more persons with the desire of improving the heathen, and to teach them
how to improve them. I say, how to improve them. All sneers, whether at
the failure of missionary labours, or at the small results in return for
the vast sums spent on missions--all such sneers, I say, instead of
deterring us from praying to God on this matter, ought to make us pray
the more earnestly in proportion as they are deserved. For they ought to
remind us that we possibly may not have gone to work as yet altogether in
the right way; that there may be mistakes and deficiencies in our method
of dealing with the heathen. And if so, it seems all the more reason for
asking God to set us and others right, in case we should be wrong; and to
make us and others strong, in case we should be weak.

We thus commit the matter to God. We do not ask God to raise up such
missionary labourers as we think fit: but such as He thinks fit. We do
not pray Him to alter His will concerning the heathen: but to enable us
to do what we know already to be His will. And this course seems to me
eminently rational; provided always, of course, that it is rational to
believe that there is a God who answers prayer; and that if we ask
anything according to His will, He hears us.

Now the older I grow, and the more I see of the chances and changes of
this mortal life, and of the needs and longings of the human heart, the
more important seems this question, and all words concerning it, whether
in the Bible or out of the Bible--

Is there anywhere in the universe any being who can hear our prayers? Is
prayer a superfluous folly, or the highest prudence?

I say--Is there a being who can even hear our prayers? I do not say, a
being who will always answer them, and give us all we ask: but one who