My thought must lie open to him: if he makes me
think, how can I elude him in thinking? 'If I should spread my wings
toward the dawn, and sojourn at the last of the sea, even there thy
hand would lead me, and thy right hand would hold me!' If he has
determined the being, how shall any mode of that being be hidden from
him? If I speak to him, if I utter words ever so low; if I but think
words to him; nay, if I only think to him, surely he, my original, in
whose life and will and no otherwise I now think concerning him, hears,
and knows, and acknowledges! Then shall I not think to him? Shall I
not tell him my troubles--how he, even he, has troubled me by making
me?--how unfit I am to be that which I am?--that my being is not to me
a good thing yet?--that I need a law that shall account to me for it in
righteousness--reveal to me how I am to make it a good--how I am to
_be_ a good, and not an evil? Shall I not tell him that I need him to
comfort me? his breath to move upon the face of the waters of the Chaos
he has made? Shall I not cry to him to be in me rest and strength? to
quiet this uneasy motion called life, and make me live indeed? to
deliver me from my sins, and make me clean and glad? Such a cry is of
the child to the Father: if there be a Father, verily he will hear, and
let the child know that he hears! Every need of God, lifting up the
heart, is a seeking of God, is a begging for himself, is profoundest
prayer, and the root and inspirer of all other prayer.
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