^ The sweetest and the best talent that God gives to any man or woman in this world is the talent of prayer. And the best usury that any man or woman brings back to God when He comes to reckon with them at the end of this world is a life of prayer.
' Luther, The Oreaier Catechism.
PSALM cxLv. i6 i8i
And those servants best put their Lord's money to the exchangers who rise early and sit late, as long as they are in this world, ever finding out and ever following after better and better methods of prayer, and ever forming more secret, more steadfast, and more spiritually fruitful habits of prayer: till they literally pray without ceasing, and till they continually strike out into new enterprises in prayer, and new achievements, and new enrich- ments. It was this that first drew me to Teresa. It was her singular originality in prayer and her complete captivity to prayer. It was the time she spent in prayer, and the refuge, and the peace, and the sanctification and the power for carrying on hard and unrequited work that she all her life found in prayer. It was her fidelity and her utter surrender of herself to this first and last of all her religious duties, till it became more a delight, and, indeed, more an indulgence, than a duty. With Teresa it was prayer first, and prayer last, and prayer always. With Teresa literally all things were sanctified, and sweetened, and made fruitful by prayer.^
(3) When we are ready, then, to receive God's satisfying bounty we will bring all our desires before His throne, and their fulfilment will surely come to pass. All that our heart has ever craved of the beautiful and good, but which we have never had ; all we have ever longed for and have never reached ; all that has been taken from us that was dear and precious to our souls and to the loss of which we have never become reconciled ; all we have ever wanted without being able to win, though we have tried hard and earnestly so to do ; all we have ever won and been unable to keep, or have kept only to find that the joy we expected in it has never been ours — in all these we have been seeking something which is waiting for us in the hands of God, and He will not fail to give it us when we are ready to receive it.
And the amazing thing is that God more than satisfies our desires. His bounty is so great that many are unwilling to take His greatest gifts. For He has given His only-begotten and well- beloved Son, and how many refuse Him ! How foolish it is to take God's lesser gifts and refuse the greatest of all ! The man in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress gathering the straws with the muck- rake and neglecting the crown above his head is a fit picture of such un-wisdom. Let us not follow his miserable example, but rather, while we receive with thankfulness all the good that God ' A. Whyte, Smta Teresa, 18.
i82 THE GOOD PROVIDENCE OF GOD
gives us for the body, accept with equal readiness the Gift He has provided for the soul.
^ Work we may, seek and strive, and we are all bidden do this; but in the end it is not our doing. It is not the need we feel of Christ which saves us. It is Christ, and He is a gift. If He did not place Himself before us, we could never see Him. He puts Himself in our hands. Unless we can grasp Him there, we shall never grasp Him anywhere. He lies, like treasure, at our feet ; if we do not find Him there, we shall never find Him any- where. He lies, like the pearl, under our eyes : if we do not see Him there, we shall never see Him anywhere.^
' £. W. Barbour, Thoughts, 99.
Tenderness and Power.
«B3
Literature.
Ainsworth (P. C), The Pilgrim Church, 28. Blackley (T.), Practical Sei-Tumis, ii. 82. Fairbairn (A. M.), Christ in the Centuries, 205. Ford (H.), Sermons with Analyses, 61. Harper (F.), A Year with Christ, 47. Holden (J. S.), Life's Flood-Tide, 106. Matheson (G.), Times of Retirement, 206. Parker (J.), Sttidies in Texts, vi. 79.
„ „ The City Temple, iii. 217. Wilmot-Buxton (H. J.), Day by Day Duty, 36. Christian World Pulpit, xxvii. 338 (Canon Curteis). Sunday Mayazine, 1895, p. 353 (\V. J. Foxell).
1S4
Tenderness and Power.
He healeth the broken in heart,
And bindeth up their wounds.
He telleth the number of the stars ;
He giveth them all their names.— Ps. cxivii. 3, 4.
The old Hebrew Psalmist, by placing in striking contrast the infinitely great and the infinitely little, brings out, in the most effective way possible, the providence of God as at once compre- hensive enough to superintend the interests of the collective universe, and kindly and careful enough not to neglect the smallest individual. While His omniscient eye numbers the innumerable stars, His gentle touch heals the broken heart. While His spoken word holds the glistening planets to their spheres, His tender hand binds up our bleeding wounds. These are old, very old thoughts, the imaginings of ancient Hebrew men, who little dreamed of the strange secrets hidden in the earth beneath their feet, or in the heaven above their heads ; but, though between their day and ours lie centuries crowded with the most splendid discoveries man has made, yet neither science nor philosophy has ever proclaimed a truth that can match in sub- limity, equal in beauty, or rival in its wealth of eternal human interest, this old Hebrew faith — " He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds. He telleth the number of the stars ; he giveth them all their names."