her thou wouldest keep
His commandments, or no. And He humbled thee, and suffered thee to
hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy
fathers know; that He might make thee know that man doth not live by
bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the
Lord doth man live . . . Thou shalt also consider in thine heart, that,
as a man chasteneth his son, so the Lord thy God chasteneth thee."

For, believe me, my friends, whatever nation or whatever man Christ
chooses to be His own, and to be holy and noble and glorious with Him, He
makes them perfect through suffering. First, He stirs up in them strange
longings after what is great and good. He makes them hunger and thirst
after righteousness, and then He lets them see how nothing on this earth,
nothing beautiful or nothing pleasant which they can get or invent for
themselves will satisfy; and so He teaches them to look to Him, to look
for peace and salvation from heaven and not from earth. Then He leads
them, as He led the Jews of old, through the wilderness and through the
sea, through strange afflictions, through poverty, and war, and labour,
that they may learn to know that He is leading them and not themselves;
that they may learn to trust not in themselves, but in Him; not in their
own strength: but in the bread which cometh down from heaven; not in
their own courage, but in Him; and just when all seems most hopeless, He
makes one of them chase a thousand, and by strange and unexpected
providences, and the courage which a just cause inspires, brings His
people triumphant through temptation and danger, and puts to flight the
armies of the heathen, and the inventions of the evil fiend, and
glorifies His name in His chosen people.

So He calls out in the heart of men and of the heart of nations, the two
great twin virtues, which always go hand in hand--Faith in God, and Faith
in themselves. He lets them feel themselves foolish that they may learn
how to be wise in His wisdom. He lets them find themselves weak that
they may learn how to be strong in His strength. Then sometimes He lets
them follow their own devices and be filled with the fruits of their own
inventions. He lets their sinful hearts have free course down into the
depths of idolatry and covetousness, and filthy pleasure and mad self-
conceit, that they may learn to know the bitter fruit that springs from
the accursed root of sin, and come back to Him i