Would that we knew our God as He is to be known, for His praise and our comfort! Love delights to be used. Love is wearied with ceremoniousness. It is, in its way, a trespasser on love’s very nature, and on its essential mode of acting. Family affection, for instance, puts ceremony aside all the day long. Intimacy is there, and not form. Form would be too cumbrous for it, as Saul’s armour was for David. It has not proved it, and cannot therefore wear it. Love is doing the business of the house in one and another, and the common confidence of all allows it to be done in love’s way. So will the Lord have it with Himself. The intimacy of faith is according to His grace, and ceremony is but a weariness to Him. Grace, as we sing at times, is "a sea without a shore," and we are encouraged to launch forth with full-spread sails. The pot of oil would have been without a bottom, had the woman’s faith _still_ drawn from it; and the king of Israel’s victories would have been in quick succession, till not a Syrian had been left to tell the tale, had his faith trod the field of battle as one who knew it only as a field of conquest. 2 Kings iv. and xiii. But we are straitened. The boldness of faith is too fine an element for the niggard heart of man that cannot trust the Lord: though, blessed to tell it, it is that which _answers_, as well as _uses_, the boundless grace of God. The believing mind is the happy mind; and it is the obedient mind also, the God-glorifying mind. It is the thankful and the worshipping mind; the mind too that keeps the saint the most in readiness for service, and in separation from pollutions. We may be watchful, and it is right; we may be self-judging, and it is right; we may be careful to observe the rule of righteousness in all that we do, and it is right: but withal, to hold the heart up in the light of the favour of God, by the exercise of a simple, child-like, believing mind, this is what glorifies Him, this is what answers His grace, this is what above all proves itself grateful to Him with whom we have to do. "We have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand." It is not attainment, it is not watchfulness, it is not services or duties, which entitle us to take that journey, that gives the soul entrance into that wealthy place of the divine favour--_by faith_ we have access into this grace wherein we stand. But we go onward still in this history, and find it rich in other instructions and illustrations of the life of faith. Sarah now comes forth for the first time in independent action. Chapters xvi. xvii. The famine had already, as we saw, tempted Abraham to seek the _land_ of Egypt, and he got the resources of that land, with shame and sorrow, and a wearisome journey back again to Canaan. Sarah now tempts him to seek the _bondmaid_ of Egypt.