688 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



amount to anything unless I leave yoii in the world. If 1 take you out of 

 the world, and have matters mechanically arranged about you in a pleasant 

 manner, and if you preserve only your poor consistency, enough, it may be 

 easy enough; but, there's no future for the Kingdom in this; if you are 

 going to amount to anything you must be rooted in this world, and trans- 

 form and assimilate the world material into the life of humanity, as I have 

 done." 



There is no gospel of asceticism for the corn seed. There is no hope in 

 taking the corn away from all temptation and danger, and keeping it 

 wrapped up. Nothing of that sort is in God's plan. There are no monas- 

 teries in nature. God puts His seed into the world— z« the world, but not 

 of the world. He would have us get out of the world just what this seed 

 gets out of the soil— all that is inspiring to the soul, or stimulating the 

 powers of the moral being in its development. 



Oh, say you, ' 'I am a boy in school." I know you. You are a Christian 

 boy. You came to the city this fall. There you stand, with the other fel- 

 lows, who are no better than you are; and you are rightly afraid of seeming 

 to be a spiritual dandy. They'^ill soon find out whether or not there is any 

 man in you. They will know whether they are dealing with a realty, or a 

 sham. You can not afiFord to walk through your school holding a Psalm 

 book in one hand of your piety, and holding a scientific book in the other 

 hand of your piety. Don't divide yourself in that way. Trust yourself to 

 place your life in this world. You must root yourself here. You must get 

 into human interests, and get them into you. You would better join every 

 society that will make a man of you. Get into relationship with your fel- 

 lows. But, if you are a real Christian, oh! how they will respect you! When 

 they see you taking all that there is in the world, and in college life — all that 

 is inspiring, and upbuilding, and uplifting — living in and yet growing out 

 of the soil in which you are; growing more manly because you are more 

 Godly, Oh! how surely they will rally round you; for all men love a true 

 man. 



Behold this little seed again. By and by, there will begin to grow out of 

 this seed long streamers— those banners, those flags of nature-triumph in the 

 corn. But it is a victory only by sacrifice of the little to the large, the lower 

 to the higher— all form, to life. I know that it is a risky business, this affair 

 of growth. But if you oppose growth you oppose life. 



Why, my friends, there is no more insult to the human mind as the insult 

 offered by any hard and fast church organization, and those that conduct it 

 on the principle that men shall not grow, and their ministers shall not grow. 

 The church is not a place where saints are discovered, and placed side by 

 side in their original state, each in a little niche, where wise ecclesi- 

 astics may expect them to stay forever. It is a place for the aches and 

 the perils of growth alongside of the guidance, and in the love of God. 

 Character-growth is like growth in belief. We come out of the cold ground 

 in obedience to the sunshine; but it means the bursting of some shell of our 

 smaller life; it means rain of tears; it means the throb of a vitality which 

 will root itself downward and open itself upward as the winds blow. It is, 

 impossible to get a shock of corn fully ripe without all this expenditure. 



