Distrust is atheism, and the barrier to all growth. Lord, we do not understand thee, because we do not trust thy Father--whole-hearted to us, as never yet was mother to her first-born! Full of care, as if he had none, we think this and that escapes his notice, for this and that he does not think! While we who are evil would die to give our children bread to eat, we are not certain the only Good will give us anything of what we desire! The things of thy world so crowd our hearts, that there is no room in them for the things of thy heart, which would raise ours above all fear, and make us merry children in our Father's house! Surely many a whisper of the watching Spirit we let slip through brooding over a need not yet come to us! To-morrow makes to-day's whole head sick, its whole heart faint. When we should be still, sleeping or dreaming, we are fretting about an hour that lies a half sun's-journey away! Not so doest thou, Lord! thou doest the work of thy Father! Wert thou such as we, then should we have good cause to be troubled! But thou knowest it is difficult, _things_ pressing upon every sense, to believe that the informing power of them is in the unseen; that out of it they come; that, where we can descry no hand directing, a will, nearer than any hand, is moving them from within, causing them to fulfil his word! Help us to obey, to resist, to trust. The care that is filling your mind at this moment, or but waiting till you lay the book aside to leap upon you--that need which is no need, is a demon sucking at the spring of your life. 'No; mine is a reasonable care--an unavoidable care, indeed!' 'Is it something you have to do this very moment?' 'No.' 'Then you are allowing it to usurp the place of something that is required of you this moment!' 'There is nothing required of me at this moment.' 'Nay, but there is--the greatest thing that can be required of man.' 'Pray, what is it?' 'Trust in the living God. His will is your life.' 'He may not will I should have what I need!' 'Then you only think you need it. Is it a good thing?' 'Yes, it is a good thing.' 'Then why doubt you shall have it?' 'Because God may choose to have me go without it.' 'Why should he?' 'I cannot tell.' 'Must it not be in order to give you something instead?' 'I want nothing instead.' 'I thought I was talking to a Christian!' 'I can consent to be called nothing else.' 'Do you not, then, know that, when God denies anything a child of his values, it is to give him something _he_ values?' 'But if I do not want it?' 'You are none the less miserable just because you do not have it. Instead of his great possessions the young man was to have the company of Jesus, and treasure in heaven. When God refused to deliver a certain man from a sore evil, concerning which he three times besought him, unaccustomed to be denied, he gave him instead his own graciousness, consoled him in person for his pain.' 'Ah, but that was St. Paul!' 'True; what of that?'