“Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly, above all that we can ask or think,” what a vision the apostle must have had! How much can a man ask or think? When the deepest convictions of sin are upon him, in his hour of dark despondency, in some perilous pass of life, when fears come upon his soul as on Lake Galilee the storms come, consider how much a man then asks! Or when love swells in his soul, and makes life as full as mountains make the streams in spring, and hope is the sun by day and the moon by night,—in those glorious elate hours when he seems no longer fixed to space and time, but, mounting, as if the body were forgotten by the soul, wings his way through the realm of aspiration and conception, consider how much a man then thinks! The prayers of exiles, of martyrs, of missionaries, of the Waldenses, of the covenanters, of mothers for children gone astray, when with splash of tears, and yearnings that can find no speech, they implore God’s mercy upon them,—if some angel, catching them as they were uttered, should drop them down from heaven, what a liturgy would they make!— BEECHER.
