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I plant many seeds in my garden from which I do not look for blossoms the year that I plant them. Yet I nourish them and transplant them; and when the days of November commence to cut them down, I take them up, roots and all, and hide them in a dark frost-proof dwelling for the winter. There they rest till the spring comes, when I go and take those buried roots and stems and bring them forth out of their grave, and put them into a better soil. And before September comes round in the second year of their growth, they will do what they had not time to do in the first. It takes two summers to get a blossom on many plants. It takes I know not how long a series of summers to develop the highest blossoms and the truest fruit that we can bear. God takes us from this life and hides us in the grave; and then, in His good time, transplants us in another soil. The work is not done in this life. It is not done when you are converted, or even when you have gone on for forty years. Such is the pattern of that work which God is carrying forward, such is the majesty of that manhood which He means shall yet flame in glory in us, that He cannot accomplish His purpose in the narrow compass of our present life; so He buries us over the winter of death, and then puts us in a better soil and a better summer to take our next growth. And what there is beyond these, "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive"; but doubtless there are to be serial developments, infinite and endless.

(H. W. Beecher.)

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KJV: And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book:

WEB: Therefore Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book;