not but at times arise and perplex even the honest
heart. There is the question as to God's sovereign, all-wise,
all-disposing will. How can our wishes, often so foolish, and our will,
often so selfish, overrule or change that perfect will? Were it not
better to leave all to His disposal, who knows what is best, and loves
to give us the very best? Or how can our prayer change what He has
ordained before? Then there is the question as to the need of
persevering prayer, and long waiting for the answer. If God be Infinite
Love, and delighting more to give than we to receive, where the need for
the pleading and wrestling, the urgency, and the long delay of which
Scripture and experience speak? Arising out of this there is still
another question--that of the multitude of apparently vain and
unanswered prayers. How many have pleaded for loved ones, and they die
unsaved. How many cry for years for spiritual blessing, and no answer
comes. To think of all this tries our faith, and makes us hesitate as we
say, "My God will hear me."

Beloved! prayer, in its power with God, and His faithfulness to His
promise to hear it, is a deep spiritual mystery. To the questions put
above answers can be given that remove some of the difficulty. But,
after all, the first and the last that must be said is this: As little
as we can comprehend God can we comprehend this, one of the most blessed
of His attributes, that He hears prayer. It is a spiritual
mystery--nothing less than the mystery of the Holy Trinity. God hears
because we pray in His Son, because the Holy Spirit prays in us. If we
have believed and claimed the life of Christ as our health, and the
fulness of the Spirit as our strength, let us not hesitate to believe in
the power of our prayer too. The Holy Spirit can enable us to believe
and rejoice in it, even where every question is not yet answered. He
will do this, as we lay our questionings in God's bosom, trust His
faithfulness, and give ourselves humbly to obey His command to pray
without ceasing. Every art unfolds its secrets and its beauty only to
the man who practises it. To the humble soul who prays in the obedience
of faith, who practises prayer and intercession diligently, because God
asks it, the secret of the Lord will be revealed, and the thought of the
deep mystery of prayer, instead of being a weary problem, will be a
source of rejoicing, adoration, and faith, in which the unceasing
refrain is ever heard: "_My God will