onder and amazement and thanksgivings and hopes. I am sometimes so
thankful that I still live, that in a world of light and dark shadows I
can show my faith in God, before the other world dawns with its full
day and unclouded brightness--and most of all that I can here and now
pray for those whom He has taught me to love. I cannot conceive this
world without prayer. It is {129} worth while making any efforts,
however desperate, to learn to pray. When the Day dawns, how wonderful
it will be to look back and trace the path through which He has led us
in the Twilight!

_To F. J. C._

Christ's College, Cambridge: 1900.

The more He tries you by His silence, the greater to my mind is the
proof that He believes in you. He knows you will come through. He has
great work for you to do, and therefore you need a strong perfected
faith, and He is trying to give you it.

I am so sorry at what you tell me about prayer. But do go on. When
things are at their darkest light comes. After all God knows how much
you can bear, and He will not, if you will only persevere, allow you to
be utterly confounded. Don't be in the least discouraged at your
inability to concentrate your attention. Even a man who had lived in
the presence of God for years has told us that

The world that looks so dull all day
Glows bright on me at prayer,
And plans that ask no thought but these,
Wake up and meet me there.
My very flesh has restless fits;
My changeful limbs conspire
With all these phantoms of the mind
My inner self to tire.

Do you expect to fare better, when you are exercising faculties which
have been for long more or less dormant? The same man goes on to
say--and I {130} think it is a comforting truth--that God sees further
than we do, sees what we mean:

These surface troubles come and go,
Like rufflings of the sea;
The deeper depth is out of reach
To all, my God, but Thee.

Even if your conscience condemns you, remember that God is greater than
your conscience. He sees that you _want_ to pray, and the battle is
half won when there is even the want. I like these old words of the
hymn:

Satan trembles when he sees
The weakest saint upon his knees,

even if he can't collect his thoughts. I find it usually easier to
pray for others than for myself. I believe in beginning by praying for
what is easiest. I don't kneel down. I find it more possible to
concentrate my at