reatest privileges.

I do not know whether you have ever noticed what a part difficulties
play in our natural life. They call out man's powers as nothing else
can. They strengthen and ennoble character. We are told that one reason
of the superiority of the Northern nations, like Holland and Scotland,
in strength of will and purpose, over those of the sunny South, as Italy
and Spain, is that the climate of the latter has been too beautiful, and
the life it encourages too easy and relaxing--the difficulties the
former had to contend with have been their greatest boon; how all nature
has been so arranged by God that in sowing and reaping, as in seeking
coal or gold, nothing is found without labour and effort. What is
education but a daily developing and disciplining of the mind by new
difficulties presented to the pupil to overcome? The moment a lesson has
become easy, the pupil is moved on to one that is higher and more
difficult. With the race and the individual, it is in the meeting and
the mastering of difficulties that our highest attainments are found.

It is even so in our intercourse with God. Just imagine what the result
would be if the child of God had only to kneel down and ask, and get,
and go away. What unspeakable loss to the spiritual life would ensue. It
is in the difficulty and delay that calls for persevering prayer, that
the true blessing and blessedness of the heavenly life will be found. We
there learn how little we delight in fellowship with God, and how little
we have of living faith in Him. We discover how earthly and unspiritual
our heart still is, how little we have of God's Holy Spirit. We there
are brought to know our own weakness and unworthiness, and to yield to
God's Spirit to pray in us, to take our place in Christ Jesus, and abide
in Him as our only plea with the Father. There our own will and strength
and goodness are crucified. There we rise in Christ to newness of life,
with our whole will dependent on God and set upon His glory. Do let us
begin to praise God for the need and the difficulty of importunate
prayer, as one of His choicest means of grace.

Just think what our Lord Jesus owed to the difficulties in His path. In
Gethsemane it was as if the Father would not hear: He prayed yet more
earnestly, until "He was heard." In the way He opened up for us, He
learned obedience by the things He suffered, and so was made perfect;
His will was given up to God; His faith in God was proved an