This much, therefore, we may say of prayer. We may always pray to be
made better men. We may always pray to be made wiser men. These
prayers will always be answered; for they are prayers for the very
Spirit of God himself, from whom comes all goodness and all wisdom,
and it can never be wrong to ask to be made right.
There are surely, too, evils so terrible, that when they threaten us-
-if God being our Father means anything,--if Christ being our example
means anything--then we have a right to cry, like our Lord himself,
'Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me:' if we only
add, like our Lord, 'Nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt.'
And of dangers in general this we may say--that if we pray against
known dangers which we can avoid, we do nothing but tempt God: but
that against unknown and unseen dangers we may always pray. For
instance, if a sailor needlessly lodges over a foul, tideless
harbour, or sleeps in a tropical mangrove swamp, he has no right to
pray against cholera and fever; for he has done his best to give
himself cholera and fever, and has thereby tempted God. But if he
goes into a new land, of whose climate, diseases, dangers, he is
utterly ignorant, then he has surely a right to pray God to deliver
him from those dangers; and if not,--if he is doomed to suffer from
them,--to pray God that he may discover and understand the new
dangers of that new land, in order to warn future travellers against
them, and so make his private suffering a benefit to mankind.
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