C. H. Parkhurst: “The yeast does not strike through the whole lump of dough at a flash. We keep finding unsuspected lumps of meal that the yeast has not yet seized upon. We surrender to God in instalments. We may not mean to do it, but we do it. Conversion has got to be brought down to date.” A student asked the President of Oberlin College whether he could not take a shorter course than the one prescribed. “Oh yes,” replied the President, “but then it depends on what you want to make of yourself. When God wants to make an oak, he takes a hundred years, but when he wants to make a squash, he takes six months.” (_c_) It is distinguished from regeneration as growth from birth, or as the strengthening of a holy disposition from the original impartation of it. _Eph. 4:15_—“_speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into him, who is the head, even Christ_”; _1 Thess. 3:12_—“_the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men_”; _2 Pet. 3:18_—“_But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ_”; _cf._ _1 Pet. 1:23_—“_begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the word of God, which liveth and abideth_”; _1 John 3:9_—“_Whosoever is begotten of God doeth no sin, because his seed abideth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is begotten of God._” Not sin only, but holiness also, is a germ whose nature is to grow. The new love in the believer’s heart follows the law of all life, in developing and extending itself under God’s husbandry. George Eliot: “The reward of one duty done is the power to do another.” J. W. A. Stewart: “When the 21st of March has come, we say ‘The back of the winter is broken.’ There will still be alternations of frost, but the progress will be towards heat. The coming of summer is sure,—in germ the summer is already here.” Regeneration is the crisis of a disease; sanctification is the progress of convalescence. Yet growth is not a uniform thing in the tree or in the Christian. In some single months there is more growth than in all the year besides. During the rest of the year, however, there is solidification, without which the green timber would be useless. The period of rapid growth, when woody fibre is actually deposited between the bark and the trunk, occupies but four to six weeks in May, June, and July. _2 Pet. 1:5_—“_adding on your part all diligence, in your faith supply virtue; and in your virtue knowledge_”—adding to the central grace all those that are complementary and subordinate, till they attain the harmony of a chorus (ἐπιχορηγήσατε).