be fully developed. The
muscles need various trials. If the mind has only one trial, it will
never be fully developed. If the mind studies only one thing, it will
never be trained, developed, educated. If the soul has only one kind
of trial, it will never be developed. "Count it all joy, my brethren,
when ye fall into manifold temptations."--James 1:2 (R. V. Margin,
trials).

But the redeemed, the children of God, often complain that their
trials are so hard. Easy trials do not develop. The one who takes only
light exercises for his muscles will never be fully developed
physically. The boy who works the easy examples and skips the hard
ones, will never be an educated man; he will be only a "hewer of wood
and drawer of water." It takes hard trials to develop the body
properly. It takes hard trials of the mind to develop it properly. It
takes hard trials to develop the soul properly; "That the trial of
your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth,
_though it be tried with fire_." He who asks for only easy trials of
his muscles, asks to remain undeveloped physically; he who asks for
easy trials of his mind, asks to remain undeveloped mentally; he who
asks, yearns, to have no hard trials spiritually, yearns to remain
undeveloped in real character, in his spiritual nature. The hard
trials are the ones that develop. And the more one's muscles have been
developed, the harder should be the trials for those muscles; the more
one's mind is developed, the harder should be the trials for the mind;
the more the redeemed man's spiritual nature is developed, the harder
his trials will be.

That would be an unwise educator who, after training the pupil's mind
up through geometry, would then put him back to studying the simple
branches of mathematics, instead of taking him on into higher
mathematics. Likewise the Heavenly Father does not, after partly
developing the redeemed, His children, by hard trials, return them to
lives of easy trials, but He leads them into yet harder trials. Take
Elijah as an example (see F. B. Meyer's "Elijah"). He is sent to
pronounce God's sentence against Ahab (1 Kings 17:1); he is then sent
into obscurity (17:2, 3); he is left dependent on the ravens for food
(17:4-6); he sees the brook dry up, his only hope for water, for life
(17:7); he is submitted to the humiliation of being supported by a
poor widow (17:8, 9); God delays answering his prayer (17:17-22); God
requires him to expos