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XSfOH. LEND* »"U 1UWI ' JUWOMIOH*

THE LORD'S PRAYER.

NINE SERMONS

^rtnrjjti in tlje (Cjjaprl nf Jiurnltt's 3ntt,

^£)Uv% FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE, M.A.

CHAPLAIN OF LINCOLn'3 INN.

FROM THE LONDON EDITION, REVISED.

PHILADELPHIA:

II. HOOKER, CORNER OF CHESTNUT AND EIGHTH STS.

1852.

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TTM. 8. TOCKG. PRIKISK-

THE LORD'S PRAYER

SERMON I.

Sixtl) Smtban after (Epiptjant), .febrttarn 13, 1848.

After this manner therefore pray }re: ( Our Father which art in
heaven.' — Matt. vi. 9.

"After this manner," and therefore any manner
but this is a wrong manner ; a prayer which has
any other principle or method than this, is not the
Lord's Prayer.

The remark may seem superfluous, but it is not
so. The Paternoster is not, as some fancy, the
easiest, most natural, of all devout utterances. It-
may be committed to memory quickly, but it is
slowly learnt by heart. Men may repeat it over
ten times in an hour, but to use it when it is most
needed, to know what it means, to believe it, yea,
not to contradict it in the very act of praying it,
not to construct our prayers upon a model the
most unlike it possible, this is hard; this is one of
the highest gifts which God can bestow upon us ;
nor can we look to receive it without others that
we may wish for less ; sharp suffering, a sense of
wanting a home, a despair of ourselves.

4 SERMON I.

At certain periods in the history of the Church,
especially when some reformation was at hand,
men have exhibited a weariness of their ordinary
theological teaching. It seemed to them that they
needed something less common, more refined than
that which they possessed. As the light broke in
upon them, they perceived that they needed what
was less refined, more common. The Creed, the
Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, were found
to contain the treasures for which they were seek-
ing. The signs of such a period are surely to be
seen in our day. We can scarcely think that we
require reformation less than our fathers. I be-
lieve, if we are to obtain it, we too must turn to
these simple documents ; we must inquire whether
there is not a wisdom hidden in them which we do
not meet with elsewhere ; whether they cannot in-
terpret the dream of our lives better than all the
soothsayers whom we have consulted about it
hitherto.

I. Much of the practical difficulty of the prayer
lies assuredly in the first word of it. How can we
look round upon the people whom we habitually
feel to be separated from us by almost impassable
barriers; who are above us, so that we cannot
reach them, or"so far beneath us, that the slightest
recognition of them is an act of gracious conde-
scension ; upon the people of an opposite faction
to our own, whonr we denounce as utterly evil ;
upon men whom we have reason to despise ; upon
the actual wrong-doers of society, those who have
made themselves vile, and are helping to make it

OUR FATHER WHICH ART IN HEAVEN. 5

vile : and then teach ourselves to think that in the
very highest exercise of our lives, these are asso-
ciated with us ; that when we pray, we are praying
for them and with them ; that we cannot speak for
ourselves without speaking for them ; that if we do
not carry their sins to the throne of God's grace,
we do not carry our own ; that all the good we
hope to obtain there belongs to them just as much
as to us, and that our claim to it is sure of being
rejected, if it is not one which is valid for them
also ? Yet all this is included in the word "Our :" till
we have learned so much, we are but spelling at it ;
we have not learned to pronounce it. And what
man of. us — the aptest scholar of all — will venture
to say that he has yet truly pronounced it; that
his clearest utterance of it has not been broken and
stammering ? Think how many causes are at work
every hour of our lives to make this opening word
of the prayer a nullity and a falsehood. How
many petty disagreements are there between friends
and kinsfolk, people dwelling in the same house —
so petty that there is no fear of giving way to
them, and yet great enough to cause bitterness and
estrangement, great enough to make this "Our
Father " a contradiction. How often does my va-
nity come into collision with another man's vanity,
and then, though there be no palpable opposition
of interest between us, though we do not stand in
the way of each other's advancement, what a sense
of separation, of inward hostility, follows ! As the
mere legal, formal, distinctions of caste become
less marked, how apt are men to indemnify them-
1*

6 SERMON I.

selves for that loss by drawing lines of their own
as deep and more arbitrary ! As persecution in
its ruder shapes becomes impossible, what revenge
does the disputatious heart take under this depri-
vation, by bitter manifestations of contempt for an
adversary, by identifying him more completely
with his opinions, by condemning him, if not for
them, then for the vehemence and bigotry with
which he supports them ! How many pretexts have
the most tolerant amongst us for intolerance !
How skilful are the most religious in finding ways
for explaining away the awful command, u Judge
not, that ye be not judged !"

II. But when we say " Father," are we more in
earnest ? Do we mean that He whom we call upon
is a Father actually, not in some imaginary me-
taphorical sense ? Alas, in stumbling at the first
word " Our," we do, I fear, destroy the next also.
For though all countries and nations had a dim
vision of this name ; though men, in whom the re-
verence for fathers had any strength, were taught
by a higher wisdom than their own, to connect that
reverence with their thoughts of the unseen world,
and of One who ruled it ; though the sense of this
connexion was a balance to the tendency which
they felt to idolize the powers of Nature, and yet
kept them from a mere abstract, formal notion of
the Divinity ; though by it they learnt to realize,
in a measure, their own spiritual existence ; yet
the revelation which fulfils the heathen expectation,
which turns the dream of a Father into substance,
is that which is expressed in the words, " He hath

OUR FATHER WHICH ART IN HEAVEN. 7

sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under
the law, . . . that we might receive the adoption of
sons," and in those which are inseparable from them,
"Because ye are sons, he hath sent the Spirit of
his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father."
Now this revelation is grounded upon an act done
on behalf of Humanity — an act in which all men
have a like interest ; for if Christ did not take the
nature of every rebel and outcast, he did not take
the nature of Paul and John. Therefore the first
sign that the Church was established upon earth in
the name of the Father, and the Son, and the
Spirit, was one which showed that it was to consist
of men of every tongue and nation ; the baptized
community was literally to represent mankind. If
it be so, the name Father loses its significance for
us individually, when we will not use it as the
members of a family. No doubt it is a true name ;
it expresses an actual relation; and therefore, if
we attain by ever so unfair a process, through ever
so narrow a chink, to the perception of it, we may
be thankful. But the possession is an insecure
one : if some feelings or apprehensions give us a
title to it, the title will become uncertain with every
variety of our feelings and apprehensions. We
shall regard the Unchangeable as a Father to-day,
and not to-morrow. And then what becomes of
the Lord's Prayer as a fixed manner or model for
all prayer? What becomes of it as a resource in
times of tribulation, when our feelings and appre-
hensions are in the lowest, most miserable state ?
What is its worth when we are tempted by sug-

8 SERMON I.

gestions addressed to these very feelings and ap-
prehensions— suggestions which overmaster them,
and get possession of them ? Does any one answer,
that God is called the Father of our spirits, that
He is said to beget us to a new life, that as natural
men we are not His children, though we are His
creatures ? All this is true and most important ;
and it is precisely what we assert, when we say
that God has redeemed mankind in Christ. We
mean that He has not left us to be fleshly crea-
tures, to be animals, as we are naturally inclined
to be, and would be altogether, if He were not up-
holding us ; we mean that He has owned us as spi-
ritual creatures, has claimed us in that character
to be his servants and children, has given us His
Spirit. We say that when a man arises and goes
to his Father, he renounces his vile, selfish, exclu-
sive life, and takes up that human privilege which
God has given him in Christ ; he enters upon his
state as a man when he confesses God as his Father.
If, instead of doing this, he will stand upon certain
feelings and apprehensions of his, which separate
him from his kind, he is not a penitent ; he is still
a self-exalting, self-glorying man ; he has not been
brought to feel that he is nothing ; he has not been
forced to cast himself wholly and absolutely upon
the love and mercy of God in Christ. And, surely,
such dependence, such self-renunciation, such will-
ingness to take up a common position as portions
of a family, is very difficult for creatures proud as
we are, eager to have something of our own, always
hoping to make out for ourselves special pleas of

OUR FATHER WHICH ART IN HEAVEN. 9

exemption from the laws of the universe. Only by
discoveries often forgotten, often repeated, that
we cannot establish any such pleas, that they must
prove trumpery and preposterous, when they are
urged before the Judge of the whole earth, only
through the dreary conviction that our faith and
hope and love, as well as our deeds, are shallow
and insincere, are we drawn to real trust in Him
who is faithful and loving, who is the God of all
hope ; who can impart to us the power of believing,
of hoping, of loving, of doing what is right ; who is
willing to impart it because He is our Father, and
has promised all good things to them that ask
Him.

III. It might seem, till we know a little of our-
selves, that the next words, "which art," had no-
thing in them to cause us offence or perplexity.
But they too are hard words. The greatest temp-
tation, perhaps, of this age, is to think of the Most
High rather as one about whom we read in a book,
than as the Living God, the name by which the
book always speaks of Him. It is a fearful ten-
dency ; but if you search your hearts, you will find
it there. Nay, there is not need of much search-
ing ; the habit is so natural. In all ages, a dispo-
sition has been apparent, not in irreligious minds,
but in those which are specially serious and reve-
rential, to turn their devotion towards that which
has been, rather than to that which is, toward
images and relics, toward whatever carries with it
the sign and reminiscence of personality, but is not
personal. The modern English form of it which

10 SERMON I.

makes words rather than visible objects the substi-
tutes for the unseen realities, is externally so un-
like the other that we are not easily persuaded of
their essential identity. It is the effort of prayer
which brings the evil fully before us. What a dim
shadow, thrown it would seem from our own minds,
has often been before us when we were kneeling to
the Majesty of Heaven. What a strange self-con-
gratulation, that we were performing an act of
worship, good and desirable, to some Being ; but to
what Being we hardly dared to ask ourselves ! Oh !
surely even in such hours there have been flashes
upon the conscience, wonderful assurances that the
place was a dreadful one ; that God was there,
though we had not known it. These are admoni-
tions, that the Father of all lives, though our spi-
rits be ever so dead. But they are also admoni-
tions that we should stir ourselves to the recollec-
tion of Him, who is always near our spirits ; who
can both restore life to them, and keep them alive.
And if, at any time, He has taught us to feel that
the universe would be a horrible blank without
Him ; that His absence would be infinitely more
to us than to all creatures beside ; that if He is not,
or we cannot find Him, consciousness, memory, ex-
pectation, existence, must be curses unbearable :
but that when the burden of the world and of self
is most crushing, we may take refuge from both in
Him, — if at any time such convictions have dawned
upon us, let us not hope to keep the blessing of
them by our own skill and watchfulness. Let us
say, " Our Father which art, when we least re-

OUR FATHER WHICH ART IN HEAVEN. 11

member Thee, fix the thought of Thy Being deeper
than all other thoughts within us ; and may we,
Thy children, dwell in it, and find our home and
rest in it, now and for ever."

IV. Once more : the words "In Heaven" as they
are closely united with those which went before in
meaning, so too, like them, come into collision with
some of our strongest evil tendencies. The impulse
of ordinary polytheists was to bring God down to
earth ; to make Him like themselves. Against this
impulse the philosopher protested, representing the
Divine Nature as wholly inactive, self-concentrated,
removed from mundane interests. The Gospel
justifies the truth which was implied in the error of
the first ; Christ, taking flesh, and dwelling among
men, declares that Heaven has stooped to earth.
But here a great many would stop : they would bring
back Paganism through Christianity. The Son of
God, they say, has become incarnate ; now fleshly
things are again divine; earth is overshadowed by
Heaven ; it is no longer sin to worship that which
He has glorified. In the manger of Bethlehem they
sink the Resurrection and Ascension ; they will only
look at one part of the great Redemption, not at the
whole of it ; at the condescension to our vileness,
not at the deliverance from that vileness, which the
Son accomplished when he sat down at the right
hand of the Father. But He does not sanction this
partial and grovelling view. " After this manner,"
he taught his disciples, even while he was upon
earth, — "pray ye, Our Father which art in Heaven. ' '
As if He had said, Do not think that I am come to

12 SERMON I.

make your thoughts of God less awful than those
of Moses were, when he put his shoes off his feet
and durst not behold ; than Solomon's were, when
he said, "He is in Heaven and thou upon earth,
therefore let thy words be few." The revelation of
the divine mystery in me is not given that you may
entertain it better in your low carnal hearts, that
you may mingle it more with the things which you
see and handle ; that each of you may have a war-
rant for the form of idolatry which is dear to him.
This revelation is given that the mystery may be
no longer one of darkness, but of perfect light :
light which you will enter into more and more as
your eyes are purged; but which, if it colour the
mists of earth for a moment, will at last scatter
them altogether.

" Our Father:" there lies the expression of that
fixed eternal relation which Christ's birth and death
have established between the littleness of the crea-
ture and the Majesty of the Creator; the one great
practical answer to the philosopher who would make
heaven clear by making it cold, would assert the
dignity of the Divine Essence, by emptying it of
its love, and reducing it into nothingness. Our
Father, which art in Heaven : there lies the answer
to all the miserable substitutes for faith, by which
the invisible has been lowered to the visible ; which
have insulted the understanding and cheated the
heart ; which have made united worship impossible,
because that can only be when there is One Being,
eternal, immortal, invisible, to whom all may look
up together, into whose presence a way is opened

OUR FATHER WHICH ART IN HEAVEN. 13

for all, whose presence is a refuge from the con-
fusions, perplexities, and divisions of this world;
that home which the spirits of men were ever seek-
ing, and could not find, till He, who had borne their
sorrows and died their death, entered within the
veil, having obtained eternal redemption for them,
till He bade them sit with Him in heavenly places.
What I have said may have seemed to prove that
this simple prayer is too high and too deep for crea-
tures such as we are. Would you have it otherwise ?
Would you have a prayer which you can compre-
hend and fathom? I am sure the conscience and
reason would reject such a prayer as a delusion, an
evident self-contradiction. I have said nothing to
show that this prayer is unsuitable to the wants and
ignorance of any beggar in our streets. I have
shown only, that the wisest man, who will not use
it as that beggar does, who will try it by his own
narrow methods and measures, will find that he has
never entered into the sense of it, that he is con-
demning himself in the repetition of it. And if,
brethren, we all know that we have been guilty of
this mockery again and again, how clearly do our
consciences witness, that it is after this manner,
and no other, we must make our confession. What
despair we should be in, if our unbelief were indeed
truth, and not a lie! If the word "Our" did not
express the truth, that we participate in the bless-
ings, as well as the curses, of the whole race ; if the
word "Father" were a word merely, and not the
expression of an eternal truth ; if we might think of
Him as not nigh, but afar off; in a book, not as one
9

14 SERMON I.

in whom we are living and having our being; if He
were subject to the changes of earth, not for ever
fixed in Heaven, whither could we turn under the
overpowering sense of our own sinfulness and heart-
lessness? It is the full conviction that our misery
has proceeded from ourselves, from our maintaining
a resolute war with facts and reality, which can alone
give us encouragement. For we know there is One
who is willing to teach us how to pray this prayer
in spirit and in truth ; we know that there is One
who is praying it. He who died for us and for all
mankind, He who is ascended into Heaven, He,
who is true, and in whom is no lie, did when He was
here clothed with our mortality, does now in his
glorified humanity say, in the full meaning of the
words, for us and for his whole family above and
below, "Our Father which art in Heaven."

SERMON II.

gspiuaigesima Smtftag., £cbvnax£ 20, 1848.

Hallowed be thy Name. — Matthew vi. 9.

I SAID last Sunday that in this Prayer our Lord
taught us the method, as well as the principle of
all prayer. It is, indeed, impossible to separate
one from the other. The principle of a prayer
which asks first for bread or forgiveness, must be

HALLOWED BE THY NAME. 15

wholly different from the principle of one which
begins with "Hallowed be thy Name." The con-
ceptions of Prayer which you would derive from
them are unlike, nay, they are opposed.

I think there can be little doubt which form men
would most readily adopt. "Let us have bread
enough, bread to satisfy all bodily appetites: bread,
if you will, that shall meet our intellectual, our
spiritual desires — what other petition can possibly
take precedence of this ? If an earthly ruler could
send us this blessing, should we not implore him for
it before all things? If we are hearty in believing
that the Heavenly Ruler is willing to send it, shall
we not take the same course when we call upon
Him? Shall we strain ourselves to introduce need-
less, artificial preliminaries, when this is what He
knows we are craving for? " So men are likely
to reason till they painfully discover that there is
something they need more than bread, till a certain
inward gnawing in lonely hours, on a sick bed, sug-
gests that sin has need to be pardoned, as well as
hunger to be appeased. Is it not still more mon-
strous to interpose any check to the utterance of
this cry? What can be so desirable as that it
should be poured forth with all the agony and in-
tensity of a spirit which has learnt that such a boon
would be cheaply purchased by the sacrifice of all
things else?

Language of this kind would seem to be reli-
gious as well as natural, proceeding from sympa-
thy with human needs, and a belief that there is a
divine provision for them. And yet our Lord says,

16 SERMON II.

"After this manner pray ye : Our Father which art
in Heaven, Hallowed be thy Name." He recog-
nises the desires of which I have spoken as rea-
sonable~and true, but he postpones them ; and this,
too, when he is warning us against babbling in
prayer, against all vain, idle, formulas; when he
is directing us especially to ask for the things we
have need of.

Brethren, in this difference lies, I believe, the
great contrast between those systems of theological
doctrine and practice, which have been shaped out
by the subtlety of divines in accordance with the
cravings of disciples, and that teaching which be-
gins from God, which never lowers itself to the
base and selfish thoughts of men, and which, there-
fore, is able to satisfy all that is real in man as no-
thing else can. Ask the systematizer what that
Revelation is which the Bible records : he will tell
you, that it is the announcement of the duty which
man owes to his Maker for the good things he en-
joys upon earth ; and of a scheme of redemption
by which he may obtain pardon for his sins, and
higher blessings hereafter. Ask the Apostles, or
our Lord Himself, what that revelation is, and they
say it is the revelation of a Father whom men
were feeling after and could not find, and who at
length declared Himself to them in His well-beloved
Son. If the first statement be accepted as the
truest and simplest, the prayers, "Give us bread,"
"Forgive us our sins," are all that we have any
concern with; we should rush into them at once;
by them we grasp all the good which creation and

HALLOWED BE THY NAME, 17

redemption have in store for us. If we are led
by any process to feel that the news concerning a
father is really the good news, apart from which the
promise of food or pardon would signify nothing, we
shall feel that " Hallowed be thy Name " is the first
and most necessary and most blessed prayer for
the whole human race and for every one of its
members.

For every gross and cruel superstition has this
origin and definition : it springs from ignorance of
the name of God ; it consists in and by that igno-
rance. It mixes Him with His creatures; first
with what is highest in them, next with what is
mean, then with what is basest ; finally it identifies
him with the Evil Spirit. What is darkest and
most hateful ; what a man flies from most, and would
desire should not exist ; this becomes the object of
His worship. He has within him a witness that
there is a Being whom he ought to love with his
heart and soul and strength. That which he con-
ceives of as this Being, that which his fancy and
his conscience represent to him is one whom he in-
wardly hates, and from whom he would be deli-
vered.

But these horrors belong, it will be said, to the
ages of priestcraft; civilization puts an end to
them. Let us understand ourselves clearly on this
point, that we may not deny what is right in the
assertion, nor be deluded by mere phrases. The
classes which have been brought within the reach
and sway of civilization have, no doubt, learnt that
the inventions of superstition are false and mis-
2*

18 SERMON II.

chievous; they have seen that a dark notion of
the divinity is at the root of them ; they have made
strenuous efforts to rid themselves of what they
believe to be a phantom. In place of it they have
substituted a being answering to their own habits
of mind, good-natured, indifferent, tolerant of evil.
To such a being they have paid a homage which
they have almost felt to be fictitious, a homage
justifying itself chiefly on the plea that the de-
pendence of inferiors — the general order of society
— could hardly be maintained without it. The hum-
bler men, partly perceiving why this decent devo-
tion was thought desirable, partly observing that it
only lasted during summer-days, and was often
changed for another and more vulgar sort in ca-
lamity; but, above all, conscious that it was of a
nature altogether unsuited to them, either cherish
amid the glare and glitter of civilized life the dark
thoughts of another age, or change them for a
more resolute and courageous atheism, or, lastly,
learn that God is a refuge in time of trouble, a de-
liverer from the horrors of conscience, not an enemy
who must be persuaded to forego his hatred of them,
or a mere phantom of benevolence, who leaves His
creatures undisturbed in their wickedness and mi-
sery. Upon the thoughts of God it will depend, in
one time or another, whether we rise higher or sink
lower as societies and as individuals.

The civility or intelligence of a people may seem
to have grown up, and to be growing, under the
influence of a multitude of adventitious circum-
stances. But if you search well, you will find that

HALLOWED EE THY NAME. 19

whatever there is in it not false, whatever has not
the sentence of speedy death written upon it, has
had a deeper and more mysterious origin. It has
been the fruit of struggles, carried on in solitary
chambers by men whom the world has not known,
or has despised; struggles which were to decide
what power they were meant to obey, and to what
power they would yield themselves; struggles to
know the name of Him who was wrestling with
them; to know whether He was one who cared for
them, or who hated them or was indifferent about
them ; whether they had a real or an imaginary
Master ; whether God is a presence floating in the
air, or a Person who can be loved, feared, trusted ;
whether they and the universe were separated by
a thin plank of opinion and sentiment from a bot-
tomless pit of Atheism, into which both must sink
at last; or whether they were resting upon a rock
which could not pass away, though not earth only
should be shaken, but also heaven. But for these
questions, which those who were exercised by them
knew were not propounded by any human doctor,
do not fancy that there could have been any thought
or energy or hope in the world. Luxury and com-
fort do not confer there; there is no exorcism in
them to cast out the demons of indolence and de-
spair. No ! men have learnt to say this prayer,
" Hallowed be Thy Name ; " and to say it before all
others. They have found that the prayer for bread
might mean any thing, from an Eleusinian mystery
to the cry of a Genoveva in the desert for milk to
nourish her babe; that a prayer for forgiveness

20 SERMON II.

might mean any thing, from the words, " Thou de-
sirest truth in the inward parts ; Thou canst wash
me with hyssop, and I shall be clean ; Thou canst
wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow ; " to the
sacrifice of a virgin, that the wrath of the gods
might be averted, and a favourable breeze granted
to a fleet. One petition as much as the other,
these sufferers perceived, must derive its worth
from that which went before. What is the Name
of Him to whom we pray? all the meaning of
prayer, of human existence, turns upon the answer
which we make to this demand.

II. But it is not quite certain what answer we
shall make to it ? How can we hallow the Name
of God, if by hallowing is meant, keeping it sepa-
rate from all other names; preserving it as the
special treasure of our spirits; not suffering the
idea of absolute holiness, purity, goodness, to be
soiled by any defilements from without or from
within? Suppose I could shut myself out from the
world, drawing round me some charmed circle which
should exclude not only its direct assaults but its
secret plague influences, should I not still have to
ask myself whether I was a safe steward of the di-
vine treasure ; whether my pride in the trust might
not destroy it ; whether the Name might not pass
into a shadow, while I was thinking of it as most
substantial ; whether it might not be acquiring from
the imaginations of my heart all the same mixtures
which it had contracted among the tribes of men ?

Experience authorizes these inquiries ; it scarcely
authorizes us in giving more than one answer to

HALLOWED BE THY NAME. 21

them. Solitude is no security for the hallowing of
God's Name; recluses have dealt as irreverently
with it as men in the world's bustle. For us, how-
ever, this point is of no great practical importance,
except to preserve us from desiring a state which
is evidently not intended for us. We know that
our thoughts of God, as well as our other thoughts,
are, and will be continually, affected by speech, by
books, by the movement and attrition of society.
We know how various these thoughts have been :
earnest yesterday, indifferent to-day; the Name
now so little heeded, that we could trifle with it in
the most ordinary conversation, in the most vulgar
adjurations; now so terrible, that we dared not
entertain the thought of it ; now looking so beauti-
ful at a distance, that we were content it should
always remain at a distance ; now approaching into
awful nearness ; now making us fear that it would
ever be a shadow to us, and nothing more; now in-
viting us to take refuge in it from a hopeless Athe-
ism. To hallow God's Name, habitually to hallow
it, amidst such countless variations of the external
atmosphere, such colds and heats in ourselves —
how is it possible ? Must not we give up the at-
tempt ?

III. Certainly it is better that we should ; then
we shall begin to pray, " Hallowed be thy Name."
" We cannot hallow it ; we cannot keep it from con-
tact with our folly, baseness, corruption ; the world
cannot keep it : the Church cannot. But Thou
canst. Thou canst make the darkness of the world
a foil to thy clear untroubled light, a means to its

22 SERMON II.

manifestation. Thou canst make the intricacies,
falsehoods, contradictions of our hearts into reasons
for our seeking and apprehending Thy simplicity
and truth. That which would be in us, left to our-
selves, terror of Thy power, Thou canst make awe
of Thy holiness ; what would be presumption of Thy
indifference, Thou canst make into hope of Thy
mercy ; what would be defiance of Thy judgment,
Thou canst make trust in Thy righteousness. Thus
will Thy image be restored in man, because he will
be able to behold Thee the Archetype."

Such a prayer is not one which men could have
dreamed of themselves, but it is one which God
himself has taught them. He led His saints in the
old times to pray that He would declare His great
Name; to thank Him for all His past revelations
of it ; to flee to it as a strong tower, in which they
were safe from their enemies. Every new act of
His judgment and His mercy was an answer to the
cry ; in every such act the prophet saw the witness
and pledge of a fuller manifestation. The petition
then was no new one. The disciples had often
heard it before that day when our Lord was alone,
praying, and when they said, " Teach us as John
taught his disciples." But they knew that He had
stamped it with a new impression; for though they
understood but imperfectly why He had come, and
who He was, their hearts testified that He had cer-
tainly come to do that which He bade them ask
for. If He brought gifts to men, if He proclaimed
forgiveness to men, this was His first gift, this was
the ground of His forgiveness, he hallowed the

HALLOWED BE THY NAME. 23

Name of God. He showed forth the Father who
dwelt in Him full of grace and truth. Men could
see Him after whose likeness they had been cre-
ated, in a pure untroubled mirror. They were not
obliged to measure the Eternal Mind by the partial
distorted forms of truth and goodness which they
found each in himself. Here was goodness and
truth in its primitive form, in its entire fulness.
They needed not to reduce goodness and truth into
abstractions; here they were exhibited in actual
human life ; the perfect man reflecting the perfect
God. They need not dream of qualities which the
shock of the Fall had separated in their minds —
mercy and justice, freedom and obedience — as
having a corresponding conflict in the Eternal
Mind; here they were seen working harmoniously
in every word and deed.

Thus God's Name was hallowed for them, thus
it has been hallowed for us. This revelation is for
all ages: if one has more need of it than another,
ours is the one.

We are in danger alike from the invasion of all
old superstitions, and of a fanatical Atheism ; for
they have a common ground. All superstition, all
idolatry, had its root in the belief that God is made
in our image, and not we in His ; the most preva-
lent assumption of the modern as of the ancient
sophist is, that man is the measure of all things ;
that there is nothing great or holy which is not his
creation. Do not wonder, then, at any combina-
tions you may see in our day between parties seem-
ingly the most hostile — at any apparently sudden

I>4 SERMON II.

transitions from one camp to the other. There is
no real inconsistency, no abandonment of principle.
Do not let us be hasty in urging that charge or
any charge. But let us be very careful in under-
standing the temptation of the age, because it is
certainly our own. Let us not think we escape it
by doing just the opposite of those who seem to us
to have fallen into it ; by cultivating all opinions
and notions which they reject; by fearing a truth
when they speak it. We may find that their prac-
tical conclusions meet us at the point which we
thought the furthest from them, and that we have
turned awTay from the very principle with which we
might have strengthened ourselves, if not have
done some good to them. Still less let us refuse to
have our own loose and incoherent notions brought
to trial, lest in losing them we should lose the eter-
nal truths of God's Word. Depend upon it, they
are in the greatest peril from every insincere habit
of mind we tolerate in ourselves ; they will come out
with a brightness we have never dreamed of when
we are made simple and honest. Therefore let us
pray this prayer, "Hallowed be Thy Name," be-
lieving that it has been answered, and being confi-
dent that it will be answered. It was answered in
the old time by God's covenant; by the calling of
every holy man; by the Divine law; by all the or-
dinances of family and national life ; by every pro-
phet and teacher whom God sent ; by every witness
which He bore to one people or another, in their
conscience, in the discipline of their lives, through
nature, through death, of His own character. It

THY KINGDOM COME. 25

was answered by the whole life and death of the
only-begotten Son, the first-born of many brethren,
the Prince of -all the kings of the earth. It was
answered by the gift of the Holy Spirit to abide
with the Church for ever, for this end, that He
might teach men of the Father and the Son. It
is answered by our baptism into the holy and blessed
Name, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.
It is answered by confirmation and prayers, and
holy communions, by individual trials, by visitations
to nations, by the gift of new life to churches, by
the conversion of sinners, by dying beds. It will
be answered when we all yield ourselves up in deed
and truth to the Spirit of God, that we like our Lord
may glorify His Name upon the earth, and may
accomplish the work which He has given us to do.

SERMON III.

Scxagcsima Strnban, i^bruarn 27, IMS.

Thy Kingdom come. — Matt. vi. 10.

We have reached this petition of the Lord's
Prayer at a time which would seem to give it special
emphasis and significancy. I suppose few have re-
peated it this week without a kind of impression,
however vague, that it bore upon events which were
occupying themselves and the world. The words
3

26 SERMON III.

" Thy Kingdom," must have suggested to most n,
contrast between a Kingdom which cannot be moved
and kingdoms which appeared firm one day, and
have been shaken to the ground the next.

But this general reflection will have taken differ-
ent forms according to the previous habits, con-
victions, associations, of those who entertained it.
The first and most natural form is surely an ex-
pectation that there will be some time or other a
better order in all our relations to each other, and
in all the circumstances which affect us here on
this planet. Upon what ground soever this expec-
tation rests, it lasts with wonderful vitality through
fair and foul weather, through killing heats and
frosts. No one who has once cherished it entirely
loses it ; or, if he loses it, he loses himself with it.
Disappointments, desertions, mockeries, may change
its shape, or drive it further within, but they do not
destroy it. If it fades away for awhile, it bursts
out more vigorously when you least look for it.
Many who have expected from one civil movement
after another that which they have not found, be-
lieve that a better ecclesiastical organization, or a
freer working of that which exists, would remedy
all confusions ; others find refuge in the promise of
a universal education; not a few, who have con-
vinced themselves that no human rulers of one kind
or another, in Church or State, no systems of go-
vernment or instruction, will avail for the removal
of evil and the establishment of good, cling more
strongly to the belief that One who is above all
human rulers and systems will soon claim the earth

THY KINGDOM COME. 27

as His rightful possession ; that all convulsions in
the existing order of things are the trumpets by
which he announces that the city He has accursed
is about to fall down. All these convictions, dif-
ferent as they are, belong to the same habit of mind.
Those who entertain them mean when they pray,
" Thy Kingdom come," "Let the earth be governed
wisely and truly, not as it has been, by the help of
folly, insincerity, crime."

Such a prayer will call up some echo in the hearts
of all. But in many good men only a feeble echo ; for
the wish which it expresses is, in them, swallowed
up by a stronger one. They never knew where to
find or how to make for themselves a position upon
earth; it never cheered them or soothed them.
Now and then they have had sudden revelations of
beauty in hill or valley, at sunrise or sunset, but
these spoke, as they appeared and vanished, of some
region to which the eye could not reach. Now
and then they have met faces which smiled on them,
but they seemed to have descended from a distant
home to which they soon returned. Even the nar-
row circle in which these pilgrims dwell confuses
them by the various interests and opposing senti-
ments of those who belong to it ; the larger circles
of society, with their manifold complications, alto-
gether bewilder them. It seems to them a weary
maze, without a plan ; men are running a race with
each other, of which a few withered leaves are the
prize ; they are beginning a tale which must be
broken off in the middle ; death makes all plots im-
perfect; only that state to which he introduces us
can unravel them. There in that state must lie all

28 SERMON III.

that we dream of and hope for. Their vision of the
land that is very far off may be not as clear as they
wish, but it is more clear than their vision of any
thing which lies about them ; without it all would
be shadow and darkness. When such persons think
of tumults and revolutions, they feel more keenly
what it is they would escape from. When they
pray, "Thy Kingdom come," they ask that the
Great Shepherd will lead them and their brethren
out of a land of pits, a thirsty wilderness, a valley
of the shadow of death, to a peaceable habitation,
and a sure dwelling-place.

But there are also men who feel strongly that
the kingdoms of this world are of a weak and pe-
rishable material, and yet who cannot be satisfied
with the mere anticipation of a better inheritance
after death. They require what is different in kind
from any thing which their eyes see, not merely
that in an improved and perfected form. They
desire a blessing which by its very nature cannot
be more for one time than another, cannot be less
needful for men here than hereafter. They have
spirits which are haunted with the sense of a beauty
and righteousness and truth which may be imaged
in the world around them, but of which the source
must lie nearer to themselves. Some of them would
say that it is in themselves ; if men were but great
and noble, and disengaged from the impressions of
sense and the notions of society, they would per-
ceive it. Others affirm, that when they exalt them-
selves this secret is hidden from them : that they
enter into it only when they are humbled.

The first would say, not indeed in a prayer, but

THY KINGDOM COME. 29

in their professions, their daily acts, their processes
of self-discipline, " M y Kingdom come;" let my
spirit be lightened of the outward impediments
which prevent it from being right, wise, free ; let it
be lifted to its proper throne, from which it may
look upon all beneath and around it, and if there be
aught above it, as its own possession. The other
says, " Thy Kingdom come ;" let the eyes of my
understanding be cleared of their native mists, that
they may see Thy wisdom ; let me be purged of my
inward pride and self-seeking, that I may know
Thy truth ; let me be set free from my exceeding
sinfulness, that I may confess Thy righteousness,
and be clothed with it. And that this may come
to pass, do Thou take the government of all that
is within me, of conscience, affection, reason, will,
that they may do Thy work and not their own, and
be directed to the great ends for which Thou hast
designed them, not to those meaner ends which
they would invent for themselves.

We have found then, at least, three distinct in-
terpretations of this prayer, leading to practical
conclusions, apparently very remote from each
other. It is surely important to know whether
they are incompatible; if they are, which is the
right one ; if they are not, how they are reconciled.
I think you will agree with me that there is but
one authority which can decide these questions.
lie who taught his disciples the prayer, can alone
tell them what the nature of that kingdom is, which
He bids them desire.

3*

30 SERMON III.

I. You will remember, that when our Lord be-
gan to preach, saying, Repent, for the kingdom of
Heaven is at hand, the expectation of a coming
kingdom was strong in the minds of at least a large
body of the Jewish people. Those who felt the
Herodian family to be cruel oppressors and fo-
reigners likewise, those who were tormented by the
recollection of a still more shameful servitude,
which the sight of every Roman soldier, of every
tax-gatherer, brought before them, believed that
the Divine Kingdom, the Kingdom of God, was to
be the deliverance from these. Have you not
sometimes wondered that we are not told of any
direct words in which our Lord combated this ex-
pression ? He might have said at once to the peo-
ple of Galilee, or Judsa, The kingdom I speak of
has nothing whatever to do with those to which you
compare it ; you only confuse yourselves by think-
ing of them together. But he did not say so. He
used the phrases, "Thy Kingdom," "The Kingdom
of God," "The Kingdom of Heaven," on every
possible occasion, though He knew that this associ-
ation was present to the minds of those who heard
him. It is true, that those who had come before
Him appealing to the desire for liberty in their
countrymen, and holding out the hope of a divine
interference to satisfy it, had led their followers
into the wilderness to insurrection and to murder.
There was that difference, amidst a multitude of
others as wonderful, between His method and theirs.
What I am observing is, that there was not this
difference. The Jews generally, the Galileans more

THY KINGDOM COME, 31

than the rest of their countrymen, looked upon
themselves as in an oppressed, anomalous condi-
tion, such as the chosen people of God ought not
to be in. He did not tell them that they were
mistaken. They believed that God meant to deli-
ver them out of this condition. His words and his
acts confirmed them in the hope. They thought
that they must be brought into a different social
position before they could attain freedom. He ad-
mitted the necessity. Many public acts, besides
His last entry into Jerusalem as the Son of David,
proved that he claimed to be what Nathanael de-
clared him to be, " The King of Israel." His pa-
rables, so far from setting aside common language,
from disconnecting His Kingdom with the common
relations and feelings of men, affirmed that all
facts in nature and social life were testifying of it ;
His miracles, so far from diminishing the impres-
sion that He came to set men free from a galling
yoke, were one and all acts of deliverance ; of de-
liverance, not from some bondage of which the suf-
ferers were not conscious, but from the most visible,
obvious, bodily torments. These are sufficient
proofs, I think, that our Lord does not intend us,
when we pray his prayer, to shut our eyes against
the actual confusions and oppressions under which
men are suffering, or to think that His Kingdom
is of too transcendent a character to take account
of them. Assuredly when we do, we depart from
His teaching and example ; we bring ourselves into
a very artificial, visionary state of feeling ; we set
aside the great truth, that as nothing human should

32' SERMON III.

be foreign from those who are partakers of huma-
nity, nothing human can be foreign from Him who
is the Head of it. The lofty expressions of con-
tempt for the littleness of mere earthly transactions
and the vicissitudes of human governments, which
some divines aifect, are not learnt in His school,
or in the schools of His prophets. They rather
teach us to be ashamed of the cold indifference with
which we trace His footsteps and listen to his voice
in the present and past history of mankind. Sure-
ly, then, we are not to condemn those who hope
for the cure of the ills which they know to exist,
through a larger and wider sympathy in civil go-
vernors, through a deeper knowledge of the ends
for which the Church exists, and a more faithful
use of the powers with which she is endowed, or,
lastly, from the manifestation of Him to whom
State-rulers and Church-rulers alike owe homage.
All these expectations are sustained, not crushed,
by the Word and Spirit of God. Without divine
succour and encouragement they must have pe-
rished long ago, to our great misery, under the
pressure of selfish feelings and interests, and of the
despondency which experience, not penetrated with
a higher principle, brings after iti And wherein
then do those who have cherished these expecta-
tions, to which we owe so much of all that has been
best in the world, seem to have wandered from His
guidance who justifies their higher aspirations ? In
this respect, I think, mainly, our Lord speaks of
His Kingdom, or His Father's Kingdom, not as if
it were to set aside that constitution of the universe,

THY KINGDOM COME. 33

of which men had seen the tokens in family and
national institutions, of which they had dreamed
when they thought of a higher and more general
fellowship ; but as if it were that very constitution
in the fulness of its meaning and power. He who
is the ground of the world's order, He in whom all
things consist, reveals Himself that we may know
what its order and consistency are, how all disor-
der and inconsistency have arisen from the discon-
tent and rebellion of our wills. Now an opposite
feeling to this seems to characterize those who are
noticing the present distractions of the world, and
are suggesting how, in this day or hereafter, they
may be removed. All seem to assume that the
constitution of things is evil; not that we are evil
in departing from it. With strange unanimity,
eager politicians, restless ecclesiastics, hopeful mil-
lenarians, seem to take it for granted that the
Devil is lord of the universe : only that by an im-
provement in the arrangements of civil life, by a
stronger assertion of priestly authority, or by the
final coming of the Son of man, the evil power may
be weakened or broken. Which sentiment, by
whomsoever entertained, is surely unchristian and
ungodly. The holiest men protested against it be-
fore our Lord's coming. Though the Kingdom was
not yet shown to be a kingdom for the whole earth,
they believed that it was ; they declared its laws,
testified that heathens were at war with their own
proper ruler; told the chosen race that by their
evil acts as kings, priests, people, they were break-
ing the everlasting covenant. Any other language

34 * SERMON III.

since Christ has come is, practically, a renuncia-
tion of His authority, and a denial of His incarna-
tion. Those who use it cannot effectually connect,
the command " Repent " with the announcement
" The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand;" though our
Lord's example forbids us ever to separate them.
For they cannot say, " There has been a holy,
blessed order among you, which you have been
darkening, confounding, hiding from men, by your
sins and selfishness ; but which must and will assert
itself, in spite of you and of all that resist it."
Were this mode of speaking generally adopted by
pastors and preachers, their hearers might be led
each to ask himself, What have I done to frustrate
the ends for which the Kingdom of Heaven has
been established upon earth ? how can I cease my
strife with it, and become its obedient subject? a
question which, instead of destroying their interest
in the doings of the world generally, would make
that interest practical and personal ; instead of les-
sening their hopes of the time when the darkness
shall pass away and the true light shall shine out
fully, would make them less earnest in guessing
about it, than in preparing for it.

II. But if our Lord spoke thus of His Kingdom,
did He frown upon the wishes and longings of those
who would cast this world behind them, and project
their thoughts wholly into a future state ? So far
as any thing in their anticipations is incompatible
with an entire recognition of the sacredness of our
life here ; so far as they imply the Manichsean
notion, that the earth, or the flesh, is the devil's

THY KINGDOM COME. 35

creature and property; so far as they utter a
merely selfish cry for escape from toil and warfare ;
He certainly gives them no encouragement, who
hallowed all human life, who overcame the Evil
Spirit, whose own garments were dipped in blood.
But this, we must all confess, is only the dark and
feeble side of a faith which is, in itself, gracious
and inspiring. To despair of the present must be
bad ; to hope for the future must be good. And
this hope our Lord cherishes and confirms, as
much as he disowns that despair. Think of those
words which came with such power to the mind of
a scribe who had maintained the doctrine of a re-
surrection always, but had probably never before
felt it to be a reality : "As touching the resurrec-
tion of the dead, have ye not read what was spoken
to you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham,
and Isaac, and Jacob ? He is not the God of the
dead, but of the living; for all live unto him."
What are all speculations about separate states and
intermediate existences to this celestial sentence ?
Those whom you read of in ages gone by, who
sometimes stand out in such clear individuality,
who sometimes melt into shadows, all live ; for He
lives from whom their life came. Nothing of it is
departed, only the death which encompassed it.
They have lost no personality. Here, there was
but the first dawn of it. They were beginning
feebly to be conscious of powers ; to recognise dis-
tinctions ; to feel after unity. He was educating
their affections through the first stage of infancy ;
their reason, in its struggles to know its object ;

86 SERMON III.

their will, in its endeavours to be obedient : who is
now bringing them into more wonderful affinities,
infinitely deeper apprehensions, a perfect liberty.
And what is true of them is true of all who have
yielded to the same guidance, who have desired the
same light. All live to Him, with not one sympathy
impaired or raised too high for human interests.
With Him, as the common centre of all their
thoughts and adorations, every thing which He be-
stowed specially upon each is, necessarily, quick-
ened and perfected, and finds its relation to the
gift of every other. With Him as their centre they
must care for all whom He cares for, but still, one
would suppose, be knit closest in all bands of at-
tachment and service to those with whom it was
His pleasure, by holy pledges imperfectly under-
stood, to unite them below. Such thoughts followed
out, not by the fancy, but by the most legitimate
reflection upon the state which must remain if the
infirmities and sins of earth were purged away,
would surely go far to satisfy men who have learnt
to mourn over the meanness and incoherency of
our earthly existence, considered by itself. And
our Lord's own resurrection, and His appearances
to his disciples after he was risen, which were so
brief, and yet carried with them such a wonderful
witness of a perpetual presence, — these translate
His words into life, and declare that our existence
is not rounded with a sleep ; or that it is a sleep in
Him at whose voice all creation was first awaked,
and will wake again. With such thoughts, bre-
thren, we may comfort ourselves when we pray,

THY KINGDOM COME. 37

" Thy Kingdom come." But we must not think that
we are waiting for death to solve a problem which
is not solved yet. The death of Him who took
away the sins of the world, solved it at once and
for ever; we only die to understand how perfect
the solution is.

III. But this we shall not understand if we sup-
pose that while our Lord sanctioned the expecta-
tions of those who look for a better government of
this world, and of those who look for a world after
death, He did not include in His gift and promise
the satisfaction of those who feel that they want
not a visible kingdom, but a kingdom of righteous-
ness, truth, love ; not a future, but an eternal king-
dom. To them and to their hopes we may say that
He spoke first. He awakened their longing, He
met them before He could respond to the others.
" For now," said John the Baptist, "the axe is laid
to the root of the trees." He who is at hand is
not coming to deal with external circumstances,
but first with the being to whom those circumstances
belong. Our Lord spoke straight to the conscience,
reason, will, in man, which were asking after the
Unseen, which were seeking for a Father. Even
by his bodily cures He showed that He was the
Lord of the unseen influences which produce the
outward signs of disease and decay. When he cast
out evil spirits, He bore witness that He was hold-
ing converse with the spirit of man, that with the
pride, lust, hatred, the powers of spiritual wicked-
ness in high places which have enslaved us, He was
carrying on His great controversy. By this victory
4

38 SERMON III.

He accomplished His great work. He manifested
forth the true state and glory of man, as the child
of God, and the inheritor of truth and righteousness,
and built His Church upon that foundation of His
own divine humanity, against which the gates of
hell shall not prevail. Here, in this inner region,
in this root of man's being, He is still subduing His
enemies, He is conducting His mysterious educa-
tion. To that which he cultivates within us, He
promises the great reward, the knowledge of Him
who is, and was, and is to come. But be it ever
remembered, that while he gives all encouragement
to the highest desires of man's heart and reason,
He gives none whatever to any mystical conceits
and imaginations. " The axe is laid to the root of
the tree ; therefore every tree which bringeth not
forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the
fire." The kingdom of God begins within, but it
is to make itself manifest without. It is to pene-
trate the feelings, habits, thoughts, words, acts, of
him who is the subject of it. At last it is to pene-
trate our whole social existence, to mould all things
according to its laws.

For this we pray when we say, " Thy Kingdom
come." We desire that the King of kings and
Lord of lords will reign over our spirits and souls
and bodies, which are His, and which He has re-
deemed. We pray for the extinction of all tyranny,
whether lodged in particular men or in multitudes ;
for the exposure and destruction of corruptions, in-
ward and outward ; for the truth in all departments
of government, art, science ; for the true dignity

THY WILL BE DONE. 39

of professions ; for right dealings in the commonest
transactions of trade ; for blessings that shall be
felt in every hovel. We pray for these things,
knowing that we pray according to God's will ;
knowing that He will hear us. If He had not
heard this prayer going up from tens of thousands
in all ages, the earth would have been a den of
robbers. He will so answer it, that all which He
has made shall become as it was when He beheld
it on the seventh day, and, lo, it was very good.

SERMON IV.

dmnquacjesima Stmban, iftarri) 5, 1848.

Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth. — Luke xr. 2.

The prayer we considered last week could not
easily be separated from the spectacle which we
had just witnessed, of a fallen kingdom. Since
that time we have been watching attempts to con-
struct a new society out of the ruins of the old.
If I do not mistake, many have regarded these ex-
periments with greater impatience, with less com-
placency, than the events which preceded them,
and made them necessary. Such words as these
have risen very readily to our lips : " What a weary
repetition is here of a thrice-told tale ! Is it pos-
sible that phrases which have been tested and found

40 SEEMON IV.

hollow nearly sixty years ago, are still fit for use
and circulation now ? Can it be that we must pass
through another series of the same false promises,
vain hopes, bitter disappointments, the same dreams
of peace realized in blood, which were appointed
for the last generation ?" Not to entertain thoughts
of this kind is difficult — difficult even not to give
them expression. Yet when they are spoken they
must drive others to ask, while we harbour them,
does not the question present itself to ourselves —
Is then the belief a phantasy, that men are in-
tended for a brotherhood ? Must the effort to rea-
lize it terminate in ridicule or in crime ? Supposing
that is the fact, should we begin with accusing other
men of deception? Have we not a long list of
falsehoods to confess which we have been proclaim-
ing ourselves — in pulpits especially, which have
been proclaimed throughout Christendom for nearly
1800 years?

Such an inquiry may, no doubt, be evaded by
the reply: " Oh! we do not take Christianity into
account. That, of course, may effect any thing.
We complain of those who think they can work all
good to their species without it." But our con-
science will not be so appeased. It will rejoin,
" And if you take Christianity into account, what
then ? You know that it will not of course set the
world right. Do you believe seriously in your
heart, that it can set the world right at all, under
any conditions ? If not, you should not pretend to
believe it. Certainly this end will not be accom-
plished by phrases and professions. These are not

THY WILL BE DONE. 41

the least better when they are coined in one mint
than in another. It does not help us more to talk
of brotherhood on Christian principles, than of
brotherhood upon any other principles. The more
sacred the language, the more offensive is any
trifling use of it. We must not blame our neigh-
bours for trying to make men brothers without the
Gospel, if we are not ourselves convinced that the
Gospel can make them so." There is still another
resource which I know is commonly adopted by
those who seek to escape from this difficulty. They
say, " Christianity declares to us the exceeding
sinfulness of the human heart and will. There is
the root of all the confusions and miseries of the
world. What mockery then to reform it by new
schemes of government and society I" Christianity
does, no doubt, declare to us, or rather assumes,
the exceeding selfishness of man's heart. But it
comes not proclaiming sin,but proclaiming a remedy
for it. Do we believe the remedy to be effectual?
If not, in what sense do we call ourselves Chris-
tians ? If we do, how dare we blaspheme Chris-
tianity by calling her to prove that evil, social evil
or individual, is inevitable ? We cannot then avoid
the inquiry, severe though it must be to most of
us, What have you meant hitherto by this prayer,
"Thy Will be done, as in heaven, so in earth?"
What have you taken the Will of God the Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ to be ? How do you sup-
pose it is done in heaven ? What is implied in
asking, that even so it may be done on earth ?
I. It would be a great mistake to identify this

42 SERMON IV.

petition with that which I spoke of a fortnight ago.
The Name denotes that which a Person is in him-
self, his own character. This is an object of
contemplation ; it is to be hallowed. A Will im-
ports energy going forth ; it points to action, to
effect; it is to be done. It is very needful for the
clearness of our minds, and for great practical re-
sults, to remember this distinction. But it is equally
needful to remember that the Name and the Will
exactly correspond to each other, that at all events
in a Perfect Being there cannot be the slightest
clashing or contrariety between them. Nay more ;
if the Name is that which has been revealed to us
as the Name of God; if it expresses goodness,
mercy, loving-kindness, we cannot think of it at
all without thinking of a Will, directed towards
other beings, and exercising itself upon them. To
identify Will with mere Sovereignty, is to destroy
the earlier petition. We cannot hallow the Name
of God, if we suppose power to be his most essen-
tial characteristic, or the manifestation of power to
be His chief delight. This notion of Him is evi-
dently fashioned out of our own low appetites and
base fancies ; it is the notion which lies at the root
of the dark fables of heathenism. The whole Re-
velation which is delivered in the Old and New
Testament is nothing else than a continuous pro-
test against it, or rather a continuous unfolding of
the truth from which it is a departure. It assaults
the natural tendency of our minds, which is to wor-
ship all the different shapes and appearances of
power that we discern in the world around us ; it

THY WILL BE DONE. 43

leads us to feel that we need some power of an al-
together higher and different kind to rule ourselves ;
it shows us that this power must be a Will; that it
must be moral ; that righteousness must be its es-
sence, power its instrument. A God of righteous-
ness and truth, just and without iniquity, is He
whom the Bible speaks of, He who presents Him-
self to the conscience, heart, will, of His creatures,
as the Author of all that is right and good in them
and in the universe.

When we say, Thy Will, this must be the sense
in which our Lord would have us speak the words.
To enter into the inmost recesses of that Will, was
His only, who perfectly delighted in it. But we
are sure, that were it possible for us to know as He
knew, we should not discover a difference of pur-
pose, another kind of Will than that which His acts
exhibited ; we should only behold that infinite abys-
mal love, which, through our evil and selfishness,
had been hidden from us. It would be well for us,
brethren, if we were more careful of insulting the
Majesty of Heaven in our confession of ignorance
as well as in our boast of knowledge. We have no
right to say, We are such poor creatures, we cannot
tell the least what are the designs of God ; we can
only submit to his irresistible pleasure. It is pre-
cisely His design which He has made known to us ;
what His Will is to the human race and each of
His members, is not one of the secrets which He
withholds from us and from our children. Nor is
there any real awe of Him while we choose to think
our own thoughts instead of His, whilst we insist
upon doing homage to a dreary, naked Omnipotence.

44 SERMON IV.

For, however we may fancy that there is something
at once humbling and elevating in the thought of
that which may crush and may uphold us, it is not
a contemplation in which we care to abide ; the
spirit within us soon starts up from the momentary
depression it has caused, soon betakes itself to other
and more natural ways of realizing its own dignity.
We want a mightier charm than this; we want the
belief and knowledge of a Will that is always ori-
ginating and effectuating good — good, and nothing
else. Before such a Being, the spirit of man trem-
bles ; in His presence it feels its own nothingness ;
to Him it can look up, and be sure that he is raising
it. Hence comes a conviction, not of weakness,
but of sin ; the sense, not that we have been unable
to resist, but that we have actually resisted that
power which is working for the deliverance and
blessedness of us and of our whole race. A power we
shall then joyfully confess it to be, when we know
that it is not that merely or principally. We could
not bear to suppose — it would be the most flagrant
of contradictions — that a perfectly Loving Will was
ever idle, that it was not continually energizing,
continually accomplishing its own deep and gracious
ends. Where the limit is to their accomplishment,
how it is possible that a creature Will can contend
with that which has formed it ; by what mysterious
concurrence, which cannot be understood in either
alone, obedience is produced out of rebellion — here
is a depth indeed, in which we may be content not
to see our way; here is that secret which, except
in life and practice, we never penetrate. I say

THY WILL BE DONE. 45

except in life and practice ; for we can and do know
in our own experience the fact of resistance and
the law of submission. We do know that every
evil act has been one against which there was a di-
vine remonstrance within us ; we do know that this
act has brought disorder and contradiction after
it ; we do know that, not we ourselves, but He, who
has curbed us and forewarned us of the evil, has
wrought the repentance for it ; since only when we
confessed the wrong and cried to be made right
were we brought into our true state. Thus much
every man may know in himself; but to generalize
from this experience is a more difficult process than
we sometimes suspect. The logical terms in which
we express our conclusions are even less adequate
to describe the subtle operations of spirit than those
of nature ; we should not, therefore, suffer them to
embarrass us either in our dealings with our indi-
vidual consciences, or in our judgments respecting
the purposes of God. Generalities are not accu-
rate enough for the one ; they are far too narrow
for the other. A man cannot be honest in action
if he applies maxims and formulas about the extent
of prescience and human power to his own parti-
cular conduct; he must be profane and false if he
uses them to measure the Eternal Mind. By a
strange perversity those who are using their intel-
lects to determine what must be the acts and inten-
tions of God, resent every appeal, though grounded
on express revelation, to his moral nature ; as if it
implied that we were circumscribing Him by our
own imperfections. But this appeal is a witness

46 SERMON IV.

against all such circumspection. We say, that we
must acknowledge the absolute goodness of that
Will, which was manifested in act by the only-be-
gotten Son, or we shall make it merely the image
of our own. We must have an invariable standard
to which we can refer ourselves ; or we shall make
ourselves, with all our variations and contradictions,
the standard. We must not let logical formulas,
or deductions from our own experience, and the
world's experience, or possible dangers, or the fear
of losing plausible topics of declamation, come in
the way of the strict simple use of this prayer, or
force us to mean something less by the words, Thy
Will, than a Will of efficient good to every creature ;
otherwise we shall either be contracting our own
love within limits which God commands us to trans-
gress, or blasphemously suppose that it is, at some
point or other, greater than His. At all hazards,
in despite of all reasonings and all authority, cling
to the prayer. That will never do you harm, or
lead you astray. The more we use it, in the faith
that the Will we ask should be done is the right
loving and blessed Will, the more we shall know
that it is, the more we shall be sure that it must
be done. We shall meet every day with a set of
new impediments to that conviction ; at times, it
will seem the most monstrous and incredible of all
convictions ; then when it does, the prayer is spe-
cially needed to raise us above the plausible lies of
our understandings ; to place us in a point of view
whence we can see the truth which surmounts them.
That point of view is obtained when our state is

THY WILL BE DONE. 47

the lowliest ; we must sink, not rise, if we would
feel our relation to the Will whieh is guiding all
creation ; the Cross is at once the complete utter-
ance of the prayer and the answer to it.

II. For it is the Cross which tells us how this
will is done in Heaven. We should be giving an
intelligible sense to this clause, if we took heaven
in its simplest, most outward sense, as synonymous
with what we call the heavenly bodies, and if we
supposed the prayer to be that, as all these silently
and calmly obey the law which was given them on
the fourth day, so the voluntary creatures of God,
who have set His will at naught, might be brought
into a submission as complete, into an order as un-
broken and harmonious. There would be a deep
significance in such a petition, though we should
need great caution to prevent it from turning into
the most unchristian and dreadful of all desires —
the desire to be free from responsibility, to lose our
wills, to become mere natural creatures. And I
do not think any one who has prayed the Lord's
Prayer ever rested in this interpretation, even if
it might be cherished for a moment. The general
feeling of Christian people has been that this Will
is done in heaven, not by blind agents, but by in-
telligent, spiritual, creatures ; by wills which might
have fallen, but which stood in holy, cheerful obe-
dience. Of such beings Scripture speaks often ;
their existence it assumes throughout ; only it does
not indulge us with any such account of their con-
dition and circumstances as would lead us away
from that one great truth of their history, in which

48 SERMON IV.

all others are included: "They do His command-
ments, hearkening to the voice of His word." We
have, in the Bible, no description of celestial hie-
rarchies, such as the schoolmen of the middle ages
were wont to draw out : above all, none of those
expressions respecting the angelic nature by which
many modern writers indicate their belief that it is
essentially different from our own. The more care-
fully you consider the passages in Scripture con-
cerning angels, the more you will be struck with
the use of a language which seems almost to con-
found them with men. And why, but because
Scripture never for an instant contemplates the
derangement of man's state, which is the conse-
quence of his disobedience, as determining what
that state is. It looks upon the unfallen creature,
or the creature renewed after the fall, as the pro-
per representative of humanity — not upon one who
is dead in trespasses and sins ; it never treats an
anomaly as a law. u Their angels," says our Lord,
" do always behold the face of my Father in heaven ;
for the Son of Man is come to seek and to save
that which was lost." The true form of human ex-
istence and society has not perished because cer-
tain fragments have been severed from it ; the
flock was not destroyed because a set of sheep had
wandered from it : but He, in whom the whole
harmony stood perfect, came to re-unite the frag-
ments ; the Shepherd came into the wilderness to
carry home rejoicing the lost one. It is the effect
of our sin to make us look Jipon^ ourselves as the
centres of the universe; and then to look upon the

THY WILL BE DONE. 49

perverse and miserable accidents of our condition
as determining what we ourselves are : so all the
manifestations of God are treated as if they were
merely appropriate to those accidents, till we learn
at last to think of sin, not as that which takes us
out of the harmony God has established, but as
that which has been able to subvert the harmony ;
to frustrate the Divine will. To feel sin, as we are
intended to feel it, seems almost impossible while
we adopt this scheme ; still more, to feel the might
and mystery of redemption. But if we contemplate
the Son of Man as the Lord of the unfallen as well
as of the fallen creation, if we believe that He per-
fectly fulfilled that Will under all the conditions of
temptation and misery upon earth, which He had
fulfilled before the worlds were, our minds become
quieter and more hopeful. Let Science discover
to us as many myriads of worlds as it may; let
each of these myriads of worlds be peopled with
myriads of creatures ; we know, if they are invo-
luntary, they are subject to the same Will which
rules every animal and vegetable on this planet:
if they are voluntary, their state must be one of
cheerful dependence upon that "Will, or else of re-
bellion against it. There must be an order for
them, and it must be a blessed order. Space and
time can make no difference in that which concerns
the Eternal government; in the principles of obe-
dience, disobedience, redemption. And however
darkly we may see into these things, we are sure
of this prayer "as in Heaven;" we are sure that
we are not presuming when we believe it and offer

50 SERMON IV.

it up. As we clo so, the fetters of time and space
become more and more loosened through His might
who willingly took them upon Himself, and then
ascended up on high, leading captivity captive, that
he might fill all things. It becomes no hard effort
to suppose the existence of multitudes of blessed
creatures, formed and kept in the image of him
who said "Even so, Father, for so it seemed good
in Thy sight;" or to believe that mysteries of love
have been revealed to them, through our fall and
redemption, which they desire more deeply to look
into ; or to feel that they must rejoice over one
sinner who repenteth.

III. And therefore the prayer may well go on,
"Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth."
Holding fast the testimony of Christ respecting
His Father's will ; believing that it is continually
at work to execute His purposes ; believing that
there are multitudes of wills in whom it does work
effectually, triumphantly, who obey it and are free ;
believing, lastly, that He who guides them, and to
whom they do homage, has taken account of this
earth for the purpose of restoring those who dwell
upon it to submission, liberty, unity, we can ask
without fear that all which resists this Will in one
place or another, may be brought to acquiesce in
it, and to become its cheerful servant and child.
If place makes no difference in the view which we
take of those who confess this Will, and yield them-
selves to it, place can make no difference in its
power of reaching and subduing those who have
been refractory. There is nothing, surely, in this

THY WILL BE DONE. 51

fair earth to make it an unfit dwelling for all that
is pure and gracious. It is the revolted will which
interposes the one barrier to all communications
from above, to union and fellowship below. The
selfish, self-seeking spirit says, " Thy Will be not
done ;" love shall not have dominion here : supposing
that demon cast out, supposing the spirit of man
brought to desire that it should serve in heaven,
instead of reigning in hell; and the earth, the
battle-field between them, which Christ won when
He gave up Himself, becomes not potentially but
actually God's: by its own acknowledgment, as
well as by His victory. And we know, assuredly,
that spirits which have yielded themselves to the
tyranny of the evil power are, day by day, set free
from its yoke ; that God, by the mighty instruments
which He has wrested out of the hands of His ene-
mies, by individual sorrows, by national calamities,
does lead men to feel that it is better to live in their
Father's house, than to feed upon husks, or to
starve. If we do not think so, why do we use this
prayer? what sense is there in it? what hope can
we have from it? If we confess so much, how can
we ever make it a charge against any people, that
they hope for a brotherhood upon earth ? To tell
them, if that is the case, that they are not resting
their expectations on a safe ground ; that there is
no brotherhood, unless we begin with confessing a
Father ; that we must attain it by giving up our-
selves to do His Will; that if we set up our own,
we are enthroning the very principle which has
made all unity impossible : this is right, this is be-

52 SERMON IV.

nevolcnt. But we have scarcely a right to dispos-
sess a man of a pleasant dream unless we can give
him a reality in place for it ;for every hope points
upwards : if it does not find an object, it is in search
of one ; you cannot crush it without robbing your
fellow-creature of a witness for God, and an instru-
ment of purification. I do not mean that false-
hood can ever do good to a human soul, or be
any thing except a curse to it ; but I mean that
hope is a deliverance out of the falsehood of sense,
and that there is a truth always corresponding to
it, which is missed, not because the hope is too
strong, but because inconsistent elements are
mingled with it, which weaken and debase it.
Therefore let us labour diligently to clear ourselves
of all such mixtures. One I referred to before,
and will speak of now. We say that Christianity
can bring about a true fraternity among men. But
this is an elliptical mode of speech, and may be a
misleading one. Christianity, as a mere system of
doctrines or practices, will never make men brothers.
By Christianity we must understand the reconcili-
ation of mankind to God in Christ; we must un-
derstand the power and privilege of saying, " Our
Father — Thy Will be done in earth as it is in
heaven." No notion, or set of notions, will bind
us together ; He binds us who has given His Son
for us all, that we might not live for ever in sepa-
ration from Him and from each other. There is
another error which is, perhaps, in practice, even
more fatal. We are apt to say, u These large
schemes of the universe, which we hear so much of,

THY WILL BE DONE. 56

are vain; what good can come of them? let us try
to do our duty each in his own sphere." An ex-
cellent resolution : but, too often, adopted merely
in spite, and therefore leading to no result. We
exalt the little for the sake of disparaging the large ;
presently we grow weary of not doing more; we
fly back to great schemes which we have pronounced
abortive : because we find them so we do nothing.
This prayer meets us at each point; it will not
allow us to escape by one pretext or the other. It
does not treat the projects of men for universal so-
cieties, unbounded pantisocracies, as too large. It
overreaches them all with these words, uAs in
Heaven." It opens to us the vision of a society,
in which angels and archangels, and the spirits of
the just made perfect, are citizens, and in which
we too have an inheritance. It does not look upon
any homely individual task of self-sacrifice as in-
significant: " So upon earth" meets every such
case, and reminds us that the lowliest tasks beseem
the disciples of Him who " took upon Him the
form of a servant, and was found in fashion as a
man." "Thy Will be done " reconciles the high
and the mean ; the Will of Him who created the
heavens, and stretched them out ; the Will of Him
who was born in the manger ; the Will of that
Spirit of Holiness in whom they are eternally one.

SERMON V.

Jirst Smtuan in Cent, iVLavtl) 12, 13ri7.

Give us this day our daily bread. — Matt. vi. 11.

There are many points of view from which this
season of Lent may be regarded. One of them is
given us in the beginning of the Gospel for to-day.
The tempter said to Jesus, "If thou be the Son of
God, command that these stones be made bread."
He answered, " It is written, Man shall not live by
bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out
of the mouth of God shall men live." If these
last words had declared that man does not live by
bread, they would have been naturally construed
to mean that he has a higher, more mysterious life
than that of his body; one requiring a diviner
nourishment. But this sense, though it may be
latent in the answer, has not generally been felt to
arise immediately out of it. That the most per-
fect man does, in some sense, live by bread, was
shown by our Lord's hungering. He did not exalt
Himself above the conditions of creatures with
bodies, dying bodies; those conditions He entered
into. It was to His weakness, to His suffering,
that the Tempter spoke. And the reply did not

GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD. 55

move the question to a different ground, but met it
on its own ground. Man's body lives not by bread
alone, but by the Word which proceedeth out of
the mouth of God. This was, obviously, the first
intention of the language when it was used by Mo-
ses. The manna proved to the Israelites that their
support came from the Word of God. That Word
did not sustain them without visible food; but it
conferred upon the visible thing the power of sus-
taining them. Take away the life-giving Word,
which proceedeth out of the mouth of God, and
the little round thing which lay upon the ground
would have been useless. This lesson they were
to lay to heart ; the pot of manna in the taberna-
cle was to remind them of it when they were come
into the promised land, and were eating bread
made by various processes from the corn which
they had themselves sown and reaped. They were
not to think that this derived its nourishing power
less from the Word of God than the manna which
their fathers ate in the wilderness. They were not
to suppose that this bread had any virtue of its
own more than the other. Its virtue lay in its fit-
ness for the creature whom God had endued with a
life incomparably more wonderful than that of
the corn, wonderful as that is; wonderful as is its
capacity of growth, maturity, conversion into a
material quite unlike itself; wonderful as is the
whole relation of the vegetable to the animal sub-
stance. Rightly reflected on, this bread contained
a deeper, more comprehensive, revelation of God
than the manna. But, because deeper and more

56 SERMON V.

comprehensive, therefore less adapted to an infant
nation, which had been sensualized and debased by
animal and vegetable worship, and by the slavery
which must accompany it. Such a people have to
begin at the alphabet ; they must be taught by the
falling of food from Heaven, that they depend upon
an invisible Person, a sure Friend who cares for
them; not upon the hard material thing which will
not come to them when they ask for it: which they
will be least able to procure when they treat it with
most reverence. But that truth had need to be
fixed in their hearts, again and again, in different
stages of their history, by methods adapted to those
stages. In the city as much as in the wilderness,
when they had grown old in a settled independence,
as much as when they had just escaped from the
flesh-pots of Egypt, in the monotony of ease, as
much as when every thing around them spoke of
famine and drought, they would be assailed by ma-
terialism and unbelief; they would be in danger of
losing all thought of an unseen Protector. There-
fore the heavens would become brass, and the earth
iron, the locust and palmer-worm would eat up the
fruits of the ground, the Philistine, or the Assyrian,
would lay it waste for the same reason that the
manna had fallen in the sight of their fathers; to
show them that they lived by the Word which pro-
ceeded out of the mouth of God, and not by any
necessary fertility in the soil, or special exemption
from the plagues of Egypt, or any strength in their
hands or in their wit. There might come, in the
latter days of the nation, even a harder and more

GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD. 57

desperate condition than that which is the result of
men's natural inclination to trust in things seen,
and in the works of their own hands. A stiff re-
ligious formalism, a comfortable conceit that they
were going on with suitable decency through a
round of appointed services, or were acquiring
merit by acts of voluntary supererogatory devotion,
might make the heaven. brass and the earth iron in
another sense. All real communication might be
cut off between them; the Lord of all might be ex-
hibited as a tyrant to be won over by presents and
bribes ; the heart which should receive His grace
might become utterly impenetrable. In such a
period of the history of the Jews, our Lord ap-
peared among them; at such a time the voice from
Heaven said, "This is my beloved Son," and the
voice from hell, "If thou be the Son of God,
command that these stones be made bread." At
such a time, He claimed to be the Son of God, not
because He could make stones bread, but because
He could stand on the old promise, " Man shall not
live by bread alone, but by every word that pro-
ceedeth out of the mouth of God." And having
thus asserted His own filial dependence and filial
faith, and having claimed the privilege of depend-
ence and faith, not for Himself but for man; He,
who came as the first-born of many brethren, could
say to the band of fishermen, His disciples, " After
this manner, therefore, pray ye : Our Father — give
us this day our daily bread." That childlike peti-
tion was the fruit of His Baptism, Fasting, and
Temptation.

58 SERMON V.

The forty days then which bring that Fasting
and Temptation to our mind, are given us especially
that we may be taught how to pray this prayer.
Those who find it quite easy, in all circumstances
of indulgence and comfort, to believe that they re-
ceive their bread from God ; who, when it is most
abundant, ask him to give it — meaning what they
say — have not, perhaps, any call to self-restraint.
But there are some who know, in their consciences,
that they are apt to mock God when they speak
these solemn words, apt to take food and every
other blessing as if it were their right, of which no
power in heaven or earth except by sheer injustice
can deprive them. Something which shall tell them
of dependence, some secret reminiscence, insignifi-
cant to others, that all things are not their own;
some hint that there are a few million creatures of
their flesh and blood who cannot call any of these
things their own, is needful for them. If it comes
in the form of punishment sent specially to them-
selves, they cannot say it was not wanted; if it is a
voice addressed generally to the whole Church, a
season returning year by year, they cannot pretend
that there are any satisfactory reasons why they
should close their ears to it. What they ought to
desire is, that they may keep the end in sight : so
they will never reckon means, of whatever kind
they be, of any value for their own sakes ; they
will not fancy that to abstain from food is more
meritorious in God's sight than to eat it; if in either
case equally, they are desiring to recollect that it
is a good which He bestows. Above all, they will

GIVE tJS THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD. 59

feel that, whatever else Lent is, it is certainly a
time of confession, and their great hope of being
ever able to use this prayer more faithfully must be
grounded on an examination of the causes which
have made it so unreal in times past. Let us look
manfully at some of these causes this afternoon ; if
we study the petition, we shall not be long in dis-
covering them.

I. It may seem strange that I should put, first
of all, our unwillingness to acknowlege God as a
Giver; our inclination to think of Him rather as
an Exactor. Such a charge will, I know, sound
to some most paradoxical. "What!" they will
say, " do you affirm that people in this day like
especially to be reminded of the duties that are re-
quired of them, and dislike to be reminded of the
gifts and mercies which they may expect with or
without the performance of those duties ? Is not
precisely the opposite error that to which our age
is prone? Are we not most restless and impatient
when we are told, Such things you ought to do, —
such men you ought to be ; most eager to receive
the comfortable assurance that we may rest, for
that God's grace is every thing — man's energy no-
thing?" Those who make this objection, show
that they have considerable experience, both of
other men's infirmities, and of their own. That
a certain languor, not incompatible with much fe-
ver, but one of its symptoms, is characteristic of
our time, I should indeed be afraid to deny. We
cannot feel it ourselves without being conscious
that it is abroad. That when we are indisposed to

60 SERMON V.

strenuous effort, we often take refuge in theories,
religious or philosophical, which disparage it, or
represent it as needless, is also indisputable. We
try stimulants first, then opiates ; and each empi-
ric, who would suggest a new one, may reasonably
speculate upon the failure of the last. But where
did this listlessness begin ? what is the root of it ?
Our Lord puts this interpretation of it into the
mouth of one who had exhibited it, and wished to
justify it: "I know thee that thou art a hard man,
reaping where thou dost not sow, and gathering
where thou dost not strew : therefore I hid thy
talent in the earth ; lo ! there thou hast that is
thine." If we can trust Him who knew what was
in man, the two accusations are not inconsistent ;
we- may be very slow in listening to calls of duty,
and the reason may be that we regard Him who
calls us as an Exactor, not a Giver. I press this
confession before all others, not only because the
first word of the Prayer suggests it, but because I
believe we, the ministers of God, are more bound
to make it than other men. We have thought, it
seems to me, that our chief business was to per-
suade and conjure and argue and frighten men into
a notion and feeling of their responsibilities : where-
as our chief business is, assuredly, to proclaim the
name of God; to set that before our fellow-crea-
tures in its fulness and reality ; so to convince them
of their sin ; so to teach them how they may be de-
livered from it. Being very eager to make out a
case against mankind, comparatively indifferent
about the assertion and vindication of the Divine

GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD. 61

character, we have failed in one object quite as
much as the other. We have not dared to speak
of God broadly, simply, absolutely, as a Giver, lest
we should thereby weaken His claim upon man's
obedience ; whereas this is His claim upon their
obedience: in this way He enforces His claim.
Thus we have begotten in men a feeling that they
are obliged to do something which they cannot do.
A struggle ensues, passionate, irregular, hopeless,
after an unattainable prize; then bitter discontent
and murmuring against Him who seems to have
created us for vanity and wretchedness.

See how this consideration affects the petition
for daily bread. If we dared to look upon God as
a giver in the full, free, intelligible, sense of the
words, we should, in asking for bread, feel that we
were asking for the power and energy wherewith
to work for it. We should say to ourselves : " This
is the law under which God has put the universe, a
merciful and good law, which if man is able to evade
as he is in some regions of exuberant fertility, the
seeming privilege turns out to be his curse. It is
desiring a stone, and not bread, to desire that
we may have all we want without the sweat of
our brow ; and such a stone the Father will not
give us. But when we desire the will to toil, and
the wisdom to toil, and the strength to toil, and
the fruit of toil, we plead as men with Him who
desires that we should subdue the earth and reple-
nish it, because He has made us in His image, and
would have us share His work and His rest. Then
we ask according to His will and He heareth us.
6

62 SERMON V.

Then does the earth bring forth and bud, and God,
even our own God, blesses us. We are not the
creatures of chance ; we are not the slaves of a
Pharaoh; we are doing the blessed command of
Him who created the ground and man to inhabit
it." How entirely then does the life and sense of
this passage depend upon those which have gone
before it ! If we misrepresent the Name of God,
and the Will of God, how inevitably does this pe-
tition for bread turn to evil instead of good. If
we will think of Him, not as the Scripture and the
Church teach us to think of Him, as the author and
giver of all things, but only as one who demands
so much work of us, and offers so much pay in re-
turn, we fold our hands in indolence and despair ;
we cannot love that which he commands, nor desire
that which He promises. Let us confess, then,
this sin first, that we have slandered His holy
name, not believing that He gives to all men libe-
rally, and upbraideth not.

II. If we think of God as an Exactor and not a
Giver, exactors and not givers shall we be. And
so the word us acquires a very contracted signifi-
cation indeed. The prayer will express a hope
that we, who are sufficiently well supplied with all
necessaries and comforts, may never be stinted of
them ; it will express a lazy half-formed wish that
people, who have none of our comforts and little of
what we call necessaries, may not quite starve.
Think what meaning it must have had when it was
first offered up by that band in Jerusalem, after
the day of Pentecost, who were of one heart and

GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD. 63

one soul, eating their bread with joy and singleness
of heart. They will have understood it to be in-
deed a petition to the Father, who had so loved
them as to give His only-begotten Son for them,
and who had filled them with His own Spirit, that
He would give them that which they needed for
body and soul ; would give it them under that con-
dition of which I spoke just now : and under this
further condition, that each, upon whom the Lord
bestowed superfluity, should hold himself a steward,
and distribute his bounties. As the first principle
which united bread and work together had been
proved, by a long experience, to be a blessed one,
so the second they will have felt to be the fulfil-
ment of Christ's promise, that they should be chil-
dren of His Father in heaven ; that they should be
gracious and merciful as He is. Without the one
the Church would have been a hive of drones ;
without the second it would have been a collection
of separate bees, each working for itself, bringing
in its contribution to a common stock, but wanting
the sweetness of affection, sympathy, subordination.
Will it be said that the law of that Church was
never intended to be perpetual; that even in apos-
tolical history there are few vestiges of it after the
Church had diffused itself beyond a single city or
province ? I answer ; the accidents of that Jeru-
salem Church were indeed transitory; more tran-
sitory than the fall of the manna in the camp of
Israel : but the law which those accidents made
known was as permanent a law as that which the
manna revealed. The selling; of houses and lands

64 SERMON V.

was only one exhibition of a state of mind, an ex-
hibition never enforced, as St. Peter told Ananias.
But the principle implied in the words, "No man
said that which he had was his own," is the princi-
ple of the Church, in all ages ; its members stand
while they confess this principle, they fall from her
communion when they deny it.

Property is holy, distinction of ranks is holy : so
speaks the Law, and the Church does not deny the
assertion, but ratifies it. Only she must proclaim
this other truth, or perish. Beneath all distinc-
tions of property and of rank lie the obligations of
a common Creation, Redemption, Humanity; and
these are not mere ultimate obligations to be con-
fessed when the others are fulfilled. They are not
vague abstractions, which cannot quite be denied,
but which have no direct bearing upon our actual
daily existence ; they are primary, eternal bonds,
upon which all others depend; they are not satis-
fied by some nominal occasional act of homage ;
they demand the fealty and service of a life ; all
our doings must be witnesses of them. The Church
proclaims tacitly by her existence — she should have
proclaimed openly by her voice — that property and
rank are held upon this tenure ; that they can stand
by no other. Alas ! she has not spoken out this
truth clearly and strongly here or any where. She
has fancied that it was her first work to protect
those who could have protected themselves well
enough without her, provided she had been true to
her vocation of caring for those whom the world
did not care for, of watching over them continually,

GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD. 65

of fitting thern to be citizens of any society on
earth, by showing them what is implied in the hea-
venly filial citizenship into which God has freely
adopted them. Failing in this duty, she has be-
come powerless for the one she ignominiously pre-
ferred. She can give but feeble health to the rich
in their hour of need, because she ministered to
them with such sad fidelity in their hour of triumph
and prosperity. She can scarcely make her voice
heard against schemes for reducing all things to a
common stock, for establishing a fellowship upon a
law of mutual selfishness, because she has not be-
lieved that the internal communion, the law of Love,
the polity of members united in one Head, of bre-
thren confessing a common Father, is a real one
— has left people to fancy that it is only a fine
dream, a cruel mockery, incapable of bringing any
tangible blessings. If she can yet avert such a
calamity, it must be by calling upon all of us her
members to confess the insincerity with which we
have uttered these words, " Give us our daily bread."
If we had understood that we were children of one
Father, and were asking him to bless all the parts
of His family, while we were seeking blessings for
ourselves, that, in fact, we could not pray at all
without praying for them, we should have found the
answer in a new sense of fellowship between all
classes, in the feeling that every man, in every po-
sition, has an office and ministry which it is his
privilege to exercise for those over whom he is set;
in a clearer apprehension of the relationship be-
tween the master of a household and his domestics,
6*

6G SERMON V.

the landlord and his tenants, the farmer and his
labourers, the manufacturer and those who work at
the loom or the mill, the tradesman and those who
serve in his shop ; between these and then between
all of them and the outlaying mass, which seems to
be beyond the bounds of all ordinary civil relation-
ships, but which, as it has the great mark of human
relationship, may be adopted into these, or be fitted
to take a part in the establishment of new societies
elsewhere.

If we meet continually in the streets creatures
of our own flesh and blood, who have a look of
hunger and misery, without being able to determine
whether it is a greater sin to withhold that which
may save them from death, or to give what may
lead to the worst kind of death ; if a thousand so-
cial problems, which we once supposed were of easy
solution, present themselves in new and embarrass-
ing aspects, tempting us to pass them by altogether
and then forcing upon us the reflection, that they
must settle themselves in some way, whether we
forget them or not; if we hear masses of creatures
spoken of as if they were the insects we look at in
a microscope, and then are suddenly reminded by
some startling phenomenon that each one of them
has a living soul ; then, before we become mad, or
escape into an apathy that is worse than madness,
let us ask ourselves whether we have yet prayed
this child's prayer as we would have a child pray
it, in simplicity and truth. And if we are con-
scious that we have not, let us confess the sin, and
see whether He to whom we confess it does not

GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD. 67

shed some light into our minds which makes our
path clearer — a light which we may believe He will
vouchsafe to our brethren in this land, and in all
lands, for their practical guidance, when their large
theories are found to be reeds, upon which, if a
man leans, they will go into his hand and pierce it.
III. But the prayer is only for this day. Hence
it is often thought that the spirit of the Gospel is
adverse to foresight. How can the command,
" Take no thought for the morrow," be reconciled
with the kind of anticipation and preparation which
seem to distinguish the civilized man from the hun-
ter of the woods ? The answer lies in our own ex-
perience. Have we found that anxiety about pos-
sible consequences increased the clearness of our
judgment, made us wiser and braver in meeting the
present, and arming ourselves for the future? Is
it this kind of temper which enables a man to plough
the ground, to sow the seed in the appointed month,
to wait patiently for the harvest ? Is it the temper
which would have enabled any sailor, any merchant,
to venture himself or his goods upon the deep?
We know perfectly well that the most opposite
habit of mind to this, a simple and hearty reliance
upon a power whom the ground, and the seasons,
and the winds, and the waves obey, could alone
have made such acts and enterprises possible.
Clearness of vision, providence, discovery, are the
rewards of the calm and patient spirit. The cases
are rare indeed where they have been given to any
other. Out of that care for the morrow which our
Lord denounces, spring the fever of speculation,

68 SERMON V.

the hastening to be rich, endless scheming, con-
tinual reactions of fantastic hope and deep de-
pression in individuals, of mad prosperity and in-
tense suffering in nations. If we had prayed for
this day's bread, and left the next to itself, if we
had not huddled our days together, not allotting to
each its appointed task, but ever deferring that to
the future, and drawing upon the future for its own
troubles which must be met when they come whether
we have anticipated them or not, we should have
found a simplicity and honesty in our lives, a ca-
pacity for work, an enjoyment in it, to which we
are now, for the most part, strangers. Here, I be-
lieve, we shall all find abundant matter for confes-
sion, if we look faithfully into our lives. This part
of the prayer too has been unfaithfully repeated ;
we have been wearying ourselves in thoughts of
what would be, because we have no confidence in
Him who is.

IV. But it is our daily bread we ask for, *ov <xp-
tov fyfMov iov srtiovaiov. This word HiwvtsLQv gave rise
to one of the controversies between Abelard and
Bernard in the 12th century. The former, follow-
ing a hint of Jerome, adopted the translation partem
supersubstantialem, and taught Heloise and the
nuns in her convent to use it in repeating the
prayer. It appears that the practice was not a
new one there ; at all events, Bernard had no right
to accuse his opponent of wilfully perverting Scrip-
ture, when he was following the guidance of the
most approved Latin Father. We shall all pro-
bably agree that he was right in objecting to a

GIVE US THIS DAT OUR DAILY BREAD. 69

phrase which, even if it had more philological
plausibility than really belongs to it,* would be
entirely out of harmony with the tone and spirit of
the prayer. It is less easy to say what exact word
we should adopt; we have no analogy to help us,
for the word does not exist in any classical author.
The balance of evidence seems decidedly in favour
of those who derive the word as Jerome did, but
take it to mean " bread for subsistence." Our trans-
lators followed a different course, but they arrived
nearly at the same result. Bread for subsistence
defines accurately what we intend by daily bread,
when we intend any thing. We ask for bread to
sustain us, bread that shall be enough for our needs.
What is enough we happily are not called to fix ;
the act of prayer throws the decision of that point
upon a wiser judge. No one, therefore, could infer
from the use of this expression that a rigid sump-
tuary law is involved in the petition ; that one has,
of course, the same needs as another. The Bible
admits the distinction of rich and poor; in com-
manding hospitality, it assumes that there are some
who have the means of exercising it, and others
towards whom it may be exercised. But the words
are not the less cutting because they do not reduce
all expenditure to a level. They may dilate to
take in a great variety of cases, but they can never
lose their proper original signification. Bread for
subsistence will not, under any circumstances, be
bread for mere display, for waste, for rivalry. The

* It confounds vrt with <v

TTt£.

70 SERMON V.

prayer asserts a broad, palpable, everlasting dis-
tinction between the different reasons for seeking
wealth, the different ways of using it; though it
leaves every man's conscience to determine in the
sight of God which reasons govern his acts, which
ways he is taking. Honestly offered up, therefore,
it will, I conceive, make us very uneasy in that
kind of ostentation which men in each class of so-
ciety are apt to affect for the purpose of not being
distanced by those of the same grade, and that they
may assert their right to a higher. Moralists, sa-
tirists, divines, have long been using their different
weapons against this folly apparently with little
success. It is now felt to be far too serious for the
name "folly." Competition is denounced by the
working and suffering classes of our land, as their
deadly enemy; they ask for a new organization of
society to extirpate it. But a mightier hand than
ours is needed to deal with a disease which has
penetrated so deeply, which has so nearly reached
our vitals. What we can do is to tell men that this
hand is stretched out, that any secret corruption
which has been cherished in the heart of indivi-
duals, or in the heart of society, will be brought
into the clear light; that national judgments will
purge away those of which the removal is not first
sought by national repentance. What we can do
is to say, He who sends these judgments is willing
to give that repentance. He invites us now at
this time to acknowledge the sins that we know, to
ask Him to search our hearts, and discover those
which we know not. He bids us believe that the

FORGIVE US OUll DEBTS, ETC. 71

most inveterate cancer as in ourselves, so in the
body politic, may be taken from us by His knife,
if we will submit to it. He exhorts us not to wait
till the dark and evil day actually comes upon us,
till the house is left desolate of His presence, and
stript of every good gift which we have received
through it. He calls upon us this day to turn to
Him with thanksgivings, as to the great Giver of all
blessings, with confessions as to the Father whom
we have grieved by disbelieving in His love, and
not showing it forth to our brethren ; with prayer
that He will give us and them all we need, and
most of all, the heart to receive it from Him as His
stewards, for the good of those who are dear in
His sight.

SERMON VI.

Saonb Suuban in Cent, Jttarcl) 10, IMS.

Forgive us our Debts as we forgive our debtors.— -Matt. vi. 12.

We should be sorry, I think, to lose the word
"Trespasses," which we use in our ordinary repe-
tition of the Lord's Prayer, and which is translated,
no doubt, from the word acapnias in St. Luke. Yet
St. Matthew's expression presents a more distinct
image to the mind ; it interprets itself more easily.

72 SERMON VI.

Therefore I have chosen it this afternoon, not wish-
ing you to consider it alone, but believing that it may
help us to a clearer apprehension of a word which for
many, at least, has lost its brightness through con-
tinual attrition. The idea which the petition embo-
dies results, I suspect, from the union of that
which is peculiar in each of these forms. "We find
it so generally, when we take the pains to examine
different expressions evidently answering to each
other, or different reports of the same transaction
in the Gospels. From the comparison of them
there proceeds a fuller and more profound mean-
ing than we could have obtained from either sepa-
rately. What is called the study of parallel pas-
sages, may in this way be really profitable ; it is often
made into a very childish exercise, one which in-
volves no reflection ; sacred words being turned into
an irreverent game; all sense of their unity and
relation being lost in the eagerness to hunt out the
precise places in which they occur, or their most
superficial and insignificant resemblances.

That there is something in the word "debts,"
which we are bound to keep in mind when we con-
sider this prayer is evident from the use of the cog-
nate verb by St. Luke, in the other clause of the
sentence. " Forgive us our trespasses, for we also
forgive every one that is indebted to us." It is
evident also from the word a^s, send away, or " re-
mit," which is common to both Evangelists. Every
one feels the appropriateness of such an expression
to a creditor's release. We have no need to go
beyond the very simplest notion of such a release ;

forgive us our debts, etc. 73

We are not bound to think of a deliverance from
a prison, or from any infliction consequent upon
the failure in the fulfilment of an obligation. Dis-
charge from the debt itself is that which the verb
suggests. Perhaps we may find that this' sense
gains, instead of losing strength, when we apply it
to trespasses, — to sins. Still we should first fix
our minds upon that which stands in the most ob-
vious connexion with it.

I. Our Lord then bids us pray, Remit, or send
away, or discharge, these debts or obligations of ours.
Whatever they are, He bids us ask Him for this ; this
and nothing less. He who tells us to pray, Our
Father, says also, Ask for this full remission. He
must mean that it is such a request as a child should
make of a father, and a father could grant to his
child. He who teaches us to say, "Hallowed be
thy Name," bids us ask for this remission. He
must mean that God's Name is hallowed in our
making the petition, and in His hearing it. He
who taught us to say "Thy Kingdom come," bids
us say, Grant us this remission. He must mean
that it is consistent with His Royalty, and part of
it, and a proof of it that we should desire and re-
ceive this release. He who desired us to pray,
" Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,"
tells us also to ask for this sending away of debts*
He must mean that this is the Will which is obeyed
in heaven, and that so, we are obeying it on earth.
He who taught us to look up to God as a Giver,
not as an Exactor, and to pray for the bread which
is needful for us, further commands us to ask for
7

74 SERMO^ VI.

this freedom. He must mean that rain and fruit-
ful seasons are not more a sign to men of what He
is than remission ; that one is as much an utterance
of His disposition and purpose as the other ; that
one is at least as much needed by His creatures as
the other. He who came down to declare the
E~ame, the Kingdom, the AYill of God, and to bring
all good gifts to men, must have wished us to un-
derstand Him thus ; or He could not have trained
us to the use of a word so precise, and yet so un-
limited.

II. The objects of this prayer must be those
who were united with us, when we said, "Our
Father," and, "Give us this day our daily bread."
If there were any for whom we did not pray when
we said those words, they will be excluded from
these. If there are any human beings wrhose na-
ture we suppose Christ did not take, any for wThom
w7e suppose the Father does not care, for those we
do not ask the remission of trespasses. Where
such limitations begin, where they must end, I have
had occasion to consider while I have been com-
menting on the former clauses of the prayer. They
begin in a feeling that we must, for our own safety,
establish certain boundaries beyond which the di-
vine compassion cannot go ; they proceed to the in-
vention of securities and exclusions which compass
their end so little, that their places must be pre-
sently supplied by others ; they end in the dis-
covery that we have destroyed the ground under
our own feet, while we have been making it untena-
ble for our fellow-men. I need not repeat the

75

evidence, but I must repeat the warning. When
the publican prayed, " God be merciful to me a
sinner," he claimed for himself a place among the
mass of sinners ; he would not say, like the Phari-
see, I am not as other men are. If in literal imi-
tation of his example, in real contempt of it, any
one of us chooses to say, Forgive me my debts,
rather than, Forgive us our debts ; he will not go
down to his house justified; he will feel that the
petition has not been granted.

III. And yet when we come to consider what
these debts are which we crave should be put away,
it does not seem wonderful that we should choose
individualizing language, rather than that which is
more general. For each man says within himself.
Are not these debts mine in the strictest sense?
Are they not obligations which I have contracted,
and which I have violated ? Upon me lies a burden
which I cannot shift upon any other human crea-
ture— the burden of duties unfulfilled, words un-
spoken, or spoken violently and untruly; of holy
relationships neglected; of days wasted for ever;
of evil thoughts once cherished, which are ever ap-
pearing as fresh as when they were first admitted
into the heart; of talents cast away; of affections
in myself, or in others, trifled with ; of light within
turned to darkness. So speaks the conscience ; so
speaks or has spoken the conscience of each man.
In some it may be a feeble voice, soon lost in the
noises of the outward world, or silenced by violent
efforts, or choked by the senses, or bribed by the
fancy. In others, it is loud and stormy to-day;

76 SERMON VI.

then comes a reaction of fierce merriment or a tem-
porary lull which "will be followed again by new
blasts of passion. In some it is a low but per-
petually sounding knell, witnessing of a death begun
and going on in themselves; of the past accursed,
the present withered, the future vaguely terrible.
But each one who has ever known what conscience
is, feels that it is upon his own very self these ob-
ligations lie. They may sometimes present them-
selves to him in dark outward visions, they may be
associated inseparably with certain places and per-
sons. But they sit like nightmares upon him ; they
stop his breathing; they hold him chained. How
often would he persuade himself that they are only
phantoms ! How often would he task his under-
standing to prove that he has himself brought them
thither by some strange conjuring ! Why cannot
he cast them aside as dreams of the night? Are
they any thing more ? They come back with fear-
ful distinctness ; the very act of which conscience
testifies, every circumstance, look, tone, clearly re-
corded ; it is no dream of the night. The voice, be
it from Heaven or Hell, is a real one, which says,
" It is done, and cannot be undone," and, " Thou art
the man." What signifies it that years have passed
away ? The act is gone, but thou art still the same.
The act is gone into Eternity, and there it will meet
thee.

These are the debts ; are they to ourselves ?
Often it seems so. We have suffered by them more
than all others — our bodies and souls. But if they
are to ourselves, we cannot release them. The

FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS, ETC. 77

more we try, the more hopelessly the coil is twisted
round us. Are they to our fellows? Often we
think so. We were bound to them by sacred tics
which were forgotten ; the friend repulsed, because
we did not understand him, or his opinions seemed
dangerous, or because we took a cry of agony for
a mocking laugh; the child petted and fondled into
sin, or driven into it by roughness and what we call
parental authority; those who looked to be raised
and purified by us, degraded through our weak and
grovelling ways ; those who would have entered into
the Kingdom of Heaven hindered, because we cared
not that they should be wiser and better than our-
selves. But if our debts are to our fellow-creatures,
they cannot discharge them. If we could hear
each one distinctly saying out of the grave or from
Heaven, "I forgive," though the words might be
unspeakably delightful, we feel they would not pene-
trate deep enough, they would not set us free from
that which has seemed to become a part of our own
beins;.

Are they debts to God ? The first vague cor -
sciousness of such a belief, how terrible it is ! All
the former aspects of the debt seem mild to this
one; yet all were surely prophetical of this one.
That sense of permanence of Eternity being bound
up with our acts and the results of them, what was
this but a witness that they had a relation to God
himself? He surely was speaking that voice which
we thought came from ourselves, and which was
echoed by every thing and every person in the world
around. Yes, Debts are Trespasses: we have not

78 SERMON VI.

only forfeited an obligation, but committed a sin ;
we have broken a law which was not formed on
earth, and cannot be repealed on earth.

But at this point of despair hope begins. It is
sin ; sin against God. These very feelings we are
groaning under are sinful ; this sense of evil is evil.
For has it not brought death into the soul? Is
not this torpor, this incapacity for action, feeling,
loving, Death ? Assuredly it is. And He willeth
not the death of a sinner. He cannot be pleased
that I should continue in a state of sin. He is not
pleased with it. Then come dim recollections of
words heard in the nursery, of doctrines which had
been reduced into mere phrases and stored away
in the memory as lumber, or more courageously
cast aside as absurd contradictions of human ex-
perience and ordinary logic; doctrines which had
perhaps been associated with the remembrance of
some hard, comfortless teacher, who first imparted
them to us in traditional shapes and moulds, or who
mixed them with views of the divine character from
which the conscience and reason revolted; doc-
trines, however, which do not sound now as if they
were unsuited to our necessities or unworthy of One
who cares for His creatures ; the doctrine of recon-
ciliation, of a Father who so loved the World as to
give His only-begotten Son for it; of a Son who
came down from heaven not to do his own Will,
but the Will of Him who sent him ; who did that
Will by laying down his life for the sheep ; who was
manifested to take away sin, and in whom was no
sin ; by faith in whom a man may rise out of him-

FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS, ETC. 79

self, cast away the slough of death, and become a
new and righteous creature. Such words, however
imperfectly understood, yet carry in them an ama-
zing power for one who has felt his debts and known
them to be sins. But they acquire a newer and a
fuller meaning for him when he finds that what
seemed to him an entirely isolated experience is
that of numbers of his fellow men ; when he hears
of publicans and harlots who, through the same
storm, have sought and found the same haven.
Then he learns to say, and not to say in vain,
"Forgive us our Trespasses."

IV. There perhaps he stops; the words which
follow are either forgotten or they give him no pre-
sent anxiety. In the spring-tide of wonder and en-
joyment, at the discovery that there is a communi-
cation between Earth and Heaven, and that the
Angels of Heaven and the God of Heaven rejoice
over every sinner that repenteth, it does not strike
him that there is the least difficulty in remitting to
other men any debts that may have incurred to
him. But the first fervour of these convictions
dies away. He seeks to keep them alive by asso-
ciation with those who are or have been sharers in
them. By mutual encouragement, that which is
feeble and flagging in each may be invigorated.
Every one has realized something which another
might be better for knowing ; the barter and inter-
change of thought will make all richer. It should
be so certainly; but those who make the experiment
often suspect that the reverse is true. While they
are discoursing of that which is passing within, it

80 SERMON VI.

seems to be within no longer. In the commerce of
feelings, notes and bills which there is nothing to
meet soon circulate rapidly from hand to hand.
And then the latter words of the prayer suddenly
assume a disagreeable significance. "Forgive as
we forgive:" Surely here is a condition appended
to that which we thought absolutely free ! Does
it mean that our forgiveness is the cause of God's
forgiveness — -that He expects so much of us be-
fore He dispenses to us out of His infinite trea-
sures? Or does it mean that our forgiveness is
the measure of His; that the acts of us fallible
creatures determine the kind and degree of the
Divine Mercy ? Surely if this be so, the Gospel
cannot be large and infinite. Forgiving is not forth-
giving, as we have been used to think; a narrow
and clumsy derivation must take the place of this ;
it must import the giving for an equivalent. Ac-
cordingly a great part of men, even of religious
men, are content to sit down without determining
what the words which they repeat so often actually
signify. They cannot mean that, therefore it is
better to suppose that they have no distinct mean-
ing at all. " Of course," thinks the Christian who
is trying hard to be at peace with himself, "in a
sense, I do forgive every one who is indebted to
me. I should not be deserving of the goodness I
receive if I did not ; and if I come short, I ask to
be forgiven: is not that the very use of prayer?"

There are, I am sure, thousands and tens of
thousands who repeat this petition in spirit and
truth, and upon whom it brings down blessings un-

ETC. 81

speakable, though they could not express to others
what they mean by this clause, and though their
own minds are probably far from clear about it.
Prayer seeks that which lies below all words ; it
aims at the light whereof that which shines in our
understandings is but the dim reflection. From
those who pray as children one desires only to
learn; their lives are better and more beautiful
commentaries upon their prayers than any the
schools can furnish. But it is altogether different
with those who try to explain away words upon
which our Lord dwells with special carefulness ; those
words to which he drew his disciples' attention, as
if they contained the spirit and essence of the whole
form. "If ye forgive not men their trespasses,
neither will your Heavenly Father forgive you
your trespasses " — this is His own express language,
which He illustrates again and again in His other
discourses, always strengthening not diminishing
its awfulness ; making in one case the significant
addition, "if ye from your hearts forgive not every
one his brother their trespasses.'' It will not do
surely to make light of such solemn oracles, or re-
duce them into nullities, because they do not accord
wTith a notion we have formed about the freeness of
Christ's Gospel. But as little ought we to part
with our belief in that freeness or with any deep
conviction which has been given us, because some-
thing which we have not yet understood seems
to contradict it. We need, for our practical life,
that the apparently inconsistent principles should
be reconciled: and if we are honest with ourselves

82 SEKMON VI.

we shall not be long in discovering the reconcilia-
tion.

How is it that persons who have had that lively
sense of mercy and forgiveness to which I referred
are not able to retain it ? They know in their con-
sciences that they do not ; they continually confess
it; they are sure that they ought to retain it, but
it will not stay. The feeling of a debt grows up
in the mind again, after they supposed it was can-
celled ; they refer to the evidence upon which they
rested their confidence ; it is as satisfactory as ever ;
they assure themselves that all must be right, and
yet their hearts say there is much wrong. Then
they resort to theological distinctions and formulas ;
this sense of debt and sin is very tormenting, no
doubt, but it is inevitable ; it must stay with us while
we are in this bad world. Perhaps so ; but must
it be ever multiplying, nay, producing fresh sin ?
Must the consciousness of it make me sour to others ;
often make me false in dealing with myself ? Will
theological terms and distinctions, or the recollec-
tion of bygone experiences, or a general apprehen-
sion that God is at peace with us, make ill temper
gracious, or self-deception truth ? Must there not
be some other more excellent way than this of
bringing the facts of our own lives into coincidence
with the truths of the Bible ? One would think
that the most obvious, the most excellent way was
to study our Lord's own interpretation of the case.
He says that when a servant who had been pardoned
the debt of ten thousand talents went out of his
lord's presence, he found a fellow-servant who owed

ETC. 83

him a hundred pence, and that he took him by the
throat, saying, Pay me that thou owest, and would
not listen to his cry, "Have patience with me."
This, he says, was the cause that his own debt came
back to him heavier and more hopeless than ever.
Is there not a clear light thrown on the dark pas-
sages of our lives by this parable? Only think
how we are wont to speak of the obligations which
other men are under to us, of the debts they have
incurred to us, of the demands which we have a
right to make upon them. Only think how exactly
our Lord's language represents our feelings, how
it is uttered in all our daily actions. " Pay me
that thou owest, servant, child, poor dependent,
friend, wife, brother:" is not that the first natural
thought of our hearts ? Do w^e not encourage it,
justify it to ourselves and others ? have wTe not a
host of religious excuses for tolerating; it till it be-
comes the habit of our souls ? There is abundance
of good-natured charity afloat in the world, charity
for all sorts of people, for all forms of distress.
But this is the ornamental part of our existence,
the capital or fret-work of the building. The sub-
stantial part, the pillars of it, we seem to think are
our rights ; rights to position, property, rank, the
homage of others, their gratitude. If these are
withheld — the hundred pence which each man has
a claim upon from his fellow — with what indigna-
tion do we repulse the claims wrhich we had acknow-
ledged that mercy and charity have upon us ?

Now, brethren, if this be so, is it very wonderful
that the sense of divine forgiveness, the apprehen-

84 SERMON VI.

sion of perfect unclouded mercy, should not be very
clear and strong in our minds ?

It is surely the most fantastic of all dreams, that
a man can cut his being into two portions, call one
of -them religious and the other mundane, and ad-
minister them on directly opposite principles. One
or other must come to naught. If we believe that
the world is governed by a forgiving Being, His
forgiveness must be recognised as the Law of the
Universe; the Law of our being. If we believe
that Individual Right is the great principle we are
to assert in all common transactions, that principle
will be carried to the highest ground of all, and so
far as we acknowledge a Divine Being at all, we
shall regard Him as one like ourselves ; we shall
feel that His main desire is to assert His rights
over us. I say, so far as we acknowledge a Divine
Being at all; for I cannot help perceiving that
Atheism is the natural, almost the necessary refuge
from such a notion of the Lord of all as this. The
naked contemplation of one who has no will but
self-will is so intolerable, that the conscience which
remains in human beings, in spite of all their
theories, shrinks back in horror from the belief that
such a one can be he to whom the name of God,
the good, was once ascribed. Yet what avails the
denial? If self-will do govern the world, if we
confess it to be our lord, we may or may not at-
tribute to it personality ; but it does, all the same,
hold us in its iron bonds ; we are in prison, the
evil spirit is our jailer, and we cannot come out till
we have paid the uttermost farthing.

85

Brethren, it is this which makes the considera-
tion of our times so profoundly awful. We cannot
avoid the conviction that the maxims upon which
we have been acting will come forth into full dis-
play ; that they will be thrown back upon ourselves ;
that the rights we have asserted against our fellow-
men will be asserted by them against us. We have
had and we have warnings enough of this catas-
trophe; let us hope that they have not been wholly
lost upon us. Even yet the dark, image of mere
selfish power, in one or in a multitude, is not re-
vealed ; it struggles strangely, wonderfully in the
minds of those who seem most ready to fall down
and worship it with the belief of a Love which must
rule at last, which we are permitted to obey now.
Oh ! if we might interpret to any that strange con-
flict of two opposing principles — two Kingdoms —
in the womb of humanity ! Oh ! that some voice
might be heard declaring clearly and mightily,
" The elder shall serve the younger. He who won
the battle in the wilderness, proved that His Father
and not Satan, love and not self, is the King of
kings, and Lord of lords."

But if that proclamation is to be heard on the
housetops, it must first be spoken in the ear in
closets. It must come forth as the interpretation
and fulfilment of this prayer, " Forgive us our tres-
passes, as we forgive them who trespass against us."
We must thoroughly believe and understand that
what seems to be a limiting condition of the request,
is really an enlargement of its scope and power.
We ask to be forgiven, and the revelation of God's

86 SERMON VI.

mercy in Christ, of the love which is in Himself, of
the perfect atonement made once for all, is an an-
swer. It seems to be transitory ; we try to fall
back upon it, and feel that that which we trusted
in yesterday is not so strong to-day. Why? Be-
cause we asked too little, because we did not enter
into the fulness of the word, "Remit," " Send
away." If we had, we should have prayed not for
a momentary sense of Forgiveness, but for the
spirit of Forgiveness ; not merely that we may
know what God is and is to us, but what He can
accomplish in us ; that we may understand in Him
and show forth in ourselves that mercy which is no
tolerance of wrong but the tormentor of it, which
does not reject stern discipline, but makes it an in-
strument; which is a fire to consume the evil of all
in whom it dwells, of all to whom it reaches. For-
giveness is not forgiveness when it is turned to
our ease and comfort. It is in its nature expan-
sive, diffusive ; it cannot be cooped up in the heart
of any creature ; it must go forth into the open
air, or it dies. The debts, we know it well, cannot
lose their penal hold upon the conscience, their
present and future terror, till love comes in to ful-
fil them and transfer them ; till the man who in his
pride thought that all nations owed him homage,
learns to say, "Jam a debtor to Jew and Greek,
to Barbarian and Scythian, to bond and free."
The sense of sin — sin itself — does not finally depart
from the conscience till love, its great enemy, pos-
sesses the ground which it once occupied, till he
who was crushed under the sense of powerlessness

LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION. 87

and evil — " To will is present with me, but how to
perform that I will I find not," can exclaim, "He
worketh in us both to will and to do of His good
pleasure," and, "I can do all things through
Christ which strengtheneth me."

Wherefore, as it should be one of our saddest
subjects of confession this Lent that we have not
lived as if we were under the Law of Forgiveness
which God has established for us and for all, so also
let us earnestly believe, whensoever we pray, that
we are praying to a Forgiving and Merciful Father,
who can yet do for us more than we ask or think ;
even inspiring us with His own love, and enabling
us to walk in love and to forgive all who are in-
debted to us, as He for Christ's sake hath forgiven
us.

SERMON VII.

&!)iru Stmuan in Cent, iBarcl) 2G, \Br%B.

And lead us not into temptation. — Matt. vi. 3.

I said that the words of our Lord, " It is written,
Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every
word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God,"
were a ground for the petition, " Give us this day
our daily bread." Lent, above all seasons, might

88 SERMON VII.

teach us the sense and power of it. " Forgive us
our debts, as we forgive our debtors," had surely
as close a connexion with these forty days. To be
delivered from a heavy burden, this is the blessing
of confession: a blessing which (as the prophets so
often told the Jews) we cannot realize by any
prayer or fast unless we seek to set others free
from their burdens. The subject of Temptation
might seem, even more than either of these, to em-
brace the whole history and purpose of this time in
its relation both to our Lord and to ourselves. But
here a difficulty presents itself. We are told by
the Evangelist, that our Lord was " led up by the
Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the
Devil.." We are taught to pray, "Do not lead or
bring us into temptation." Must we not infer
from this opposition, that there is not that close re-
semblance between His struggles and ours which
we have sometimes imagined ; that our spiritual
life is not under the same law as His ; that we are
to deprecate that kind of trial to which He cheer-
fully submitted?

There are some, perhaps, who will not feel even
the semblance of perplexity here. They will say,
" Certainly ; there are multitudes of perils into
which it was fitting for the Son of God to enter,
and which it would be madness for his followers to
encounter. He stood in the might of his impecca-
ble divine nature ; how can sinners, nay, even
mere human creatures, if they were not sinners,
ever forget their own readiness to fall ?" Persons
who use this language cannot be aware what prac-

LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION. 89

tical heresies they are uttering, how completely
they are demolishing the whole intent of the Gospel,
the very ground of man's trust and hope. If there
are some parts of our Lord's example that we are
not to follow, what authority is to tell us which ?
Does not the assertion that He stood by the strength
of a nature in which we are not sharers, exclude
us as much from communion with one of his acts
as with another? We make void the doctrine of
His having taken our nature : it is too little to say
that we lessen the perfectness of the relation; it
becomes imaginary.

And surely no record of our Lord's life is so en-
tirely outraged by this hypothesis as the record of
His temptation. If He had asserted an independ-
ent standing ground, He would have listened to
the words of the Tempter. He would, because He
was the Son of God, have made the stones bread,
have cast Himself from the pinnacle of the temple,
have taken to Himself the Kingdoms of the world
and the glory of them. He refused to do this, He
would simply stand by faith and dependence on his
Father ; thus and thus only would He assert his
filial character. He did put Himself upon a level
with those whom He called His brethren ; He did
claim for them a right to depend as He depended,
to trust as He trusted. Dependence and trust are
not inconsistent with the condition of creatures who
are human, and who have sinned. Because we de-
pend and trust so little, we prove that we are still
trying to be gods — that is our sin. Just so far as
we depart from our Lord's example, we show our

90 SERMON VII.

pride, not our humility, our self-confidence, not our
fear of ourselves.

The prayer then cannot be justified on this plea ;
it cannot bear a construction which would make it
a separation between the creatures who offer it,
and Him in whose name it is offered.

Indeed, if we reflect, we shall perceive that such
a notion of it would be as much at variance with
what we know of ourselves, as with what we believe
of Him. Is it not the fact that we, too, are led
up into one place or another — a wilderness or a
city — to be tempted? Is not this whole life of
ours one continual succession of temptations? I
say, advisedly, of Temptations: for we shall gain
little, I think, by changing that word for "trials"
as if every trial did not of necessity involve a temp-
tation. When we speak of undergoing "trials,"
we do not mean merely "troubles;" we mean that
in some way or other we are proved, that we have
an opportunity given us of doing wrong or right.
When we speak of Temptation, we look at the same
fact from another side ; we wish to indicate, not
merely that we have the good and evil set before
us, but that there is a power biassing us to the evil.
But this is implied in either form of expression.
And therefore, if we suppose that God has brought
us into this world, and that we are dwelling in it
under His guidance, and that all trials are ordained
by Him ; we must suppose that He just as much
intended us to be tempted as He intended His Son
to be tempted. If we make out a difference, we do
it wilfully. Our consciences, and Scripture, equally
oppose the attempt.

LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION. 91

But why then should we pray, "Lead us not
into temptation?" I answer, Because this and no
other, is the prayer which, if we believe the Scrip-
ture account of our Lord's forty days in the wil-
derness, He must himself have prayed at the very
time when He was led up to be tempted, and when
He was going through the Temptation. His first
act of dependence and obedience was to go whither-
soever He was led; not to choose His circum-
stances for himself; to be equally ready for the
desert or the market-place. His second act of de-
pendence was in the desert or market-place, in the
full sight and foresight of the temptations which
beset him to say, "Father, bring me not into
them." And the prayer was heard. That wicked
one touched Him not. The Tempter had no power
over him, not because he exalted himself in his own
strength, but because He would not exalt himself
in it ; because in all things He glorified Him whose
will he came on earth to do. It may seem a sub-
tle and shadowy distinction to make; and subtle
and shadowy must all verbal distinctions be which
concern the Will and its acts. If you would real-
ize the distinctions which words try to embody, you
must turn to facts. Then you will find how sub-
stantial are these subtleties ; that in them lies all
the difference between the best and the worst man ;
between an angel and a devil. To be incapable of
temptation is the privilege of involuntary creatures ;
a man, or an angel dares not desire it. So long
as he feels who it is that has made him capable of
such danger, who has given him a will, he is safe;

92 SERMON VII.

for his life is a prayer that he may not be left to
his own guidance. The moment he ceases to offer
that prayer he is brought into temptation, he comes
under the Tempter's power; because he has lost
trust and allegiance and claimed independence.
Then he tries to say that he was tempted by God ;
but he is conscious that he lies ; he knows that his
act was one of submission to another than God,
that it was a secret defiance of him. He had a
right to believe that God placed him in the circum-
stances which his own will has made destructive ;
but that belief, if he had hallowed the Name of
God, if he had cried, " Thy will be done on earth,
as it is in heaven," would have been a security
against the Temptation ; it would have given him
confidence to cry, " Thou, Father, art leading me ;
bring me not into this temptation, but through it."

The deflections and eccentricities then which sin
has introduced into our lives do not make the life
of our Lord, which exhibits to us humanity in its
orderly state, in its perfect harmony, a less prac-
tical standard; on the contrary, they oblige us to
look for such a standard : we cannot measure or
interpret our own acts without it. In the sunlight
of His history, our relations to the Father, and to
all which opposes Him, stand out clearly and dis-
tinctly revealed ; though it is only in prayer and
in action that we can fully appropriate the lesson,
and feel the truth as it is in Jesus to be also a truth
in us.

However strange it may be to affirm that God
is leading us every day into some circumstances of

LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION. 93

temptation, and that here lies the very strength
and warrant of the prayer that he will not bring
us into it — will not suffer our enemies to prevail
against us ; we can boldly adopt that paradox, and
find the blessing of it in all ordinary events and in
all terrible emergencies. Riches, we know, are
temptations : poverty, we know equally, is a very
great one. The king in the Proverbs was judicious
in desiring a mean ; but therein too lies a peril of
its own : a kind of secure hardness, self-indulgence
comforting itself with the assurance that it is not
luxury, the rich and the poor man's sins both re-
garded with abhorrence because they interfere with
us and because there is no knowledge of either.
What wild pride and recklessness there is in the
sense of health ! how miserably are those deceived
who fancy that a sick bed is in itself a cure for na-
tural infirmities, and not an aggravation of them
and an excuse for them ! What selfishness is there
in possession, but oh ! how it turns inward, how
gnawing it becomes in the hour of deprivation and
loss ! Various gifts and endowments we speak of
as full of danger, and yet the man in the Gospel
hid his talent in the earth because he had only one.
The physician, lawyer, divine, may each suspect
that the other has some especial means of useful-
ness, some exemption from evils which he has felt ;
but the heart knows its own bitterness ; not one of
them is wrong in saying that his position is full of
snares; and that what seem to the on-looker secu-
rities are really dangers. If the busy man is every
day tempted to worship the idola fori, how many

94 SERMON VII.

idola specus are there which continually seduce the
contemplative man from his allegiance ! How easy
it is for monks to bring evidence that marriage
makes the soul less free; how utterly they fail
when they would praise the safety of celibacy !
When the characters of those who are bound toge-
ther are unsuitable, what irritation and restless-
ness ; if they perfectly accord, what fear that each
may confirm that which is wrong in the other !
How free from all debate and turmoil the halls of
philosophy may be thought by one who has only
known the region of politics ; sometimes men escape
from both for security to the religious world, and
find that there they are in the midst of more fierce
and implacable contentions.

The last discovery seems appalling. Can reli-
gious habits, a religious atmosphere, tempt us into
evil, into falsehood, into Atheism ? Experience
answers, Yes ! It tells us not only that no sect,
no Church, is free from these dangers, but more,
that sects and even Churches directly or implicitly,
by the idolatries or self-righteousness which they
encourage, or by the reaction against them, by pious
frauds, or the unbelief which follows upon their de-
tection, may lead us into utter ruin. It is most
necessary, in our day especially, to know that fact,
and to keep it in our recollection. There may be
a Protestantism, a Catholicism, a Christianity with-
out a God ; all that sounds most religious, all that
really is full of deepest worth, of divinest meaning
— confessions, ordinances, the Bible — may be used
to make us in practice and ultimately in theory,

LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION. 95

deniers of Him from whom they have proceeded and
of whom they speak. Where then lies the securi-
ty? In this, that He is, that He lives, and that in
one condition or another we are still led by Him,
Into what perils soever we have come, into what
perils soever we may come, let us be sure it was
not the Evil Spirit, but God himself who ordered
the whole frame and condition of our lives, and that
this frame and condition is not the worst but the
best possible for us, the best possible though — yea,
because — it is one of tremendous temptation. Let
us be equally sure that He is not our tempter ; that
He never tempted any man to evil ; that we fall
into it only when we think He is not with us to
deliver us from it ; that to think so is to believe a
lie ; that at all times, and in all possible states, this
is a right and true prayer which He inspires and
which He hears, " Bring us not into temptation."
Those old words, " The Lord is my Shepherd, there-
fore can I want nothing, He prepareth a table for
me in the midst of mine enemies, though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death, thou
art with me, thy rod and thy staff they comfort
me ;•" these words have lasted three thousand years,
and they are just as living and as good now as they
ever were ; as adapted to the temptations of every
Englishman in the 19th century as to those of David.
The words "Lead us not into Temptation," are
of the same kind; equally reminding us that we are
in the midst of enemies, that we may have to pass
through a valley of the shadow of death, through a
state of utter darkness ; equally telling us that there

96 SERMON VII.

is One who provides us a table now, and will be
with us then. But it is a prayer which goes down
more deeply, for He taught his disciples to use it,
for whom the table had been prepared in the wil-
derness where there was no bread, but only stones ;
who was Himself to pass through the valley of the
shadow of death, and to feel all that can be felt of de-
sertion and solitude there. He bids us say, "Lead
us not into Temptation," assuring us that God is
not merely the Shepherd over each lonely man, when
passing through hours and days of gloom and doubt
and anguish which no other creature knows of, but
that He is also the Guide of the whole flock, of his
own Church upon earth, and of the great Human
family, out of darkness into His marvellous light.
"Lead us not into Temptation," said He who is the
Head of the whole body, intimating that though it
consists of many members, and each has its own
special trial, which would not be precisely such a
one to any other — though it often seems as if this
were the greatest hardship and misery of all, that
sorrow is incommunicable, that each person under-
stands so little of his neighbour's, — yet in spite of
this seeming diversity and solitude, there is the
most intimate relation between all the parts of the
body, that what affects one, of necessity affects
all. We know it to be so, and in our different
ways express the conviction. "We talk of family
likenesses, of national feelings, of a particular age
having its characteristic tendencies, its own special
good and evil. The observation of these sympa-
thies is one of the necessary qualifications for con-

LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION. 97

versing with men and describing their acts ; we may
have made comparatively small progress in the in-
quiry, but all confess it to be real and full of interest.
Our hearts bear witness to the Scripture assertion,
that we have a common Tempter and a common
Deliverer ; that all things, though made instruments
of one, are yet actually and truly the instruments
of the other ; that there must be such a cry from
all hearts as this, and that it must be the most
helpful and uniting of all cries: "Lead us not into
Temptation." 0 strange and mysterious privilege,
that some bed-ridden woman in a lonely garret,
who feels that she is tempted to distrust the love and
mercy of Him who sent His Son to die for the help-
less, should wrestle with that doubt, saying the
Lord's Prayer; and that she should be thus asking
help for those who are dwelling in palaces, who
scarcely dream of want, yet in their own way are
in peril as great as hers; for the student, who in
his chamber is haunted with questions which would
seem to her monstrous and incredible, but which to
him are agonizing; for the divine in his terrible
assaults from cowardice, despondency, vanity, from
the sense of his own heartlessness, from the shame
of past neglect, from the appalling discovery of evils
in himself which he has denounced in others, from
vulgar outward temptations into which he had proud-
ly fancied that he could not fall, from dark sug-
gestions recurring often, that words have no reali-
ties corresponding to them, that what he speaks of
may mean nothing because to him it has often meant
so little. Of all this the sufferer knows nothing,
9

08 SERMON VII.

yet for these she prays — and for the statesman
who fancied the world could be moved by his wires,
and suddenly finds that it has wires of its own which
move without his bidding ; for her country under
the pressure of calamities which the most skilful
seek in vain to redress; for all other countries in
their throes of anguish which may terminate in a
second death or a new life. For one and all she
cries, "Lead us not into Temptation." Their
temptations and hers, different in form, are the
same in substance. They, like her, are tempted
to doubt that God is, and that He is the Author of
good, and not of evil; and that He is mightier than
the evil ; and that He can and will overthroAV it,
and deliver the universe out of it. This is the real
temptation, there is no other. All events, all things
and persons, are bringing this temptation before us ;
no man is out of the reach of it who is in God's
world; no man is intended to be out of the reach of
it who is God's child. He himself has led us into
this wilderness to be tempted of the devil ; we can-
not fly from it; we cannot find in one corner of it
a safety which there is not in another; we cannot
choose that we shall not have those temptations
which are specially fitted to reach our own feelings,
tempers, infirmities ; they will be addressed to these ;
they will be aimed at the heel or the head, at what-
ever part has not been touched by the fire, and is
most vulnerable. We must not crave quarter from
the enemy: to choose for ourselves where we shall
meet him, is to desert that guardianship in which is
all safety. But we may cry, "Lead us not into

LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION. 99

Temptation:" and praying so, we pray against our-
selves, against our evil tendencies, our eagerness
for that which will ruin us. Praying so, that which
seemed to be poison becomes medicine; all circum-
stances are turned to good; honey is gathered out
of the carcass ; death itself is made the minister of
life.

Away then with that cowardly language which
some of us are apt to indulge in when we speak of
one period as more dangerous than another; when
we wish we were not born into the age of revoke
tions; or complain that the time of quiet belief i$
passed, and that heneeforth every man must ask
himself whether he has any ground to stand upon,
or whether all beneath him is hollow. We are fall-
ing into the temptation, when we thus lament over
it. We are practically confessing that the Evil
Spirit is the Lord of all ; that times and seasons
are in his hand. Let us clear our minds from every
taint of that blasphemy. God has brought us into
this time ; He, and not ourselves or some dark demon.
If we are not fit to cope with that which He has
prepared for us, we should have been utterly unfit
for any condition that we imagine for ourselves.
In this time we are to live and wrestle, and in no
other. Let us humbly, tremblingly, manfully look
at it, and we shall not wish that the sun could go
back its ten degrees, or that we could go back with
it. If easy times are departed, it is that the diffi-
cult times may make us more in earnest; that they
may teach us not to depend upon ourselves. If
easy belief is impossible, it is that we may learn

100 SERMON VIII.

what belief is, and in whom it is to be placed. If
an hour is at hand which will try all the inhabitants
of the earth, it is that we may learn for all to say,
"Lead us not into the Temptation" of our times;
that so we may be enabled with greater confidence
and hope to join in the cry of every time, "Deliver
us from Evil."

SERMON VIII.

lonxtt) Bmxban in £ent, &pril 2, IMS.

Deliver us from evil. — Luke xi. 4.

When a man prays, "Lead us not into Tempta-
tion," he prays against himself; prays that he may
not go where he has an inclination to go ; prays
that neither he nor his brethren may have what
they have a false taste for, even though God's hand
seems to offer it them. Such a prayer, till we know
something of ourselves, something of his purpose
in placing us here, must needs appear strange and
perplexing. Is not the one which follows it alto-
gether different; the simplest, most spontaneous
utterance of the heart ; one which all the world has
been pouring forth; which we should certainly have
learnt, though no one had taught it us?

DELIVER US FROM EVIL. 101

It would be idle, indeed, to deny the universality
of this prayer. Wherever men are visited by any
storm, or fire, or earthquake; wherever they are
plagued with any bodily sickness ; wherever they
are oppressed by their fellow-men ; wherever they
have a vague sense of being crushed by fortune ;
wherever they have learnt to look upon custom or
law as an incubus ; wherever they are stifled by sys-
tems ; wherever they are conscious of a remorse which
stays with them and moves with them ; there is a cry
ascending to some power, known or unknown, " De-
liver us from Evil." The question what evil is, and
whence it comes, is for such sufferers of easy solution :
they know well what they mean by it ; they know
or guess generally what brought it to them ; at all
events it has overtaken them. They may suppose
that some fellow-creature can rescue them from it,
or chance, or themselves; they may look to the
physician, the priest, the legislator; to alterations
in government; to new dispositions of property;
to a friendly executioner ; to suicide. But a deli-
verer there must be; something or some person to
hope in. If once we believe evil to be omnipotent,
or suppose that it was intended for us, and we for
it, I do not think it is possible to conceive of hu-
man society or human life. Recollect the worship
of every country you ever heard of, how many
names and characteristics of the different divini-
ties had relation to deliverance of some kind, or to
the averting or avenging of wrong. If you took
these away from the mythologies, you would find
that there remained a mere caput mortuum ; all

102 SERMON VIII.

that had held them together and appealed to hu-
man trust and sympathies would have escaped.

Now it would surely be a very hard and Stoi-
cal doctrine to proclaim that what these different
creatures of our flesh and blood have cried to be
saved from, were not really evils, but only certain
conditions of existence, which they fancied to be
such. No one, I should think, can imagine that he
served truth by maintaining such a proposition
against the sense of mankind, and against the wit-
ness of his own heart. That from which men have
revolted as utterly unnatural and inconsistent and
unreasonable, that which they have felt to be in
positive disagreement with their constitution, they
have a right to call an evil ; and all the theories,
political, philosophical, religious, in the world, can
never deprive them of the right. Nor can these
theories, so far as I see, prove even the most ex-
travagant hopes that our race has indulged to be
utterly vain and delusive ; or take from any man
the right to seek deliverance from human helpers,
kings, lawgivers, shepherds of the people, from his
own strong arm, from invisible helpers, from some
fate that is higher, sterner, more inflexible than all
other powers. There was a warrant for all such
'hopes, even for hope from the last resource of self-
destruction. We have no right to take away such
refuges until we can provide a better ; and it is at
least probable that if a better be found, we shall
find some explanation of all the rest.

We may readily grant them, not only that the
prayer has been offered in all places and in all

DELIVEB US FROM EVIL. 103

ages, but that in all places and in all ages a deep
truth has been expressed in it. But do we, there-
fore, say that the prayer had no need to be taught,
that it sprang up naturally in the mind of man
without any inspiration from above, that it was
not, like the former, the petition of a man against
himself, but altogether one from and for himself?
I rather think the evidence, if it is well considered,
will lead us just to the opposite conclusion ; that
the prayer was, in all eases, taught and inspired
from above; that what was contributed to it by the
natural heart of man in his different circumstances
and positions, was the false, confused element of
it, that which narrowed its scope and divided its
object ; that in its true sense and purport it is in
perfect accordance with the cry against temptation ;
that He who imparted it to men in the old time,
was He who gave it to His disciples in its clear-
ness and purity, in its length and breadth, when
He said, "After this manner, therefore, pray ye:
Our Father — deliver us from evil."

I. Other portions of the Lord's Prayer have led
me to remark, that there is a fearful tendency in
us all, which has infused itself most mischievously
into our theology, to look first at our necessity or
misery, only afterwards at our relation to God, and
at His nature. The last are made dependent upon
the former. We are conscious of a derangement
in our condition ; simply in reference to this de-
rangement do we contemplate Him who we hope
may reform it. We have just been tracing this
process in heathenism. A mischief is felt; if

104 SERMON VITT.

there is a mischief, there must be a deliverer. Un-
doubtedly the conscience bears this witness, and it
is a right one. But the qualities of the deliverer
are determined by the character or locality of that
which is to be redressed, or by the habits of those
who are suffering from it. From this heathenish
habit of mind the Lord's Prayer is the great pre-
server. Say first, "Our Father." This relation
is fixed, established, certain. It existed in Christ
before all worlds, it was manifested when He came
in the flesh. He is ascended on high, that we may
claim it. Let us be certain that we ground all our
thoughts upon these opening words ; till we know
them well by heart, do not let us listen to the rest.
Let us go on carefully, step by step, to the Name,
the Kingdom, the Will, assuring ourselves of our
footing, confident that we are in a region of clear
unmixed goodness ; of goodness which is to be hal-
lowed by us; which has come and shall come to
us, and in us; which is to be done on earth, not
merely in heaven. Then we are in a condition to
make those petitions, which we are ordinarily in
such haste to utter, and which He, in whom all
wisdom dwells, commands us to defer. Last of all
comes this " Deliver us from evil." When we are
able to look upon evil, not as the regular normal
state of the universe, but as absolutely at variance
with the character of its Author, with His consti-
tution of it, with the Spirit which He has given to
us, then we can pray, attaching some real signifi-
cance to the language, Deliver us from it. Then
we shall understand why men looked with faith to

DELIVER US FROM EVIL. 105

the aid of their fellow-men ; to princes, and chief-
tains, and lawgivers, and sages. They were sent
into the world for this end, upon this mission.
They were meant to act as deliverers. They were
to be witnesses of a real righteous order, and to
resist all transgressors of it. We can understand
why strong men felt that they had better act for
themselves, than depend upon foreign help. For
the Father of all put their strength into them, that
they might wield it as His servants in His work ; it
was His Spirit who made them conscious of their
strength, and of that purpose for which they were
to use it. We can see why these hopes were so
continually disappointed, though they had so right
a foundation; why they were driven to think of
higher aid, of invisible champions, because those
upon the earth proved feeble, or deserted the cause,
and served themselves. It is true that the hosts
of heaven are obeying that Power which the hosts
of earth are commanded to obey; that they are
doing His service by succouring those who are toil-
ing below ; it is true, because He who rules all is
not a destiny, but a loving will ; not an abstraction,
but a Person ; not a mere sovereign, but a Father.
All creation is ordered upon this law of mutual de-
pendence and charity ; but it is only in the know-
ledge and worship of the Highest, that we can ap-
prehend the places and tasks of the lower; when
He is hidden, these are forgotten ; society becomes
incoherent: nothing understands itself; every thing
is inverted ; the deliverer is one with the tyrant ;
evil and good run into each other ; we invoke Satan

10G SERMON VIII.

to cast out Satan. See, then, what a restorative,
regenerative power lies in this prayer ! See what
need there was that the Son of God should come
from the bosom of the Father, to make men know
that they were not orphans, to show how they might
be in fact, and not merely in idea, children !

II. For now it is not any longer by this, or that
man, or unseen power, by this or that subordinate
agency, by this or that alteration of events and
circumstances, that we are forced to bound our
plans and prospects of deliverance. We have not
to work our way upwards by stairs winding, broken,
endless, to an indefinite shadowy point, which we
are afraid to reach, lest it should prove to be no-
thing. We begin from the summit ; we find there
the substance of all the hope men have drawn from
the promising, but changeable, aspects of the cloud-
land below; we see that all the darkness of earth,
all its manifold forms of evil, have come from the
rays being intercepted, which would have scattered
it and shall scatter it altogether. Therefore we
pray boldly, "Deliver us from evil," knowing as-
suredly that we are praying to be set free from
that to which the will of the Creator is opposed,
and against which all the powers of the universe
are engaged: that which all natural things, doing
Him quiet homage, are punishing; that against
which all voluntary creatures by the law of their
being are pledged to co-operate. We are praying
against that which men have not been praying
against in vain for six thousand years, but rather
which they have been stemming, overcoming con-

DELIVER US FROM EVIL. 107

tinuall y ; each of their prayers, if offered in ever
so much dimness and confusion, opening a vista out
of the darkness, because each of them derived its
first impulse from Him, who through them and in
answer to them was preparing the full discovery of
Himself, and of that strength whereby all that re-
sists Him shall be broken. I say the prayer of-
fered with this recollection, becomes one full of
cheerfulness and confidence. The difficulty is, to
offer it in that recollection. God forbid that I
should speak lightly of that difficulty! knowing
how great it is ; how hard, when evil is above, be-
neath, within, when it faces you in the world, and
scares you in the closet, when you hear it saying
in your own heart and saying in every one else,
"Our name is Legion," when sometimes you seem
to be carrying the world's sins upon yourself, and
then forget them and yourself altogether,— which
is worse, and brings a heavier sense of misery
afterwards, — when all schemes of redress seem to
make the evil under which the earth is groaning
more malignant, when our own history, and the his-
tory of mankind, seem to be mocking at every
effort for life, and to be bidding us rest contented
in death ; oh, it is hard, most hard, to think that
such a prayer as this is not another of the cheats
and self-delusions in which we have worn out exist-
ence ! But, courage ! if the evil were less press-
ing, we might have leisure to doubt the remedy ;
when all possibilities are exhausted, we begin to
understand that here is certainty : we must believe
on some ground or other that evil is not absolute,

108 SERMON VIII.

not victorious ; we must believe it honestly, and
without a trick, not pretending that it is nothing,
when we feel inwardly that it is only not all. And
we can believe it honestly with our whole hearts,
while we say, "Our Father, deliver us from the evil."
Then that which seemed so terrible, because it was
so manifold, is condensed into one ; it means in all
its forms that which is opposed to the mind and
will of Him, who so loved the world, as to give
His only-begotten Son, that we might be His
children, and brethren one of another.

III. This truth, that evil, though by its nature
multiform and contradictory, has nevertheless a
central root, our Lord teaches us by His temptation
in the wilderness, and again by the prayer, "De-
liver us from the evil." He, for the first time,
made it fully evident that mankind has not merely
enemies, but an Enemy; that neither the various
external torments which seem to make up evil, nor
the desires and appetites of the man himself, upon
which we often charge it, create or constitute the
mystery of iniquity which is at work. Most blessed
was this discovery ; it justified the thoughts which
had been in a number of hearts; it justified the
ways of God. I said that the Stoical denial of
external evil is an artificial doctrine, at war with
conscience and reason. Our Lord never for a mo-
ment yielded to it ; He acknowledged palsies, and
hunger, and leprosies, to be plagues and curses
from which men should seek deliverance. But he
did at the same time explain wherein the truth of
Stoicism lay. He showed that these sufferings arc

DELIVER US FROM EVIL. 109

not the evils of man ; they belong to a wrong con-
dition, but they are not the causes of it ; nay, their
sting may be taken out of them, they may become
instruments for the cure and destruction of evil.
He himself underwent them ; He felt them as none
ever felt them ; so He showed that men are in-
tended to feel them. He exhibited love and mercy
in them, and through them ; so He showed that they
are not the masters of the will ; that they may be
its servants. Equally does He prove that the good
things of life, the riches and beauty of the uni-
verse, are not the origin of its evils, as men have
wickedly imagined ; and if not, then that the de-
sires and appetites of our heart, which correspond
to these, and which they address, are not the origin
of evil, and carry in them no necessary corruption.
And yet He brings the sense of evil nearer to us
than it was ever brought before; He explains by
His words, by His life, why we must feel that evil
to be actually bound up with ourselves, why it is
the most difficult of all things not to identify it with
ourselves. For He by bidding us deny ourselves,
He by giving up Himself in every thought and act,
He by presenting Himself as the one great Sacri-
fice to the Father, makes us perceive that the set-
ting up of self, the worship of self, is the evil from
which all others flow, from which we are to pra}7,
"Deliver us." Here is the wonderful Gospel-
mystery which meets all the mysteries of our own
hearts and of the world, and expounds them. Here
is that which makes that last refuge of man in self-
murder intelligible. It is self he wants to get rid
10

110 SERMON VIII.

of; he has sought evil elsewhere, and not found it;
he has it in his own being ; that must perish. What
a sense of solicitude must be in the spirit before it
can dream of such an act ! what a feeling that all
which it has seen without is centred within ! And
yet what it feels in that hour, all the world is feel-
ing in a measure : this self is the curse of each, a3
much as it is his. Oh ! if he could rise for a mo-
ment to that perception, if he could feel "It is not
2, it is the spirit of self-will, who is counterfeiting
me; it is this from which I must be delivered, it is
this from which my race must be delivered ! That
each may be himself, that the universe may be what
the Lord of all created it to be ; this must be over-
come for each, for all." With what a new and
wonderful feeling would he then turn to the words,
"Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the
sins of the world !" "Lo, I come, (in the volume
of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, 0
God: thy law is within my heart;" and to this,
" By the which will we are sanctified, through the
offering of the body of Christ once for all." Such
words may have seemed hitherto quite vague, the
fragments of an obsolete theology. Seen in the
light of this discovery respecting the nature of Evil,
seen in the light of that other more glorious dis-
covery respecting the infinite charity of God, how
they harmonize with all that our hearts had pro-
phesied of, with our consciousness that we have ca-
pacities of sympathy and fellowship, which are de-
stroyed by self-will ; with the conditions of a world,
created for brotherhood, destroyed by the same

DELIVER US FROM EVIL. Ill

self-will. How little a man, who has learnt this
lesson, wishes any more to resolve the evil spirit
into the feelings and passions of the individual
heart ! How he abhors such implicit practical Mani-
cheeism, against which Christ's temptation, and the
history of His redemption, extending as it does to
every thought and movement and appetite of our
souls and bodies, as well as to the whole outward
universe, is the protest ! How he must rejoice to
think, "I can pray, I will pray, Deliver us from
the evil. I will pray to the Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ against myself, against my inclination
to make self the object of my existence, of my
worship, against every act and thought which in-
volves that inclination. I will pray to Him, whose
will is that I should be in submission to Him, that
I should be His servant in all the powers and af-
fections of my spirit, soul, and body; wdio would
use all these for the manifestation of His love, for
the deliverance of His creatures. I will pray to
Him in the confidence that He has accepted the
perfect sacrifice of His Son for me, and for all man-
kind, the sacrifice which He had himself prepared,
the sacrifice which was the fruit and perfect setting
forth of His own love, the sacrifice which was pre-
sented to Him by the Everlasting Spirit. I will
pray in the confidence that He will receive the sa-
crifice of myself and of all to Him in that Name.
I will pray in the certainty that He is maintaining
a conflict with the self-will which is the curse and
dislocation of the world, and that every plague, pes-
tilence, insurrection, revolution, is a step in the his-

112 SERMON VIII.

tory of that conflict, tending towards the final vic-
tory. I will pray that we may not be cast down
and lose faith, because change after change only
seems to bring out the evil more fearfully, to ex-
hibit some darker and more inward form of it. I
will pray that we may not acquiesce in any evil
about us, or within us, because we fancy that a worse
might come from its removal. I will pray to feel
that our only safety is in the God of truth and
love, to recollect that self-will, as its different veils
and bandages and rags of borrowed finery fall off,
must be displayed more nakedly and horribly; to
give thanks, nevertheless, that its resources are
nearly exhausted, that its rage will be fiercest when
its hour is shortest ; to make, therefore, no truce
with it ; to wish none for my fellow-men ; to act
and live in the confidence that if we wait the ap-
pointed time, the travail-hour of creation, He who
overcame the principalities and powers of evil in
the wilderness, in the city, on the cross, in the se-
pulchre, and who ascended on high, making a show
of them openly, will fully deliver us and our race
from them, that we may serve without fear Him,
the Father, and the Holy Ghost, the one God,
world without end."

SERMON IX.

iriftl) Qnribas in Cent, ftpril 0, \Sr±B.

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever.
Amen. — Matt. vi. 13.

As this Doxology occurs in only one Evangelist,
the Church, in her repetitions of the prayer, omits
it at least as often as she uses it. The idea con-
tained in the words has been expressed already; it
is involved in all the petitions. But the distinct
utterance of it at the close of the prayer teaches
us some lessons which the prayer might fail to
teach us, and yet which we must always remember
if we would say it truly.

I. The words, " Thine is the kingdom," certainly
assume that it is not ours. Now if by " Kingdom "
we understand the kingdom of Nature, the courses
of the planets, the succession of day and night, of
seed-time and harvest, perhaps the temptation to
say, " This is ours," may not be very great. Some
Opifex 3Iundiy or Intelligent Principle, or Demi-
urgus, or fixed law, may be admitted to preside
over these arrangements. But if we apply " king-
dom," as I suppose most of us would, to the order
and conduct of human society generally,^ or in
some of its particular divisions, the feeling is very
10*

114 SERMON IX.

different. Here we have a claim to be masters ;
over this order man exercises a most evident in-
fluence. Is there any thing monstrous in the
notion, that he established it, and that he upholds
it ? There can be nothing strange in it, for we all
drop into it most easily and naturally. True, there
are old forms which denote a belief the most oppo-
site of this, forms which indicate that the highest
ruler of the land, and every subordinate magistrate,
derives his authority from an invisible person, to
whom he is under a fearful responsibility for the
fulfilment of his duties. The recognition of an
actual King of kings, and Lord of lords, of one not
only interfering at certain crises to disturb an ex-
isting monotony, but present at all times, the real
source of government, through whatever hands it
may be administered, — this recognition enters as-
suredly into the institutions and laws of every
nation in Christendom ; I might say, of every
nation in the world. But we have become, it seems,
convinced that these witnesses are, as to their real
and original intent, obsolete. They belong, it is
said, to a theocratic period of the world's history ;
when that had passed away they lingered still, and
are even now not without their use in enforcing
obligations, the true ground of which cannot be ap-
prehended by the people at large, in giving an his-
torical sacredness and mystery to that which would
else seem a creature of the present, in sustaining
the force of laws by sympathies and affections, by
the terrors or hopes of another world. But all
these explanations and apologies clearly assume,

FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM. 115

that the schemes for upholding society, be they re-
ligious or secular, are of our creation ; that society
itself is. Some would throw a decent veil over its
origin ; some would lay bare the savage contests,
victories of cunning and terror, contests of the
weak many and the strong few, out of which it
arose ; sonxe would find a resting-place in the phy-
sical conformation and mental temperament of dif-
ferent races ; ultimately, the great majority of those
who think for themselves, and of those who are
thought for, subside into the conclusion, that man
is an absolute sovereign over his own social rela-
tions ; or, at all events, that there is merely a re-
served right dwelling with some other power, which
in ordinary calculations hardly needs to be taken
into account. It may happen, undoubtedly, that
this claim of sovereignty assumes a shape which
we find startling. We may be suddenly required
to recognise, not the abstract phantom, but the
practical exercise of popular supremacy. Then
when we begin to observe, that whenever that which
is in conception so sublime takes a concrete form,
it is a very coarse and very narrow. one ; the most
ignorant part of some city or district embodying
the great idea. We may begin to ask, Whether
that which seems to be the highest achievement of
liberty does not involve a perpetual alternation of
despotism and servility ; whether that which is the
last and highest effort of reason does not lead to
incessant contradiction ? Such expressions may
be true, such doubts amply justified, but do not
they come too late ? Have we not already admitted

116 SERMON IX.

the principle, sanctioned the contradiction? If
this ultimate sovereignty resides in any creatures,
surely there must be a law of gravitation which
will make it settle at last where we dread to think
that it is settling now. That law cannot for ever
be resisted by mere prescription, or tricks of di-
plomacy, or arms which may lose their edge and
change their object; or, lastly, by spiritual influ-
ences which we resort to for a purpose, which we
wish to be effectual for others but can trifle with
ourselves. Surely all these things must come to
naught; all, that is to say, which interposes be-
tween us or any country, and the abyss of self-
willed mob dominion, if these words which we utter
so often have not a reality in them above all re-
alities, a depth beneath all depths. "Yours," says
our Lord, "is not the kingdom, though you may
be called to sit down in it, and occupy honourable
places in it ; though each of you has some place in
if; some work and office assigned you by the
Great King, a rule over a portion of his subjects.
Yours is not the kingdom ; nor, as so many of you
come to think, when all your plots have failed, and
you are desperate of overcoming evil and estab-
lishing good in your fashion, is it the Devil's king-
dom. He claims it; he says to you, as he said to
Me, ' It is mine, and I give it to whomsoever I
will.' On the strength of that assertion he bids
you, as he bade me, fall down and worship him.
He asks you to traffic with him for the means of
regenerating your fellow-creatures, and getting the
kingdom out of his hands. But you can answer

FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM. 117

him as I answered : * It is written, Thou shalt
worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt
thou serve.' You can say, ' Thine is the kingdom ;
thine it is now ; not thine it shall be hereafter.
Thine it is who art our Father, and hast called us
to he thy children. Thine it is, whom we have
asked according to thy will to deliver us from
evil.'"

Now, my brethren, in making this ascription, we
do not affirm Theocracy in the sense which some
persons give to that word, and which may well have
made it hateful. We do not say, " Thine is the
kingdom," meaning that it belongs not really to an
invisible Father, but really to certain visible priests,
who claim the homage due to Him for themselves,
and bring men into bondage by the perversion of
that truth which is alone able to set them free.
We do not mean, according to the Filmer and
Sacheverel doctrine, that the divine power is trans-
ferred to certain visible kings, in whom it rests ab-
solutely and indefeasibly. We do not mean, ac-
cording to the fifth-monarchy teachers, that this
kingdom resides in a certain body of saints whom
God has authorized to claim the world as their
possession. All these doctrines we should reject,
not as exaggerations, but as evasions ; not more for
their folly than for their profaneness. If the words,
"Thine is the kingdom," are true words, priests,
kings, saints, must say as much as any, yea, more
than any: "It is not ours. We exist only to tes-
tify whose it is, only to bring all whom we can
reach within the experience of its blessedness."

118 SERMON IX.

They are to make it manifest that their consecra-
tion is not a falsehood ; that all the services by which
we hallow our civil acts are not horrible mockeries ;
that all the forms of human discourse which uncon-
sciously witness of a divine order and government,
need not for the sake of honesty be cast out of it,
till it is reduced to little more than the chattering
of savages. They are to declare — we all of us,
brethren, are pledged by our baptismal vows, to
declare, — that there is an actual eternal ground
for what we have treated as fictions, for what men
declare — and declare rightly if we could by our lie
make God's truth of none effect,— to be worn-out
fictions. We are bound to affirm, that a Fatherly
kingdom is established in the world; that to be
members of it is our highest title, and that the
beggars of the land share it with us : that in it the
chief of all is the servant of all ; that under Him
all may in their respective spheres reign according
to this law ; that all ranks and orders stand upon
this tenure, and are preserved or overturned by
their honour or contempt for it ; that all offices,
the highest and lowest, have hence their responsi-
bility and dignity; that this kingdom has its highest
rule in the human will, and its secret impulses and
determinations ; that it reaches to the most trifling
acts and words ; that not one of the suffering myriads
in a crowded city is forgotten by him who is its
Ruler, any more than one of the spirits of just men
made perfect; that when all the subordinate vassals
of the kingdom shall confess their dependence upon
Him, shall know that He is, and shall feel towards

FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM. 119

those who are beneath them and to one another as
He feels towards them, then His kingdom which is
now, will indeed have come in power.

II. And so it shall come ; for Thine is the Power.
Different words from the last, however closely allied
to them ; and I think harder words to say in per-
fect sincerity. Here we are not limited, as in the
other case. We were obliged to confess that we
did not call the Kingdom of Nature into existence.
But we do put forth a great and notorious poiver
over that kingdom ; men can say, with much appa-
rent justification, " Ours is the power," even there.
Accordingly they did say it. The students of Na-
ture went forth, like the Persian king, with the
chains wherewith to bind her, with the magical
sounds which were to make her do their biddings.
But then the humbling maxim was proclaimed, which
has been the foundation of all real discovery and
victory in this department : " Man, the servant and
interpreter of Nature, knows nothing, can do no-
thing, except what he has first observed in her."
All the boastings to which two centuries of won-
derful success might have given birth are stopped
by the recollection, that obedience to this canon
has been the single secret of success, that any one
who would resist it, and determine to conquer with-
out stooping, has gone away discomfited. Nature,
even when she seems most confessing the dominion
of man, is saying with all her voices, "Yours is not
the power ; you are learners, interpreters, receivers ;
you can use the strength which you have first asked
for, that is all."

120 SERMON IX.

Yet how wide a field remains, if this is denied
us ! Ours is surely the power, in some way or
other, to affect our fellow-men. There is the direct
power which lies in relationship ; station, age, the
power of outward attractions ; the power of wealth ;
the power of conversation ; the power of moving
crowds by speech; the power of written words and
of song; these, with all the innumerable subtle
mysterious agencies which are only known in their
operation. Surely, whatever may be said of the
objects to which these powers are directed, their
existence must be admitted. It cannot be said
that they are not put forth by human beings, that
they are not human powers. Can it be pretended
that they would be in any respect better if they
were less vigorous, that there is in power itself an
inherent curse ? Such a proposition would, I be-
lieve, be a denial as great as there can be, of the
truth which this ascription affirms. But upon this
point experience has its own testimony to bear,
which must be listened to, and which cannot be at
variance with that which comes from any true au-
thority. These exercises of power do not only
bring with them pain, which might be easily under-
stood, but after them disappointment. And this
not only when the end sought for has been mean,
but when it has been glorious ; when it has been
the triumph over wrong and the setting up of right.
A bitter wail is heard again and again, that weak
insignificant men do the work of the world, and
that those who could do it are kept back or crushed ;
a wail which they who make it are half ashamed

FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM. 121

of, but which, nevertheless they cannot suppress.
The thing that was aimed at is not achieved; hope-
less obstacles from the force of circumstances, and
the ignorance of mankind, are said to stand in the
way. "What is stranger still, those in whom no
power is apparent, who are not conscious of its ex-
istence in them, are seen to exert it ; the meek peo-
ple whom the world does not regard, whom the men
of power have been used to look upon with scorn,
effect what they cannot; at some time or other that
influence reaches even them and overmasters them.
Strange facts, but recurring continually, making
up the history of mankind ! How can they be ex-
plained ? They are not explained, I think, to any
person who has much vaunted of his own powers,
till he is led to perceive that man, the servant and
student of the ways of God, knows nothing in morals,
can do nothing in influencing his fellow-men, except
what he hath first perceived in Him after whose
image he is formed. In other and much better
words he learns to say, " Thine is the power. Thine
are all those powers which I have found in myself
and called mine. From Thee they came, by Thee
they must be sustained and directed. That per-
petual restlessness which I have experienced, which
sometimes made me curse the world, sometimes
myself, sometimes Thy gifts, was the effect of my
claiming that which did not belong to me, trying
to wield armour which was too weighty. Those
whom I complained of because they were set in
high places, with so little right to be there, were
less mischievous than I should have been, because
11

122 SERMON IX.

they did less, struggled less, and left more room
for Thy working. Those whose strength I was
forced to admit, though naturally I despised them,
might have fewer powers than mine, hut what they
had were submitted to Thee, were confessed to be
Thine ; therefore they had Omnipotence with them.
And now, since Thou hast taught me, by sore and
tremendous discipline, that I cannot strive with
Thee, I believe, indeed, that Thine is the power;
the power to make this will comfortable to Thine;
the power to use what Thou hast endowed me with
as Thine own; the power to make all circumstances,
which have no virtue of their own, and which whether
sad or happy, may be my plagues, really blessed;
the power to bring order out of the chaos within
me ; the power to change selfish remorse into gra-
cious repentance; the power to quicken the bodie3
of Thy saints, to restore the age, to renew the
earth, to subdue even all things to Thyself."

III. For lastly, Thine is the glory. To what
is this Kingdom tending? What is to be accom-
plished by this power? " Though we admit," it is
often said, "that there is some Being who formed
individuals and human society, and who is continu-
ally directing both, still, if we hold Him to be a
gracious and benevolent Being, we cannot conceive
Him to have any object but the happiness or well-
doing of His creatures; we must not dream that
self-glory is ever His aim. But if not, then surely
the blessedness and glory of humanity may be our
ultimate aim, we need not, cannot look higher.
This statement you must all have heard frequently,

FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM. 123

in one form of words or another, and we shall hear
more of it yet. We ought not to overbook the
important truth which is contained in it, or to be
unthankful for the confutation it contains of a
deadly doctrine which divines have been too ready
to propagate. If the glory be His, whom we have
called our Father, whose Name we have desired to
hallow, whose Kingdom we have prayed might come,
whose Will is to be done on earth and in Heaven,
who is the Giver and the Forgiver, who guides us
through temptation, and brings us out of evil; we
dare not believe for an instant that it is a Self-glory
of which we are speaking. It must be that which
is the eternal opposite and contradiction of Self-
glory ; the glory of a Being whose name and nature
is Love. That such a Being must seek the good of
the creatures He has formed, we are all agreed.
What we say is, that He would not be seeking the
good of His voluntary creatures, if He did not raise
them above themselves ; if He did not give them a
perfect absolute object to behold and to dwell in.
Those of our age who speak so much about the glory
of humanity, affirm that man wants no such object,
or cannot attain it if he does. Either it is really
the satisfaction of all his wants, or else the only
one he can hope for, to be a Narcissus, ever behold-
ing his own beauty and becoming more and more
enamoured of it. I am aware that many who use
this kind of language, would protest strongly against
the notion that a man becomes necessarily a self-
worshipper, a seeker of his own glory, because he
seeks the glory of his race or kind. I admit the

124 SERMON IX.

distinction ; it is a very important one. What I
desire earnestly is, that they would ask themselves
how it may be practically realized. Humanity
cannot be contemplated merely as an abstraction;
it must be seen in some one, Fcr a time we may
choose a favourite hero, and think that he embodies
all we covet to behold. Imperfections appear in
him, or he does not meet the new cravings of our
mind; he is discarded, another is raised up, who
has a shorter reign. We discover that we must not
exalt one against another ; each one carries in him
the nature of all; each man has that nature very
near to him. A great and wonderful conviction !
but if existing alone, sure to turn into that state of
mind which I just now spoke of. Around, beneath,
above, the man finds no object so worthy of his
delight, admiration, adoration, as himself*

It is very possible, that those who put forth a
theory which justifies, as it seems to us, this mourn-
ful result, are not practically nearer to it than we
are who denounce it. God forbid that I should ex-
aggerate their danger, or our safety ! I believe
that we are one and all haunted by this tendency
to self-glorification every day and hour of our lives;
that no religious systems, no religious practices,
are a protection against it, nay, will, if we trust in
them, infallibly lead us into it. It signifies not
under what pretext, philosophical, political, theolo-
gical, we build altars to ourselves ; the worship is
in all cases equally accursed. To throw down these
altars, to destroy the high places in which men are
burning incense to divinities that will prove at last

FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM. 125

to be fouller than Belial or Moloch ; this must be
our work. But if we have commenced this process,
where it always should commence, in our own hearts,
we shall know that we can only drive out the false
by turning to the true. It is only God who can
break the yoke of the tyrants under whom we have
fallen from forgetfulness of Him.

Therefore I have desired that we should medi-
tate upon the prayer of our childhood, in which lies,
I believe, the charm against all that has assaulted
us in our manhood. Within the few weeks that we
have been considering it, as many events have been
passing before us as might fill many centuries ; it
has seemed to meet them all; to be the best and
fullest language in which we can express our fears,
hopes, longings, for ourselves, our nation, the world.
We have not found that the wants and sorrows of
Humanity were forgotten in it, because it begins
from a higher ground, because it starts from a Fa-
ther, because it acknowledges all the highest and
lowest blessings as proceeding from Him. If we be-
lieve that this Father beholds Humanity created, re-
deemed, glorified, in His beloved Son ; if we believe
that in that Son we may behold it and behold Him ;
that being members of His body we may see Christ
in each and Christ in all ; we cannot think less
nobly of our kind than those who do shut their eyes
to the facts of its corruption and misery, or who
will not acknowledge that this corruption comes
from our refusal to retain God in our knowledge.
If we believe that the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of
the Father and Son, is given to us that we may be

126 ' SERMON IX.

united to each other, that we may be fitted for all
knowledge and all love, we cannot have less noble
anticipations of that for which man is destined than
those who speak most loudly of his emancipation
from all thraldom, and of his infinite capacities.
But what we desire for ourselves and for our race —
the greatest redemption we can dream of, — is ga-
thered up in the words " Thine is the glory." Self-
willing, self-seeking, self-glorying, here is the curse :
no shackles remain when these are gone ; nothing
can be wanting when the Spirit sees itself, loses
itself, in Him who is Light, and in whom is
no darkness at all. In these words therefore we
see the ground and consummation of our prayer ;
they show how prayer begins and ends in Sacrifice
and Adoration. They teach us how Prayer, which
we might fancy was derived from the wants of an
imperfect, suffering creature, belongs equally to the
redeemed and perfected. In these the craving for
independence has ceased; they are content to ask
and to receive. But their desire of knowledge and
love never ceases. They have- awaked up after
His likeness, and are satisfied with it; but the
thought " Thine is the glory," opens to them a
vision which must become wider and brighter for
ever and ever. Amen.

THE END.

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