er spoken, together make the lesson plain, as far as we are capable
of comprehending it. In the mouth of these two witnesses the Lord has
established his doctrine regarding importunate pressure in prayer.

When I was a little child I often stood near a forge, and watched a
blacksmith at work, admiring the strength and skill of the
wonder-working man. He was wont to treat me kindly and bear with me
patiently, although I sometimes stood in his way. At one time he would
benevolently answer my childish questions; and at another, instead of
answering, would continue to handle his tools with his strong, bare
arms, throwing glances of tenderness towards me from time to time out of
his deep intelligent eyes, but all in silence. When two pieces of iron,
placed in the fire in order to be welded together, became red, I thought
and said he should take them out and join them; but he left them lying
still in the fire without speaking a word. They grew redder, hotter;
they threw out angry sparks: now, thought I, he should certainly lay
them together and strike; but the skilful man left them still lying in
the fire, and meantime fanned it into a fiercer glow. Not till they were
white, and bending with their own weight when lifted, like lilies on
their stalks--not till they were at the point of becoming liquid, did he
lay the two pieces alongside of each other, and by a few gentle strokes
weld them into one. Had he laid them together sooner, however vigorously
he had beaten, they would have fallen asunder in his hands.

The Lord knows, as we know not, what preparation we need in order that
we may be brought into union with himself. He refuses, delays,
disappoints,--all in wise love, that he may bring the seeker's heart up
to such a glow of desire as will suffice to unite it permanently with
his own.

A father, when his son asks bread, does not give him a stone: when he
asks a fish, does not give him a serpent. Thus, our Father in heaven
gives good things to them that ask him. "The giving God" ([Greek: tou
didontos Theou] James i. 5), is one of his attributes. Why, then, do not
all his children get whatever they ask, and when they ask it? One
reason, doubtless, is, that the child, ignorant and short-sighted, often
asks a stone or a serpent because they seem beautiful,--not knowing that
the one is destitute of nourishment, and that the other will sting--and
then frets when things are given to him wholly different from those
which he des