race is sufficient for thee!_ On
reaching home, I looked it up in the original, and at last it came to me
in this way. _MY grace is sufficient for THEE_! "Why," I said to myself,
"I should think it is!" and I burst out laughing. I never fully
understood what the holy laughter of Abraham was like until then. It
seemed to make unbelief so absurd. It was as though some little fish,
being very thirsty, was troubled about drinking the river dry; and
Father Thames said: "Drink away, little fish, my stream is sufficient
for thee!" Or as if a little mouse in the granaries of Egypt, after
seven years of plenty, feared lest it should die of famine, and Joseph
said: "Cheer up, little mouse, my granaries are sufficient for thee!"
Again I imagined a man away up yonder on the mountain saying to himself:
"I fear I shall exhaust all the oxygen in the atmosphere." But the earth
cries: "Breathe away, O man, and fill thy lungs; my atmosphere is
sufficient for thee!"' John Bunyan enjoyed a moment's merriment of the
same kind when he threw the last two words into the scale and saw his
despair dwindle into insignificance on the instant.

III

Some such thought shines through the passage in which Paul tells us how
the great words came to him. He was irritated by his thorn; he prayed
repeatedly for its removal; but the only answer that he received was
this: _My grace is sufficient for thee!_ Grace sufficient for a thorn!
It is an almost ludicrous association of ideas!

It is so easy for Bunyan to believe that the divine grace is sufficient
for the wide, wide world; it is so difficult to realize that it is
sufficient for him!

It is so easy for Wesley to believe in the forgiveness of sins: it is so
difficult for him to believe in the forgiveness of his own!

It is so easy for Paul to believe in the grace that is sufficient to
redeem a fallen race: it is so difficult for him to believe in the grace
that can fortify him to endure his thorn!

And yet, in a fine essay on _Great Principles and Small Duties_, Dr.
James Martineau has shown that it is the lowliest who most need the
loftiest; it is the tiny thorn that calls for the most tremendous grace.
The gravest mistake ever made by educationalists is, he says, the
mistake of supposing that those who know little are good enough to teach
those who know less. It is a tragedy, he declares, when the master is
only one stage ahead of his pupil. 'The ripest scholarship,' he
maintains, 'is alone q