turning tail at the first fence, let us learn that it will do us good
to climb, and that the fence is there in order to draw forth our
effort.

There is another point in which these bewildered disciples are
uncommonly like the rest of us; and that is that they have no
patience to wait for time and growth to solve the difficulty. They
want to know all about it now, or not at all. If they would wait for
six weeks they would understand, as they did. Pentecost explained it
all. We, too, are often in a hurry. There is nothing that the
ordinary mind, and often the educated mind, detests so much as
uncertainty, and being consciously baffled by some outstanding
difficulty. And in order to escape that uneasiness, men are
dogmatical when they should be doubtful, and positively asserting
when it would be a great deal more for the health of their souls and
of their listeners to say, 'Well, really I do not know, and I am
content to wait.' So, on both sides of great controversies, you get
men who will not be content to let things wait, for all must be made
clear and plain to-day.

Ah, brethren! for ourselves, for our own intellectual difficulties,
and for the difficulties of the world, there is nothing like time and
patience. The mysteries that used to plague us when we were boys
melted away when we grew up. And many questions which trouble me to-
day, and through which I cannot find my way, if I lay them aside, and
go about my ordinary duties, and come back to them to-morrow with a
fresh eye and an unwearied brain, will have straightened themselves
out and become clear. We grow into our best and deepest convictions,
we are not dragged into them by any force of logic. So for our own
sorrows, questions, pains, griefs, and for all the riddle of this