Impatience never commanded success.

We may learn by practice such things upon earth as shall be of use to us in heaven. Piety, unostentatious piety, is never out of place.

Impatience never commanded success.

Christ illustrates the purport of life as He descends from His transfiguration to toil, and goes forward to exchange that robe of heavenly brightness for the crown of thorns.

Earth has scarcely an acre that does not remind us of actions that have long preceded our own, and its clustering tombstones loom up like reefs of the eternal shore, to show us where so many human barks have struck and gone down.

In the isolation of his clear, cold intellect, the sceptic abides in a glacial and spectral universe. No glow from the affections lights up the frost and shadow of the grave. He feels no prophecy in the thrill of the human heart-in the incompleteness of nature. He believes merely in things tangible, and sees only in the daytime. He will not confess the authenticity of that paler light of faith which was meant to shine when the sunshine of reason falls short, and the firmament of mystery is over our heads.

The brightest crowns that are worn in heaven have been tried, and smelted, and polished and glorified through the furnaces of tribulation.