If we could analyze the influences that build up a godly character to maturity, we might well find that the agencies which we call natural vastly outweigh the supernatural. The book of Proverbs reassures us that this, if it is true, is no reflection on the efficacy of God's grace, for the hard facts of life, which knock some of the nonsense out of us, are God's facts and His appointed school of character; they are not alternatives to his grace, but means of it; for everything is of grace, from the power to know to the power to obey. -Derek Kidner