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 we hate, if there are any, and all things that live
on the face of the earth. There is a hint of what I mean in those
beautiful words of Tennyson's:
"For what are men better than sheep or goats That nourish a blind life
within the brain, If, knowing God, they lift not hands in prayer Both
for themselves and those who call them friend? For so the whole round
earth is every way Bound by gold chains about the feet of God."
Let us reach out our arms of sympathy to all the world and bring the
world sympathetically into the presence of our Father. So our own
hearts and loves will broaden, until they, too, are divine.
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