History of Saints

Often, too, we have seen in the first freshness of soul in a young saint apprehending the truth, a deeper and more spiritual recognition of the will of the Lord than at later times in his life. He may have turned aside from the performance of it, or he may have sought to do it in the power of man, thinking that because it was right and of God he should do so. Years after (if there was no failure or turning aside) the thing is done by God Himself in him. Or if failure supervened and turned aside, it was forced upon him through sorrows and trials and breakings of the flesh and of the will of man which had come in to hinder.
You see it too, in those that have attempted to serve in the gospel or in the Church. The energy of the heart which pushed forth the young man as a servant fails; he breaks down and is coldly received or rebuked. If there is gift from Christ, the thing was right and of God, but the energy was self, unbroken. Painful lessons followed, but if we follow that man's history, if he walk with God, he will come forth brightly in useful service to the Lord. God will do by him what he tried to do himself in vain. In Abraham's case we notice he was enabled to take home "the sentence of death" to himself in the sign of circumcision (Gen. 17). Thus he learned the fruitlessness of flesh, and to be cut off from himself in the things of God.
F.G. Patterson