Our best, truest prayers are not for earthly things, but for spiritual blessings. When the objects are temporal, we do not know what we should pray for--what would be really a blessing to us. You are a loving parent, and your child is very ill. It seems that it must die. You fall upon your knees before God to pray, but you do not know what to ask. Your breaking heart would quickly plead, "Lord, spare my precious child"; but you do not know that that is best. Perhaps to live would not be God's sweetest gift to your child, or to you. So, not daring to choose, you can only say, "Lord God, I cannot speak more; but thou knowest thy child; thou understandest what is best." Or, some plan of yours, which you have long cherished, seems about to be thwarted. You go to God, and begin to pray; but you do not know what to ask. You can only say, "Lord, I cannot tell what is best; but thou knowest." What a comfort it is that God does indeed know, and that we may safely leave our heart's burden in his hand, without any request whatever! "Lord, I had chosen another lot, But then I had not chosen well; Thy choice, and truly thine, was good; No different lot, search heaven or hell, Had blessed me, fully understood, None other which thou orderest not." We can do little more than this in any request for temporal things. Says Archdeacon Farrar: "There are two things to remember about prayers for earthly things: One, that to ask mainly for earthly blessings is a dreadful dwarfing and vulgarization of the grandeur of prayer, as though you asked for a handful of grass, when you might ask for a handful of emeralds; the other that you must always ask for earthly desires with absolute submission of your own will to God's." So silence is oft-times the best and truest praying--bowing before God in life's great crises; but saying nothing, leaving the burden in God's hand without any choosing. We are always safe when we let God guide us in all our ways. "Ill that he blesses is our good, And unblest good is ill; And all is right that seems most wrong, If it be his sweet will." Many of the richest possibilities of prayer lie beyond valleys of pain and sorrow. The best things of life cannot be gotten save at sore cost. When we pray for more holiness, we do not know what we are asking for; at least we do not know the price we must pay to get that which we ask. Our "Nearer, my God, to thee," must be conditioned by, and often can come only through, "E'en though it be a cross, That raiseth me."