But through this severe testing, Sarah nowhere appears on the scene. It may be, infinite love would spare the mother’s heart. It may be, also, the last great trial of her faith took place in the tent, stretched under the oaks, in the plain of Mamre. There is a Jewish tradition that when Sarah fully learned the nature of the journey to Moriah, and the scene which there took place, the shock of it killed her, and Abraham found her dead on his return home. This may do as a tradition, but not as the _finale_ of God’s dealing with His people. The potter, as he fashions the vessel upon the wheel, does not seek to break it. So God does not test us beyond our capacity to endure. Then, also, if Isaac was born when Sarah was ninety years of age, and she died at the age of one hundred and twenty-seven, and the scene on Moriah took place when Isaac was a lad of sixteen or seventeen, she lived for twenty years after that event, to be a comfort and a blessing in her home. At length this princess in Israel, tested and tried, and found true, died at Hebron at the good age of one hundred and twenty-seven years, and Abraham wept over her, and well he might, for she had shared his trials and was a good and faithful wife, and she was a mother, even more than a wife. Abraham purchased the cave of Machpelah of Ephron, the Hittite, and tenderly laid the remains of this lovely woman to rest in one of the chambers of the cave. It is the first burial mentioned in the Sacred records. And the tomb remains unto this day, hallowed in the eyes of Jews, Christians and Mohammedans alike, and was visited by the writer. The lesson which God would teach us in the life of this woman in White Raiment is that testings are necessary to the development of faith, and that these testings come to us in the most ordinary events of our daily lives. All Christians surely know by experience that events which seemed all darkness at first have ultimately brought them nearer to the light. The much-dreaded cloud has proved to be only a veil under which God hides His mighty power. His gracious query, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” has comforted us, and has turned what we thought to be a curse into a blessing. O, can we not trust Him in the darkness as well as in the light, knowing that He can bring calm out of storm, and that he often chooses the darkness and the cloud as a special medium by which to reveal himself? Could we climb to heaven by some other way, and escape the shadows and the storms of life, how much should we miss of the blessed manifestations of God’s revelations of His power.