ur Father; the more
certain I am that we shall never have any heart to pray unless we
believe that God is our Father. If we forget that, we may utter to
Him selfish cries for bread; or when we look at His great power, we
may become terrified, and utter selfish cries to Him not to harm us,
without any real shame or sorrow for sin: but few of us will have
any heart to persevere in those cries. People will say to
themselves, 'If God is evil, He will not care to have mercy on me:
and if He is good, there is no use wearying Him by asking Him what
He has already intended to give me: why should I pray at all?'

The only answer is, 'Pray, because God is your Father, and you His
child.' The only answer; but the most complete answer. I will
engage to say, that if anyone here is ever troubled with doubts
about prayer, those two simple words, 'Our Father,' if he can once
really believe them in their full richness and depth, will make the
doubts vanish in a moment, and prayer seem the most natural and
reasonable of all acts. It is because we are God's children, not
merely His creatures, that He will have us pray. Because He is
educating us to know Him; to know Him not merely to be an Almighty
Power, but a living, loving Person; not merely an irresistible Fate,
but a Father who delights in the love of His children, who wishes to
shape them into His own likeness, and make them fellow-workers with
Him; therefore it is that He will have us pray. Doubtless he
_could_ have given us everything without our asking; for He _does_
already give us almost everything without our asking. But He wishes
to educate us as His children; to make us trust in Him; to make us
love Him; to make us work for Him of our own free wills, in the
great battle which He is carrying on against evil; and that He can
only do by teaching us to pray to Him. I say it reverently, but
firmly. As far as we can see, God cannot educate us to know Him,
The living, willing, loving Father, unless He teaches us to open our
hearts to Him, and to ask Him freely for what we want, just
_because_ He knows what we want already.

If I have not made this plain enough to any of you, my friends, let
me go back to the simple, practical explanation of it which God
Himself has given us in those two words--father and child.

Should you like to have a child who never spoke to you, never asked
you for anything? Of course not. And why? 'Because,' you would
say, 'one might as wel