Look at the case of your own family to-day, and your child shall come and say to you, “Give me your most precious possession.” What would be your answer to the little child? Would it be an instant imparting of the gift? Nothing of the kind. Your child shall come to you and say, “Let me go out all to-day, and all to-morrow, and never ask where I am or what I am doing.
Now I have asked you, give.” What would you say to your seven-year-old little boy who came with that prayer? If ye, then, being children of the night, bewildering shadows, unable to see straight and clear, know how to say “No” under the inspiration of love, how much more may your Father in Heaven say “No” to your poor prayers, your ignorant supplications, your asking for scorpions under the supposition that they are eggs.
For the naturalist tells us that the scorpion coils itself up so as to look very much like an egg; hard-hearted would be our Father in Heaven, having heard our prayer when we have mistaken a coiled scorpion for an egg, if his answer would be the reply of death.—PARKER.