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
the meaning of the years. Always smarting under the sharp discipline and
missing the merciful design: 'With Him in trouble.' That helps me to
believe in my religion. Trouble is the test of the creeds. A fig for the
orthodoxy that cannot interpret tears! Write vanity upon the religion that
is of no avail in the house of sorrow. When the earthly song falls on
silence we are disposed to call it a pitiable silence. Not so. Let us say a
divinely opportune silence, for when the many voices grow dumb the One
Voice speaks: 'I will be with him in trouble,' and the man who has lost the
everything that is nothing only to find the one thing that is all knows
what that promise means.

_I will deliver him._ What a masterful, availing, victorious presence is
this! How this promise goes out beyond our human ministries of consolation!
How often the most we can do is to walk by our brother's side whilst he
bears a burden we cannot share! How often the earthly sympathy is just a
communion of sad hearts--one weak hand holding another! 'I will deliver
him.' That is not merely sympathy, it is victory. The divine love does not
merely condole, it delivers.

You cannot add anything to this promise. It is complete. The time of the
deliverance is there, the manner of it is there, the whole ministry of help
is there. You say