There can be no objection to praying for certain special things. God forbid! I cannot help doing it, any more than a child in the dark can help calling for its mother. Only it seems to me that when we pray, "Grant this day that we run into no kind of danger," we ought to lay our stress on the "run" rather than on the "danger," to ask God not to take away the danger by altering the course of nature, but to give us light and guidance whereby to avoid it.

Letters and Memories. 1860.