We do not know the use of the sword until we are in battle.  Until the shipwreck comes, no man puts on the lifebelt in his cabin.  Every one of us has large tracts of Christian truth which we think we most surely believe, but which need experience to quicken them, and need us to grow up into the possession of them.  Of all our teachers who turn beliefs assented into beliefs really believed none is so mighty as sorrow; for that makes a man lay a firm hold on the deep things of God’s Word.  ~Alexander MacLaren, The Disciple’s Confession and the Master’s Warning