....other than miserable can no one be, under the yoke of a nature contrary to his own. Comfort thyself then, who findest thine own heart and soul, or rather the things that move therein, too much for thee: God will avenge his own elect. He is not delaying: he is at work for thee. Only thou must pray, and not faint. Ask, ask; it shall be given you. Seek most the best things; to ask for the best things is to have them; the seed of them is in you, or you could not ask for them. 

But perhaps, in saying “He will avenge them speedily,” the Lord was thinking of what most troubles his true disciples; and the suggestion is comforting to those whose foes are within them; for, if so, he recognizes the evils of self, against which we fight, not as parts of ourselves, but as our foes, on which he will avenge the true self that is at strife with them. And certainly no evil is, or ever could be, of the essential nature of the creature God made!

To give us the spiritual gift we desire, God may have to begin far back in our spirit, in regions unknown to us, and do much work that we can be aware of only in the results. With his own presence, the one thing for which most earnestly we cry, he may be approaching our consciousness from behind, coming forward through regions of our darkness into our light, long before we begin to be aware that he is answering our request—has answered it and is visiting his child. 

Even such as ask amiss may sometimes have their prayers answered. The Father will never give the child a stone that asks for bread; but I am not sure that he will never give the child a stone that asks for a stone. If the Father say, “My child, that is a stone; it is not bread;” and the child answer, “I am sure it is bread; I want it,” may it not be well he should try his bread?

But what if the eternal, limitless Love, which, demanding all, gives all, should say, “Pray on, my child; I am hearing you; it goes through me in help to him. We are of one mind about it; I help and you help. I shall have you all safe home with me by and by! There is no fear, only we must work, and not lose heart. Go, and let your light so shine before men that they may see your good things, and glorify me by knowing that I am light and no darkness.”  

...why should my love be powerless to help another? If in God we live and move and have our being; if the very possibility of loving lies in this, that we exist in and by God himself, we must then be nearer to each other, we must by prayer come closer to each other, than by any bodily proximity or interchange of help. Surely, in the Eternal, hearts are never parted! 

I think God will help my friend that I may be helped—perhaps help me to help him. You see, in praying for another, we pray for ourselves—for the relief of the needs of our love. Would God give us love, and leave that love altogether helpless in us?  

 If we believe that God knows every man’s needs, and will, for love’s sake, not spare one pang that may serve to purify the soul of one of his children, then how can we think he will in any sort alter his way with one because another prays for him? The prayer would arise from nothing in the person prayed for—why should it influence God?

Poor, indeed, was the making of the wine in earthen pots of stone, compared with its making in the lovely growth of the vine, the live roots gathering water from the earth; but what makes it precious to me is the regard of our Lord to a wish of his mother...

No man is so tied by divine law that he can nowise modify his work: shall God not modify his? Law is the slave of Life. If you say, he has made things to go, set them going, and left them—then I say, If his machine interfered with his answering the prayer of a single child, he would sweep it from him—not to bring back chaos, but to make room for his child.

How could he be Father, who creating, would not make provision, would not keep room for the babbled prayers of his children?