This is an ingenious, instructive, and legitimate pursuit. Perhaps you might not elect to preach upon, “Take it by the tail,” but the remark arising from it is natural enough—“there is a way of taking everything.” Moses took the serpent by the tail, so there is a mode of grasping our afflictions and finding them stiffen in our hands into a wonder-working rod; there is a way of holding the doctrines of grace, a way of encountering ungodly men, and so on.
