an secret of a
composed life. Apart even from the parable of the lily, the failures of
the past have taught most of us the folly of disquieting ourselves in
vain, and we have given up the idea that by taking thought we can add a
cubit to our stature.

But no sooner has our life settled down to this calm trust in God than a
new and graver anxiety begins. This time it is not for the body we are
in travail, but for the soul. For the temporal life we have considered
the lilies, but how is the spiritual life to grow. How are we to become
better men? How are we to grow in grace? By what thought shall we add
the cubits to the spiritual stature and reach the fullness of the
Perfect Man? And because we know ill how to do this, the old anxiety
comes back again and our inner life is once more an agony of conflict
and remorse. After all, we have but transferred our anxious thoughts
from the body to the soul. Our efforts after Christian growth seem only
a succession of failures, and instead of rising into the beauty of
holiness our life is a daily heartbreak and humiliation.

Now the reason of this is very plain. We have forgotten the parable of
the lily. Violent efforts to grow are right in earnestness, but wholly
wrong in principle. There is but one principle of growth both for the
natural and spiritual, for animal and plant, for body and soul. For all
growth is an organic thing. And the principle of growing in grace is
once more this, "Consider the lilies _how they grow_."

In seeking to extend the analogy from the body to the soul there are two
things about the lilies' growth, two characteristics of all growth, on
which one must fix attention. These are--

First, Spontaneousness.

Second, Mysteriousness.

I. Spontaneousness. There are three lines along which one may seek for
evidence of the spontaneousness of growth. The first is Science. And the
argument here could not be summed up better than in the words of Jesus.
The lilies grow, He says, of themselves; they toil not, neither do they
spin. They grow, that is, automatically, spontaneously, without trying,
without fretting, without thinking. Applied in any direction, to plant,
to animal, to the body or to the soul this law holds. A boy grows, for
example, without trying. One or two simple conditions are fulfilled, and
the growth goes on. He thinks probably as little about the condition as
about the result; he fulfills the conditions by habit, the result
follows by natur