The Law of Spiritual Growth [pp. 608-640]

632
Law of Spiritual Growth.
[OCTOBER
For where the watcher, that with eye
Turned eastward, yet could ever say,
When the faint glooming in the sky
First lightened into day?
Or maiden, by an opening flower
That many a summer morn has stood,
Could fix upon the very hour
It ceased to be a bud?
The rainbow-colours mix and blend
Each with the other, until none
Can tell where fainter hues had end,
And deeper tints begun.
But only this much doth appear That the pale hues are deeper grown;
The day has broken bright and clear;
The bud is fully blown.
Dear child, and happy shalt thou be,
If from this hour with just increase
All good things shall grow up in thee,
By such unmarked degrees:
If there shall be no dreary space
Between thy present self and past,
No dreary, miserable place
With spectral shapes aghast:
But the full graces of thy prime
Shall, in their weak beginnings, be
Lost in an unremembered time
Of holy infancy."*
Now this, just this, as we have already seen, is the scriptural
idea of religious growth. But the question may be asked, Are
there not exceptions to this rule? Does it not sometimes happen that professing Christians, at certain points of their history,
are conscious of a transition into a new state of experience
which is so marked and sudden as to appear almost like a
second conversion? We answer, Yes-it does undoubtedly happen; but never, in any case, where there has previously been a
healthy spiritual growth. It is always the result of some antecedent disease or defect in the soul, just as the rapid increase of
flesh and the sudden spring into new life and vigour, of which an
invalid is conscious when recovering his bodily health, is the
result of the previous disease and prostration which he has suffered. If, in the ordinary and natural condition of the body, a
child, for example, should increase in size and strength in the
* Richard Chenevix Trench, D. D., Dean of Westminster.