STAGES OF THE JOURNEY
STAGES OF THE JOURNEY
Trials not a few nor small have tested you, and yet today you may raise your Ebenezer, rejoicing that there is more purpose of heart in you to follow Gideon wholly. The halting places of Israel are carefully recorded. Some [p. 197] distinct lesson I suppose was finished at each, and from thence the march began again. I hope you are getting ready for a fresh stage in the journey with increased confidence in God, and with the patience acquired in the several tryings of your faith. Properly the same stage ought never to have to be traversed again. The way one ends one stage in a great measure foretells how the new one will be entered on. A clear brisk evening foretells a good bright morning; and a morning of sombre conflict, neither too bright nor too clouded, is generally the harbinger of a good day. The morning that takes into account the opposing elements and encounters them at the start, generally clears up into a bright and useful day. When the obstacles are not encountered but overlooked there is an unnatural brightness, and one may then always forecast that there will be cloud and storm. G. V. W. has said, ‘If you have had exercise before you enter on a new course, you will have no need for it when you do enter on it, but if you have not had it before, you must have it after’.