If your path had been smooth, you would have depended upon your own surefootedness; but God roughened the path, so you have to take hold of His hand. If the weather had been mild, you would have loitered along the watercourses, but at the first howl of the storm you quickened your pace heavenward and wrapped around you the warm robe of Saviour's righteousness.

Thomas De Witt Talmage (1832-1902), The Pathway of Life, New York: The Christian Herald, 1894 p 100.