ere is comfort, there is strength, there is peace, there is help.
Why, even in our human life do you not know how it is? You go to some
friend you trust and love with your trouble. Perhaps he cannot lift it
with one of his fingers; but he can tell you that he loves you, he
cares, he would help you if only he were able. He can put his arm
around you, he can say, God bless you; and you are stronger. You go
away with lifted shoulder and with head that fronts the heavens; and
you are able to bear the burden. Is there nothing akin to this in the
sense of coming into intimate relations with the eternal Father, when
troubled, pressed, when the outside world is dark, and feeling that
here is refuge in a love deeper, higher, unspeakably more tender than
that of the dearest friend that ever lived?

And this suggests another point. I have no doubt that sometimes, in my
attempts to lead the devotions of this congregation, I use words which,
if I were to sit down and critically analyze, I could not logically
justify. I do not mean to; but, perhaps, sometimes I do. What of it?
When my children were small, and my little boy came and climbed up in
my lap and expressed himself in all sorts of illogical and foolish
ways, telling me every sort of thing he wanted, impossible things,
unwise things, things I could not get for him, things I would not get
if I could, because I thought myself wiser than he, did these things
trouble me? I loved to have him pour out his whole little soul into
mine, because he was my child and because I did not expect him to be
over-wise. It was this simple touch of kinship, this simple communion
of father and child, which was sweet and tender and true.

So I believe with my whole soul that God loves us, his little children,
with an unspeakable tenderness, a tenderness infinitely beyond that
with which any earthly father ever loved a child, and that we can go to
him freely and pour out our hearts, whether it is wise in expression or
unwise; only let us do it with the feeling, "Not my will, Father, but
Thine, be done," not as though we were trying to persuade him to do
things for us that he would not otherwise do, but merely as the pouring
out of our gratitude, our tenderness, our love.

There is another thing that needs just a word of suggestion. I believe
that we ought to pray to God, not in the sense of begging for things,
but sympathetically bringing in the arms of our sympathy all those we
love and all those