ in his conversion at a future day. The seed
committed to the soil does not produce rich harvests in a day. A change
of air and habits does not at once regenerate the invalid. The
husbandman has to wait long for his crop: and the physician has to wait
long for the recovery of his patient. And the skeptic has to wait long,
till the seed of truth, deposited in his soul, unfolds its germs, and
produces the rich ripe harvest of faith, and holiness, and joy.

'And preachers and teachers must not think it strange, if their hearers
and readers are slow to change. Nor must they despond even though no
signs of improvement appear for months or years. A change for the better
in a student may not be manifest till it has been in progress for years.
It may not be perfected for many years. You cannot force a change of
mind, as you can force the growth of a plant in a hot-house. An attempt
to do so might stop it altogether. Baxter said, two hundred years ago,
'Nothing so much hindereth the reception of the truth, as urging it on