d its
whole circumference.

For a man is never very long in discovering the mischief he has done
by setting his own wisdom above God's, by underrating God's goodness
and overriding God's will. When Samuel remonstrated with Israel and
warned them that their king would tyrannise over them, all the answer
he got was: "Nay, but we will have a king to rule over us." But, not
many days after, they came to Samuel with a very different petition:
"Pray for thy servants unto the Lord thy God, that we die not; for we
have added unto all our sins this evil, to ask us a king." So it is
always; we speedily recognise the difference between God's wisdom and
our own. What seemed neglect on His part is now seen to be care, and
what we murmured at as niggardliness and needless harshness we now
admire as tenderness. Those at least are our second and wiser
thoughts, even although at first we may be tempted with Manoah when
he saw his son blind and fettered in the Philistine dungeon, to
exclaim,

What thing good
Pray'd for, but often proves our woe, our bane?
I prayed for children and thought barrenness
In wedlock a reproach;
I gain'd a son And such a son
as all men hail'd me happy.
Who would be now a father in my stead?
Oh, wherefore did God grant me my request,
And as a blessing with such pomp adorn'd
Why are His gifts desirable, to tempt
Our earnest prayers, then giv'n with solemn hand
As graces, draw a scorpion's tail behind?

Such, I say, may be our first thoughts; but when the first bitterness
and bewilderment of disappointment are over, when reason and right
feeling begin to dominate, we own that the whole history of our
prayer and its answer has been most humiliating to us, indeed, but
most honouring to God. We see as never before how accurately our
character has been understood, how patiently our evil propensities
have been resisted, how truly our life has been guided towards the
highest ends.

The obvious lessons are:-

1. Be discreet in your importunity. Two parables are devoted to the
inculcation of importunity. And it is a duty to which our own
intolerable cravings drive us. But there is an importunity which
offends God. There is a spiritual instinct which warns us when we are
transgressing the bounds of propriety; a perception whereby Paul
discerned, when he had prayed thrice for the removal of the thorn in
his flesh, that it would not be removed. There are things, about
which a heavenly-min