“Eleven days,” and yet it took them forty years? Alas! we need not travel far for the answer. It is too much like ourselves. How slowly we get over the ground! What windings and turnings! How often we have to go back, and travel over the same ground again and again. We are slow travelers, because we are slow learners. Our God is a faithful and wise, as well as a patient Teacher. He will not permit us to pass over our lessons hastily.
Sometimes, perhaps, we think we have mastered a lesson, and we attempt to move on to another, but our wise Teacher knows better, and He sees the need of deeper plowing. He will not have us mere theorists or smatterers; He will keep us, if need be, year after year at our scales until we learn to sing.