Judges 7:4

The Reader will do well, in reading this scripture, to meditate what he may suppose passed in the mind of Gideon, when, out of thirty-two thousand, ten thousand only remained. And yet even of those ten thousand, the Lord declared them to be too many. Oh! it is sweet, when faith is enabled to see all in God's Christ, and nothing of human policy, or human strength mingled with it. The prophet felt this, I am persuaded, when he caused the sacrifice which was to be consumed with fire, to be first deeply drenched in water. And so did Paul, when he had learned to glory in his infirmities, that there might be more scope for the display of Jesus's strength. See 1 Kings 18:33; 2 Corinthians 12:9.