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Not less was meant by Jesu's prayer,
"That they be perfected in one,"
Not less when God chose each to be
Conformed in image to His Son.2

But life is brief! we trembling cry,
Such wondrous change, how can it be?
We need not doubt: Time's eldest are
But infants in eternity.

God's teaching cannot all be crammed
Within a term of fourscore years;
Its alphabet we scarcely learn
Amid our changing smiles and tears.

But so we take to earnest heart
The lessons planned each passing hour,
Germs of all holy life are ours,

As seeds contain both root and flower.

Our part is this: to nourish well
The life of love and thought within,
To value motive more than deed,
And most to dread the secret sin.

Nor slurring over common tasks
To think no work of mean degree;
The kingliest king once lived below
As carpenter in Galilee.

Then rising higher, each heart must learn
To make its brother's need its own;
The soul that only thinks of self
Lives farthest from the central throne.

Yet more than this: if on our face
Some ray of holy light would shine,
Oft must we climb the mount of God
To breathe the air of things divine.3

And seek high fellowship with Him,
The mighty, glorious Three in One,
Until we faintly catch His glow
As dewdrops may reflect the sun.1

'John xvii. 23. Eph. ii. 21, 22. 3 Ex. xxxiv. 29, 30.

2 Rom. viii. 29. 4 2 Cor. iii. 18, Rev. Ver.

Then when we turn, as needs we must,
Once more to face the garish day,
Each asking eye shall see its Lord
Treading with him the self-same way.1

Nay more, the King Himself shall come
To fill the heart's "most holy place,"
From thence to reach life's outmost bound
And through it all His presence trace.

And here we pause: let us but make
Such possibilities our own,
And come what may in outward life
To us its highest shall be known.

And day by day we thus shall rise
Upward toward that "full-grown man,"
Which infants though as yet we be,
Shall changeless stand-God's perfect plan.

CONSTANCE EVELYN.

Ex. xxxiii. 14. John xiv. 19.

2 I Cor. iii. 16.

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