ime some
are more fully awakened, evolved, unfolded. One should also be careful,
if life is continuous, eternal, how he judges any particular life merely
from these threescore years and ten; for the very fact of life, in
whatever form, means continual activity, growth, advancement,
unfoldment, attainment, and, if there is the one, there must of
necessity be the other. So in regard to this one or that one, no fears
need be entertained.

By the door of my woodland cabin stood during the summer a magnificent
tube-rose stock. The day was when it was just putting into bloom; and
then I counted buds--latent flowers--to the number of over a score. Some
eight or ten one morning were in full bloom. The ones nearer the top did
not bloom forth until some two and three weeks later, and for some it
took quite a month to reach the fully perfected stage. These certainly
were not so beautiful, so satisfying, as those already in the perfect
bloom, those that had already reached their highest perfection. But
should they on this account be despised? Wait, wait and give the element
of time an opportunity of doing its work; and you may find that by and
by, when these have reached their highest perfection, they may even far
transcend in beauty and in fragrance those at present so beautiful, so
fragrant, so satisfying, those that we so much admire.

Here we recognize the element of time. How foolish, how childish, how
puerile, to fail or even refuse to do the same when it comes to the
human soul, with all its God-like possibilities! And, again, how
foolish, because some of the blooms on the rose stock had not reached
their perfection as soon as others, to have pronounced them of no value,
unworthy, and to have refused them the dews, the warm rains, the
life-giving sunshine, the very agencies that hastened their perfected
growth! Yet this puerile, unbalanced attitude is that taken by untold
numbers in the world to-day toward many human souls on account of their
less mature unfoldment at any given time.

Why, the very fact that a fellow-man and a brother has this or that
fault, error, undesirable or objectionable characteristic, is of itself
the very reason he needs all the more of charity, of love, of kindly
help and aid, than is needed by the one more fully developed, and hence
more free from these. All the more reason is there why the best in him
should be recognized and ever called to the front.

The wise man is he who, when he desires