I. THE BURDEN WHICH IS BORNE BY EACH HUMAN HEART. With our complex nature, and our many human relationships, we lie open to many ills and sorrows. These may be:

1. Bodily; pain or weakness, or threatened serious disease.

2. Temporal; some difficulty or danger connected with "our circumstances."

3. Sympathetic; some trouble of heart we are suffering by reason of our strong attachment to others who suffer and are in distress.

4. Spiritual; heart-ache, disappointment, compunction, doubt, anxious inquiry after God. "Every one knows his own sore and his own grief."

II. THE APPEAL OF THE SOUL TO THE SUPREME. Trouble does lead men to the God of their life, to the Father of their spirit. "Men say, 'God be pitiful,' who ne'er said, 'God be praised.'" We cannot supply our own need; we find our own "insufficiency for ourselves;" we must look beyond ourselves, and in what direction? Man often fails us.

1. We cannot speak to him, either because we cannot get his ear, or because we do not care to divulge our secret grief to any human heart whatsoever.

2. Or we have tried to secure human sympathy, and have failed; men are too much occupied with their own affairs and their own troubles to make much room in their hearts for ours.

3. Or we cannot discover the human hand that will help us; those that pity cannot serve us, cannot save us. We must have recourse to God. And we bring our grief, our sore, to him.

1. We are sure that he is accessible. He invites our approach; he says, "Call upon me in the time of trouble; I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me."

2. We are sure of his attention. He is our Father, who pities us with parental kindness (Psalm 103:13); he is our Saviour, who has trodden the path of struggle and of sorrow before us, on whose tender sympathy we may confidently count (Hebrews 2:18; Hebrews 4:15, 16; Hebrews 5:2).

3. We may depend on his power. He is able to save, to rescue, to restore, to renew.

III. THE DIVINE RESPONSE.

1. It is a question of our spiritual integrity. God answers "according to all our ways;" that is, according to our integrity. We must have the spirit of obedience in us. We may not look for a response if we are "regarding iniquity in our heart;" but, on the other hand, if we are seriously bent on serving the Lord, if "our heart condemn us not," if it acquit us of all insincerity and double-mindedness, "then have we confidence toward God; and whatsoever we ask we receive of him, because we keep his commandments" (1 John 3:21, 22). We may not, we are not able to keep all his precepts in all particulars; but the spirit of filial obedience, the desire to do what is "pleasing in his sight," is dwelling within us and inspiring us, and we are, therefore, of those whose prayer he hears. He forgives our shortcoming ("hear... and forgive"), and he "renders according to our ways."

2. It is a question of Divine knowledge. Who shall tell that this spirit of submission and obedience is within us? Only One can; it is he who "only knows the hearts of the children of men." He looks beneath our words and actions, and sees the motives and the purposes of our hearts.

3. It is a question of our character and the Divine intention. And God's design is so to hear and heed our prayers, so to grant or to withhold the desires of our heart, that we shall "fear God and walk in his ways," shall be "partakers of his holiness." - C.

II. A MORAL DESIGN IN THE INFLICTION OF NATURAL EVILS.

1. To requite justice.

2. To lead to God.

III. A PLACE FOR PRAYER IN THE REMOVING NATURAL EVILS. This denied by many. Prayer may be necessary for man's highest culture. We do not classify with powers in physical nature. It is not a natural but a moral power. The ordination of God leaves room for prayer. Prayer may be one of the laws of the universe as certain in its sphere as the laws of heat or of gravitation in their peculiar realms. Neither history, Scripture, nor experience forbid us to pray in times of national distress.

(J. Wolfendale.)