AN ADDRESS TO STUDENTS. 97 



liberty, however, of determining for myself the direc- 

 tion which effort was to take. 



And I may now cry 'Act!' but the potency of 

 action must be yours. I may pull the trigger, but if 

 the gun be not charged there is no result. We are 

 creators in the intellectual world as little as in the 

 physical. We may remove obstacles, and render latent 

 capacities active, but we cannot suddenly change the 

 nature of man. The l new birth ' itself implies the 

 pre-existence of a character which requires not to be 

 created but brought forth. You cannot by any amount 

 of missionary labour suddenly transform the savage 

 into the civilised Christian. The improvement of man 

 is secular not the work of an hour or of a day. But 

 though indubitably bound by our organisations, no 

 man knows what the potentialities of any human mind 

 may be, requiring only release to be brought into 

 action. There are in the mineral world certain crys- 

 tals certain forms, for instance, of fluor-spar, which 

 have lain darkly in the earth for ages, but which 

 nevertheless have a potency of light locked up within 

 them. In their case the potential has never become 

 actual the light is in fact held back by a molecular 

 detent. When these crystals are warmed, the detent 

 is lifted, and an outflow of light immediately begins. 

 I know not how many of you may be in the condition 

 of this fluor-spar. For aught I know, every one of you 

 may be in this condition, requiring but the proper 

 agent to be applied the proper word to be spoken to 

 remove a detent, and to render you conscious of light 

 and warmth within yourselves and sources of both to 

 others. 



The circle of human nature, then, is not complete 

 without the arc of the emotions. The lilies of the 

 field have a value for us beyond their botanical ones 



