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Forty-second Day

We are to call upon God with repeated and importunate cries—Luke xviii. 4, 5, 7.

THE importunity that we are told to use towards God consists in that urgent form of prayer just described: — never fainting.

Think of that cry of the elect that rises night and day before God! We must firmly believe that our own unjust deeds — our scandals — all we do that disedifies the Saints and makes them suffer, calls down vengeance upon us by day and by night; and that we can only appease this cry bya continual cry of repentance. Have mercy, O God, have mercy! This is what we must cry, night and day: — this is what our needs are incessantly calling out.

Remember the sad state of that judge who said: "I fear not God, nor regard man.’ When all restraint is gone, there is no more hope. So long as there is some check upon us: — so long as, though not fearing God, we are at least slightly restrained by the fear of man: — there is yet hope, and our passions are subject to some kind of moderation.

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