alters his stature, not indeed by taking thought thereunto, but even as
the lilies grow; and adding together the receiving and the becoming, we
find that we are the children of God.

Hence it appears that our faith is not a single definite act, done, and
done with; but one done and gone on with. And our faith is to be not
only definite, but progressive and increasing, leading us from grace to
grace, from strength to strength, and from glory to glory.

If we take a stranger to view the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, it
is possible that he will say that the outside is the finest part of it,
and that it looks best from a distance; or he may say that the
entrance-hall, with its display of coloured marbles and polished
granite, is the best part of the museum. Certainly there are many that
look at Christianity in this manner; thinking it perhaps a magnificent
ideal of life, especially as seen in history; or perhaps as seen at
some distance, as we view Sunday from the other days of the week. And
others there are who think that the entrance of the Christian life is
the best part of it, who say honestly from experience that the
beginning of the life was the best for them. The reason being that
they stopped there; otherwise people never could think that the
happiest part of the life was that immediately consequent on
conversion; for in reality the path of the just is a shining light,
that shines more and more unto the perfect day. It is not like one of
those ancient Egyptian temples of which one reads, in which we pass
from daylight to shade as we enter, and into deeper gloom as we
approach the secret shrine.

The life of faith--progressive, increasing faith--is a motion in a
straight line, and not in a closed curve; it is not like an Irish
penance around a sacred well where one makes progress with the final
result of being where you started, and, perhaps, ready for another
revolution, as, indeed, it must appear to some Christians whose circle
is a week and whose starting-point a Sunday. Neither is it like the
pilgrimage up Pilate's staircase at Rome, in which the pain of going up
on one's knees is only varied by the discomfort of coming down again
and finding ourselves just about where we were before, as it must
appear to some good people who live the up-and-down life. It is an
upward and onward life; on our knees, if you will, but upward and
upward and, like the stairs in Ezekiel's vision, still upward. And the
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