And so the very act of prayer justifies God, and honours God, and gives glory to God; for it confesses that God is what He is, a good God, to whom the humblest and the most fallen of His creatures dare speak out the depths of their abasement, and acknowledge that His glory is this—­That in spite of all His majesty, He is one who heareth prayer; a being as magnificent in His justice, as He is magnificent in His majesty and His might.

All this is argued out, as it never has been argued out before or since, in the book of Job:  and for seeing so much as this, was Job approved by God.  But there is a further question, to which the book of Job gives no answer; and to which indeed all the Old Testament gives but a partial answer.  And that is this—­This just and magnificent God, has He also human pity, tenderness, charity, condescension, love?  In one word, have we not only a God in heaven, but a Father in heaven?

That question could only be answered by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Truly He said—­No one cometh to the Father, but by me.  No man hath seen God at any time:  but the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath revealed Him.  He revealed Him in part to Abraham, in part to Moses, to Job, to David, to the prophets.  But He revealed Him perfectly when He said—­I and the Father are one.  He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.  Yes.  Now we can find boundless comfort in the words, “Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost”—­Love and condescension without bounds.  Now we know that there is A Man in the midst of the throne of God, who is the brightness of God’s glory and the express image of His character; a high priest who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, seeing that He was tempted in all things like as we are, yet without sin.

To Him we can cry, with human passion and in human words; because we know that His human heart will respond to our human hearts, and that His human heart again will respond to His divine Spirit, and that His divine Spirit is the same as the divine Spirit of His Father; for their wills and minds are one; and their will and their mind is—­boundless love to sinful man.

Yes, we can look up by faith into the sacred face of Christ, and take refuge by faith within His sacred heart, saying—­If it be good for me, He will give what I ask:  and if He gives it not, it is because that too is good for me, and for others beside me.  In all the chances and changes of this mortal life we can say to Him, as He said in that supreme hour—­“If it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done,” sure that He will present that prayer to His Father, and to our Father, and to His God and to our God; and that whatsoever be the answer vouchsafed by Him whose ways are not as our ways, nor His thoughts as our thoughts, the prayer will not have gone up to Christ in vain.