"Experience will convince you, what I have often said, that man can do much for himself. God would not have given him a dis¬ position so easily excited and so easily moved to sorrow and grief, if he had not bestowed at the same time a strength of mind to control these feelings, and to get the better of this grief. He gives nothing directly; he ever wills that man should merit his blessing by his own exertions; we cannot say earn and deserve, for the human can never in this way attain the heavenly. All, too, that God gives must pass through man and his own exertions, as if it were his own peculiar work. It is with the seed which produces the fruit of the Spirit precisely as with that which springs from the earth, or at least in quite a similar way. The seed is not immediately from God or from nature; it must go through all the processes necessary to bring it by degrees to maturity; and if man, under the most favourable sky and the most fruitful soil, wishes to be secure of his harvest, he must bestow his labour and the "sweat of his brow." This is still more the case with the fruit of the Spirit and of the heart, but the certainty of the harvest is still greater."