But the lesson is not easy: analogies drawn from sensible objects or human experience cannot express it fully. The two parables which bear upon it--the one now under consideration, and that of the unjust judge--touch only the edges of the theme. The human motive is in the one picture mean, and in the other wicked; yet these are the best analogies that can be found on earth for expressing this feature of our Father's love. Knowing the defect of the analogy employed in the parable, the Lord has supported and supplemented it by a fact in his own history. The case of the Syro-phoenician woman (Matt. xv. 21-28), although a historic event, serves also as an allegory. The two parables, one enacted and the other spoken, together make the lesson plain, as far as we are capable of comprehending it. In the mouth of these two witnesses the Lord has established his doctrine regarding importunate pressure in prayer. When I was a little child I often stood near a forge, and watched a blacksmith at work, admiring the strength and skill of the wonder-working man. He was wont to treat me kindly and bear with me patiently, although I sometimes stood in his way. At one time he would benevolently answer my childish questions; and at another, instead of answering, would continue to handle his tools with his strong, bare arms, throwing glances of tenderness towards me from time to time out of his deep intelligent eyes, but all in silence. When two pieces of iron, placed in the fire in order to be welded together, became red, I thought and said he should take them out and join them; but he left them lying still in the fire without speaking a word. They grew redder, hotter; they threw out angry sparks: now, thought I, he should certainly lay them together and strike; but the skilful man left them still lying in the fire, and meantime fanned it into a fiercer glow. Not till they were white, and bending with their own weight when lifted, like lilies on their stalks--not till they were at the point of becoming liquid, did he lay the two pieces alongside of each other, and by a few gentle strokes weld them into one. Had he laid them together sooner, however vigorously he had beaten, they would have fallen asunder in his hands. The Lord knows, as we know not, what preparation we need in order that we may be brought into union with himself. He refuses, delays, disappoints,--all in wise love, that he may bring the seeker's heart up to such a glow of desire as will suffice to unite it permanently with his own.