d Mr. Wet-
eyes in one, say with that deep man in his _Private Devotions_, say: 'I
need more grief, O God; I plainly need it. I can sin much, but I cannot
correspondingly repent. O Lord, give me a molten heart. Give me tears;
give me a fountain of tears. Give me the grace of tears. Drop down, ye
heavens, and bedew the dryness of my heart. Give me, O Lord, this saving
grace. No grace of all the graces were more welcome to me. If I may not
water my couch with my tears, nor wash Thy feet with my tears, at least
give me one or two little tears that Thou mayest put into Thy bottle and
write in Thy book!' If your heart is hard, and your eyes dry, make
something like that your continual prayer.

2. 'A poor-man,' said Mr. Desires-awake, about his associate. 'Mr. Wet-
eyes is a poor man, and a man of a broken spirit.' 'Let Oliver take
comfort in his dark sorrows and melancholies. The quantity of sorrow he
has, does it not mean withal the quantity of sympathy he has, and the
quantity of faculty and of victory he shall yet have? Our sorrow is the
inverted image of our nobleness. The depth of our despair measures what
capability and height of claim we have to hope. Black smoke, as of
Tophet, filling all your universe, it can yet by true heart-energy become
flame, and the brilliancy of heaven. Courage!'

'This is the angel of the earth,
And she is always weeping.'

3. 'A poor man, and a man of a broken spirit, and yet one that can speak
well to a petition.' Yes; and you will see how true that eulogy of Mr.
Wet-eyes is if you will run over in your mind the outstanding instances
of successful petitioners in the Scriptures. As you come down the Old
and the New Testaments you will be astonished and encouraged to find how
prevailing a fountain of tears always is with God. David with his
swimming bed; Jeremiah with his head waters; Mary Magdalene over His feet
with her welling eyes; Peter's bitter cry all his life long as often as
he heard a cock crow, and so on. So on through a multitude whose names
are written in heaven, and who went up to heaven all the way with
inconsolable sorrow because of their sins. They took words and turned to
the Lord; but,--better than the best words,--they took tears, or rather,
their tears took them. The best words, the words that the Holy Ghost
Himself teacheth, if they are without tears, will avail nothing. Even
inspired words will not pass through; while, all the time, tea