with and mocked, ere we call upon God in heaven to fill us with abiding
treasure and fold us in eternal love.

_He shall call upon Me, and, I will answer him._ But I have called, says
one, and He has not answered. I called upon Him when my little child was
sick unto death, and, spite my calling, the little white soul fluttered
noiselessly into the great beyond. My friend, you call that tiny green
mound in the churchyard God's silence. Some day you will call it God's
answer. Our prayers are sometimes torn out of our hearts by the pain of the
moment. God's answers come forth from the unerring quiet of eternity. 'He
shall call upon Me.' 'He shall ask Me to help him, but he does not know how
he can be helped. He is hedged about by a thousand limitations of thought.
His life is full of distortions. He cannot distinguish between a blessing
and a curse. I cannot heed the dictations of his prayers, but I will answer
him.' This is the voice of Him to whom the ravelled complexities of men's
minds are simplicity itself; who dwells beyond the brief bewilderments and
mistaken desirings and false ideals of men's hearts.

Oh these divine answers! How they confuse us! It is their perfection that
bewilders us; it is their completeness that carries them beyond our
comprehension.

There is the stamp of the local and the temporary on all our asking. The
answer that comes is wider than life and longer than time, and fashioned
after a completeness whereof we do not even dream.

_I will be with him in trouble._ Trouble is that in life which becomes to
us a gospel of tears, a ministry of futility. This is because we have
grasped the humanity of the word and missed the divinity of it. We are
always doing that. Always gathering the meaning of the moments and missing