A Knight of the Nineteenth Century

"I cannot understand it," said the young man, looking at her in deep perplexity.

"That does not prevent its being true. The most skilful physician cannot explain why certain beneficial effects follow the use of certain remedies; but when these effects become an established fact of experience it were sensible to employ the remedy as soon as possible. One might suffer a great deal, and, perhaps, perish, while asking questions and waiting for answers. To my mind the explanation is very simple. God is our Creator, and calls himself our Father. It would be natural on general principles that he should take a deep interest in us; but he assures us of the profoundest love, employing our tenderest earthly ties to explain how he feels toward us. What is more natural than for a father to help a child? What is more certain, also, than that a wise father would teach a child to do all within his ability to help himself, and so develop the powers with which he is endowed? Only infants are supposed to be perfectly helpless."

"It would seem that what you say ought to be true, and yet I have always half-feared God--that is, when I thought about him at all. I have been taught that he was to be served; that he was a jealous God; that he was angry with the sinful, and that the prayers of the wicked were an abomination. I am sure the Bible says the latter is true, or something like it."

"It is true. If you set your heart on some evil course, or are deliberating some dishonesty or meanness, be careful how you make long or short prayers to God while wilfully persisting in your sin. When a man is robbing and cheating, though in the most legal manner--when he is gratifying lust, hate, or appetite, and intends to continue doing so--the less praying he does the better. An avowed infidel is more acceptable. But the sweetest music that reaches heaven is the honest cry for help to forsake sin; and the more sinful the heart that thus cries out for deliverance the more welcome the appeal. Let me illustrate what I mean by your own case. If you should go out from this prison in the same spirit that you did once before, seeking to gain position and favor only for the purpose of gratifying your own pride--only that self might be advantaged, without any generous and disinterested regard for others, without any recognition of the sacred duties you owe to God, and content with a selfish, narrow, impure soul--if, with such a disposition, you should commence asking for God's help as a means to these petty, miserable ends, your prayers would, and with good reason, be an abomination to him. But if you had sunk to far lower depths than those in which you now find yourself, and should cry out for purity, for the sonship of a regenerated character, your voice would not only reach your divine Father's ear, but his heart, which would yearn toward you with a tender commiseration that I could not feel were you my only son."