We do not like such conditions. The heart resents them; but the renewed mind approves them, and justifies God in them. The _sufferings_ of Christ are first, and then the _glories_. 1 Peter i. 11. Job was nearer his good thing in God, when he lay in ashes amid the potsherds, than when he was happy in his nest. Israel did not descend Mount Lebanon, and enter Canaan after a fruitful journey, through a land of cities and villages, and corn and wine, and rivers and vineyards; but they paced it slowly, through one desert after another. And so Abraham was called out from all, to go he knew not whither; but this he knew, that it was God who had called him. And this was faith’s beginning. "He went forth to go into the land of Canaan, and into the land of Canaan he came." He came, however, rather to sojourn than to dwell there. He moves from place to place, and in every place it is but a tent he pitches. He had been told by the God of glory, that the land should be _shown_ him. He should _have_ it in _his seed_ for ever, but in _his own person_ he was but to _see_ it. And, accordingly, we find him _surveying it carefully_, but not _occupying any of it_. For this was the right answer of such a promise. He _looked_ on the land, because the promise was that it should be _shown_ him. He went first to Sichem and to the plain of Moreh; from thence, southward, to the neighbourhood of Bethel and Ai. But he was a man of the tent, and of the tent only, wherever he went. The Canaanite was then in the land, and he was the occupier of the soil; and Abraham did not dispute with him for a foot’s breadth of it. He surveyed it, and had such possession of it as faith and hope imparted; but he sought no personal, present inheritance there. The promise lived in his heart, and the promise was his measure as well as his joy. Chapter xii. Quickly, however, another man in our Abraham is before us; for, like all of us, beloved, he was a man of _nature_, as he was a man of God; and there is none perfect in the life of faith, as we said before, but the Master Himself. Famine touches the land into which the call of God had brought him. A strange surprise this may well be thought to have been. But faith would have been equal to it. Faith in Paul was equal to a like surprise. Called into Macedonia by the voice of God, a prison awaited him. But Paul stands the shock, though Abraham falls before it. Paul and his companion sing hymns in the prison in Macedonia; but Abraham practises a lie, seeking help from the famine of Canaan in another land, of which his call under the God of glory had made no mention whatever.