The human parent may use the child’s innocent and natural wishes as one means of attracting its attention, but would surely be grievously disappointed if the child never looked beyond the advantages to be reaped by the power of speaking to its father—never rose to the perception that intercourse with him was in itself the greatest of human joys, not a mere means to an end. And in the same sort of sense I feel that, when people insist upon “the efficacy of prayer,” they are insisting upon its very lowest use; and that the concentration of attention upon this lowest use creates a serious stumbling-block, which hinders faith in two ways. 1. It suggests a _test_ which is not and cannot be uniformly favourable. Whatever the power of prayer may be—and words, I believe, must wholly fail to express it—particular requests are certainly not always granted. Our Lord explicitly prepares us for the refusal of blind requests, and our own good sense and our daily experience combine to make it abundantly clear that many requests are, and must always be, refused. 2. And more than this, there is, I believe, nobility enough in every heart capable of real prayer to cause a recoil from the idea of using it only for the purpose of obtaining advantages, be they of what kind they may. I believe, that is, that the modern perplexity about prayer arises not only from a difficulty in imagining God as One who can be influenced by our desires, but largely also from a latent sense that, even if true in fact, that is a very inadequate conception of Him to whom our worship should be addressed, and who must assuredly know better than we do what things we have need of—from a recoil, in short, against the low and coarse and unworthy tone of much that is urged on the other side. Therefore I think that in the long-run an immeasurable gain will result to faith from modern outspokenness in recognizing the difficulties of this subject. Prayer, if regarded as an attempt to wrest favours from our heavenly Father by dint of mere importunity, is doomed to many disappointments, and stands sorely in need of their purifying discipline. Prayer is not really prayer—that is, it is not true communion with God—till it rises above the region in which wilfulness is possible, to the height of “Not my will, but Thine, be done.”