The Lord's prayer

PRINCETON, N. J.

BV 230 .S73 1883

Stanford, Charles, 1823-1886

The Lord's prayer

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THE LORD'S PRAYER.

T H E

LORD'S PRAYER

/

CHARLES STANFORD, D.D.,

NEW YORK: MACMILLAN & CO.
1883.

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PREFACE.

The following homilies were in substance first
preached in the ordinary course of the author's
ministry, and have since been written out from
rough notes, or from memory. In November
1 88 1, while engaged in thus getting them ready
for the press, it became needful for him to con-
sult an oculist, and his sentence was, " Glaucoma:
fast fading sight." In consequence of this, much
of the manuscript has been written by him with
shut eyes, and much set down at his dictation
by the hand that has helped him in all other
things.

"All is said, and we come too late."* Nearly
two centuries are gone since this remark was
penned ; and if it had some truth in it then,
how much more now, especially as to the great
subject of this small book !

The same argument for silence would, how-

* Jean de la Bruycre.

VI PREFACE.

ever, have equal strength against the discussion
of any other vital subject of Christian truth or
duty, and although the Lord's Prayer has al-
ready been so fully discussed by men of the
highest worth, even now, any Christian who,
as in this instance, utters his own living
thoughts about it, in his own natural way, and
with a simple wish to honour God, may hope
thus to be of some service to his fellow Chris-
tians. May this grace be given.

Charles Stanford.

Camberwell, April 1883.

CONTENTS.

CHAl'.

I. Jesus, the Teacher of Prayer

"Lord, teach us to pray."

II. The Lord's Prayer given as a Patierx

"After this manner therefore pray ye."

III. The Invocation

"Our Father which art in heaven."

IV. The First Petition • . . .

'■ Hallowed be Thy Name."

V. The Second Petition

"Thy kingdom come."

VI. The Third Petition

"Thy will be done in earth."

PAGE

I

53

84

112

130

VII. The Fourth Petition . . , .156

" Give us our daily bread."

viii CONTENTS.

CHAP.

PAGE

VIII. The Fifth Petition . . . • i79

" Forgive us our debts."

IX. The Sixth Petition . . . • 203

" Lead us not into temptation."

X. the Seventh Petition . . • • 229

"Deliver us from evil."

JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER.

"Lord, teach us to pray."— Luke xi. i. (Authorized ahd
{Revised Version.

This discourse is simply introductory. Only in
the smallest degree does it profess to offer notes
on any passage in the Lord's Prayer, or>n any
of its historical circumstances ; yet it is hoped
that, by the blessing of the Highest, it may
help to tune some spirits for the thoughts that
follow, and waken some hearts into sympathy
with the lessons that Christ is about to teach,
by showing from the Scriptures in general, these
two things: —

I. Why Jesus is to be regarded as the Teacher
of prayer,

II. How He teaches.

I. We have to show wJiy Jesus is to be re-
garded as the Teacher of Prayer ?

It should be taken for granted that knowing
how to pray is the first of all essentials. Men
may know, or think they know, how to discuss
questions of Divine metaphysics, and may talk
as if they thought themselves " privy councillors
A

2 JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER.

to the King of kings," but, after all, without a
knowledge of prayer, they have only a know-
ledge of surfaces. God is still a secret ; a veil
hides the mercy seat, and though they may claim
to know all about the cabinet of Gospel truth,
with all its treasury of things " new and old,"
they only know the outside of it ; the door is
locked, and there is no key. Yet no one need
"perish for lack of this knowledge." If we
want information, we may have it.

There was once a man in Palestine who said
that He was the Son of God, and what He did,
proved that what He said was true. Of Him
it was written by the pen of the Holy Ghost,
" No man hath seen God at any time ; the only
begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father,
He hath declared Him." When He had lived
the three years which made visible the eternity
of unseen Divine love, had spoken out the
simple, great, creative words of eternal life, and
had wrought out, by the sacrifice of Himself,
the one plan for restoring the bond which sin
had broken between the Maker and the made,
He carried our nature alive and uninjured right
through the death of the cross, — still in the
body, though changed into a body of glory ; He
then went up into the throne of mediation, and
there He ever lives to bestow what here He
died to procure.

When we would know how to pray, we, like

JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. 3

the first disciples, think that if anyone can tell
us, He can. It is plain from the sequel to their
request, that they were not only right in making
it, but right in making it to Him, and that we
therefore shall be right in repeating it. He is
the Teacher of prayer. This is His business.
Now He is ascended. His disciples are always
learning to pray, and He is always teaching.

No ! some will say, this teaching is the pro-
vince, not of the Son, but of the Holy Ghost.
But not a single instance do we find in all the
New Testament of a request for instruction
made to the Holy Ghost. It is not to the
Spirit that disciples may go with the petition —
"Lord, teach us to pray." In all our approaches
to the Infinite Unseen, we have first to do with
Jesus ; every prayer must reach His ear before
we have the answer to it ; like Stephen, like
Paul, like those who followed Him during
His earthly life, it is still our delightful right to
speak out all our fears, all our cares, and all
our questions, to Him as to our present Lord,
with this difference only — that He is not with
us as He was with them, veiled in a human form.*
When we speak to Him, we speak to the Spirit,
for the Spirit is in Him, and in Him as the

* That human form, having answered the ends for
which it was taken, would, if still retained on earth, be
but a veil before His divine glory, Sia rod KarcnreTdix/xaTos,
tovt'' ^crrt, ttjs aapKhs duroO. — Heb. x. 20.

4 JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER,

Head of the Church, that He may give out
holy influences. It is as much as ever one of
His functions and part of His work as our
Saviour to be the Teacher of prayer, and He
teaches by the agency of the Spirit — of the
Spirit of whom it is written — "He shall not
speak of Himself, He shall glorify Me." " It
is the Spirit that quickeneth." "The Spirit
helpeth our infirmities, for we know not how to
pray as we ought, but the Spirit Himself maketh
intercession for us with groanings which cannot
be uttered, and He that searcheth the heart,
knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because
He maketh intercession for the saints according
to the will of God." *

II. Next, let us enquire how He teaches. We
must distinguish between agency and instru-
mentality. The agent is One — that is, Jesus,
by the Holy Spirit's influence ; the instruments
are many — and we now propose to glance at
some of the many instruments through which this
influence works, in order that we may answer the
question before us.

I. He sometimes begins to teach us by
means of an overheard prayer. The first neces-
sity in the process of teaching us is, that there
should be roused in us the wish to learn. The
sinner never anticipates the Saviour. He begins
to teach before we begin to ask Him, and it is
* Rom. viii. 26, 27 {Revised Version).

JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. 5

at His own mystic prompting that we pray to
be taught. The instrument of this prompting
is frequently an overheard prayer. It was so
in the chapter of events to which the text be-
longs.

" And it came to pass that, as He was pray-
ing in a certain place," I think it was in secret,
"when He ceased, one of His disciples said
unto Him, Lord, teach us to pray."

John Bunyan, telling the story of his pilgrims,
says in one passage, "Now, when they were
almost at the end of the ground, they perceived
that a little before them was a solemn noise as
of one that was much concerned. So they went
on, and looked before them, and behold they
saw, as they thought, a man upon his knees,
with his hands and eyes lift up, and speaking,
as they thought, earnestly to one that was
above. They drew nigh, but could not tell what
he said, so they went softly till he had done.
When he had done, he got up, and began to
run towards the Celestial City."

If I read aright the short notes that Luke has
left us, the disciples, on the occasion here noti-
fied, overheard the secret prayers of God's Holy
One ! The deep impression left on me is, that
there was not only something extraordinary in
the prayer itself, but in the circumstance that
they heard it — that it was not a family prayer,
such as, doubtless, they had already many a

6 JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER.

time heard Him utter, and in which they had
taken part, but one in which they could not take
part, and with which mortals could have nothing
to do — one in which He was terribly alone,
gloriously alone — one which made them feel
that they had never prayed before, and had now
to begin learning. If, in old time, a man with-
out meaning it had overheard^ the secret prayer
of Jacob, when, under the stars, he wrestled
with the "Traveller Unknown ;" if a man had
overheard that prayer of Elijah which shut the
heavens ; or that which, three years after, opened
them again ; if a man had overheard the prayer
of Daniel in the night when he was left with
the tremendous lions ; if a man had lost himself
in the Temple, and had somehow got shut
within the curtains of the Holy Place, so that
he oversaw the secret glory flame out, and over-
heard the secret, lonely priest pray — what would
such overhearings have been in comparison with
this ! No seer has told us how it came to pass,
but our minds seem just now to have a vision
of it. Jesus has been praying in the mountain
all night. In the morning His disciples go out
to meet Him as He comes down. They are
pushing up through the dewy leaves, and round
by the boulders, when — hush !

There, in " a certain place," is Jesus, praying.
Suddenly they feel as if they had been caught
up into the third heaven, and were hearing

JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. 7

" unspeakable words, not lawful for man to
utter." It seems to them that they have no
right to be there, and they try to step softly
away, but a power, not their own, holds them
like a hand, and with a fearful joy their thrilled
and lifted spirits hear the prayer all through.
" Whether in the body or out of the body,"
whether rich or poor, whether in trouble or in
joy, they cannot tell. They are carried quite
out of themselves. Jesus is not in their world.
We read that when He ceased, "one of the
disciples said. Lord, teach us to pray." *

No wonder ! Such a prayer as that will
never more be heard on this our star. We
must die before we can see the face of Jesus, as
He now is, or hear His voice like " the sound
of glory ringing in our ears." But we still have
his spiritual presence, and in a great sense He
is still on earth incarnate — incarnate by His
grace — incarnate now not in one form only,
but in millions. His Spirit being still with
us, still we may hear Him pray through human
lips.

Among the many surprises by which He

* In speaking of the prayer overheard by the disciples,
as one of our great Intercessor's own solitary prayers,
the preacher only presumes to give his own view of what
was probable. Of course, others have an equal right to
make a different statement, but no one must speak with
positiveness.

JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER.

wakes in us the wish to pray, such an overheard
prayer is still one. Some of you can bear
witness to this. There is a man whose first
wish to pray was prompted by the praying life
of ^ his mother. There is a man, a father in
Israel now, whose first wish to pray was
prompted by the overheard prayers of an old
farm servant, as he knelt amidst corn-sacks and
under cob-webbed rafters, yet as before the lone
Majesty of majesty. There is a man whose
first wish to pray was prompted by the over-
heard prayers of his own little child. " Little
children," we have been told by a great sage,
" are professors in Christ's college." Sometimes,
when you open the book of wonderful things,
intending to teach your child, he will suddenly
teach you. Sometimes he will ask you precisely
the right questions — the next thing to knowing
precisely the right answers. SomxCtimes he will
pierce the centre of some great truth with start-
ling ease and directness ; and sometimes while
he is talking to his Heavenly Father with
artless, fearless faith, and with quaint, loving
prattle, adding a prayer of his own to that he
has been taught to say — he makes you, old
Christian as you are, ashamed to find how much
you have to learn, and how far you are from the
secret place of the Most High. Though there
may for the moment be a smile on the lip, t\ ere
will be a tear in the eye and a prayer in the

JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. 9

heart, making the words leap out ahuost before
you are aware, " Lord, teach me to pray."

2. Jesus teaches us to pray by oitr troubles.
" Head over all things to the church," one
function of His mediating love is to rule and
sanctify events, sending through them to human
hearts the memories of His truth and the forces
of His Spirit. In this part of His saving work
it is His way to use trouble as an incitement to
prayer, and so teaches how to pray. We shall
not be understood to mean that every cry to
God in trouble is an outforce of Christ's teaching
Spirit. In many an instance such a cry is only
instinctive, like the cry of the sea birds in a
storm.

" There is no God," the foolish saith ;
But none, " there is no sorrow,"
And Nature, oft the cry of Faith,
In bitter need will borrow.

" Nature in an agony is no atheist." Once, in a
case known to me, a man who had argued him-
self into the most self-complacent materialism
had a great affliction ; the blow broke him
down ; nature was too strong for his mere
theories, and looking round on the silent com-
pany of those who had come to comfort him,
he said, " perhaps there is a God — somewhere —
pray, somebody ! " Once, a man whose very
name had passed into a proverb of sarcastic
infidelity, when in a crisis of trouble, cried, " O

lO JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER.

God, have mercy ! " This was no new thing in
the history of souls. Five hundred years before
the words " Lord, teach us to pray " were spoken,
a poet penned this similar story, — "When the
Grecian forces hotly pursued our host, and we
must need venture over the great river Strymon,
frozen then, but beginning to thaw, and a hundred
to one we had all died for that thaw, with my
own eyes I saw many of those gallants whom I
had heard before so boldly maintain there was
no God, everyone upon his knees and devoutly
praying that the ice might hold till they got over."
Perhaps before the Son of God came into this
world as the Son of man, He did by virtue of
His yet unrevealed expiation, and by the influ-
ence of His mysterious spirit, not yet formally
inaugurated, speak to men in times of the power,
or of the tender listening sensibility, or of the
yearning after God, incited by trouble, and by
means of this trouble began to strive with them,
thus in som.e degree teaching them to pray.
We know He does so now. Almost all our
Ebenezers have been set up, like the memorable
one of old, in some place out of which trouble
compelled us to cry for help, and in the acute
instant of that cry we said our first lesson.
After a time of terror, John Newton wrote,
" About this time I began to know that there is
a'God who hears and answers prayer." * After
Letter to Rev. Mr Haweis, January 19, 1763.

JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. I I

such a time you might make the Hke memoran-
dum. The time when the soul seems to be
slipping off some cliff of life, or going over the
pitch of some dread Niagara, or the time when
all standing ground seems about to open, or the
time when going down to " do business in deep
waters," your ship seems about to split — such is
often the agony point of time when the soul is
surprised into its first prayer. There is beautiful
order in the very hurricane of trial, and the
calm Jesus is in the very heart of the cyclone
teaching that prayer. The moment of love un-
speakable, intolerable, alone ; the moment when,
thrilling at the touch of a clay hand, or the
sight of a dim, still face, done with time ; the
moment when the heart was weak as a breaking
wave, and all the world seemed to snap like a
touched bubble, when all the use seemed to die
out of you, and yet you had to live somehow,
was the moment perhaps when you first felt a
prayer moving within you. It came without
any call of yours, but in truth it was the Saviour
talking in your heart, and teaching you to pray.
Sad to say, after such an initial moment, and
when a praying life has been startled into exist-
ence, that life will have its fits of apathy or
levity, making it needful that it should be
startled again. The levity of the Londoners in
old time, whose churches were full during the
scaring visits of the plague, but empty when it

12 JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER.

was gone, originated the proverb now long out
of use, " No prayer, no paternoster." In the
spring of the year 1588, when the Spanish
Armada was expected, all England seemed to
be alive with prayer, and, says an old annalist,
" it might have been written in golden letters
over the door of every sanctuary in the land,
cor 111121111, via tma ; but when the fear was over,
and the year grew old, the prayers grew cold."
Do such public facts seem to have their reflec-
tions in the facts of our own secret history }
Are we, with all our evangelical daylight, dull
to God as were the people of the Gothic ages .-'
Are we such unconscious materialists that we
only have a life of spiritual intensity and realis-
ing prayer when terror knocks us down, or when
trouble desolates our outward lot .'' Must it be
said of us, " Lord, in trouble they have visited
Thee," " They poured out a prayer when Thy
chastening was upon them ; " and must we add
the life of prayer began to droop with the return
of prosperity .-' Then we shall have to find that
" trials give new life to prayer." The Lord will
repeat the lesson. Somehow we must learn it,
and if we will learn by no other way, it must
be by trouble. This principle will account for
many a dispensation that we have been accus-
tomed to call mysterious. If we can find no
other reason for it, we can almost always find
this one, that it makes us pray. When the

JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. I 3

elements of true piety, which are the elements
of true prayer, have become hardened in a
worldly atmosphere, they are brought into fusion
again by the fire of adversity, all your glowing
soul is " melted within you because of trouble,"
and flows forth to God ; and what is this but a
process by which Christ is teaching you to
pray ?

Old English divines, in homely dramatic
fashion, sometimes used a certain passage in
Old Testament story as a parable to expound
how the Lord of our dull reluctant spirits makes
them pray. A certain Eastern prince once rode
up to a certain farmer's gate and said, " Come
out, I would speak with thee ! " The farmer took
no notice. Again the prince cried out, " Come
out ! " There was still no notice. " Come
out ! " he shouted ; and when there was still
no notice taken of his call, he flung a lighted
brand over the gate into the dry, rustling barley.
Then the man (his name was Joab) came out
and said, " Wherefore hast thou set my barley-
field on fire .'' " The reason was not far to fetch,
the prince had thus gained his end, and had got
the sullen man out for an interview. We may
question the taste of this apologue, and say that
it is almost an act of irreverence to weave out
from the fact of a man's fury a lesson of God's
love ; but, at least, no one can mistake its point,
and no one can deny its truth. No doubt, when

14 JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER.

we will not consent to an interview, man alone
with God alone, God often lights up a great fire
of affliction. He makes "burning instead of
beauty." He begins to burn down some " dear
delight " that we would most fondly cherish, or
some possession that we had set our hearts
upon ; then we, who had shut ourselves up from
Him, come out ; we who had dropped into a
habit of indolence, and had become unwilling
to offer energetic prayer, are stirred to pray at
last ; and it may be said of the disciple whose
praying life, long declining, is thus quickened
by trouble, as was said in an ancient poem of a
certain hero in trouble, " Out of his heart there
poured a mighty cry." So the Lord teaches us
to pray.

3. Jesus teaches prayer by revealing Himself
as the one medium of prayer. This He does,
first by the letter, next by the spirit of His
instructions. By the letter, we mean the
language. If we would know the Christian
theory of sin, and the Christian conception of
prayer, we go to the Fountain-head, and ponder
the language of Him in whom all Christian life
begins. He says to us at once, " I am the way,
and the truth, and the life, no man cometh to
the Father but by Me." "Whatsoever ye shall
ask the Father in My name, that will I do, that
the Father may be glorified in the Son." All
His other instructions are built on these lines.

JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. 1 5

When we enter His school, the school-book
which He puts into our hands has, for its central
peculiarity, the doctrine that He is the one
avenue by which a sinner's prayers reach God,
and that He is so by virtue of His atoning
sacrifice. This principle of our acceptance
through Him is awfully told in the word "blood"
— the " red word " — the word which we would
only utter with a tremble of reverence — the
word which spoken lightly in our hearing, even
by a preacher, makes a hush in our spirits, a
wish to cover our faces, and a fear that would
cry " Holy, holy, holy ! " This word meets us
in almost every page of the law, and is as much
to be seen in the plain statements of the New
Testament as in the typical pictures of the Old.
If we have fellowship with Him who is "the
Light," "the blood of Jesus Christ His Son
cleanseth us from all sin ; " if we would " draw
nigh to God," we " draw nigh by the blood of
Christ ; " if " we have boldness to enter into the
holiest," it is "by the blood of Jesus, by the new
and living way."

We are told by doubters of the Atonement
that this is only poetry, and that the " blood of
Jesus Christ " is only a phrase used to give out
the general idea that Jesus Christ does in some
way cleanse the soul and make it holy. But
this is no mere poetry ! Poetry takes its laws
from Nature. Poetry delights in the beautiful ;

I 6 JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER.

does Nature suggest the imagery of Leviticus ?
Is blood beautiful ? Does blood in the battle-
field make that which it washes whiter than
snow ? Sprinkled on the golden mercy-seat of
old, did it make the gold flash ? or on the book,
did it make its leaves clean ? or on the vessels
of the sanctuary, did it take out the stains of
service ? Is not its red, wet mark, a foul thing ?
and do not men sometimes turn sick, faint, and
dark at the sight of it ? Mere man's poetry of
purity never created this emblem. Poetry made
the murderess in Macbeth look at her hand,
shiver, and cry as against the intolerable —
" Out, damned spot ! Out, I say ! One, two,
. . . There's the smell of the blood still ! All
the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this
little hand. Oh, oh, oh ! " If poetry had selected
a symbol of cleansing, the symbol would not
have been blood, but water. Water is the
universal solvent, purity making purity ; the
crystal beauty, beauty. Used by the Only
Wise as a word for teaching lost souls the way
back home, it must point to sacrificial cleansing,
and its use all through the Bible would con-
found our reason unless as the sign for sacrifice.
Once an inspired interpreter speaking of the
blood that his hearers were looking at, when in
attendance at the Temple services said, " The
blood is the life 1 " How ? He must have
meant life not in the body, but out of it ; life

JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. I 7

which, being then out of the body, implied the
death of the body — " a life laid down." Jesus,
fulfilling the words, " I lay down my life for the
sheep," fulfilled the typical meaning of " the
blood." The blood " shed," or " poured out," or,
" offered in sacrifice," was his very life, " shed,"
or " poured out," or " offered in sacrifice," life for
life. In the Divine plan of things, it is only for
the sake of this offering, that the sinner, and so
the sinner's prayers, can be acceptable.

Pleading this, though once banished out of
sight and speech from God as his Father, he
may now " come with boldness to the throne of
grace." Doubtless the Atonement has endless
aspects heavenward and earthward, and glorious
ramifications of meaning that open into infinity.
It is not to be supposed that the few proof texts
that we are accustomed to quote — precious as
they are as exquisite definitions, short sum-
maries, or watch-words of telling brevity, were
ever intended to exhaust or explain the whole
wonder ; but many of these, while they say little
about its influence beyond our immediate
necessity for it, and nothing about reasons, state
the plan of the Gospel with such plainness, that
the simplest child in the nursery, or the poorest
man at the crossing, may understand enough of
it to rest all his weight on it and be saved —
enough to use it as that which shall surely carry
his prayers up into heaven — enough for practical
B

t8 JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER.

purpose — enough for the present, all that there
is now time for. You may have the teaching
of the latter to perfection, yet be far from
mastering the secret of acceptable prayer. It is
the heart that must pray ; the heart must be the
real scholar. When Christ teaches, it is the
heart that is the critic ; the heart that rebels.
Out of the heart comes the voice that cries —
Why should prayer by way of Christ's sacrifice
be the standing order of salvation .? Why
should I come to God this way t Why will not
another way do as well t If I come somehow,
what does it matter how } It is the heart that
infects the conviction of the intellect ; but some-
times, when the creed of the intellect is that of
the Epistle to the Romans, the creed of the
heart may be heathen, and under words of
Christian truth there may slumber the hope of
being heard, not as a sinner by the rights of
Christ, but by virtue of some right thing of your
own. In a recent voyage an iron gun was in
such a position on board that it drew aside the
needle of the compass, and kept it from point-
ing quite truly; the effect was, that, spite of
skilful seamanship, the ship nearly ran upon a
rock. Owing to the iron in the heart, conscience,
the compass of the soul, will often deviate, and
your prayer may get into a wrong course.
Christ can change that iron, and so practically
teach you the right. Each tried Christian is a

JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. IQ

witness to this. More than one who listens to
me now might make the confession, Long after
I had thought myself a Christian, I failed to
appreciate the mediatorial element in the
groundwork of prayer, and there was a certain
slight of Christ in my habits of devotion, then,
by the Holy Spirit, who comes in the name and
place of Christ, and whose province is, not to
speak of Himself, but to take of the things of
Christ and show them to us, Christ taught my
heart, dissolving my doubts, melting my pride,
charming me into sympathy with His own way
of saving me, and inspiring in me a spirit of
total surrender, until I could say, "Jesus, I see
it all now, it is all beautifully right. Thou hast
undertaken my cause for me. Joyfully do I
give up to Thee, and live in Thee. In Thee I
appear before God in prayer, in Thee I stand
accepted."

4. Jesus teaches us to pray by making His oivii
Spirit the spirit of mtr lives. That indwelling
Spirit will make your life a prayer, so that pray-
ing words will become only some of its natural
expressions. The most loving Christians, how-
ever, have their dull seasons, when the soul is
sadly under-vitalized, and has to cry, " I cleave
to the dust, quicken me, according to Thy
Word."

Then, prayers seem like dead things. The
suppliant has thought of the right petitions, and

20 JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER.

given them the right shape, but seems unable
to give them wing. There is an ancient story
about Christ's childhood to the efifect that,
one day when He was with other children, they,
in their play, made some clay into the shape of
birds, and that the child Jesus gave life to
these clay birds, making them fly.

My prayer-bird was cold— would not away,
Although I set it on the edge of the nest.
Then I bethought me of the story old—
Love-fact, or loving fable, thou knowest best-
How, when the children had made sparrows of clay,
Thou mad'st them birds, with wings to flutter and fold ;
Take, Lord, my prayer in Thy hand, and make it pray.

So sings George Macdonald, although he has
not yet given his song to the world. " Beautiful ! "
we cry. When we have shaped our prayers —
and yet, somehow they will not rise— let us offer
the words over again, and wait on Him who is
our life, to breathe Himself into them and give
them wing ; only let us never forget that, first
or last, the life He puts into our prayers He
first puts into us. He makes them alive, by
first making us alive, and so teaches us to pray.

As we speak, a recollection strikes us of
certain vivid words of His which compel us to
change our metaphor, but only to get another
aspect and a yet happier conception of the
same truth. Talking to the Woman of Samaria,
He said, "Whosoever shall drink of the water

JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. 2 I

that I shall give him, shall never thirst, but the
water that I shall give him shall be hi him a lucll
of zuatcr springing up into everlasting life."
This may help to account for a common
phenomenon of the Christian's inward life. He
may say, sometimes, without meaning it, with-
out a thought beforehand, and occasionally even
without words. Amidst the activities of the day,
and when I wake in the night, I find myself
speaking to God ; I have hopes, fears, yearn-
ings, hurries of feeling Godwards ; all my life
seems to turn and tremble that way, waves of
prayer seem to throb and swell in my soul.
What is the meaning of all this .? I know it is
Jesus, teaching me to pray, and this commotion
within me is the " well of water " that He gives
"springing up into everlasting life." Did you
ever stop to trace the beginning of a river .<*
Down in the solitude, in the dimness, amidst the
tangled roots of things, under the grass, the
water springs and palpitates, breaks up through
ferns and mosses, bubbles into beauty, leaps and
lightens, darkles and sparkles, wells and swells,
bursts through all obstacles, works up through
the sand, will find a way out into the sunshine,
till that which began in secret becomes a broad
and tranquil river helping to carry the fleets of
nations and to make the boundaries of empire.
So the water that Christ gives us is " in us a
well of water springing up." In mysterious

2 2 JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER.

intuitions, stirs of life, sanctities of feeling, and
longings after the Infinite, it springs and springs,
works and works, down amidst broken stones,
in the tangle, in the heart, in the dark, in the
secrecy which only the eye of God can search.
These mystic movements in me, inclining me
Godwards, seem to show that Jesus has me in
hand, that He has begun the good work in me,
and is teaching me to pray. Work in me
mightily. Spirit of Jesus, "spring up, O well ! "

5. Jesus teaches to pray by quickening the
sense of difficulty. Paley has told us that when
he was a college tutor he found it easy to make
his pupils understand the solution of a thing ;
the difficulty was to make them alive to the
difficulty. The same principle works in every
kind of learning, human and Divine. In learn-
ing prayer, unless you have a sense of difficulty,
you will not make much way. Jesus, by His
Spirit, gives the praying power ; by difficulty.
He educates it.

Unhappily, the notion is everywhere afloat
that prayer, though a good and holy thing, is
something dreamy, something wordy, something
easy, something for women, children, ministers,
and other good people who have no more know-
ledge than is necessary, and who have nothing
to do. It may be hard to master a language,
they think, hard to see through a science ; hard
to study, hard to preach, hard to practise, but it

JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. 23

must be easy to pray. A distinction is made
between working and praying, and it is under-
stood that praying is not working. The man
of the world says, " Work is worship ; " we say,
" Worship is work."

One great difficulty is realising God. It may
be easy to kneel, easy to speak, but it is not
easy to feel with all the life of reality that there
is in the silence a listening ; in the vacancy a
power ; and so to keep up a real and effective
communication between the Spirit and the
Father of spirits. Once this realization might
not have troubled you much, but since you have
been trying to pray in good earnest under the
direction of Christ, there are moments when
you feel that it makes even a torment of diffi-
culty.

Another difficulty is the frequent coldness of
desire Godward. The simple Christians of
Labrador said to the Moravian missionaries,
" We wish to have such a longing after God as
a child has towards its mother, or as a man in
the chase has for the reindeer." This coldness
of heavenly desire had never been felt a diffi-
culty in the way of their prayers to their old
heathen gods ; it was altogether a new sense,
quickened into existence by their new Lord and
Master. Our experience is often a similar
sorrowful sense of check and incapacity arising
from spiritual coldness.

2 4 JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER.

Another difficulty, and one much felt by
Christian men amidst the hard work and keen
competitions of modern life, is the effect on their
souls of the atmosphere in which they have to live,
making it on many occasions, even when they
try to pray, long before they can fix thought,
or burn with a praying spirit. Even our
leisurely ancestors felt it. " Our thoughts,"
wrote one of them, " are like green sticks lying
on the fire, sobbing and smoking long before
they burst into a blaze." It is Christ who
makes us fret and chafe at this "power of the
air " on our souls, seeming to saturate and damp
them so that prayer will not burn. This gave
us no trouble before we knew Him.

Another difficulty is from vain thoughts.
" If," said Philip Henry, " our prayers were
written down and our vain thoughts interlined,
what nonsense there would be! " Vain thoughts
were not counted amongst the difficulties of
life, before Christ began to teach him prayer.

A kindred difficulty is the restlessness we often
feel in the act of prayer. Every one of us can
understand the entry made by homely William
Smith of Coalville, in the diary of his soul,
" While at prayer my mind was rather shifting.
I had to bring it back and ask it to sit down." *
We are baffled and weighted by ignorance, by
infirmity and by countless things, which to-
*" Hanani," Dr Grosart, p. 52.

JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. 25

gether make such a total that we feel inclined
to think with Coleridge that "the act of praying,
in its most perfect form, is the very highest
energy of which the human mind is capable."
The difficulty does not begin when we begin to
pray under the teaching of Christ, but the seiise
of it does; and this He uses for carrying on His
purpose. When you have made acquaintance
with a thing through difficulties you are more
sure of your ground. Altogether, your know-
ledge has more depth and your practice more
facility than it could have had in any other way.
By quickening the sense of difficulty the Angel
wrestles us into strength, and teaches the
suppliant to say, " I will not let Thee go except
Thou bless me."

In these, and in other ways, Jesus teaches
prayer. It is remarkable that He only teaches
prayer, never the philosopJiy of prayer. The
sentiment of not a few appears to be, that this
philosophy is the very thing that we first have
to learn. The first questions, even of Christians,
are too often simply speculative ; and in almost
every one of the many treatises on prayer they
have given to the world in recent years, a large
space is taken up with the discussion of such
questions. More than they are aware, they are
influenced in this direction by the spirit of the
times. Each young believer is now likely to be
brought more or less in contact with some

26 JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER.

theorist who owns no higher teaclier of religion
than science, who smiles down upon him, assures
him that the discoveries of science prove the
alleged power of prayer to be impossible ; and
says, " It is useless for you to expect that the
laws of nature will be set aside because you
pray !"

"Who wants the laws of nature to be set
aside?" might be the reply. "Assuredly I do
not. I know very little about the laws of nature,
and even you know very little more. For aught
your science can show, it may be quite possible
for God to answer prayers, without in the least
degree touching the settled constitution of the
universe."

Our conviction is that we find wrought into
our very nature, as one of its primary principles,
the instinct that prompts to prayer. We find
in the Bible a renewal of this law, together with
directions, incentives, and promises encouraging
our obedience to it. On evidence that satisfies
our reason, we believe the Bible to be as much
the word, as creation is the work of God.
Then, as a matter of course, our common sense
refuses to believe that when He " who seeth the
end from the beginning," made the world, He
shut Himself out of it, establishing such fixed
and strong arrangements that they have totally
mastered Him, so that although He has pro-
mised to hear our prayers. He is in the position

JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. 2"]

of one who has to say — I am sorry, very sorry,
but circumstances quite unforeseen, and entirely
beyond my control, have now made me unable to
keep my word ! When, therefore, the Nebuchad-
nezzar of modern opinion demands that we
shall answer all his questions before we pray,
and that we shall bow down before the golden
theories that he has set up, on pain of being
cast into "the burning, fiery furnace" of his
contempt, we say what the three confessors said
to the royal dogmatist of old, " O king, we are
not careful to answer thee in this matter !"

We would yield to none in enthusiasm for the
study of natural science, nor in our admiration
of those who are working out the process of its
endless and fascinating discoveries. Only what
is false in faith can depend on what is false in
science. Every truth must be consistent with
every other truth in the universe of God. Sure
as that there is truth in the doctrine of prayer,
the power of prayer must be in harmony
with the reign of law ; the efficacy of the one
with the stability of the other. These are our
convictions. Up to this time, however, we are
not entirely satisfied with any solutions of the
problem in question. Perhaps we shall find
one, some when and some where ; but we think
not, in this short and germinal stage of exis-
tence. Some day in the infinite future, He who is
the sole Master in this school, may grant some

28 JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER.

of these explanations that naturalists ask for so
eagerly that he may or may not do. We see no
reason why he should. As we take food and
get nourishment from it, before we can under-
stand the philosophy of nutrition ; as we think be-
fore we can understand the laws of thought, and
move before we can understand all the mysteries
of motion ; so we may realize all the advantages
of prayer before we can understand its place in
the system of the universe, and in the counsels
by which the universe is swayed. If a truth be
ascertained, and the mind of the man who knows
it be healthy, no dark things connected with the
philosophy of it will disturb his faith. Know-
ing, as a matter of fact, that God is the hearer
of prayer, we shall not be stopped in our prayers
by arguments drawn from theoretic difficulties.
It is enough for the present that Jesus teaches
the practice of prayer ; we can wait for know-
ledge of the philosophy.

II.

THE lord's prayer GIVEN AS A PATTERN.

" After this manner therefore pray ye." — Matt. vi. lo.
"When ye pray say . . ." — Luke xi. 2.

Aiithorizcd and Revised Version,

The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews says,
" Moses was admonished by God when he
was about to build the Tabernacle, for, see,
saith He, that thou make all things according
to the pattern shewed thee on the mount." * We
venture to borrow this phrase. When the
disciples said, " Lord, teach us to pray," the
prayer that we are now reading was shown as a
pattern. Here, we have a ground plan to fill in,
and on whose lines we may build the structure
of our petitions every time we pray.

I. Observe, it is not one of our Lord's own
prayers that is given for a pattern. This we
think is what the inquirers mainly meant and
asked for. When the sound of His prayer was
over, their thought was, " well, this is prayer
indeed, would that we could pray just like it —
Lord, teach us ! "

* Hebrews viii. 5.

30 THE lord's prayer

Many crude and random words are now in
the air about Christ as our pattern. "A
Christian is one who aims to take Christ as
his pattern in everything, is he not?" When a
secularist asks you this question, you are apt at
once to say "Yes," for what is thus spoken,
so rings Hke a truth, and so looks like a first
principle, that you let it pass without a challenge.
He has you now. Then he proceeds to argue
that, if all Christians said and did exactly
similar things to those which the four gospels
report Christ to have said and done, they
would dissolve society, and the world would
be no place for us to live in. Thus he works
out the conclusion that no one is, no one ever
can be, a thorough Christian, and goes on to
prove, as he thinks, that the creed of Christianity
is untrue because the practice of it would be
impossible.

There is an error in the seemingly indisputable
statement that a Christian is in all respects to
copy Christ. In the great Puritan allegory, one
old pilgrim, reviewing his life as he stands at
the brink of the river, is reported to have said,
" I have loved to hear my Lord spoken of, and
whenever I have seen the print of His shoe
in the earth, there I have coveted to set my
foot too." His words make an echo in my
heart, yet they can only be mine with an
important element of reserve. I see the foot-

GIVEN AS A PATTERN. 3 I

mark of my Lord in places where it would be
proud profanity for me to try and " set my
shoe." As my Prophet, Priest, and King ; as
the Sinless One ; as the Searcher of hearts ; as
the Revealer of truth ; as the Judge of all the
earth, who is always right, — He had to step
where it would be death for me to venture ; and
this was not only in the path of action but in
the path of prayer.

See Him at nightfall, as, amidst the gloom
that wavers and the mist that clings, — when the
birds are still, and man is dropping his weary
head upon the pillow, — He walks with grass-
muffled feet up the steep cleft, through the
trees, out into the open at the mountain top,
the peaceful infinite above, the white world
below — there to be alone with the Father. May
I go up into that holiest place with Him,
and can I dare to tread in the print of His feet?
Is prayer like that which He is breathing any
rule for me .'' Am I, though His follower, bound
thus to spend my nights .'' Surely I must not
be in despair because this is impossible; I have
not His cup to drink. His Calvary to climb.
He walked through sublime passages of prayer,
not as a sinner such as I am, but as the Saviour
of sinners ; He prayed as the Son of God, who,
in His adopted nature as the Son of man, had
but three years in which to accomplish His
awful minisrty. From the first, only what

32 THE LORD S PRAYER

looked like a little moment lay between Him
and Gethsemane ; He was always under the
shadow of that cross on which He had to know
the utmost secrets of agony, and on the efficacy
of which all salvation depended ; no wonder
that He spent long nights in prayer. You might
as well ask me to walk the waves like Christ,
to heal the sick like Christ, to raise the dead
like Christ, or to die on the altar of sacrifice
like Christ, as to pray like Christ. Besides,
being alone in His intercessions as the Saviour,
He was alone as the perfect man. He had no
sin to confess, no pardon to implore ; He never
joined in saying " Our Father," but when speak-
ing to His disciples about God, made the
careful distinction, " Your Father and My
Father. Your God and My God." There must
have been secrets in His communion with
which no stranger could intermeddle, and
thoughts as much beyond our comprehension
as His work is beyond our power. We are to
be like Christ, not in doing the like deeds, or
in saying the like words, but in having the
like Spirit, animating us in the infinitely dif-
ferent offices we have to fill, and works we have
to do as saved sinners. It is out of the question
that we should offer for our daily prayer the
very words once used to express the prayers of
Christ for Himself. When, therefore, the dis-
ciples asked for a pattern that they might pray

GIVEN AS A PATTERN. 33

just like Christ, the spirit of this the opening
sentence in His reply was — " No, your prayers
are not to be just like mine, I pray after that
manner. After tliis manner pray ye. I pray
as the Lord; but when ye pray, say," — and then
He gave them these words.

n. You will also take notice that this
pattern was granted after the petition — " Teach
us to pray as JoJin also taught his disciples.
The speaker, and those for whom he was the
spokesman, had, no doubt, been in the school
of John before they had come into that of Jesus.
Yet you are ready to wonder how they could
have thought of him just then. They had just
overheard that sacred secret, a secret prayer of
Jesus. They were still thrilling in the sound
of it. You say each one ought to have felt
his whole being tenfold alive and awake in that
moment of glory and exaltation, and you think
there ought then to have been no room for the
memory of anything mortal. Yet that prayer at
once reminded them of their old master, and
their first wish was that Jesus would use John's
method of teaching them to pray. He must
have been a tremendous man to leave an im-
pression on the minds of his scholars that was
keen even in the sharpness of such an excite-
ment. Surely we cannot yet have realised what
he was, or what power he had for a time, on
the men of his day. After a night of four

34 THE LORD S PRAYER

hundred years, up sprang this flaming morning
star. The nation was startled by a holy novelty.
When all the romance seemed to have faded
out of its life, and all its religion had sunk
into common place, John was like one of the
old prophets alive again. We must not sup-
pose that he only rang the monotone, " Repent,
for the kingdom of heaven is at hand ! " In
this phrase is given only a summary of his
sermons. Though we have no preserved
memorabilia of his teaching, it is certain that
there was great variety in it. Passages written
by the evangelists, show that Pharisees and
Sadducees, publicans, soldiers, and persons of
every class, went to him with questions of con-
science, and had his counsel. No notes survive
of the instructions he gave to his disciples, but
there can be no doubt that some of these were
precious as the gold of heaven, and naturally
some of the most precious would be on the
subject of prayer. Perhaps no man then living
knew more about this than did he. " Filled
with the Holy Ghost " from his childhood, he
had lived in the wilderness in all weathers.
When the wind sang dismally along the river,
when the sun struck down with silencing blow,
then was he alone with God, inspired with the
thoughts that God speaks only to the seeker
who dares to be thus alone. He was specially
a man of prayer, and prayer must have been

GIVEN AS A PATTERN. 35

one of his special subjects as a teacher. He
had secrets to tell about it, and methods to
prescribe which his disciples would think match-
less. We cannot by any means agree with
those expositors, who imagine that he was like
the Rabbis, who each gave to the students of
his own school some particular form of prayer
for daily repetition. The glory of John as a
teacher would most likely be, that imitating
no Rabbi, and using no conventional plan, he
would teach prayer in a way that was all his
own. He might have given his pupils a pattern,
but would not have taught by pattern only. At
the same time it is probable that the request,
" Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught
his disciples," had reference in the first instance
to the grant of such a form. Anyway, there
was much imperfection in it. The disciples
had no right to speak to their Lord in anything
like the tone of dictation. While they asked
Him to teach them, they told Him how to do
it, and indicated the kind of teaching they pre-
ferred. They named the best model. They
seemed, as they pointed to John, to say, there
— we want you to give us a form like one of
his ! But Jesus passed by the fault, recognized
the necessity, and was pleased to formulate a
prayer for the help of their weakness, and also
of our own ; for on us also His eye rested as
He gave it, and all who are trying after closer

36 THE lord's prayer

fellowship with God, may now feel their way,
think their way, and pray their way through
these great words.

III. Take note of the fact that this pattern ivas
given twice. Christ had already given it once,
that is, in the sermon on the mount. These
suppliants, as if they had never heard of it, asked
Him to give what He had already given. How
was this } We suppose that, besides the
disciples who came from John to Jesus at the
commencement of his ministry, and the story of
whose call is told in the opening of the fourth
Gospel, there were others whose enrolment
came later, and that some of these having been
with John during the first delivery of the Lord's
prayer, made the appeal which led to this, the
second delivery.

Strange that they should have been content
to miss so much ! Why did they stay with
John after he had pointed out Jesus to be the
Saviour .'' and how could they stop looking at
the finger post instead of travelling in the road }
Perhaps they considered themselves, so to speak,
to be all the time, scholars in Christ's school,
though in John's class, and as spiritual infants,
still needing his elementary lessons ; perhaps
they understood that they were bound to wait
with him who said, " The kingdom of heaven is
at hand," until that kingdom had come; perhaps
there were times when he wavered, making

GIVEN AS A PATTERN. 3/

them waver ; perhaps as his fame fell away, and
his strength broke down, the spirit of chivalry
kept them at his side ; perhaps he was a man,
who under his roughness had, as rough men
sometimes have, a loving gentleness that held
them with more than magnetic charm. But one
day there was a feast in the castle, perhaps on
the very floor under which the prophet was im-
prisoned, when, all at once, amidst flowers
fragrances, and shooting rays of gold and silver
amidst the clink of drinking cups, and the crash
of pitiless laughter, a dead head was placed on
the table in a charger. Whose head ? John's
disciples knew. It was the head of their dearest,
their most revered ; of the man who had said,
" Behold the Lamb of God ! " and who had
taught them how to pray. They took the body,
buried it, then " went and told Jesus." Did they
not stay with him from that time, and would they
not say, " Lord, to whom shall we go but unto
Thee .'' thou hast the words of eternal life " .'*
But they had come late to school ! They had
more to learn than their class-mates. They had
missed the sermon on the mount. Their new
companions, spiritually dull and slow, had not
told them that the Lord had already given a
pattern of prayer, they therefore asked for one,
and the compassionate Saviour gave them the
substance of his former words. This was only
like Himself, the Teacher who has infinite

38 THE lord's prayer

patience with our dulness, stoops to us, repeats
His lesson, and is for ever saying, " Learn of Me,
for I am meek and lowly in heart."

IV. Let me now remind you that this pattern
of prayer must always be taken in connection zvit/i,
atid be explained by, the wliole of the CJiristian
revelation. If you are in the stir and current of
modern thought, spoken or printed, you will often
hear one man say "I want none of your theology,
give me the sermon on the Mount ;" and another,
" I want none of your creeds, the Lord's prayer is
enough for me;" and another, "Jesus Himself
taught, not a creed, but a prayer." There is a
spirit of intolerance abroad usurping the name of
liberality. Persons will tolerate Christ on the
Mount, who will not tolerate Christ on the Cross ;
they will tolerate Him as giving the Lord's prayer,
but will not tolerate Him as the living way for
its acceptable presentation ; they will tolerate all
who think as they do, distinguishing them as
" broad," while those who differ, they brand as
"narrow." It is common for disciples in this
school to take the sermon on the Mount, in-
cluding this prayer, as containing the perfect
fulness and finality of Christ's teaching, and
because they think it does so, they have at
least a dormant belief that all other parts of the
Bible are comparatively inferior if not needless.
At the same time, they regard these words as
so wonderfully plain and easy as not to need

GIVEN AS A PATTERN. 39

explanation. " Is it not an odd thing," writes
one whose genius gives his words great influence,
"that the common fishermen and boatmen by
the Lake of Galilee, understood the message
that Christ taught them just at once ? and now-
a-days, when we have millions of churches built,
and millions of money spent, and tons upon
tons of sermons being written every year, we
seem only to get further and further into con-
fusion and chaos. Fancy the great army of
able-bodied men that go on expounding and
expounding, and the learning, time, and trouble
they bestow on their work, and scarcely two of
them agreed, whilst the people who listen to
them are all in a fog. Simon Peter and Andrew,
the sons of Zebedee, must have been men of
extraordinary intellect. They understood at
once, and were commissioned to preach." We
quote this as a fair summary of opinions now
afloat with respect to theology and the Lord's
prayer, but we venture to say that certain
mistakes run through these opinions.

It is a mistake to take this, or any other
sectional part of revelation, as if it were the
whole. All words spoken by Christ, whether
by His own lips directly, or by men whose lips
His fire had touched, are of equal authority.
The New Testament is one Book, It is now
present with us totally, is offered to us at once,
is all before us at the same time, one part

40 THE LORD S PRAYER

as well as another. Take one, take all. We
are to read this part of the book in connection
with the other parts, carefully, constructively,
putting two and two together, and trying to see
how all the parts fit into one development.

It is a mistake to treat this as Christ's final
disclosure of grace. That was given gradually.
The sermon on the Mount, including this model
of prayer, was at an early stage of it, and His
earlier words are to be explained by His later.
It was not His way to anticipate. The time
had not come for Him to "speak of His suffer-
ings " as man's way to God. The discourse to
which this prayer belongs is a description, not
of the Gospel, but of the kingdom to which the
Gospel is the gate.

It is a mistake to say that this part of the
Scriptures is so plain as not to need exposition.
The multitude did not understand it, or they
would not have insisted on its Teacher being
crucified. His disciples did not understand it
until the facts of the Gospel were accomplished
and the spirit was given. With astonishing
dulness they constantly missed their Lord's
meaning, and when He gave them this prayer,
so far from seeing what it meant, it seems to
have slipped from their memory, and they at
least said nothing about it to the new recruits.

When, therefore, anyone says, "the sermon
on the Mount is gospel enough for me, the

GIVEN AS A PATTERN. 4 1

Lord's prayer is silent about the doctrines of
the Trinity, the Atonement, justification by
faith, and the regenerating Spirit," we might
answer, " Who gave the Lord's prayer ? — the
Lord," the Lord who has been crucified, and
who offered on the cross the sacrifice by which
forgiveness is possible ; who has said, " I am
the Way;" who is our "righteousness;" "who
ever liveth to make intercession for us ; " who
has told us that we " must be born again ; " and
has given us " the Holy Spirit of Promise."
All the prayer is in harmony with these
doctrines, and must be taken in connection with
them. Speak of which you will, the Gospel or
the Lord's prayer, the one is woven into the
text, and is essential to the completeness of the
other.

V. It is a pattern meant for the use of all
the children of God, whatever their differences
in age, capacity, or attainment. Some of them
belong to one tribe, some to another ; some are
very young, some very old ; some have been
learning for half a century, some have only
entered school to-day ; yet this is for them all.
" Not for all," some object. So far from think-
ing with those who regard it as a lesson in
prayer, so very easy that it is too simple to be
simplified, we have met with some on the other
hand, who regard it as too profound for the use
of any but pilgrims of great experience. " It

42 THE LORD S PRAYER

is SO deep," we have heard an old Christian say,
"that I never teach it to a child." As this
exposition is for a Household Library, pardon
a simple household story.

Dr Jonas King once went into an orphan
school for infants, stepped on to the platform,
and beckoned the children to stand around him.

"So this is an orphan school?" said he. " I
suppose that if I were to ask you, you little
scholars would tell me that you have no father
or mother."

Some shrill voices said, " Yes."

" How many of you have no father .? Answer
by holding up your hands."

There was a forest of little hands held up.

" So you have no father 1 "

The children said they had not.

" Now say the Lord's Prayer .-* "

They began, "Our Father who art in heaven — "

"Stop, stop! " said the doctor, "is that right.''"

They began again — " Our Father — "

" Stop again," he said. " Did you say. Our
Father ? Yes, you are right, you have a Father.
I want to speak to you about Him."

Then, when their attention was awake, he
told the story of their heavenly Father's love.
The Lord's Prayer was not quite a mystery to the
congregation of infants.

As we look into this well, we look through
words of wonderful clearness down into a

GIVEN AS A PATTERN. 43

wonderful depth. The oldest saint has not
sounded it, yet it is so simple that even a child
can understand enough of its real meaning to
make it his own real prayer. It names the
whole world's wants, yet that little one can use
it. It fits the child, it fits the man, it fits the
father and mother, it fits the youngest saint,
and the saint with reverend head —

" On which from opening gates have shone.
The glories of the great white throne."

If Christ had left for our pathway of praying
language, words of passion, or utterances of sub-
lime expression, true only in moments of rare
light or exaltation, that sometimes would
not have been true prayer for us, for it would not
have fitted our average life, but this always fits
us. It fits every mood and stage of our soul's
history — it fits us when our wants are few, when
our pulsations are quiet, when our thoughts are
level ; it fits us when we are just beginning
and when we are just ending our journey. So,
when I am but a very young child of the Most
High, the moments of weakness will be rare
indeed when I cannot speak this language, and
be stronger for it, but if I have just come down
from the third heavens, feeling that henceforth
I shall be more than I ever yet have been, all
the life of my soul rides out in these words,
and by this expression, that life gets to be more

44 THE LORD S PRAYER

strong, rapid and victorious. The prayer is, to
borrow the beautiful words of Augustine,
" Httle to the little and great to the great.
Each word is a seed, and the growing power of
the praying life we put into it, gradually makes
it throw off the husk and become a tree."
Christ has taught doctrines in human words
which may be understood more or less by every
mind, each mind having its own separate
power of understanding them. All the while,
does still deeper truth lie hid in his language,
waiting to be growingly discovered by growing
grace — the more grace, the more knowledge.
As it may be said of Chemistry and Botany, of
the arts and sciences, of music and beauty — their
laws do not stop where our minds lose them ;
so it may be said of the truths here. From
infancy to age, it helps everyone who has in
him the life of God, to fresh visions of his glory,
fresh discoveries of his meaning, and no part of
his Word should make us more ready to say
with Luther — " I adore the Divine fulness of
Scripture."

VI. This pattern is intended to fnrnisJi certain
rules and methods of prayer. Some of these we
may be allowed to make notes of, abstaining
from enlargement.

Petitioners are here taught brevity. A classic
biographer says of one who made a great show
in his day, yet had but a shallow soul, that " he

GIVEN AS A PATTERN. 45

could speak much, and yet say little." Some
prayers seem to be after this standard. Writ-
ing to the Lady Proba, Augustine reminds her
that " much speaking is quite a different thing
from much praying."

It must be understood that this has no
reference to secret prayer. Such prayer is
seldom too long. Perhaps it would be well for
some of us, if sometimes we rose in the night,
or contrived to break away from occupations in
the day, so as without the sense of hurry to wait
upon the Lord " in praying silence or speech."
Indeed in our united as well as in our individual
histories there may be special times calling for
special continuance in supplication. But when,
from much work or much weakness, we are
short of time or scant of breath, it inspirits us
with new vigour to read how the Supreme
Teacher, after telling his pupils that they will
not be heard for their much speaking, gave
them this scheme of devotional words as if from
example of "the much in little."

They are taught to shun vain repetition. Per-
haps the term " battology " which is thus trans-
lated in our English New Testament, does not
merely refer to the repetition of words, but also
to their senseless multiplication,* repeating the
same prayer in our devotional appeal is not

* Matt. vi. 7. The charge M^/3aTToXo7?;(rr;rf is explained
by 7roXi/Xo7ta " much speaking."

4-6 THE lord's prayer

always a vain thing, for Christ Has sanctioned
it by his own example. The real meaning of the
charge seems to be " babble not." It has often
been said that " battology," the word used by the
Evangelist as the nearest Greek equivalent for
the Syriac word used by our Lord, came into
circulation and grew into force from Battus, the
name of a hymnist known proverbially in his
day for saying the same syllables over and over
again in his addresses to the gods. Whether so
or not, the habit was not peculiar to him, but
has been the mark of heathenism all time
through, and all the world over. We have one
sample in the prayer of the priests who cried
from morning even until noon, saying, " O Baal,
hear us!"* We have another in the Ephesian
mob, shouting for two hours, the liturgical
phrase, "great is Diana of the Ephesians ! "-j- In-
stances have been quoted from poets to show
how the fashion belonged to all ancient idolatry.
Indian monks, we are told, echo for days to-

* I King xviii. 26. t Acts xix. 34.

Gilbert Wakefield in his New Translation of the Gospel
by Matthew (1782), quotes in illustration: Terence
Heautont, v. 880. " Ohe ! jam desine deos, uxor, gratu-
lando obtundere .... illos tuo ex ingenio judicas, ut
nihil credas intelligere, nisi idem dictum est centies.
Pray thee, wife, cease from stunning the gods with

thanksgiving unless thou judgest them by thyself

that they cannot understand a thing unless the same
thing is repeated a hundred times."

GIVEN AS A PATTERN. 47

gether, the sacred syllable Uvi. Hindoos repeat
the name of Ram over and over thousands of
times. Mahomedan dervishes keep on repeating
the word for God, going round in circles while
they say it, until they faint. Some phrases are
repeated thirty times in a single Mahomedan
prayer.* A more remarkable thing however, is
the way in which professing Christians vainly
repeat the very prayer given by their Master
as an antidote to vain repetitions, "f* No section
or class of Christians can claim freedom from
the sin ; not one can venture to " cast the first
stone," and say, look at us, we never utter
needless or thoughtless words in our speech to
God — but all need this hint from heaven.

They are taught to pray using these very words.
The second announcement of the pattern was
prefaced by the phrase " when ye pray, say," the
language following. But mark the proviso. It
implies that when we do not pray we may not
say it. The point is, that we may only say it
when we do pray. Prayer is a distinct thing
from the vehicle of prayer. Beautiful as this

* " Land and Book," 26.

t See Tholuck on Matt. vi. 7. He says 'according
to the Rosary, the Paternoster (Patriloquia, as it was
called) is prayed fifteen times, and the Ave Maria 150
times.' We have in a Psalter addressed to Jesus the
word Jesu repeated fifteen times together, with only
" have mercy on us, help us," intervening. Beza has
said "Battologis pontificee vel Satanum ipsum pudent."

48 THE lord's prayer

frame is, it is only a vehicle of praying life, not
a substitute for it. It is no rigid and iron en-
closure holding prayers that are ready made for
us ; it is no petrified prayer, waiting outside our
living selves ; it is no mere lesson that we may
learn with diligence and repeat with senseless
accuracy, as birds learn to speak ; it is no
written Paternoster for priests or saints to touch
and bless ; it is no verbal spell to conjure with ;
but it is a divine formula which we may use
daily to our unspeakable advantage, and while
it is a model, it is also a mould through which
we may pour out our new, living, flaming sup-
plications.

/ It is a social prayer. " Souls are not saved
in bundles, the Spirit saith to the man, how is
it with thee — thee personally ? " * So, in teach-
ing us to pray, Jesus begins with the individual.
After He has said to each apart, " Thou, when
thou prayest enter into thy closet, and when
thou hast shut to thy door, pray to thy Father,
which is in secret ; "f He goes on to say " after
this manner pray ye',' then when each child
has been with the Father alone, he comes out
into the family circle and joins with the other
children in this praying concert.

They are taught to pray " after this matiner!'
Such is His own phrase, used in giving this
edict of grace for the first time. " After this
* Emerson. t Malthcw vi. 6.

GIVEN AS A PATTERN. 49

manner," as to our devotional temper, " after
this manner" as to the things to be sought
for, however we may expatiate or particu-
larize in the language of our request, every-
thing we need, comes under the head of one or
other of these seven summaries or breviates.
"After this manner," as to the order of our
petitions ; so that we may give to each petition
its right place in the scale of urgency, and its
right subordination to, or power over, the other
petitions in the train. There is touching pathos
in the plaint of Job : — " O that I knew where
I might find Him ! I would order my cause
before Him, and fill my mouth with argu-
ments !"* Important as he felt it to have right
arguments, he felt it to be also important
that they should be presented in right order.
By the framework of devotion here raised for
us, Christ teaches us this right order, showing
not only what we should ask for, but what we
should ask for first, what next, and on to the
end. If in the mere mechanism of our prayers,
we may not always choose this progressive
sequence, we must, at least, keep this pattern
before us as a general guide to their spirit
and structure. " It is a regulator by which all
ages should set their devotions." -f-

* Our pater noster'is apt to begin at panem nostratn.
Anthony Faringdon, Works, iv. p. 262, 1829.
t Hannah More's " Sketches," &c., 1819, p. 472.

D

50 THE LORD S PRAYER

VII. — It is right to call this pattern the Lord s
Prayer. This title has been strongly disputed, ^
but we still stand up for it, regarding the ques-
tion as one not only of verbal accuracy, but of
practical importance.

Some would prefer to call it tJie Rabbis
prayer. They tell us that Jesus is not the
author of it, but that He only caught up certain
Rabbinical phrases current in His day, and
wrought them up into this composition. If so,
it would be impossible for them to prove it, for
no written collection of Rabbinical sayings
was commenced until nearly two centuries
later ; but what if they could prove it .'' Say
that the Rabbis gave some of their sayings to
the Lord. Who first gave them to the Rabbis t
The Lord. "Truth," saith St Ambrose, "by
whomsoever uttered, is of the Holy Ghost."*
It is possible, indeed, that at the time of the
Incarnation, forms of petition were used by
certain devout " masters in Israel " with which
the sentiments of some petitions in the Lord's
prayer are in harmony, for, " with the Law and
the Prophets," why should not gracious souls
express themselves graciously .''"•f* In that
case, however, they were only original with
Him Who in all ages is the Teacher of prayer.

* " Veritas, a quocunque dicator, a spiritu sancto est."
t Note on Lord's Prayer in Geikie's " Life of Christ."
619.

GIVEN AS A TATTERN. 5 I

The Lord's Prayer was not culled from
Pharisaic rosaries, and was not merely made
up of pearls picked from the dust-heaps of the
Talmud.*

Others would prefer to call it the Disciples'
Prayer. They say, " It is not the Lord's
Prayer, but the Disciples' Prayer, for only the
disciples are to offer it. We might as well say
of the Remembrance Feast, it is not the Lord's
Supper, but the Disciples' Supper, for only the
disciples are to keep it. In the one case as in
the other, the common denomination is plainly
the correct one ; for the social use of this prayer
and the social celebration of the supper, are
alike the Lord's appointment. To say, " our
tongues are our own, who is Lord over us .-'
We are our own judges of what we should say
in prayer, we see no necessity for what has
been urged and we disallow dictation," is to run
a great risk : we must be careful lest we not only
slight a privilege but break a law. The Lord
had spoken. The disciples said, " Lord, teach
us to pray," then, accepting the title, and
exercising the authority of Lordship, He gave

* In all commentaries now within reach of everybody,
quotations are made from Lightfoot, Wetstein, Scottgen,
and others, of passages collected from Jewish sources,
said to have parallel in the Lord's Prayer. One need
only look at them to see that our Lord's teaching was
altogether independent of anything that the Jews had
already taught themselves.

52 THE LORDS PRAYER AS A PATTERN.

this. As the Lord's Supper is a remembrance
feast, this is a remembrance prayer, always to be
in our ears, always before our eyes, to show
what we should pray for, and how we should
pray; until at "our Father's loved abode, our
souls arrive in peace."

III.

THE INVOCATION.

"Our Father which art in heaven." — Luke xi. 2; "Our
Father which art in heaven." — Matt. vi. 9. Authorized
Version.

" Father." — Luke xi. 2. Revised Version.

This passage is in two parts, and for the sake
of greater clearness we shall think of the two
successively.

I. "Our Father."

In the revised version the reading of the text
in Matthew is that of the ordinary translation,
but the reading in Luke is only "Father."
This, however, when interpreted by the con-
nection, comes to the same thing, for if we,
with all the other children, speaking to the
same Hearer of prayer, say " Father ! " of
course we mean our Father.

I. From the title "Our Father," applied to
God, all who bow to the teaching of Jesus in-
fer at least, and before anything else, that God

54 THE INVOCATION.

is a Person. " It is the tendency of many-
minds to regard the Deity as a principle rather
than as a person." * When this doctrine rules,
it puts prayer out of the question, for who could
pray to a principle, appeal to the abstract idea
of friendship, supplicate the law of gravitation,
or intercede with the unknown essence of
infinite space ? While the world is full of sun-
shine, and life is a dream of enchantment, you
may not care about the subject, one way or the
other ; but when you have to pass through
sharp tests, stern changes and black storms, the
want of a watching, speaking, looking, listening
God, will be felt as an infinite want. A leader
of thought in Germany, famous as a poet,
famous as a man of letters — who had through
his long literary career fought against the idea
of a personal God, — when poor in purse, paralytic
in body, and in his last week of life, wrote thus
to one of his old class-mates, and under its style
of banter I detect a pathetic minor of earnest
feeling.

" A religious re-action has set in upon me for
some time. God knows whether the morphine
or the poultices have anything to do with it. It
is so. I believe in a personal God. To this we
come when we are sick to death and broken
down. Do not make a crime of it. If the
German people accept the personal King of
* Chalmers's " Natural Theolojrv."

THE INVOCx\TION. 55

Prussia in their need, why should not I accept
a personal God ? My friend, here is a great
truth. When health is used up, money used up,
and sound human senses used up, Christianity
begins,"

There is an atheism abroad that has in its
language a tincture of almost pious devotion.
Some of our neighbours are trying to divorce
Christianity from Christ, and to have a religion
for their God instead of having a God for their
religion. Theorists there are, who call them-
selves Christians, and who profess their belief in
the usefulness of prayer, who yet, when asked
if they believe that God is a person, will answer
— " Not exactly." Perhaps they confuse the
idea of personality with certain other ideas per-
fectly distinct from it. The Avord suggests to
them the idea of a life shut up within the
boundaries of form, or in some other ways
limited like the life of human beings — who are
the orAy persons they know ; and perhaps simply
from what they mean to be reverence for the
Great God, they are unable to regard Him as a
Person. Yet they will tell you in confidence
that they would feel uneasy to begin the day
without the prayer which they had been
accustomed to repeat from childhood. What is
the use of praying to that, which, not being a
person, cannot hear or speak .-' Extremes meet.
The savage who prays to a stone, meets on the

56 THE INVOCATION.

same level with this man of refinement. We
say, in the words of the mystic —

" To own a God who does not speak to men,
Is first to own, and then disown again ;
Of all idolatry the total sum
Is having gods that are both deaf and dumb."*

Jesus, the teacher of prayer, has given us the
first rule, "when ye pray, say Our Father."
His first doctrine therefore is, that God is a
Person. You never say Father to a force;
Father to a law ; Father to a mist ; Father to a
mile, nor to infinite millions of miles in a line ;
"Father" is not the name for Thought apart
from the Thinker, nor for Friendship apart
from the Friend ; nor for a Link, though the
first link in a long chain of grand phenomena.
If we mean more than a figurative father, we
mean by that word a living Person. In our
world, sure as a son is a person, a father is
a person ; and Fatherhood implies personality
in God, truly as it does in man.

II. The title "Our Father" belongs to God
as the Father of all mankind. What is said
now, and what will be said in the next section,
make two halves of one complete statement,
and must be taken, not separately, but together.
I say now, Man ; whoever you are, and even
though you are now under a sentence that
deprives you of every family title, the glorious
* Dr John Byrom.

THE INVOCATION. 57

Person of whom we have been speaking is your
own Father, He is so in this sense : all human
life began in Him. Although He has given us
our bodies transmissively, He has given us our
souls immediately; it is the doctrine of our
philosophy as well as of our faith, that, while
He is the Framer of our bodies. He is the
"Father of our spirits," and that each man of you
received his soul direct from God as the first
man did. Glimpses of this truth seem to have
been caught in the twilight of ancient Heathen-
ism. Ages before the Gospel sunrise, a poet
had spoken of the supreme Spirit as "Father
of gods and men." The name Jupiter was
compounded of Deus and Pater ; and the like
sentiment was breathed in a certain Greek
verse* quoted by Paul in his oration to the
men of Athens, and which was at the same
time turned by him into an argument against
idolatry. " As certain even of your own poets
have said ' for we also are his offspring.' For-
asmuch as ive are the offspring of God " — we
thinkers, we reasoners, we sculptors, whose
magic almost makes the marble breathe, — we
who have wills of our own, we who have love,
conscience, and all the powers of personality,
" we ought not to think the Godhead " — that is,
to think that our Father " is like unto gold, or

* Sir Walter Raleigh gives several instances of this
kind in his " History of the World." Book I. section 2.

58 THE INVOCATION.

silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device" *
The argument is, "as certain of your poets
have said," so it is, God is your Father ; then,
appeaHng to the principle "like father, like son,"
he blames them for paying the honour due
only to their Father to that which is no relation
to them whatever, but altogether of another
and an inferior nature. In doing so he takes
this old sentence from their literature, stamps
it, gives it currency as a divine saying, and it is
now a doctrine welded into the sacred text,
that even idolaters are " the offspring of God."

It is true that " all have sinned and come
short of the glory of God." It is true that
while men are " alienated from the life of God,"
God is nothing to them, as the most tremendous
reality in the living world is nothing to the
dead. And it is true that no one while in that
state, or on the strength of the creative tie, has
a right to a child's place or a child's inheritance
yet it is also true that God is the Author of all
human being, — this, once a fact, is always a
fact. Speaking to all men, however wide their
wandering, or deep their fall, we are permitted
to say. Although sin has destroyed the filial
spirit in you, and made you by your own act,
outcasts from the presence of God, the change
is not in Him, but in you. He is to you, not a
foe, not a stranger, not a taskmaster, not even a
* Acts xvii. 28, 29.

THE INVOCATION. 59

king-, first of all, — but a Father. In Him is
an infinite store of unappropriated love, and of
power waiting to be trusted. Why are you so
slow to believe in this glorious reality .'' When
your children go wrong, do yoti fathers cease to
be fathers ? Do you not care .-' Have they
become nothing to you .''

A rumour once reached Andrew Fuller that
his wild son Robert, w^ho had been impressed as
a sailor on board a man-of-war, had been tried
for desertion, and had died under the infliction
of a stern sentence.* The father's words about
this, have condensed into them all the agony of
grieved affection, and seem like bitter drops of
distilled pain :

" In former cases my sorrow found vent in
tears ; but now I can seldom weep. A kind of
morbid heart-sickness preys upon me from day
to- day. Every object around me reminds me
of him! Ah! . . . He was wicked, and
mine eye was not over him to prevent it ; . .
. . He was detected and tried, and con-
demned ; and I knew it not ; . . . He cried
under his agonies, but I heard him not ; . . .
He expired 'without an eye to pity or a hand to
help him! . . . O Absalom my son! my
son ! would God I had died for thee, my son! "

Does any father think this the language of
extravagance ? Did not this father feel so much

* This rumour was afterwards proved to be false.

6o THE INVOCATION.

for this wanderer, just because he was a wise
and good man ? Is there less concern on
account of rebellious sons in the heart of the wise
and good God ? and is human paternity more
tender than the divine ? Is there no pity in the
cry " Hear O heavens, and give ear O earth ;
. . . for I have nourished and brought up
children, and they have rebelled against me ? "
Hear how he vindicates his parental character :
" How shall I give thee up, Ephraim ? How
shall I deliver thee, Israel ? How shall I make
thee as Admah ? How shall I set thee as
Zeboim ? mine heart is turned within Me ; my
repentings are kindled together ; I will not
execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not
destroy Ephraim ; for I am God and not man" : —
not less than man^ but infinitely more.

We endorse the sentiments on the Father-
hood of God expressed by Luther. He was one
day catechising some country people in a village
in Saxony. When one of the men had repeated
these words, " I believe in God the Father
Almighty," Luther asked him what was the
meaning of "Almighty".' The countryman
honestly replied " I do not know ; " " Nor do I
know," said the catechist, " nor do all the learned
men in the world know ; however, you may
safely believe that God is your Father, and that
He is both able and willing to save and protect
yourself and all your neighbours." " Almighty
God is the lovely Father of mankind."

THE INVOCATION. 6 1

III. God is "our Father," tJirough Jesus Christ.
We proceed to this statement, on the principle
ah-eady noted, that this pattern of prayer must
always be taken in connection Avith, and as
explained by, the whole of the Christian reve-
lation of which it forms a part. This revela-
tion as given by Christ in person began in His
discourse to Nicodemus. Speaking to "the
master in Israel" in the dialect of ceremonies
which he was supposed to understand pro-
fessionally, and as a matter of course — Jesus
said, "Except a man be born of water and
of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the king-
dom of God," "ye must be born again."
There is, so it seems to us, a plain refer-
ence to the prophecy of Ezekiel.* " Then
will I sprinkle clean water upon you and ye
shall be clean." . . . "a new heart also
will I give you, and a new spirit will I put with-
in you: "-f- The water spoken of, being that
which was familiar to the Jewish worshipper
water stained by the blood of sacrifice, and
called "clean" in a ceremonial sense, because
in that sense it made clean the man on whom it
was sprinkled. The fulfilment of the type
shewn in the "water" is therefore now to be
found in "the blood of Jesus Christ .... which
cleanseth from all sin." Reading the whole of
what Christ said to this enquirer, we see that
* John iii. 5, 6, 7. t Ezekiel xxxvi. 25, 26.

62 THE INVOCATION.

the Spirit is the agent of regeneration, that
" the precious blood " is the instrument of it,
that faith on man's part is the medium for re-
ceiving it, and that the first act of that faith is
identical in time with the first moment of the
"life everlasting,"* "For God so loved the
world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that
whosoever believeth in him should not perish,
but have everlasting life." So does He "devise
means that his banished be not expelled from
Him."-!* When, for every purpose of communion,
sin has dissolved the original tie of sonship, thus
does He answer His own question to the sinner,
** How shall I put thee among the children ? " |
God was in Christ, therefore, in giving ///;// He
gave Himself. His rebel children would not
believe that He loved them. They always
thought that He had to be placated by some
terrible sacrifice of their own. Jesus came to
show that they had quite misunderstood the
Father, and that the Father by the gift of His
own Self in His own Son, would give the atone-
ment which they had supposed Him to demand.
In the moment when we begin vitally to know
this, and to trust ourselves to it, we begin in reality
to live, for in that moment the new and ever-
lasting life is born. True, God is already our
Father, and while we are still in rebellion He so

* John iii. i6. t 2 Sam. xiv. 14.

X Jeremiah iii. 19.

THE INVOCATION. 6^,

loves us as to ofifer us the " Unspeakable Gift,"
but if we refuse it, this Fatherhood may not law-
fully keep us from perishing. The Fatherhood
that saves, begins not with the first creation, but
with the second ; not when we are born, but
when we are born again. So Christ teaches us
in His first discourse on Salvation, and in His
last, we hear Him say, " I am the way, and the
truth, and the life, no man cometh to the Father
but by me."*

Besides his own direct instructions, we have
the following and similar words written by his
inspired scribes: "He came unto his own, and his
own received him not. But as many as received
him, to them gave he power to become the sons
of God, even to them that believe on his name ;
which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of
the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." •!-
"Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ,
is born of God." | "//" any man be in Christ,
he is a new creature ; old things are passed
away ; behold, all things are become new." §
" Ye are all the children of God by faith in
Christ Jesus." 5[ "And because ye are sons,
God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into
your hearts, crying, ' Abba, Father.' " ||

Then, after all, some will say, your doctrine

* John xiv. 6. t John i. ii, 12, 13.

t I John V. I. § Cor. v. 17.

^ Gal. iii. 26. 11 Gal. iv. 6.

64 THE INVOCATION.

of the Divine Fatherhood comes practically to
this, — that He is only the Father of a few-
Christians. According to you, miUions of the
human race who have the natural right to say
" Our Father," are no better for that right,
because they know nothing of Christ who is the
only way to the Father. This is not what I
say. The most of what I venture to say may
be cast into the form of two suppositions : —
Suppose on the one hand the case of a man
brought up with a Christian education and liv-
ing in a Christian atmosphere, holding in his
hand or having within his reach, the whole
gospel revelation ; suppose that man shall
make a small selection from it and fling away
the rest — suppose that he will not accept the
doctrine of sacrifice, will not own himself be-
holden to Jesus Christ for salvation, — suppose
him to say, I scorn theology, I repudiate media-
tion, I will go on my own responsibility straight
into the presence of God, and shall deem it
enough to repeat this beautiful Lord's Prayer —
would that prayer be accepted ? Not, certainly,
if the words just cited, which reveal the way of
a sinner's access to God, are true — and true they
must be, for they are the words of God. Indeed,
if prayer is to be regarded as an act of faith,
this would not be a prayer at all, for it would
not be an expression of faith. No man can be
said to have faith in God who has not faith in all

THE INVOCATION. 65

God's plain words. If the gospel be true, to
utter even the Lord's Prayer without acceptance
of the gospel is to defy the law of God and to
refuse His love.

On the other hand, take the case of some
poor waif of humanity, young or old, in our
land or in any other, who had never even heard
the name of Jesus, knowing nothing, but feeling
much ; sorry for sin, yearning for love, suppose
him just to say out of his heart these two words
— " Our Father," having heard them spoken
somewhere — I should say that such a prayer
was prompted by the unknown Holy Spirit and
accepted through the unknown J«esus. I am
reminded of the man healed by Jesus, of whom
it is said, " he that was healed wist not that it
was Jesus." There would be, I think, in that
poor suppliant's heart, and ready to spring from
his lips, the question — " Who is the Lord, that
I might believe ? " Though he does not know
him yet, he will know him soon. The dawn
has begun that will shine " more and more unto
the perfect day."

I do not know the secret history of our
ignorant prayers in their movement in the
mediatorial counsels of God. I do not know
how far the efficacy of the dying intercession
extends — " Father, forgive them, they know
not what they do ! '' I do not know, definitely,
but I indulge the happy thought that through
E

6 THE INVOCATION.

Jesus, when there has been no opportunity for
Him to be heard of, many a prayer Hke a
rocket of distress shot up from the wild sea and
the dark night, has brought help from the
heavenly Father. It is gloriously true that the
Fatherhood in the thought of which Christians
rejoice, is the correlative of that sonship which
we receive when we believe. For all that, I
would say do not wait to utter this prayer until
you are sure that you are regenerate. Let any
one of the race, conscious or unconscious of
regeneracy, cry out these words from the depths
of his life, then that fact will be a proof that
Jesus is teaching him to pray, and a prophecy
that his prayer will be heard.

IV. In teaching us to say " 02ir Father,"
Jesus would remind us of our Brotherhood.
Common prayer to the common Father, suggests
a common interest, and helps to keep it alive.
Sin separates. The sinner is an egotist. The
motto of the world is, " Every man for himself."
An isolating principle is at work in every one
who has turned his back on the Father, the
result of which is seen when, in the language of
the world's own shrewd vernacular, his one
thought is for " number one." This is mirrored
in the parable of the prodigal. When the
younger son left the Father, he wished to divide
his interests from those of his brother; and his
demand was — " give me the portion of goods

THE INVOCATION. 67

that falleth to me ; but when he came back, his
greatest joy was to be received as one of the
family. The individual child is not indeed
merged in the family ; but though each one
may and must pray for himself, and say " my
Father, give me my daily bread, forgive me,
lead me; at the same time, every one whose
heart beats with the new life, will not only sing
a new song, but breathe a new prayer — this
prayer, that rises in concert with all the family
and that opens with the cry. Our Father ! "

First and chiefly are we reminded by it oi the
fellows J lip that knits together Gods elect. On
the evening before his death, Dr Chalmers,
while walking in his garden, was overheard to
say in earnest, low tones, " O my Father, my
heavenly Father!" When I can say that, then
any man in the world who can also say it, is
my brother. " Dost thou see a soul that has
the image of God in him ? Love him, love him !
This man and I must go to heaven some day.
Love one another, do good to one another."
This charge to all the holy brethren spoken by
John Bunyan in his last sermon, has lost none
of its point by change of circumstances, none of
its sacredness by lapse of time ; I must not,
however, insist on seeing in a soul all that
special family likeness which Bunyan calls the
image of God, before I give that soul my love,
nor must I mistake for love what is only a

68 THE INVOCATION.

romantic tenderness for the distant or the dead —
for the distant, whom I suppose to show, for
the dead whom I suppose to have shown, this
likeness, more than it is shown by Christians
living near me now. Christians living now, and
with whom I have now to do, may sorely try
my loving power ; but so, if brought into
actual contact with them, would those have
done whom I exalt as my ideals. Much of the
charm that good men of other lands or times "
may have for me, may be but the charm of that
" distance which lends enchantment to the view ;"
or the magic tinting of a visionary picture ;
contact with their very counterparts living in
my own land and time might shatter my dreamy
preconceptions, and make my radiant fancies
fade. Let me be sure of this and act on it ; if
I, and the man at whom I am now looking,
are both in Christ, he and I are brothers, and
" brothers evermore." Whatever may be the
drawback, whatever the weakness, whatever
even the vulgarity on the surface — there is the
family life below — sense under the nonsense,
soul under the body, truth under all the mis-
takes ; within the earthern pitcher the fire ;
behind the rough shell the pearl ; beneath the
ragged thistles and stinging nettles of the field,
the treasure ; and concealed for the present by
much that may excite the scorn of the foolish
and the pity of the wise, that which will shine

THE INVOCATION. 69

out gloriously in the day of "the manifestation
of the Sons of God." Not only am I one with
that man, but one with all the multitudes who
hold " like precious faith."

" Our teachers taught that one and one make two.
Later, Love rules that one and one are one."

Later still, the love of God works a greater
wonder, for grace turns millions into one. " We
who are many, are one body in death." The
waves are many, the sea is one ; the boughs are
many, the vine is one ; the stones are many, the
temple is one ; the children are many, the family
is one ; and as one family, we say, "Our Father !"

While " in spirit and in truth " we pour out
our prayers in these divine, delightful words,
we pray down blessings not on ourselves re-
strictively, but on the church at large. If we
believe in the real power of prayer, we must
believe that this prayer which we offer as a
family, has real power to bless us as a family.
I gain good from it as offered by my brothers
and sisters ; they gain good from it as offered
by me. In some sense, sometimes traceless, but
always true, multitudes whom I have never
heard of, and who have never heard of me,
are the better for it. Ordained by God, it has
an instrumental value and a mystic potency in
fetching down daily supplies, daily applications
of forgiving love, daily shelters from temptation

70 THE INVOCATION.

and daily deliverances from evil in which all the
children share. " There is a certain spiritual
traffic of piety betwixt all God's children,
wherein they exchange prayers with each other.
Am I weak in spirit and faint in my supplica-
tion } I have no less share in the holiest
suppliants than in my own : while there is life
in their devotions, I cannot go unblessed." Such
is Bishop Hall's commentary. And Leighton,
with the like spirit says, " Every believer hath
a share in the prayers of all the rest, he is a
partner in every ship of that kind that goes out
to sea, and hath a portion in all their gainful
voyages."

Besides the good from it shared by all Chris-
tians, there is a further benefit. " Our," is a zvord
of love that takes in all men, for, " have we not
all one Father } Hath not one God created us" }
Those who offer it with more or less conscious-
ness, in the name and grace of Christ pray for
and try to pray with all men. As belonging to
the human race they pray that the good things
here named may be given to the human race,
where they are wanted. In the spirit of the
prophet, when he said *' unto us a child is born,
unto us a Son is given," in the spirit of the
Apostle who, speaking to an angry crowd, said,
" Men and bretJiren^' the disciple who makes
this his prayer honours all men, carries out the
rule " add in your love of the brethren, love, * —
* Malachi ii. lo. 2 Peter i. 7 — Revised Version.

THE INVOCATION. 7 1

love to those outside the church, love after the
pattern of the great love wherewith God loved
us, even when we were dead in sins."

II.

We now come to the second section of the
verse — " which art in heaven."

There is a relation between the word "heaven"
and the word " heave." We have these words
from our Saxon fathers, who were not given to
think ideally, and who, pointing up to that life
or state of life which they thought of as lifted
or heaved by the Creator to the utmost possible
glory and bliss, called it " heaven." * This word
gives the essence of the meaning conveyed by
the Greek original, which seems to have been
derived from a root signifying "to rouse, or
stir up," and which therefore suggests height, or
elevation. f Physical altitude has always been
used as the type of what is the purest, noblest,
and best ; we speak of high standards, high prin-
ciples, and high aims ; in this way, we find that
all through the Bible, the word " heaven " repre-
sents the idea of loftiness, and the two phrases,
" high as heaven," " deep as hell " express the
two extremes of height and depth. While we
confess our inability to unfold the import or to
grasp the strength of the word heaven, it seems

* On heofonum. t 'Opw.

'll THE INVOCATION.

to US that it is used here mainly to remind us
how high in excellence God is above earthly
fathers. The relation He sustains to us is too
comprehensive and too intimate to be perfectly
represented by any earthly tie, but that in which
it finds its nearest equivalent, and from which
he takes His favourite name is " Father ; " but
the fatherhood is that of the "high and lofty
One," and Father " in heaven " means " Father
in perfection."

I. Perfection of love. We can only learn
heavenly things from earthly types. Looking
at such types, what is your idea of what a
Father should be .-' At least you understand that
the word represents love — love that thinks, love
that works ; the love of one who is wise, who is
strong, and who takes trouble. It means this
in man, it means this in God, and to perfection.
Does not a natural father take pleasure in his
child.-* How is it in your own knowledge and
experience .-* Is not that pleasure in your heart
one of the most pure and tender that you
know .'' Is it less so in the heart of the heavenly
Father } That which makes a father gentle to
infant weakness, that which makes him, though
" master of sentences," listen with delight to his
child's first stammering speech, that which
cheers the young life in all its blundering steps
upward, that which makes a father pleased when
the child gets on well at school, pleased to see

THE INVOCATION. 73

his own likeness come out in the child's face ;
that which makes him live in his loved one's
honour, ready to die in his shame ; that which
makes him feel no gladness like that in his son's
promotion ; that which gazing on the clawed,
stained, and trampled garment brought for him
to look at, says, " It is my son's coat ; an evil
beast hath devoured him, ... I will go
down into the grave unto my son mourning ; "
that which, after all, makes him willing rather that
some " evil beast " Jiad devoured him than that
he should live to forsake his principles or cloud
his stainless fame ; that which makes a father
"take pleasure in infirmities '' and self-denial, in
working days and sleepless nights, and in what-
ever may enable him to lay up for his child, —
a pleasure which delights to be trusted and which
hungers for love — all that — has its existence
from, and its highest perfection in, Him who is
our Father in the Highest.

We know it now. But there was a time when
each one who now is a Christian, was ignorant
of it. Perhaps his heart said to God " Oh Thou
great Iron " !*

There was once a son who left his father's
house, and went to " a far country," that he
might live in glorious independence. Divine
influences moved in his heart one day, and a

* So began a threatening letter to Prince Bismark,
Berlin, July 29, 1881.

74 THE INVOCATION.

new spirit started into life. He was like an out-
cast saying to himself: —

" Does that lamp still burn in my father's house
Which he kindled the night I went away ?
I tarried once beneath the cedar boughs,
And marked it gleam with a golden ray ;
Did he think to light me home some day ? " *

" Then he arose and came to his father." How
he, though the vilest sinner, sorry for his sin, was
received, is told in the well-known tale which
is a prophecy as well as a parable. That loving
picture of a father, who, in the gaunt, weary,
haggard, tattered tramp, while yet " a great way
off," sees his long lost child, rushes out to meet
him, clasps him to his heart, wraps round the
rags of his disgrace the folds of his own garment,
weeps over his neck the tears of enraptured affec-
tion, calls for the best robe, and has struck up
for him the music of the instant festival, — re-
presents the mighty love of our Father to us
on the day, when through the secret impulsion
of His grace, our ragged, starved souls, weary
of sinning, weary of repenting, weary of self —
came home to Him ; and since that day, we
have been making ceaseless discoveries of that
love ; we have been going on to verify the
fulfilment of the parable, and to understand the
mysteries of the ring, the robe, the sandals, the
feast, and the music of God Himself, as He
* Christina Rossetti.

THE INVOCATION. 75

" compasses us about with songs of deliver-
ance."

Perfection of help. " If ye then, being evil,
know how to give good gifts unto your children,
how much more shall your Father that is in
heaven give good things to them that ask
him V * That word " if" seems meant not only
to imply an argument, but to suggest a question.
" //" ye . . . know how ! " Do fathers and
mothers always know } Look at Hagar, when
the bread was gone, the water spent, and Ishmael
ready to die of want, did sJie know .-* " She cast
the child under one of the shrubs " — and " she
went and sat down a good way off, as it were a
bow-shot ; for she said — Let me not see the
death of the child. And she sat over against
him, and lifted up her voice and wept." Look
at certain times, into certain houses not far from
your own, and you might hear a child ask for
bread, and then hear the father say "there is
none." He would help but he does not know
how. When the tiny frame is racked with
agony ; when the white little face turns on the
pillow, when the lips quiver with rapid breath,
and no words come, when the eye of pitiful
entreaty looks into the father's very soul, and
seems to say "cannot you help me?" what can
he do } He does not " know how to give the
good things" needful, and in blind sorrow
Matthew vii. 1 1.

76 THE INVOCATION.

bursts out of the room. It is natural for the
father to be the helper of the child. The
siiper-n3X\xYd\ is not the contra-natural : it is
only nature heightened to a degree above any-
thing that we can understand. God, as our
helper, because he is our Father in heaven,
might say to us " as the heavens are high above
the earth, so " — in helping you, " are my ways
higher than your ways, and my thoughts than
your thoughts." *

Perfection of nearness and observation. Joseph
would have been saved from the rage of his
brethren in the day when they sold him into
slavery if his father had been looking on. It
was well for the little Shunamite when under
the blow of the sun-stroke that his father was
near, so that he could say to him " my head,
my head." But the earthly father cannot be
always with his child : the heavenly Father can
be. Men are slow to understand this. When
they say the words " Our Father which art in
heaven " ; — they seem to feel that " heaven " is a
lact in their astronomy rather than a doctrine
of their faith ; and they have the drifting fancy,
if not the distinctly outlined thought, that their
Father lives in one world, and they in another.
" Do not I fill heaven and earth," saith the Lord.
" Heaven is my throne, earth is my footstool."
He who is in His nature so exalted, that heaven
Isaiah Iv. 9.

THE INVOCATION. ']']

being His throne, He rules the universe, must
fill the universe. As God, His nature is with-
out limitation. When Jesus was dropping the
garment of our limited nature, and was about to
ascend into the glory which He had for our
sakes laid aside for a time, He said to Mary,
" Touch Me not, for I am not yet ascended ;"
that is, " touch Me not while I am on earth,
wait till I am in heaven, then touch Me."

The Jesus whom men once saw was farther
off than the Jesus of whom we say "whom not
having seen, we love." Wanting His help the
sisters of dying Lazarus despatched a messenger:
we need only despatch a cry. The messenger
brought Him in four days ; a cry brings Him
directly. Are you in some sore strait .'* Quick,
quick, let your heart run, your feet need not.
Cry to the Father, and God will come to you in
Christ. We speak of the rate at which light
travels, or electricity, or sound ; but who shall
say how short the time prayer takes in reaching
the ear of the Father, and gaining the reply !
" It shall come to pass, that before they call, I
will answer, and while they are yet speaking I
will hear." *

Ages ago, a man was telling his companions

the story of how he had been nearly shipwrecked

within sight of land. At one moment the ship

was riding over the crest of a mighty wave, when

Isaiah Ixv. 24.

yS THE INVOCATION.

there was a glimpse of the pier crowded with
people, — the next moment it would be like a
thing groaning and hissing in the trough of the
sea. Some of the passengers wildly prayed to the
virgin mother, some to St James, some to St
Christopher and some to other saints in glory.
His friend said, " to whom prayed you.''" His
answer in substance was, " What could Dominic,
or Thomas, or Catherine do for me ? thought I,
St Peter is nearer to the throne than they, and
if I pray even to him, I shall be drowned before
he has time to plead my cause. I must needs
go straight to Him who made me, and the sea,
and the saints, so I went straight to my Father
myself, saying * Our Father which art in heaven,
save these poor souls and me that now cry to
Thee for bare life !' Not one of the saints can
hear more quickly than He, or grant more
freely what is asked." *

Perfection of homeliness. Let no one take
exception to this word. The grandest being in
the universe is the homeliest, the Being of all
beings least to be afraid of, and to whom the
frightened child who knows Him runs for com-
fort. We have no perfect sense of rest in God,
until we have along with our adoration, this feel-
ing of homely rest, for we are so made, that He

* This is the idea given in the dialogue entitled
" Naufragium ;" a long passage in the "Colloquies of
Erasmus."

THE INVOCATION. 79

is our heart's dwelling-place, and we are restless
until we rest in Him. Pity the mortal who
sees nothing in the universe more than awful
order, dread magnificence, and the working of
cold material laws.

Times there will be, in the history of a man
without God in the world, when he will feel like
a child who has wandered into a factory, is lost
amidst the machinery, is at once fascinated and
empowered by its heavy, invariable motion —
motion without a soul in it — who feels that he
cannot get out of the way of its grind, and
"dare not let his shriek go free." One who had
held the creed of atheism, afterwards told his
friends that when at length he was able to
believe that a God was really alive, he " danced
with delight," although he had not then reached
the experience of hope in Christ. " It is a
blessed thing," cried he, " that we are not placed
amid the grinding and wheeling of a great
Machine of a universe without guiding hand or
animating heart. There is a God ! there is a God !
Jehovah, he is the God! Jehovah, he is the God "*
He got to believe in God yet more grandly
and tenderly, and no disciple was ever led more
than he into the secret of rest that comes from
saying to the God of the universe, " Our Father
which art in heaven." The child yearns to be
at home with the Great Spirit ; amidst the vast-
* Dr John Duncan.

8o THE INVOCATION.

ness and glory of the scenery around him he
cries for his Father ; longs for his loving ear, his
familiar voice, and the shelter to which he may
nestle with a sense of friendliness, security and
peace. This unspeakable want is met when we
find the Father, whom the Teacher of prayer
reveals.

The words — " Our Father which art in
heaven," suggest to us the perfection of our home.
Although the word "heaven" is here used mainly
to remind us of our Father's perfection, it is
meant also to remind us of the family home.
Some Christians seem not to care for this
doctrine, and in giving us their own views they
are almost as refined as Confucius, who said.
" Heaven is Principle." Our notion, although
it includes this idea, does not stop at it. It
includes not only character but condition, not
only principle but place. We look upon heaven
as the perfect home of perfect human nature,
Human nature has a body as well as a soul,
and the body asks for place. These expecta-
tions chime with and are cheered on by the
words of our Teacher. " In my Father's
house are many mansions : if it were not so, I
would have told you, I go to prepare a place
for you ; and if I go and prepare a place for
you, I will come again, and receive you into
myself ; that where I am, ye may be also." *
* John xiv. 2, 3.

THE INVOCATION. 8 I

We distinguish between presence and manifesta-
tion. We think of God as a Spirit who is pre-
sent in all places at all times ; yet we think of
heaven as the one place of his highest personal
manifestation through Jesus, " the Lamb in the
midst of the throne." There, and thus, God is
at home ! In this, as in other things, the
earthly must furnish us with the types of the
heavenly, A man's house is the centre of all
that he lives for, and all that he does. It is
the place which he will be sure to fit up and
adorn in a way equal to his resources and
worthy of his station. There the man of rank,
the man of wealth, the man of refined taste or
various information, will have his appropriate
surroundings ; and there, where he is at home,
his children will be. What must that place be
in which even God is at home ! We cannot tell,
and it is astonishing that any mortal has ever
tried to tell. It is written in an old story that
an artist, led by Indians, once went to paint
Niagara ; but that when he saw it, he dashed
his disappointing pencil down the precipice, for
he felt that he could as soon paint the roar, as
the fall, the foam, the great sheets of light, the
arch of coloured rays, with all the other won-
ders that went to make up the surprising catar-
act ; and shall we who have only seen earth, try
to picture heaven ! No ! poems of glory,
pictures of magnificence, all fail, " imagination
F

82

THE INVOCATION.

in its utmost stretch, in wonder dies away ; " in
our present state, our future state is a mystery,
though a mystery of delight. It is our home,
but the celestial homeliness is beyond us now.
The "gates" 7//^j/ be "ajar," but they are not
wide open ; only a blinding ray shoots through
from the light within. We see that there is a
glory, but not what the glory is. Not only
because we are so sinful, but because we are so
human, the idea sometimes seems to us as
appalling as it is glorious, alarm almost over-
powers delight ; and we understand the con-
fession of a saint who said, " If I saw a door
opened in heaven," I should be afraid, and cry
" O Lord not to-day ! " Yet no child need fear.
The heavenly condition will be natural, as soon
as we are born into it, and sure as we are now
born into grace, we shall one day be born into
glory. The heavenly antitypes of sky and
water, trees and flowers — things of nature and
art, will be to us there what these things are to
us here. Human dearness will wax, not wane ;
God will make it all perfectly right, familiar
and delightful, and each timid Christian must
now learn to say, "then shall I be satisfied
when I wake in Thy likeness ! "

While we are like children at school, or out
on the travels that belong to our education, it
is good for us that there should be this reference
to heaven wrought into the very texture of the

THE INVOCATION. 83

pattern prayer, and connected with the very
name of our Father. The thought of heaven
thus minghng with our prayer is to have a
power over all the life. Heavenliness is to
influence our earthly pleasures, earthly sorrows,
earthly cares, and earthly business. " So," says
Chrysostom, "withdrawing him that prays
from earth, and fastening him to the place on
high and the mansions above."

IV.

THE FIRST PETITION.

" Hallowed be Thy name." — Matt. vi. 9. Lukk xi. 2.
Authorized ami Revised Versions.

I. What do we mean by the Name of the
Father >

II. How can we "hallow" it .-'

I. What is meant by the phrase, " my name " .-*
The learner might say, you have been speak-
ing of " our Father," zuho is he ? To answer
this question would be to give you His name.
A name is now only a mark to distinguish
one person from another ; but originally it was
not only indicative but expressive. We still
keep to this old meaning when speaking of
God's name. His name is the expression of
Him, or the discovery of Him, written out or
spoken out, in this, that, or the other language.
We know that one language differs from an-
other language in glory ; that some languages
are not made to carry so much meaning as
others ; that the language of savages is mainly
adapted to express the meanings that belong to

J

THE FIRST PETITION. 85

the life of the senses, and that the language of
educated persons is adapted in addition to ex-
press the life of the soul. In illustration of this,
we may quote a remark once made by John
Henry Newman — " It is of no use trying to
translate the ideas of Plato into the words of the
Hottentot." So, as to the languages that God
speaks or writes. He reveals His name through
them all, but all are not adapted to convey
those highest and latest revelations which we
are dying to know.

I. His name is the expression of Himself
through the language of Nature. With more or
less distinctness of inscription and splendour of
enchantment His perfections express themselves
there, and there those living letters start forth
by Avhich we spell out His name. In the smallest
as well as in the greatest things, we see some
revelation of the Infinite. We all know what a
little desert flower said to Mungo Park, whose
eyes were perhaps the first and last to see it.
There, blooming alone in what looked like a
wilderness of sifted ashes, the little thing caught
his eye, and just as he was at the point of de-
spair, whispered in his ear the name of his
Father, so rousing him to noble enterprise.
The Name is revealed everywhere to those who
have eyes to see and ears to hear. Go out in
the sunny wind of spring, look on the awaken-
ing loveliness, listen to the enchanting commo-

86 THE FIRST PETITION.

tion of Nature's harmonies, and you must learn
something of the Name. Go out into the har-
vest field, and it shines in burning glory. Look
up into the sky through showers, and certain
words of Mr Ruskin may come to mind — " All
these passings to and fro of fruitful shower and
grateful shade, and all those visions of silver
palaces built about the horizon, and noises of
moaning winds and threatening thunders, and
glories of coloured robe and cloven ray, are but
to deepen in your hearts the acceptance and
distinctness and dearness of the simple words,
'Our Father, which art in heaven.'" Look out
into the white, wavering snow ; if, yesterday,
you had caught up one of the million million
snowflakes then falling, that you might look for
your Father's name even in that, you would have
found it. What a wonderful wealth of beauty
was in the crystal flowers of tender whiteness,
melting the moment you put them under the
microscope, yet not before you had caught a
vanishing glimpse of what you wanted to see.
Look on the winter landscape, you see it ; on
the winter water, you see it ; for God expresses
Himself on the water as much when the frost
has shot its tracery over it, as when in the spring
it reflects the fringing flowers. Look up into the
heavens that declare His glory in the night ;
then look down on the glory that shines reflected
in silver glance and gliding wave, that makes

THE FIRST PETITION. 87

magical sights in misty distance, and that spreads
itself in broad imperial sheets of light, revealing
hints of the unfathomable name.

Yes, but Nature's language, wonderful as
it is, is not rich enough to speak out all that
I need to learn. There is much after all to
be learnt about Him before I can feel safe or
happy. To say the least, I find that changes,
working death as well as life, are always going
on in Nature. Mornings are not always
clear and cloudless, the lark is not always
pouring out its morning hymns, the dews
are not always on the grass like dazzling
drops of light, nor is the river always a ripp-
ling splendour. Blights, infestations, and east
winds make desolating changes in what was
bright with hope and beautiful with promise.
Do these changes express the name of God ?
Is He kind to-day, cool to-morrow ? Does He
take me up to-day, drop me to-morrow .'' Some-
times for me, sometimes against me .'' Nature
has no answer. I meet with greater perplexities
still, when passing through the deeper experi-
ences of life. If in my distress I study Nature
by the help of such books as the " Bridgewater
Treatises," designed to shew " the Power, Wis-
dom, and Goodness of God as manifested in
the Creation," still I am confounded. God is
kind to the innumerable living things in air or
water, and has wonderfully fitted them each for

88 THE FIRST TETITION.

happiness in its own element. But God is very-
kind to the shark as well as to the life which the
shark snaps at The African tourist riding
through the wilderness pauses to notice the
gazelle waft with airy grace down to the lip of
the river — stop, shiver lightly, then stoop to
drink. He may say, "you thing of beauty, you
express a thought of Him who is the Infinite
Beauty ! " While he says so, he is magnetically
conscious of another presence, — turns in his
saddle to look, and in a moment feels as if lifted
and lighted, for what is that ? He sees silently,
swiftly trailing through the leaves, straight to
that "beauty," a bristling lion, with eyes like
electric lights, with a bound and a spring, and a
roar that shakes the air — down with smashing-
blow, the lion drops on to the gentle creature
at the stream. God made the lion. He is very
kind to him. " The young lions roar after their
prey, and seek their meat from God." So in
human life the inequalities, the mysteries of
pain, the sufferings from heredity, the long
years of injustice that once made a poet cry,
" Right is for ever in the dungeon. Wrong is for
ever on the throne ;" and the vast spaces of the
earth where the people, as it seems to us, for no
special fault of their own, " sit in darkness and
the shadow of death ; " all these things seem to
cloud over the glory of the Father. Much may
be learnt of Him from the kingdom of Nature

THE FIRST PETITION. 89

and the chapters of Providence, but not enough
for the like of me, a sinner. After all that is
told, so much remains untold, that I am some-
times in a storm of consternation. I try to be
righteous, but it is poor work. Looking at the
name of the Lord only as revealed here, I am not
able to say, " the name of the Lord is a strong
tower, the righteous runneth into it, and are safe;"
and I am not inspired with confidence to sing,
" The glories that compose Thy name, are all
engaged to make me blest." No, when I feel
fit for nothing, there is no comfort for me in
the doctrine of the " survival of the fittest " — the
doctrine which seems to be written on the
pages of Nature; when I am sinking in weakness,
it is no comfort to me to hear from Nature, the
only gospel Nature preaches, the Gospel of
" salvation to the strong." When my heart is
breaking because I have to say, " Lover and
friend are put far from me, and my acquaintance
hast thou hid in darkness ; " there is no comfort
for me in the things that naturalists discover,
however great or educated my interest may be
in such discoveries. There is no whisper of
rest from the wave, or of pardon from the breeze,
or of immortality from the sunshine ! Nature is
to me a realm of riddles. Providence shows
me the universe, " not in plan, but in section."
I am not able to form a judgment of the temple
from a stone, nor of infinite machinery from

90 THE FIRST PETITION.

the wheels that move just in sight of me, God
refuses to let us see all that He is ; to use a
blunt phrase, but with reverence, " I cannot
make Him out!" and my heart cries, "O Thou
great, beautiful Mystery, tell me, I pray Thee,
Thy Name!"

A recent sage whose decisions are still
accepted by many as those of an oracle, having
on one occasion spoken of the first Epistle to
the Corinthians as being part of a Bible about
the divine authority of which many wise and
good men have been doubtful, went on to say,
" at anyrate we are sure that in the rocks, and
seas, and stars we have the authentic hand-
writing of the Most High." * Yes, but we are
equally sure that since the rocks, and seas, and
stars were made, the family calamity and disgrace
has come to pass that with terrible brevity we call
the fall ; for common sense tells us that the Holy,
Wise, and Happy God is not the Fountain out of
which sprang the unholy, unwise, unhappy life
of men as men now are. There must have
been a change since the first. It is small
comfort to know that we have in the creation
" the authentic handwriting of the Creator ;" for
what He wrote before the fall tells us nothing to
meet the case that comes after it. I hear that
there is another will, and indeed there must be,
for the arrangements made for unfallen creatures
Carlyle.

THE FIRST PETITION. 9 I

could not fit the fallen. I want the last news
from heaven ; a fresh message from the throne,
telling us what is to be done noiv, and how the
new dilemma must be met

2. His name includes the further expression
of Himself through the medium of inspired
words. " The last news from heaven," " the
fresh message from the throne " made needful
by the changed condition of things, we have in
the words of the Bible. Thus we have an
advance not only in the matter of revelation
but in the mode of it. Words are more distinct
and exact instruments of expression than are
things. Thoughts, reasons, definitions can only
be sharply outlined and vividly tinted by words ;
therefore, while some reasoners are asking the
question with a smile at the comedy of the idea,
" is it likely, now, that the eternal Spirit should
reveal Himself to man by a book-revelation.-*"
I am thinking that it is just what might have
been expected, and that in so doing He acted
like Himself. He who at the fitting time always
uses the best means in order to the best ends,
has done so in this instance, and when the case
required it, poured out the glories of His name
through words — words of prophecy or history,
words of gracious talk, or stately oration, or
pungent proverb, or thrilling verse, spoken or
written by holy men of old who were the con-
secrated organs of divine expression. Some

92 THE FIRST PETITION.

powerful disclosures of Himself were gradually
given in those various titles which we call His
names. Read some of them. Jehovah, the" I am,"
the Everliving One, who is, and who was, and who
is to come ; El Shaddai, the Almighty ; Jehovah-
jirah, the Lord providing a ransom ; Jehovah-
rophi, the Lord our Healer ; Jehovah-nissi, the
Lord under whose banner our souls win victory ;
Jehovah Sabaoth, the Lord of the hosts of
heaven whom idolators worship, the Lord of
the hosts of Israel, — the title one day to be
merged in the famous title of Christ, " Head
of the Church ; Jehovah-Zidkenu, the Lord
our righteousness ; Jehovah-Shalom, the Lord
Peace; Jehovah-Shamma, "the Lord is there,"
making the glory of the mystical Jerusalem.
These and other appellatives, usually called
names of God, were in fact different revelations,
helping to disclose the one great Name. In
the earlier dispensations, to those who trusted
Him, God was all that these words stand for.
The time had not come for them to know why,
for the saving grace which these and other
words revealed, existed on account of a certain
basic principle, or central arrangement, as yet
out of sight, and which was to be explained in
"the fulness of time." While we have only the
Old Testament in our hands, still we wait,
there is more to come than this ; beautiful and
inspiriting as they were, most of the revelations

THE FIRST PETITION. 93

by words were founded on, and were prophetic
of a greater revelation still to be made.

3. His name is perfectly expressed to me in
the language of the Incarnation. "To whom
will ye liken God ? " not to a man, surely !
Yes, to a man. But " His thoughts are not
as our thoughts, neither are His ways as our
ways." " No, the sea is not as the standing
pool by the road side. Yet, when the breeze
crisps the pool, you may see the image of the
breakers and the likeness of the foam. Nay,
in some sort, the same foam. If the sea is
for ever invisible to you, something you may
learn of it from the pool. Nothing, assuredly,
any otherwise."* The great enquirers of anti-
quity had reached the truth that a perfect
human person is the most perfect conceivable
form of a personal revelation — that we can
have no clearer notion of a perfect person than
through a perfect man. They looked round
for one, and when he was not to be found,
genius tried to give the ideal of him in
statuary. If a Greek had said to his priest,
show me God the Father, he would have
taken him to a temple, would have lifted a
veil, and pointing to a certain colossal image
wrought by Phidias, would have said, " there,
tJiere he is ! " Never before on this earth had
been sculptured a form into which had been
* Ruskin.

94 THE FIRST PETITION.

struck such towering majesty^ or a face into
which had been flung such soul. Mailed in gold
of the morning, girdled with gems of rarest
water, when the sun shone on it, it shone back
a second sun ; and it was verily thought that
the Deity had come dow^n to inhabit that
miracle of man's device. Yet, the poor trem-
bler, looking at that sculptured man, would
have said in his heart, " No, no, that will never
do, that is not ' the brightness of the Father's
glory, the express image of His person ; ' that
is not the exponent of God ; if it be so — hard as
His jewelled coronet, cold as His marble throne,
high above all passion or compassion, there is
no sympathy to be looked for from a God like
that. A flash from that eye I can understand,
but not a tear in it ; his very whisper would
deafen me, if he were to speak I should die."

Christians as w^e are, we bow to an image,
and God himself has given it. The use of an
image in worship is a sin only when it breaks
the law, " thou shall not make to thyself a
graven image to bow down to it and to
worship it." It is the obedience of faith when
the soul has for its resting-place of thought and
help to prayer that living image which is
furnished in the divine plan of redemption.
" God is only knowable through the medium of
humanity," and the humanity set apart for
this, is that of the perfect man, Jesus Christ,

THE FIRST PETITION. 95

" the man who shall be as a hiding-place from
thewind and a covertfrom the tempest, as a voice
of water in a dry place, and the shadow of a great
rock in a weary land ;" the man "who is the
image of the invisible God, the firstborn of
every creature : for by Him were all things
created, that are in heaven, and that are in
earth, visible and invisible, whether they be
thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or
powers ; all things were created by Him, and
for Him ; and He is before all things, and by
Him all things consist." * " Lord, show us the
Father," said Philip. "Jesus saith unto him.
Have I been so long time with you, and yet
hast thou not known Me, Philip > he that hath
seen Me hath seen the Father, and how sayest
thou then. Shew us the Father ^ " Would you
know the love of the Father .'' look at Jesus ;
to know his holiness ? look at Jesus, to know
how He feels toward mankind. Do you wonder
how men dare to love a Perfection so grand
and high ? look at Jesus. Do you find in an
ancient declaration of His name that He "will
by no means clear the guilty," and do you
wonder, therefore, how He can save sinners ?
look at Jesus on the cross. Jesus is our theology.
Jesus is the Word — all words in one, and through
Him, God is no longer the Great Anonymous.
He explains Creation ; He explains the Old
Col. i. 15, 16, 17.

96 THE FIRST PETITION.

Testament. When in the last stage of His
journey to the cross, the dark shadow of it
fell upon His spirit, He said, " Now is my soul
troubled, and what shall I say ? Father, save
Me from this hour : but for this cause came
I unto this hour. Father, glorify Thy name! " *
and at the close of His high priestly prayer,
spoken just before he stepped down into
Gethsemane, He said to the Father, with refer-
ence to His disciples, " I have declared unto
them Thy name, and will declare it." Jesus
is the revelation of God, and the New Testa-
ment is the revelation of Jesus.

n. What do we mean by praying that the
name of our Father may be hallowed .-' In the
language of the Old Testament, to hallow a
thing was to set it apart ceremonially, as a thing
specially august and sacred. The temple en-
closure was hallowed ground, because it was set
apart from all other ground, as the one spot
sacred to the ministrations of the priesthood.
The vessels of the temple were hallowed because
they were so set apart for sacred purposes, that
their use for common purposes would have
been profanation. The word used in the Lord's
prayer is meant to convey the same idea.f

* John xii. 27, 28.

t Perhaps the word 'AytaaO-qTu is from a negative, and
and yv, the earth. It answers to the Hebrew K^^'^pn and

\ir\p- This meant first, to make holy an unholy thing ;

THE FIRST PETITION. 97

"What is this?" asks Augustine, "can God
be holier than He is?" Not so, but our con-
ception of Him may be holier than it is. We
pray that He who is separated only by His
perfections from all other beings, may be so
regarded ; and that more and more, in our own
souls as well as in the souls of all men, — in our
thoughts, motives, desires, and actions, also in
theirs, He may be thus venerated and glorified.
2. "Hallowed be Thy name," by the indzvdling
of the Holy Ghost in us. We shall not even sec
the name so as to hallow it, until the divine
enlightener creates the seeing spirit. When
Peter, in the flash of an amazing moment, read
God's name in Jesus, it was said to him, "Blessed
art thou Simon Bar-jona, for flesh and blood
hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father
which is in heaven."* As it was in him, so it is
in us. We must say of the things of Christ,
" Eye hath not seen " them, " but God hath
revealed them to us by His Spirit." "The
heart," says Pascal, " has reasons which the
reason does not understand," and by the Spirit
in the heart making the heart see things which

next, it came to mean to treat a holy thing as holy, that is
to honour it as such. Ex. xx. 8 ; Lev. xxi. 8 ; Num. xx.
12; Deut. xxxii. 51. In these passages, to sanctify or
hallow, means to set apart in a venerating way from
earth, and all mere earthly purposes.
* Matt. xvi. 17.

G

98 THE FIRST PETITION.

confound the intellect, He inclines us to under-
stand Christ, and to trust Christ — brings us into
intimacy with Him, and this intimacy works a
likeness, — "Beholding as in a glass the glory
of the Lord, we are changed into the same
image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit
of the Lord;" so, the beginning of all that
hallows the name of the Father in us, is the life
of the Holy Spirit.

2. " Hallowed be Thy name " by our trust.
This is our joint prayer, yet let each one in
offering it, distinctly pray for himself as well
as for others. Looking to Jesus, who is the
Father's name alive — alive in one personal, per-
fect, final revelation, I would say, there, my
soul's trust is all there — there alone, as on that
which is gloriously separated from and exalted
above " every name that is named, not only in
this world, but in the world that is to come;"
there only, there for everything, there for ever.
As " God manifest," as a Being all by Himself,
I separate this Saviour in my own mind from
all other Saviours. " He hangeth the earth
upon nothing ;" let my faith like the earth
be hung upon nothing but God ; by human
will as well as by divine ordination, by me, by
others, by more and more, may He be set apart
as the one foundation of hope, the one life, the
one strength, the one righteousness, the one
manifested Perfection !

THE FIRST PETITION. 99

3. "Hallowed be Thy name" in the spirit of our
prayers. A graphic writer has pictured to us
the story of an African journeying to offer his
petition when in trouble, to a certain wizard or
Obe man — his only ideal of Him who hears
prayer. He and his companions on their way
to the secret place where this " hearer of prayer "
had his sanctum, travelled for miles through
the wilderness. Spurred on by fear they
plunged into the shadowy forest ; in the dark-
ness, now and then they were caught in swing-
ing loops of the bush ropes, or were tripped up
by treacherous vines, or tangled among the
trunks of tree-ferns, or tumbled over vast nests
of ants. On, on, they pushed through the dull,
green light. They reached at length a spot
where the ground was so damp, the foliage so
dense, and the atmosphere so faint that it
seemed like poison. They had to brave sting-
ing leaf, teasing insect, and deadly snake — when
it seemed impossible to get through the tight
and netted undergrowth another inch, then,
dropping down on hands and knees, they glided
silently after their guide through a scarcely
discernible opening in the bush, when the man
who had the consultation to make, now went
on alone. As he crawled, he suddenly touched
with naked knee, a large, cold, smooth object,
which snatched itself away, and shot back a hiss
that thrilled him through. As he still pushed

lOO THE FIRST PETITION.

on, he could hear the noise and sway of snakes,
disturbed by his entrance ; he crept, and crept
on, till at last he found himself entered upon
a wide, cleared space of considerable size, shut
in with splendid vegetation around and above.
Against the majestic pillar of a central tree,
midst mixed bamboos and tree ferns, surrounded
by the dense wood, like the very house of death,
was the home of the strange Negro. At the
sight of him, he began to creep back again, but
he no sooner did so, than on all sides there arose
a commotion of swarming snakes, that slipped
and rustled out of his way.* This may serve as
a parable. It shows how some persons think
of prayer. They have in their hearts some
echo of the ancient cry, " O that I knew where
I might find Him ! that I might come even to
His seat ! I would order my cause before Him,
I would fill my mouth with arguments," but they
think of the way to God as a long and difficult
journey. They suffer from a sense of hard
work, of having to travel over desperate ground,
of going through an effort of conscience, making
fatigue. The thought of God is always a
weight upon their spirits, and there are times
when it is a cold horror. They must pray, but,
more or less, they are sorry for it, and some-
times it costs them agonies. Making it a
terrifying process, they turn it into a violation
* From " Liitchmee and Uilloo ;" much abridged.

THE FIRST TETITION. lOI

of reverence and a mode of profanity. This is
not the prayer of one who knows Christ, and
who has been born again. Yet it is to be feared
that in some instances, at some times, from a
stern theology, or through a depressing spiritual
atmosphere, even the sons of God pray too
much like slaves, and that even by them, the
Father, though not ?/;^known, is piisknown.
Nothing in one who ought to know better, so
grieves the Spirit ; gives such a wound to the
love of God, does such a wrong to His name.
His name is Love ; let us hallow it. There is
no love like His love. To any one who has
the faintest faith* in Christ, yet who at this
moment holds back from the Father, feeling
half afraid to take the liberty of prayer, it may
be said, "Dost thou think Him 'altogether
such an one as thyself.''' touchy, jealous, apt
to take offence, slow to make allowance, hard
to be entreated, difficult to please .'' Are you
thinking of God only as an infinite man — man
as man is now ? The only man who reveals
what He is like, 'is the man Christ Jesus,' and
are you afraid of Him ? " If your hearts have
learnt the words Christ has here taught us,
"ye have not received the spirit of bondage
again to fear, but ye have received the spirit of
adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father!"
Fear, indeed, you have, but the fear that lifts the
soul, not the fear that lowers it. It sends no

I02 THE FIRST PETITION.

shudder over the Hfe. Instead of a terror, you
feel a glorious awe. By the life of the Holy
Spirit within you, live up to your new standard
of privilege. Separate thoughts of your Father
from thoughts of all imperfect beings, fling off
all doubt of welcome, all freezing dread, and
with happy freedom, letting yourselves go, run
into the all-embracing love.
w 4. " Hallowed be Thy name " in our lives.
It is indisputable that it is Christ in us that
makes our Christianity. Christians with no
Christ in them, are only cheap imitations and
hollow shells that infinite Love itself must fling
away with infinite impatience. Such lives,
more than anything else imaginable, cause the
name of God to be blasphemed. The life of
Christ in the lives of His people, is that by
which it may be most hallowed. " Beloved, let
us get holy lives, and leave the rest to God."*
Life takes form. The apostle said to the
Galatians, " My little children, of whom I am
again in travail, until Christ ht formed in you."-|-
Sure as that life is in us, the form, beginning
in the heart, will come out into human sight.
What is the form of Christ's life t "He is holy,
harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners."
The same life in us, must, in the degree of its
existence, take the same form. We are to be

* Fletcher of Madely.

* Gal. iv. 19. Revised Versiofi.

THE FIRST PETITION. IO3

separate from sinners, not like the ancient as-
cetics, who to avoid spiritual infection fled from
their presence, and lived in solitary places ; but
separate while in the midst of them ; separate
by distinctness of nature ; separate, as the salt
which though it may be in contact with the
earth, is separate from it ; and as the light
is separate from that which it illuminates.
It is said of the glorified ones, who are before
God in heaven, " His servants shall serve Him,
and they shall see His face, and His name
shall be written on their foreheads." The spirit
of this petition is, let it be so on earth, so that
wherever His servants are, His name may be
seen. May His name be in us, and on us,
" known and read of all men ! " Where we
live, there, by the indwelling, formative life of
Christ, the Manifestor of the Father's name,
may that name be hallowed through our lives !
Most hallowed where the most of our lives have
to be spent, that is, not in splendid places, but
in common places. You have, perhaps, to
spend most of your own life amidst things for
manufactory, things for cultivation, or things for
sale ; you are inclined to tell me that there are
many small transactions in a sphere like yours,
which I 'might call sins, but which are quite
necessities as the world now is. Society has
such claims, business is so sharp, life is so rapid,
competition is so frantically desperate, that if

I04 THE FIRST PETITION.

you were, in any sense of the phrase, to hallow
God's name in your secular occupations, you
would not be able to go on for a twelvemonth.
Then you are not able to feel ready for the day
when " there shall be upon the bells of horses,
'holiness unto the Lord;'" you are not able
to feel that you are always priests, — your work-
ing dress priestly raiment; your working place,
holy ground, — you are not able to offer the
Lord's prayer.

5. " Hallowed be Thy name " in our language.
Of course, where any temptation exists to the
profane use of any word that, like a symbol,
stands for God, this is forbidden first of all.
It may seem to us quite inconceivable that any
Christian should ever thus be tempted, or any
persons who frequent Christian assemblies ;
yet, when a man who has been accustomed in
a passion to rap out " bad language " becomes
a Christian after his habits of life are settled,
there may be a burning moment, when some
evil word long unheard on his lips, but all the
while sleeping like a memory, a wicked misery,
or a motionless torpedo on the floor of the
soul's deep sea, may suddenly explode, and
rage on the surface, as did the cursing words
of Peter when he denied his Lord. In olden
times, when the disciples of Christ were new
converts from heathenism, and much mire
from the " horrible pit,'' out of which they had

THE FIRST PETITION. IO5

been lifted still clung to them ; or in the dark
ages when the Bible was a sealed book to the
multitude, preachers dwelt almost restrictively
on this use of the clause, " hallowed be thy
name." Chrysostom, for instance, knew that
large numbers in his congregation were profane
swearers, and twenty of his homilies against
profane swearing still survive.

Bishop Jeremy Taylor, discoursing on this
subject, with splendid eloquence and rich
mosaic of illustration, speaks thus : " The name
of God is so sacred, so mighty, that it rends
mountains, it opens the bowels of the deepest
rocks, it casts out devils, and makes hell to
tremble, and fills all the regions of heaven with
joy ; the name of God is our strength and
confidence, the object of our worshippings, and
the security of all our hopes ; and when God
had given Himself a name, and immured it with
dread and reverence, like the garden of Eden
with the swords of cherubim, and none durst
speak it but he whose lips were hallowed, and
that at holy and solemn times, in a most holy
and solemn place ; I mean the high-priest of
the Jews at the solemnities when he entered
the sanctuary — then He taught all the world
the majesty and veneration of His name ; and
therefore it was that God made restraints our
conceptions and expressions of Him : and, as He
was infinitely curious, that, from all the appear-

I06 THE FIRST PETITION.

ances He made to them, they should not depict
or engrave any image of Him ; so He took care
that even the tongue should be restrained, and
not be too free in forming images and repre-
sentments of His name ; and therefore, as God
drew their eyes from vanity, by putting His
name amongst them, He took it off from the
tongue and placed it before the eye ; for
Jehovah was so written on the priest's mitre,
that all might see and read, but none speak it
but the priest. But besides all this, there is
one great thing concerning the name of God,
beyond all that can be spoken or imagined
else; and that is, that when God the Father
was pleased to pour forth all His glories, and
imprint them on His holy Son in His exaltation,
it was by giving Him His holy name, the
Tetragrammaton, or Jehovah made articulate ;
to signify ' God manifested in the flesh,' and so
He wore the character of God, and became the
bright image of His person,

" Now all these great things concerning the
name of God are infinite reproofs of common
and vain swearing by it ; God's name is left
us here to pray by, to hope in, to be the
instrument and conveyance of our worship-
pings, to be the witness of truth, and the
judge of secrets ; the end of strife and the
avenger of perjury, the discerner of right and
the severe exactor of all wrongs ; and shall

THE FIRST PETITION. IO7

all this be unhallowed by impudent talking of
God without sense, or fear, or notices, or
reverence, or observation ? " *

It is not the common swearer only, who does
that which we thus pray against. It is the sin of
prayer-utterers who speak the words of devotion
while they are thinking of something else; so
making the service a work done by machinery ;
it is the sin of any speaker or writer who uses
the name of God on the vehicle of his own
glorification ; it is emphatically the sin of those
who, perhaps, habitually sit on thrones of judg-
ment, each as an incarnate perfection, and see
the children of this world, or the members of the
church pass before them with the one idea of
determining what sentence they shall pass, but
who out of their shallow religiosity, and in their
slipshod, random talk, passing for religious
conversation — sometimes make such free use of
the sacred name, that we hear them with a
spiritual shiver, and feel a shock almost as great
as when a poor ignoramus carelessly let slips a
round oath ; it is the sin of all flippancy and
levity in connection with anything chosen by
God as a special medium for the expression of
Himself. The Bible, the day of holy rest, the
institutions of His grace, are things marked by
the King's broad arrow as sacredly His own,
therefore, as such, set apart from common uses.
* Sermon on the Good and Evil Tongue.

I08 THE FIRST PETITION.

We must stifle in its first conception, the sense
of the comic in connection with the thought of
the divine. "Jest not," says Thomas Fuller,
"with the two-edged sword of God's word. Dan-
gerous is it to wit- wanton it with the majestic
of God ; wherefore, if, without intention, and
against thy will, by chance medley thou hittest
scripture in thy ordinary discourse, yet fly to
the city of Refuge, and pray God to forgive
thee." We think of all these possibilities of sin, in
ourselves or in others, when we cry, " Hallowed
be Thy name."

6. " Hallowed be Thy name in the church by
the ascription to Thee alone, of the honours
due to Thee." One day during the course of
recent disturbances in Ireland, an Irish Bishop,
giving the people in his discourse a direction on
the subject of secret societies, said, "We have
received this direction from our Holy Father,"
Our Holy FatJier ! what is his name ? We are
told that his name is " Leo the Thirteenth."
There must be a mistake here. This is not the
person meant by Jesus Christ, when He said,
" Holy Father, keep through Thine own name
those whom Thou hast given Me, that they may
be one, as we are." * The devout and loving
common sense of Christianity recoils from the
application to a man of the title Christ gives to
" the High and Lofty One." It is not as if it
* John xvii. 1 1.

THE FIRST PETITION. IO9

were simply used as the language of venerating
courtesy ; it is used as the language of religion.
It is not so much the title itself that we now
think of, as the doctrine it stands for, and which
is at the root of the system represented by him
who means it. God's title is taken by the
sovereign Pontiff, on the theory that he is
God's Word and representative. It only means
this. Some years ago, in answer to an address
read by an English deputation, the Pope
said, " I alone, despite my unworthiness,
am the true successor of the Apostles, the
Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth ; I alone have
the commission to steer and guide the bark
of Saint Peter ; I alone am the Way, the
Truth, and the Life ; all who are with me are
with the Church ; all who are not with me are
without the Church ; without the Way, without
the Truth, and without the Life. Let all men
understand this, that they may not be deceived
and led astray by fancy Catholics, who teach
and desire something very different from that
which the Head of the Church teaches and
desires." If these serene assumptions are to be
accepted as true, of course he who utters them
has a right to be called Holy Father. If they
are not true, in so calling him, we hallow the
wrong name. We know that the words, " I am
the Way, the Truth, and the Life," are the clear
and final words of Jesus Christ Himself, that

IIO THE FIRST PETITION.

His was the glory seen by the prophet in his
rapture, and that to him rose the cry of the
seraphim, " Holy, holy, holy." Only the Father
whom we see when we see Him, is the Holy
Father, and if we are consistent in the utterance
of this ascription, we shall only send it up to
God as in Christ, " Head over all things to His
Church."

7. "Hallowed be Thy name" in the overthroiv
of idolatry. An idol is that which men on their
own responsibility set apart as the name or ex-
pression of God, and therefore as the proper
object of their worship. Millions in the days
of antiquity have so regarded their imperial
masters. Where religion is another name for
fear, and God another name for Force, this was
not so much to be wondered at, for nothing so
represented to the multitude the idea of awful
power as an Eastern king of kings, or a Roman
emperor. Yet He was not only worshipped by
the uneducated. Valerius Maximus, addressing
Tiberius in the preface of his book, said " Other
divinities are only in opinion ; thy Divinity we
see and touch in thee." Antoninus called him-
self Father Bacchus ; Caligula said to Jupiter,
" kill me, or I will kill thee ; " Domitian signed
his decrees, " your Lord and your God." Helio-
gabalus proclaimed himself "the Lord Sun."
In the day when Christ was giving His disciples
their model of prayer, men were finding their

THE FIRST PETITION. I I I

ideas of God's names in emperors, in the storied
or sculptural expressions of classic mythology,
and in the grotesque shapes before which crowds
were kneeling in India. In our own day, there
are lands full of idols that look like foul, fan-
tastic, scaring dreams of sin and misery struck
into stone. Countless fellow subjects of our
own are still in such darkness, that when they
think of God, they know no better expression
of His name then such images can give. In the
Bombay Presidency alone, we are told that
more then thirty thousand temples are still
devoted to objects of worship like these. When
we call these things to mind, when we also re-
member that an idol is not only an object of
worship fashioned with the hand, but is also
anything that is instead of God to us, or from
which our life takes its supreme law ; when we
try to count the idols now worshipped in
London, and feel that they are numberless ;
when we lift the veil, look into the shadows
within our own spirits, and descry idols there,
as the penitent Manasseh saw idols in the
Holiest place, we wake up to see the meaning
and to feel the solemnity of the pra}-er, "Hal-
lowed be Thy name ! "

V.

THE SECOND PETITION,

"Thy kingdom come."— Matthew vi. lo. Luke xi. 2.
Ajithorizcd and Revised Versions.

Martin Luther, writing in the year 15 18,
remarks, that when the children say, " Hallowed
be Thy Name," The Father asks, " How can
any honour and name be sanctified among you,
seeing that all your hearts and thoughts are
inclined to evil, and you are in the captivity of
sin, and none can sing My song in a strange
land?"

Then the children speak again, thus : —
" O Father, it is true. Help us out of our
misery; let Thy kingdom come, that sin may
be driven away, and we be made according to
Thy pleasure, that Thou alone mayest reign in
us, and we be Thy dominion ; obeying Thee
with all the powers of body and soul." *

These antique sentences help to show the
vital connection between the first and second

* This is part of a long and interesting quotation made
by Dr Saphir at the opening of Lecture VI. on the
Lord's Prayer.

THE SECOND PETITION. I 13

petitions. It is not a connection without con-
sequence, like that of pearls in a circlet, or links
in a chain ; but thought grows out of thought,
and prayer out of prayer, like bough out of
bough in a stately, flowering tree.

I. The kingdom. The phrase, "Thy kingdom,"
means Thy " reign.'' In our language we have
one word for a kingdom, another for the reign
in it ; for instance, we make a distinction
between the kingdom of Queen Victoria, and
her reign in that kingdom. It was lately said
in the House of Commons, that in certain parts
of Ireland, the Queen does not reign, but the
Land League. Then, although the kingdom is
hers, the Queen's reign in it is to come. In the
original language of the New Testament, one
word is used for both meanings — in one place
it stands for the territory under kingly rule ;
in another place, for the kingly rule itself.
Here it stands for the kingly rule. Of course,
the earth is already the kingdom of God in
the first sense of the word. It cannot come
to be so, for so it already is. But other lords
have dominion in it. " An impious war has
been declared by the subjects on earth against
the Sovereign in heaven : there has been a
revolt of the heart, of the intellect, of the senses,
and of all the faculties. A general insurrection
of the human race against the Creator has been
organized in this world. The degraded senses
II

1 14 THE SECOND PETITION.

have said, ' Let us break His bands asunder
and cast away His cords from us ;' the fickle
and infatuated reason in its turn has said,
' Where is the promise of His coming ?' Selfish-
ness and pride have leagued together, and
when the Father appeared in His Son, have
exclaimed we will not have this man to reign
over us." *

This doctrine is often contemptuously denied.
You know many persons who would say,
" Nonsense ! that doctrine of the fall ; — of course,
man is as God made him." Facts contradict
their dogma. The Greek magician in stone
did not make the statue as you find it, — stained,
shattered, flung down in the nettles ; the Gothic
builder did not make Chepstone Castle as you
find it, a ruin ; the workman did not make the
king's banner as you find it, torn, trampled, and
ground into the mire ; so, God did not make
man fallen, lost, and a rebel. Do you say, he is
made with instincts to ascend .-' then some
malign hand has arrested " the ascensional
development," and brought him down to be
what you now behold. True, the heart of
humanity is part of God's kingdom ; but does
He reign in it .-* Pride reigns, self reigns,
animalism reigns, death reigns, but the reign of
the Father is to come. In the remarks now
following, although we may occasionally use
* Vinet.

THE SECOND PE FITION. I 1 5

the word " kingdom," it is with the understand-
ing that we use it in the sense of " reign."

II. TJie zvay this kingdom zvill come.

I. It will come by the mediation of Jesus
Christ. Intimation of this, couched in " dark
and cloudy words," was given on the very day
when the rebellion broke out. Then it was
said to the serpent, " I will put enmity between
thee and the woman, and between thy seed
and her seed ; it shall bruise thy head, and
thou shalt bruise his heel." * This promise of
Eden was a bud in which the future flower of
all revelation lay folded. As time went on, it
gradually opened, and the announcement of a
Saviour's coming reign was given with growing
distinctness. A promise was made to David
that a son of his should have universal
sovereignty. " He shall have dominion," so
declared the oracle, "from sea to sea, and
from the river to the ends of the earth. All
kings shall fall down before him ; all nations
shall serve him, and shall call him blessed.
In his days shall the righteous flourish, and
abundance of peace, so long as the moon
endureth."t In a few years it became clear
that neither Solomon nor Solomon's son ful-
filled this prophecy; but still, while the glory
of the Hebrew nation was waning into gloom,
and its power was sinking into nothingness,
* Genesis iii. 15. + Psalm ii. 7, 8.

Il6 THE SECOND PETITION.

the prophecies of the coming King kept glowing
on with greater vividness through message
after message, until the last prophet made
Him the subject of His last message : when,
after the silence of four hundred years, the
Spirit spoke again, the speech was still about
the King, and the burden of John the Baptist's
ministry was, " the reign of heaven is at hand,
get ready for it." While this herald's voice
was sounding, the King came. He had not
been long here — in fact, had not yet in a
formal way commenced His undertaking, when,
all eyes being fastened on Him, all minds exer-
cised on the question what His kingdom would
be like, he issued a manifesto, and we have it
in the Seven Beatitudes.* The first beatitude
is, " Blessed are the poor in spirit, for their's
is the kingdom of heaven." " This," says
Augustine, " is inclusive of all the beatitudes,
for all the beatitudes that follow are the un-
folding of this first one." " We have here, the
beginning both of the principles and the bles-
sings that make up the kingdom of God."t
Let but these principles, with their consequent
blessings, have ascendancy, and there, in all its
perfection, is the kingdom. This kingdom, or
reign, is one. Part is on earth, part is in
heaven, part is present, part is to come ; this
* Matt. V. I-I2. + Auff. de Serm. Dom. in jMonte.

THE SECOND PETITION. I I 7

is the bud, that is the flower ; when we die,
going through the gate of death is not going
into the kingdom, but going into its perfection.

Jesus having in the first section of His sermon
on the Mount, told His disciples what the king-
dom would be like, before He brought that
sermon to a close, taught them to say to the
Father, with reference to it, "Thy kingdom
come." Guided by the instructions contained
in that sermon, the cry of our life must be,
" Father, let that reign come, when men shall
be poor in spirit, so that all the advantages of
the reign may be theirs ; when they shall
mourn so that they may be comforted ; when
they shall be meek, and so inherit the earth ;
when they shall hunger and thirst after
righteousness, and so be filled ; when they shall
be pure in heart, and so see God ; when they
shall be peace-makers, and so be called the
children of God. Let that reign come in which
shall come that royal truth, that royal kind-
ness, that royal fairness, that royal peace, that
exaltation of graces — which, because common,
current language is not intense enough to
describe, is set forth in the bold hyperbole of
this sermon on the Mount ! Let that reign
come, which will be the beginning of heaven
on earth !''

2. It will come through the instrunieutality

I I 8 THE SECOND PETITION.

of the cross. By the cross, we mean what was
consummated on the cross. God in Christ
founds the new reign of grace in that only.
The peace that is signed in the palace of the
Most High, is peace through " the blood of the
cross." War ceases only when this is operative.
We take God's word for this, and lay aside
man's opinion about it. On the one hand, it
is enough for us to know, that in some way,
through the perfection of the life, and the
mystery of the sacrifice finished there, the
rebel may be forgiven, and yet the eternal
order not be broken ; on the other hand, to
know that while the rebel is looking at and
trusting in " Christ crucified," enmity melts, a
new life of love is inspired, and that, as far as
the influence of the cross extends, the reign of
God comes.

Christian men sometimes seem as if they only
half believe in this. They seem as if, like the
Emperor Constantine, they see a glorious cross,
and read the celestial inscription under it, " by
this conquer," yet, believers as they nominally
are, it is not by this, that is, not by the cross
alone, that they expect to conquer, but by the
fitness of the means they employ in using the
cross, and their real hope seems to be, after all,
in the instrument of the instrument. There was
great hope when the emperor, who has just
been named, became champion of the Christians,

THE SECOND PETITION. I IQ

but that hope was disappointed. It is true, his
conversion, such as it was, made Christianity an
aristocratic thing, — wealth, honour, office were all
on its side, and the creed of the monarch be-
came the creed of the people, but influences
were thus set working that tended to poison
Christianity and to postpone the coming of the
kingdom. When an old Saxon king gave up
his gods and was baptized, he would bid his
riders to do the same, and they would, as a matter
of course, obey their master's bidding. Equally
as a matter of course, Christianity would be-
come the fashion, but the heathen people though
marked with the sign of the cross, were heathen
people still, — still trembling in terror of the
spiritual world and the hidden wrath of nature.
The unknown powers they once worshipped
through such old names as Freya, Thor, and
Woden, they still worshipped, though under such
new names as the Virgin Mary, Saint Giles, or
Saint Lawrence ; and the kingdom of the
Father seemed to be very little nearer than it
was before. It is true in modern as in olden
time, that when fancy Christianity, or any
other version of it, gets married to rank and
social status, even the world will join that
church, fashion will profess that truth, and in-
fidelity will make believe to believe ; but it is
not in this way that the kingdom will come.
Great things for the Gospel have been expected

I20 THE SECOND PETITION.

from education, from traffic, and from the ad-
vancement of science, but these are not the
primary instruments for bringing about a chosen,
cheerful subjection of hearts to the King who is
a Spirit and whose name is Love. Sometimes,
when a nation professing to live under the
standard of the cross, has had brilliant martial
successes, and heathen peoples have thus been
brought under its sway, this has been gloried in
as a fact on the side of the Gospel. The horse
" paweth in the valley, and rejoiceth in his
strength, he goeth on to meet the armed men.
He mocketh at fear, and is not affrighted ;
neither turneth he back from the sword. The
quiver rattleth against him ; the glittering spear
and the shield. He swalloweth the ground in
his fierceness and rage, neither believeth he that
it is the sound of the trumpet. He saith among
the trumpets, Ha, ha ! and he smelleth the
battle afar off, the thunder of the captains and
the shouting." * It is not in such fields that He
who leads " the armies of heaven " rides forth to
victory. War may in a single day stop the
beat of thousands of hearts, quench the light of
thousands of eyes, and make showers of tears
fall, but though the Master of all things, good
and evil, may use this evil thing for clearing
obstacles out from the path of His kingdom, it
is not by it that the kingdom will come whose
* Job xxxix. 21-25.

THE SECOND PETITION. I 2 I

gentle glories are depicted in the sermon on the
Mount. The one instrumentality for setting up
that kingdom in human hearts is the cross.
This alone makes it possible for the Father to
Avelcome the wandered ones who come back to
Him, and, at the same time, makes them glad
to obey Him as their King. When even by the
humblest words or deeds we publish this cross,
we are taking part in some degree in working
the machinery which the King Himself has
appointed, and in the single use of which He
will win back His dominion over the human will.
3. It com.es by the pozver of the Spirit. Think
of an avalanche coming down from above the
snow-line of the Alps. See it, it is coming with
stern, conquering sway, to carry all before it,
but at first, its kingdom " cometh not with ob-
servation." It slips along with slow, scarcely
perceptible motion. In time, you begin to see
it crawl, crawl dovv^n the incline, " It is coming ! "
cry some watchers from the valley below ; but
they get used to it, give over fearing, and go
on with their work or their play. One day, all
the people are in terror ; it is coming, and they
now know it, but what can they do ^ Set up a
barrier .'' raise an army .-^ plant and point great
guns at it } say " stop ! " Do what they may, on
it comes. It comes faster and yet faster, " dart-
ing down the slopes, flitting from shelf to shelf,
jarring the mountain where it strikes," still

122 THE SECOND PETITION.

glancing, shooting, bounding on, starting vast
rocks, loosening forests, sweeping away grassy-
acres along with it as it flys, — with gathering
mass it gains gathering mountains, until it
thunders over into the vale below and entombs
a village.

Whose hand cut that stone from the Alp ?
who shot it ? who flung it into the green gulph.?
Ah ! it was cut without hands, and in our world
of forms, forces, and movements, it is the most
impressive symbol we know of gathering, rush-
ing power that is not of man.

Once in a vision of the night, the Spirit of
Prophecy showed an avalanche to the King of
Babylon. He had in the same vision seen "a
great image," whose " brightness Avas excellent,"
and "the form thereof was terrible." Then "a
stone cut from the mountain, without hands,"
smote the image, \vhich was of iron, clay, brass,
silver, gold, and broke all these in pieces.
Through the lips of Daniel the prophet, the
" Revealer of Secrets " showed that the terrible
image, fashioned in different parts, of different
materials, represented the great, successive ruling
powers in the future of this world. " In the
days of these kings," thus said the Lord, " shall
the God of heaven set up a kingdom which
shall never be destroyed ; and the kingdom
shall not be left to other people, but it shall
break in pieces, and consume all these kingdoms.

THE SECOND PETITION. I 23

and it shall stand for ever. Forasmuch as
thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the
mountain without hands, and that it brake in
pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, and the gold ;
the great God hath made known to the king
what shall come to pass hereafter ; and the
dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof,
is sure."* So will the kingdom of God come.
Man works with his hands, and this kingdom
will come as such a stone comes, " without
hands." It will come, that is, without that
power of motion which begins in man's working,
here fitly symbolised by "hands." It will come
by the power of its own divine vitality and
momentum. It will come in Gospel truth,
instinct with the life of the Holy Spirit, reign-
ing in the lives of more and more believers, until
" the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the
Lord as the waters cover the sea." So mighty
and universal shall this reign be. It will come
not as a blow scattering terror, not as an
avalanche of death, but as that which will only
kill evil, and under whose prevalence, " mortality
shall be swallowed up of life." Thus shall rise
the " Stone of vision, overlooking all the realm
of the earth."

Ill, Hoiv we should pray for this.

I. Every one of us must pray that the king-

' Daniel ii.

124 THE SECOND PETITION,

dom may come in his own heart. The speech
of each one must be, though I am the king's
child, through " having received the Spirit of
adoption ;" His reign in my heart is still a pro-
cess, not a complete result, and in the full sense
of the word His kingdom though coming, is not
yet come. My prayer ought to be more than
it is, — Let thy kingdom come in me. It is sadly
symptomatic of my soul's ill health that I find
myself offering prayers for so many other things
before this. I want His forgiveness, I want His
comfort, I want His light and protection, I want
His support in what I suffer, and His blessing on
what I do, but I do not yet feel as I ought to
feel, and pray as I ought to pray for the reign
of His grace in me. I am sometimes ready to
say. Father, save me out of my afflictions, let me
come home ; let this wicked Absalom, my soul,
see the King's face; yet the work of His subduing
spirit comes on so slowly within me, that I
almost doubt it should yet be ready to enjoy
the condition of the glorified —

" I cannot heal, I cannot hide
My leprosy of sin and pride ;
And were I summoned thus unmeet
To join the saints on Zion street —
Now, would my envy knit her frown
At one who wore a brighter crown ;
And now, my sullen discontent
Would mar the work o'er which I bent.

THE SECOND PETITION. I 25

For earthly joys my soul would long,
Soon weary of the heavenly song —
The sweet unrest, the holy care.
The yoke of love, the raiment fair." *

Heaven must be in me, before I can be heaven,
and I need the power of the new life to master
the sickness of sin. My heart would Hft its
gates daily that the King of Glory may come
in. I want Him " to lodge in the castle, with
His mighty captains and men of war, to the joy
of the town of Mansoul."*!* Therefore, on my
own account, my prayer shall be daily this,
" Thy kingdom come."

2. Let all join in prayer, that the kingdom
may come in the world. The absolute certainty of
the event does not render prayer for its accom-
plishment the less imperative. The promises
were given, not to supersede, but to encourage
prayer, and when we turn the promises into
prayers, we do but conform to the order be-
tween cause and effect, and the end is not more
certainly a matter of decree than are the
various means to its attainment. When Jehovah
promised to "restore the waste places of Judah,
and to plant that which was desolate," He
subjoined the order, " I will yet for this be
inquired of by the house of Israel, to do

* G. S. Outram.

t Bunyan's " Holy War," chapter ix.

I 26 THE SECOND PETITION.

it for them." Just as when He promises
bread, it is through the implied use of our
hands ; when He promises knowledge, it is
through the implied use of lessons ; when
He promises grace, it is through the implied
use of the " means of grace ; " when He has,
in manifold language, assured us that His reign
in this world will come, it is implied that it will
come through the working of the law of prayer.
The sight of the world's sin in its inveteracy
and universality, sometimes makes the lips
whiten, and the heart fail. " In the multitude
of thoughts " that hold parliament within us,
one sceptic thought will sometimes rise to say
of the Almighty, " What profit should we have,
if we pray to Him.?"* Though we go on
praying for the kingdom, our spirit is cast
down. " How long it is in coming ! " we say.
A poet sings of God, " His purposes will ripen
fast, unfolding every hour." Will they.? It
seems that, as a matter of fact, they do not.
It is now 1883 years ago since Christ was born,
yet look at the world ! " We see not yet, all
things put under Him." We must have patience.
" He inhabiteth eternity ; " we inhabit only a
few years of time. The soul flutters amongst
those buds of beautiful purpose, said to " ripen
fast," and we think of a butterfly hovering
about the buds in a spring garden. Does it
* Job xxi. 15.

THE SECOND PETITION. llj

fancy that the hard, green sheaths will never
burst into flower ? Before they do, perhaps
the frail little hoverer will shrivel and drop,
but for all that, the roses will come out one by
one at the right season ; so let our impatient
spirits be assured, it will be with the promises
of the kingdom. Oh, it is coming ! although
at times the world may be at moments as little
like heaven as when it crucified Christ, the
reign of the Father is sure in due season to
show itself, for no power can ever frustrate His
purpose, or falsify His word.

Prayer speaks different languages, takes
different forms. Sometimes it takes the form
of words, sometimes of gifts, sometimes of
actions, sometimes of strenuous fight ; and,
perhaps, at the moment when in this world the
fight has reached its most exciting crisis, and
the soldiers of the Cross have done and suffered
to their utmost extremity, there may be wit-
nessed one grand and final illustration of the
proverb, " Man's extremity, God's opportunity."
I look for Christ to come somewhat as His
coming is described by the seer of the " Holy
War'' — in the thick of the battle between
Captains Credence and Diabolus. The brave
men of Mansoul had fought hard all day out-
side their walls, to beat back the Powers of
Darkness. The battle seemed to waver in the
balance. At one time victory seemed to be

I 28 THE SECOND PETITION.

on the side of Faith, at another on the side of
Faith's terrible foe, when, just as the sun was
setting, and when the armies were in deadly
wrestle, " Captain Credence lifted up his eyes
and saw, and behold, Emmanuel came, with
colours flying, trumpets sounding, and the feet
of his men scarce touching the ground."* "Then
the lords of the pit made their escape," and
forsook their soldiers, leaving them to fall
before the Prince. Over the dead doubters
rode the royal army, and the victorious church
saluted its victorious Lord. So, let us believe,
will Christ come, and thus shall be brought to
pass the saying that is written, " The kingdoms
of this world are become the kingdoms of our
Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign for
ever and ever."

Let us, while striving to learn in the stillness
of secret meditation, how to offer aright this
prayer when we come into the praying com-
pany, think and- pray our way from passage to
passage deliberately, and with great searching
of heart. Before we go on to the next petition,
let us pause at this — give time for it to sink
into our souls, strike with its own power, and
do its own work there. Let us take home the
words of John Bradford, the martyr, " When a
man shall say, ' Thy kingdom come,' and then
shall be thinking with himself, ' Oh, but if it
* " Holy War," chapter xvii.

THE SECOND PETITION. I 29

should now come, what a case I am in ! ' then,
let him not in the midst of these thoughts say,
' Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven '
— so letting the tongue go on with something
else before his heart has done with this ; but let
there be deliberate attendance and careful
dwelling on one particular before the next be
presented." *

* Quoted from memory.

VI.

THE THIRD PETITION.

"Thy will be done in earth; as it is in heaven." — Matt.
vi. lo. "Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth." — LuKE
xi. 2. Authorized Version.

"Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth." — Matt, vi, lo.
Omitted from the Gospel by Luke. Revised Version,

According to the revisers, this sentence is
given only in St Matthew. His report of the
wonderful prayer appears to be the standard ;
the report in St Luke to be, in some respects,
an abridgement ; the design of our Lord in
this renewed utterance, not being to tell it
over again word for word, but to recall the
attention of His disciples to it, as to something
which they had not properly kept in mind.
The second form refers back to the first. Both
breathe the spirit of this petition, but the first
expresses the spirit in the letter. All who are
saying, or trying hard to say, " Thy will be
done," may well be thankful still to know that
these very words are in the original and com-
plete prayer.

THE THIRD PETITION. I 3 I

I. What do we mean by this petition ?

I. In presenting it, we pray that the will of
God may be done by the will of man* Without
this as a primary meaning, the prayer is need-
less, for what would be the use of saying to
the omnipotent Sovereign of the universe,
" Thy will be done " ? As far as He is con-
cerned, it is done already, and ever must be,
whether we pray for it or not. "Who hath
resisted His will ? '' " He doeth according to
His will in the army of heaven, and among the
inhabitants of earth, and none can stay His
hand, or say unto Him, What doest thou } "t
" I will take the city, whether Zeus wills it or
not ! " cried the furious Kapaneus, as he rushed
up the scaling ladder at the siege of ancient
Thebes, but a thunderbolt struck him dead.
" I will take Moscow," was the resolve of
Napoleon, and when the old saying was cited,
" Man proposes, but God disposes," he declared
that he intended both to propose and dispose.
*' Words are but air, and tongues but clay ''
— we know that, after all, he was defeated, and
that the retreat from Moscow was almost a
miracle of disaster. While men in the intoxi-
cation of absolute power, and in the worship of

* Non ut Deus facial quod vult, sed ut nos facere
possimus quod Deus vult." — Cyprian, " De Oratione
Dominica."

t Daniel iv. 35.

1 3 2 THE THIRD PETITION.

their own wills, forget their human limitations,
and refuse to own a superior, the King of
kings is all the while using them as blind
instruments, is bending with infinite ease the
mightiest and most refractory elements into
the service of His own determinations, and is
shewing that whether it is man's will or not,
His will must be done.

Then, is war His will ? is ignorance His will ?

is injustice His will ? is misery His will ? Is

it His will that life should dwindle and pine

through filth, neglect, or overcrowding in great

cities ? Is it His will that infants should die

through quieting mixtures and ardent spirits ?

Is sin His will ? Had His will been done when

He said to the favoured nation of old, " O that

thou hadst ^hearkened to My commandments !

then had thy peace been as a river, and thy

righteousness as the waves of the sea " ? *

" O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the

prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto

thee, how often would I have gathered thy

children together, even as a hen gathereth her

chickens under her wings, and ye would not !

Behold, your house is left unto you desolate ! " t

We have to distinguish between His will of

command and His will of control. Included

in the fact that on this earth His reign has not

yet come, things exist here that are not in

* Is. xlviii. 17. t Matt xxiii. 37, 38.

THE THIRD PETITION. I 33

accordance with His will of command, and
these things, therefore, are simply under His
will of control. Failing to see this distinction —
holding the hazy creed that somehow, whatever
thing happens, it is His will — regarding things
as His will which are in reality only obstruc-
tions to the free workings of His will — some
persons have glided into the habit of mistaking
quiescence in evil, for the trance of Christian
resignation.

We do the will of God in the sense intended
by our Teacher, when, His spirit in our hearts,
and His book in our hands, we pay Him our
obedience — active obedience to His will as
recorded in the words of revelation, passive
obedience — that is, the obedience of lowly and
patient submission to His will as expressed in
the direction or discipline of events. From the
nature of this, it must be done willingly. It is
by the exercise of God's own will that the
material creation obeys Him. He himself
sways to unsinning obedience the tides in
their beat and the stars in their courses. It is
by Himself that His will is done in the happy
things of the earth, and air, and water. What
child of God cannot enter into the words of one
who, years ago, wrote in a time of distress —
"The sight 01^ innocent birds in the branches
and sheep in the pastures, who act according
to the will of their Creator, hath at times

134 THE THIRD PETITION.

tended to mitigate my troubles."* His will is
done in the birds, insects, and flowers ; but we,
who are beings with wills of our own, "are
required to do willingly, what the flowers do
unconsciously," We, by our own choice, are to
spread ourselves out to His light, drink it in,
and pour it out again in the beauty and frag-
rance of holiness. We would not obey His will
against our own will, as slaves do, but would be
as happy children delighting in the " dear God
who loveth us."

"Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done."
At first these two petitions seem to be but two
forms of one and the same. The second has
been called an " amplifying and explicative
sentence," repeating the spirit of the first. As
we look again, we see a difference. When we
say, " Thy kingdom come," the turn of thought
is chiefly towards the Father, when we go on to
say, " Thy will be done," we are thinking more
especially of ourselves, the children. In the
one case we pray that He may rule ; in the
other, that we may boiv to His rule. In the
one, we say, "be Thou our gracious king;" in
the other, " make us Thy willing people." hi
us, thro2igh us, /or us, over us, — "Our Father,"
" Thy will be done." This is our will.

2. This is the prayer of a renovated will.

We pray with our ivill that the will of God
* John Woolman.

THE THIRD PETITION. I 35

may be done. Some Christians dimly think that
a Christian is to have no will at all, and that
the consummation prayed for here, is that our
own wills may die, and that the only will left
living, should be God's. This practically is the
doctrine of the monastery, which we may be
allowed to illustrate by an oft-told tale from the
life of St Francis. The grand rule of his order
is the implicit submission of each monk's will
to the will of his superior. " One day, a monk
proved refractory ; his will had to be conquered.
* Dig a grave,' said Francis to the brothers.
They dug a grave deep enough to hold a man
standing upright. ' Put him into it.' They
put him down into it. * Shovel in the earth.'
They did so, while he stood by stern as death.
When the mould had reached the victim's knees,
the superior bent down, fixed his eyes upon him,
and said, ' Are you dead yet .-" ' No answer.
Down in that grave stood a man whose will
was iron as his own. The signal was given,
and the burial went on. Up to the knees, up
to the neck, up to the lips the mould was
shovelled in. Then Francis bent once more,
and said. Are you dead now .■'' The man in the
grave looked up, and saw, in the cold, grey eyes
that were fixed upon him, no spark of human
feeling. Dead to pity, dead to nature, St
Francis stood ready in another moment to give
the signal for the complete entombment. Just

136 THE THIRD PETITION.

in time, the iron broke, the will died, the funeral
stopped, for the crushed man — a man no longer,
because he now had no will, said, ' I am dead,'
and was lifted out to join the dead men called
monks of the order of St Francis,"

That kind of death is not the death gloried
in by him who said, " I am crucified with Christ."
Man would cease to be man if he ceased to
have a will, and God could not be our God
if we are dead ; for " God is not the God of the
dead, but of the living." The death we wish
for, is the death not of the will, but of self as
its master, through the new and enthroned life
of Christ. God's will is that our will should
by renovation be more energetically alive than
ever, working in harmony with His own. This
is what we pray for here. We pray that our own
lives and all related lives may be brought into
such entire unanimity with God, that what He
wills, we may, and that so His will may be
done. The great Augustine, speaking of this
prayer, tells us that it is another way of saying,
" Grant that we may never seek to bend the
straight to the crooked, that is. Thy will to ours,
but that we, and all doers, may bend the crooked
to the straight," our will to Thine, " that Thy will
may be done." We do not thus pray naturally.
Naturally, we put self, not God in the first place.
It is therefore proof of renovation, it is the

THE THIRD PETITION. 1 37

prayer of children who have been born again, it
is the zvill that speaks, and the will all alive
with " the power of an endless life."

3. In this prayer to our Father, we say with
emphasis, TJiy will be done.

Here, therefore, in the form of prayer given to
us by Jesus Christ, not only for its own literal
use, but for use as a directory to prescribe and
govern the method and spirit of all prayer and
supplication, we are taught to ask for nothing
but with the distinct proviso that it accords with
the will of God. Before we ask for a single thing
on our own account, we lay this foundation stone
to build it on, " Thy will be done," and we de-
liberately pray that our other prayers may be
refused if they clash with this. Our real prayer,
our ruling prayer, the threefold prayer, out of
which as out of a root, all the following prayers
are. to spring, is, "Hallowed be Thy name,
Thy kipgdom come, Thy will be done."

This principle has not always received its
due prominence. In many minds there is the
impression, if not the distinct belief that prayer
is simply the request that our wills may be done
— done in this or that specified particular. The
notion often is, that if we do but set our hearts
on certain things and offer prayers for them —
prayers that are long enough or strong enough —
pleading the merits of Christ, " asking in faith,
nothing doubting,'' what we ask for we shall

138 THE THIRD PETITION.

certainly have. The thoughts of some good
people are in a tangle about this, and no great
injustice is done to their views by the definition
thus put by a certain secularist, — *' Prayer is a
machine, warranted by theologians to make God
do what His clients want." After what Chris-
tians have sometimes said, we are hardly sur-
prised that in some instances the Christian
doctrine has been understood to be that prayer
is one of the laws of nature, so that if used by
one who understood it, the prayer-power, like
any other natural power, must work out certain
known and invariable results according to the
will of the operator, that will giving sole direc-
tion. This led to the well-known challenge
made a few years ago by a scientific enquirer :
" I ask that one single ward or hospital, under
the care of first-rate physicians and surgeons,
containing certain numbers of patients afflicted
with those diseases which have been best studied,
and of which the mortality rates are best known,
&c., should be, during a period of not less, say,
than three or five years, made the obj ect of special
prayer by the whole body of the faithful, and
that, at the end of that time, the mortality rates
should be compared with the past rates, and
also with those of other leading hospitals^ simi-
larly well managed during the same space of
time."

No test could have been more fair and rational

THE THIRD PETITION. 1 39

than this, if we had to regard the question about
prayer simply as a disputed principle in natural
science. In that case, as after a certain use of
the galvanic battery, a shock will follow, so,
after certain prayers, we should expect certain
answers in the natural order of cause and effect,
and we might fairly try prayer in the wards of an
infirmary, just as we try quinine, or bark, or any
other natural means for making a sick man
well.

But prayer is not one of the powers of nature ;
it is one of the means of grace. It is not like
a medical prescription, the efficacy of which is
quite irrespective of a right moral spirit of the
person who tries it. It is not a mere applica-
tion to God in language, with whatever confi-
dence in our success. Its power altogether
depends on its spirit. While it is an instru-
ment by which God gives good things to His
children, it is a process by which He educates
them ; for thus their souls are brought into
sympathy with Himself. We are to ask for
nothing but with the understanding that in our
receiving it. His will may be done. His will
includes obedience, purity, love, and all Christian
grace. We are to have the things we pray for,
if they are, and if we are in harmony with this.
We are in this way fitted to receive the gifts
God is waiting to grant, and if not spiritually

140 THE THIRD PETITION.

fitted to receive them, common sense tells us we
are better without them.

We disclaim every form and degree of the
doctrine that prayer is simply an expedient for
getting our own way. Such a theory creates
infidels, and its acceptance as true would make
prayer itself the ruin of us. It would be fatal
to faith in the power of prayer, or in the good
of it. Fatal to faith in its power. It is plain
that all the prayers prompted simply by the
will of man could not be granted. Prayer by
some suppliants that certain things may be ;
by others that they may not be ; by some for
the success, by others for the defeat of the same
cause, could not both be granted at the same
time. The prayer of devout Lord Falkland that
the king might win, and prayers by the devout
Colonel Hutchison that the Parliament might
win the same battle, could not have both been
granted. Prayers on a sunny day, of certain
farmers in a country church that fine weather
may last because their hay is down, and prayers
of others on the other side of the road that rain
may come, because their hay is stocked, and
crops of other kinds may be damaged by dry
weather, are prayers not likely to be both
granted.

But if the unqualified prayers that our own
wills may be done, were such that the answer
to them would not of necessity imply physical

THE THIRD PETITION. 14I

contradictions and impossibilities like these, and
if, without reference to the way of the Supreme,
you gained by prayer your own way in every-
thing, what would be the effect ? What would
be the effect on your own child, if you allowed
him by prayer to you, to gain his own way in
everything ? If, while in the nursery, when he
cried for a thing, he always had it ? If, while
still a little one, scarcely able to lisp his wish,
he asked for fire, or sharp steel, or explosive
chemicals to play with, and had what he asked
for? If, when in a fit of industry, he asked
leave to weed up all the choice plants in the
garden, he had it ? If, because his •^ill was
against school, he was not sent to school ? If, as
life went on he could always plead a promise of
yours, that he had only to fill up the blank of a
cheque according to his own will, and you would
always sign it ? We need not ask, and indeed
such an experiment would be so extreme, that
our minds refuse to take in the idea.

Yet you know infinitely less of the great God's
thoughts and ways than your nurseling does of
yours. For his will to be the rule rather than
yours, would be infinitely less disastrous than
for your will to be done rather than God's. You
will not allow your child to have everything he
asks for, simply because it is his will to have it,
yet most likely it is the wise law of your house
that he should ask you for things he wishes for,

142 THE THIRD PETITION.

when they are beyond the routine of his life,
that when he does so, you will if you can, and it
is for his good, give him those things ; that you
will not, as a rule, give them unless he asks, and
that you only give them with the understand-
ing that your will is thus done. So the Heavenly
Father deals with us. The child asks for what
seems best. The Father reserves to Himself the
right to decide on what is best. The child recog-
nizes that right, and says as Jesus did in the gar-
den, "Father, not My will, but Thine be done."

If, indeed, we regarded prayer as "a machine
for making God do the will of man," or as a
power in nature, like any other such power, sure
as law, to take effect according to the will of
those who know how to use it ; if we sought to
change the will of God ; if we held the mons-
trous creed that, by the law of prayer God
places his Omnipotence at the disposal of our
weakness, so that we could make ourselves or
others, rich or poor, well or ill, live or die by
our prayers ; if we taught that His power could
be wielded by man's ignorance, and be subject
unconditionally to man's will ; if the praying
habit which Christ enjoins and Christians prac-
tice were such a dangerous instrument, having
under the name of a blessing the reality of a
curse ; we should have no more to say.

As it is, the very act of prayer helps to
make our will go along with God's. Each one

THE THIRD PETITION. 143

whose own will has been renovated, is learning
to sing —

" I worship Thee, sweet will of God,
And all Thy ways adore,
And every day I live, I long
To love Thee more and more." *

Some will must be done. Whose .-• Thy will,
our Father ! The will of the Best, Wisest, most
Holy, most Loving ! We adore, we obey, we
delight. Ours is not a mere submission to the
inevitable, but a choice of the charming, for it
is Thy will, the one will that is perfect.

" O Almighty and most merciful God, by
Thy bountiful goodness keep us, we beseech
Thee, from all things that may hurt us ; that
we, being ready both in body and in soul, may
cheerfully accomplish those things that Thou
wouldest have done ; through Jesus Christ our
Lord. Amen."-|-

4. We pray that the will of God may be
done " on earth as it is in heaven." In the New
Version, the substituted phrase, " as in heaven,
so on earth," amounts, as far as we can see, to
the same thing. Take which rendering you
choose, it is not in the nature of an appendix to
what has gone before, but is the flower, the very
crown and climax, the glory and intensifica-
tion of the petitions, " Thy will be done," It

* Faber.

t Prayer Book. Collect for the Twentieth Sunday after
Trinity,

144 THE THIRD PETITION.

speaks of the measure and degree in which
God's will ought to be done by us — namely, as
it is done in heaven. "The measure which
Christ lays down for us, is always an infinite
measure, and the pattern is always a heavenly
pattern." Our heaven is not a mere heaven of
the senses. It is the world where God is
revealed with most impressive power and most
enchanting beauty ; and where His will is done
— done in creation and in history ; done within
and without ; done in body and in soul, done
by all beings, in all ways, to perfection and for
ever. The inhabitants of heaven, says Baxter,
" obey understanding^, speedily, sincerely, fully,
readily, delightedly, unweariedly, and concord-
antly." " Willingly, speedily, sincerely, fully,
and constantly," so responds Archbishop Usher.
This is a prayer that the world may be just what
it ought to be. It is the very highest ideal of
perfection and felicity for the race. Greater
thought never dawned on man, grander prayer
never rose to God. Only by degrees can we
rise to a true conception of its sublimity. It
means, let every nation on earth, every province
in that nation, every family in that province,
every person in that family be saved. Let every
house be a temple of God, let every meal be
cucharistic, let every man be a priest, and every
place be consecrated. Let the Father be
revealed through the Son all over the earth,

THE THIRD PETITION, 1 45

let every hand bring a tribute ; every eye a
glance, every voice a song. From every land
on which the sunshine strikes, on every shore
the ocean laves, let praise softly rise, and
sweetly linger.

II. How shall we use this petition ? With
such applications as the following —

I. Thy will be done in obedience to orders.
The first meaning is an active one. It speaks of
doifig. Too often this prayer is thought of
as a holy sigh ; and sounds like a dismal,
melting, mournful cadence ; an echo to the sobs
of Gethsemane; a cry of captives while their
harps are hung upon the willows, and tears are
mingling with the stream on whose banks they
are flung ; a plaintive note wafted from some
mourner who may hereafter say, " like a crane
or a swallow, so did I chatter, I did mourn as a
dove;" — a groan from a cowed and exhausted
nature ; a phrase meaning, " we can do nothing,
it is of no use to try, we are very sorry, but, —
O God, Thy will be done!"

" Thy will be done." Yes, but the first
question is, who should do it .'' and the answer
to this question is, " You." The prayer is not,
Thy will be put up with. Thy will be suffered,
Thy will be borne as a heavy yoke ; but " Thy
will be done." It is not, Thy will be thought
about, Thy will be cried about, but " Thy will
be done." The language is resolute, spirited,

146 THE THIRD PETITION.

full of spring ; it has in it the eagerness of the
enquiry, " Lord what wilt Thou have me to do P"
The Lord's life breathed this Lord's prayer.
When from the distance of ages He spoke of
His advent, He said " I delight to do Thy will
O my God;" and " Thy will be done" is the
inscription we see displayed over the manger at
Bethlehem, over the well of Samaria, and over
all the strenuous activities of His obedience no
less than over the sorrow in the Garden, and
the sacrifice on the Cross.

Let this also be our motto. By making it
our prayer we mean that we desire to be " up
and doing " in obedience to orders. Our
life is all under orders. Because God is
our Father to perfection. He is also our King
to perfection, and His orders are therefore
absolute. Our desire for ourselves is, that we
may fall into no mistake about them, that we
may clearly know what they are, and then, that
we may thoroughly carry them out. We may
not always " know the reason why," — this is not
essential ; the thing essential to know is, what
we have to do, not why we have to do it. The
Infinite Reason makes no mistakes, and at
every pause of demur, or hint of enquiry, the
majestic answer is " what I do, thou knowest
not now, but thou shalt know hereafter." Our
eyes therefore are on God in Christ, we would
wait for a signal from the centre of supreme

THE THIRD PETITION. 1 47

authority, before we do anything which is
not already clear, and we would wait with
watchful patience. The son of Antiochus once
said, "Father, when will the battle begin?"
" Dost thou fear," replied the king, " that thou
only in all the army wilt not hear the trumpet ?"'
We are not to act before the commander gives
the word, not to delay to act after he has given
it, not to be anxious when we have to wait for it.
When the time comes for action, the trumpet
will give no " uncertain sound ;" we shall know
what to do, — then, it will be " ours to do or die."
When the steamer BirkenJiead, with a regiment
of soldiers on board, struck upon a rock on the
coast of Africa, it was thought from the moment
of the first rasp and shock that it could not keep
together many minutes, and orders were given
to fit the emergency. The roll of the drum
called the soldiers to arms on the upper deck.
It was promptly obeyed by all, though each one
knew that it was his death summons. There
they stood, drawn up as in battle-array, looking
on while boats were got out, first for the women
and children, next for the other passengers — no
boats left for them. There they stood firmly
and calmly, waiting a watery grave. The ship
was every moment going down and down, but
there each man stood in his place ; the women
and children were all got into the boats, and
pulled off in safety, but on that solemn deck the

T48 THE THIRD PETITION.

soldiers still kept their ranks motionless and
silent. Then down went the ship, and down
with it went the heroes, shoulder to shoulder,
firing a parting volley, and then sinking beneath
the remorseless waters; type of spiritual soldiers
doing their king's commands, and being " faith-
ful unto death." So may we look to this Book,
take our orders from the infinite perfection, and
say, living and dying, " Thy will be done ! "
That it may be so, we would say to the Father
what once Augustine did, " Give what thou com-
mandest, and then command what thou wilt."*
2. " Thy will be done " m submission tinder
trials. The sorrows that are in the world through
sins are used by our Father with sovereign mas-
tery for corrective, or preventive, or educational
purposes in his family. Look round in it.
There is a father the pride of whose life has
been blighted ; there is a mother, whose children,
for whose life she has offered her own over and
over again, are now all buried — buried in the
grave, or buried body and soul in business, or
buried in the love of some stranger. There
is a delicately nurtured being w^ho once lived in
a heaven of love and tender praise and beautiful
refinement, but who now, in his forlorn old age,
had survived all who ever loved him ; life has
lost its sunny prospects and its cheery stir, and
for him in this world there seems to be no future.
* " Da quod jubes, et jube quod vis,"

THE THIRD PETITION. 1 49

There is another who has been wealthy, but who
now, in his decHne of strength, has to fight hard
for bare bread, or to strain his weary faculties in
an attempt to find some way out of a deadlock
of difficulties. There is a watcher bending over
some dear face with fear, lest in a moment the
flame of life should fade, and the white shadow
of the grave come over it. There is a thin con-
sumptive coughing his span of life away. It is
hard at times for any one of these to say, " Thy
will be done ; " hard to say it when the body is
a suffering thing, peril to touch, and pain to see ;
it is harder still to say it, when the soul itself,
still brimful of life, quick as lightning, and im-
patient of any arrest of its activity in the service
of God, is forced to feel that it is the useless and
helpless prisoner of the sick body. " His use-
lessness," as he called it, was the special trial of
Archbishop Whately. When, with keen, cool,
hard intellect and impetuous energy of will, yet
with total exhaustion of body, he lay in his last
sickness — " Have you ever preached from the
words, ' Thy will be done .<• ' said he to his
chaplain one day, " How do you explain it ? "
When the chaplain replied, "Just so,'' said he,
with choking voice, " but it is hard, very hard,
sometimes, to say it ! " Every son of God has
his Gethsemane ; his place for the cup of bitter-
ness and the prayer of agony. Although there
can be no atoning element in what we go

150 THE THIRD PETITION,

through, and our cross never can be that of
sacrifice, we may have a cross in the very pros-
pect of which our soul is "exceeding sorrowful."
Then it is right for us to pray as he did, " Father,
if it be possible, let this cup pass from me." We
may in this case kneel where he knelt, and say
what he said, but we may not divide his words ;
we must add that hard word ^'nevertheless,'' and
say in prospect of the unknown trouble, " Thy
will be done." After that prayer we are ready
for the cross, if one is waiting for us, or able to
live through the affliction that may be our cross
just now. By the help of the Comforter, the
promises that shine out in our sorrows, as stars
shine out in the night, encourage us to offer
this prayer ; we are encouraged to offer it by
the memory of what God has done for us.
" Do you know this, Master Cameron } " said
an executioner, startling the old Christian in
his cell, and showing something in a basket.
It was a fair-haired youthful head, just stricken
off. " I know it, I know it. My son's — my
own dear son's. It is the Lord ; good is the
will of the Lord, who cannot wrong me nor
mine, but has made goodness and mercy follow
us all our days." The same goodness and
mercy have followed ours, warranting the same
trust in the same blessed will. It is the will of
One who cannot wrong us, the will of our
" Father in Heaven." " ' God is Love,' is the

THE THIRD PETITION. 15I

motto on the weather-cock of a country friend.
We have seen many curious vanes, but never
one that struck our attention so much as this,
* God is Love.' Our friend was asked if he
meant to imply that the love of God was as
fickle as the wind .'' ' No,' he answered, * I
mean that which ever way the wind blows, God
is Love ; if cold from the north, or biting from
the east, still God is Love, as much as when
the warm south, or genial west wind refreshes
our fields and flocks.' Yes, so it is ! our God
is always Love. We saw our friend the other
day, when he had lost his dearly loved wife, but
amidst his heartache and crushing loss, he still
said, ' My vane teaches me the truth ; I put
over it in my prosperity when the desire of my
eyes was at my side — God is Love! " * Can
we not yet trust Him enough to say in our
cares and pains, " Thy will be done ! "

3. "Thy will be done" by sur7^ender to Thy
guidance. Those mysterious travellers, our
souls, have paths before them of which they
know nothing. The map of their future is a
secret hid away amidst the glories of God.
What we shall want, what and where our
dangers will be, how long we shall be on the
road, and at what part of it we shall find
heaven, no prophet has been commissioned to
disclose. We need that the Father's will should
* Rev. C. H. vSpurgeon.

152 THE THIRD PETITION.

steer and guide our life, and that for all the
future we should trust Him totally ; yet some-
times we hardly let ourselves go, or let those
dear as ourselves go, out from our seeing or
keeping. We try to make out some glimmer-
ing outline of things to come ; we try to reserve
some power of choice as to the course, or as to
the stations of our pilgrimage. We are like
Joseph, when he took his two children to re-
ceive a blessing from his father. " And Joseph
took them both, Ephraim in his right hand
toward Israel's left hand, and Manasseh in his
left hand toward Israel's right hand, and brought
them near to him. And Israel stretched out
his right hand and laid it on Ephraim's head,
who was the younger, and his left hand upon
Manasseh's head, guiding his hands wittingly,
for Manasseh was the first-born." * God was
the arbiter of the hands. His will moved in
the movement of the blind old man. It was of
no use then, it is of no use now, trying to guide
the Guide. Let Him lead ; let us follow. We
find, for the most part, that when we have been
suffered to have our way, rather than His way
in scheming for the future, we have worked out
some disaster, and that when our burning
prayers to be led in some particular direction
pointed out by ourselves, have been refused,
that refusal has proved itself to be in the long
* Genesis xlviii. 13, 14.

THE THIRD PETITION. I 5 3

run, an act of wisest mercy calling for loudest
praise.

Monica prayed that the Lord would bring
her dear son Augustine to the knowledge of
himself ; she also prayed that He would keep
him from voyaging, as he had purposed
to do, from Africa to Italy. After all he
went to Italy, and the loving suppliant
was in trouble because her prayers were not
heard. Yet, being at Milan, going to hear
Ambrose preach, and thinking only to be
charmed by the magic of his eloquence, he
found " the pearl of great price," and began
his great life of Christian service, — with re-
ference to which fact he has said, " Thou O
good God, deep in counsel, and hearing the
substance of my mother's desires, didst not
regard what she tJien asked, that in me Thou
mightest do that which she ever asked." * This
clause of the Lord's prayer, as applied to guid-
ance in all our future, amounts to saying, as
to time or place, health or sickness, life or
death, and all possibilities. "Lord, what Thou
wilt, where Thou wilt, when Thou wilt."t

4. ** Thy will be done," in tJie use of vieans for
thy reign to come.

Amidst the solemn glories of a famous French
Cathedral, stands a statue that represents a man
speaking. One hand grasps a crucifix, the
* Confess. Lib. v. 8. t Baxter's last words.

154 THE TPIIRD PETITION.

other is lifted as if with the life and sway of
passionate oratory; and below his feet, sculptured
on the massive pedestal, are the words, " Thy
will be done." That stands for Peter the Her-
mit, the fire of whose appeals kindled the first
crusade. " Never, perhaps," says Dean Milman,
" did single speech of man work such extra-
ordinary results. He made the people feel
that to get the Holy Sepulchre from the
Saracens, was the will of God, and before the
council closed, the ©ne loud cry from it broke
forth, 'it is the will of God, it is the will of God !'"
We want the crusader's enthusiasm, without the
crusader's mistakes. We want deep conviction
alive with Pentecostal flame, when will men
rush with equal ardour to fight the true battles
of the true cross !

Sometimes it is His will that to help on this
cause, you should part with what you would nat-
urally like to keep. Sometimes that your own
selves should go into the battlefield of Christian
missions, when you would naturally like to
stay at home*; sometimes that you should part
with son or daughter ordained by Him for such
high service. Perhaps at this very moment, and
in reference to one of these very intimations
of the divine will, you are saying, " Thy will be
done,'' but in what sense ? Is it true for instance
that your child is going, and that you are say-
ing this in the mere spirit of resignation. It

THE THIRD PETITION. I 5 5

should rather be in the spirit of obedience. It
should mean on your part, not a suffering, but
a doing. The beautiful " living sacrifice," is
about to be made ; honestly, heartily, take your
part in it. You have held back your consent
till now, but now you give up and say, " Thy
will be done !" Do it, do it, brother, sister, will
you not .'' Do it yourself, not content to have it
done for you !

VII.

THE FOURTH PETITION.

" Give us this day our daily bread." — Matt. vi. il. " Give
us day by day our daily bread." — Luke xi. 3. Authorised and
Revised Fei'sions.

When our minds are saturated with the spirit
of the foregoing words — when our hearts are full
of the life that says, " Our Father which art in
heaven, Hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom
come, Thy will be done on earth, as it is in
heaven," — when we have the thorough under-
standing that our desires are to be fenced within
these holy limits, — and that what we ask on our
own account is to be ruled by the law of sub-
ordination thus declared, then we begin to pray
for ourselves, and this is our first petition —
" Give us this day our daily bread."

In making out its true meaning, we propose
to pause at each leading word or phrase in it,
giving emphasis to each, successively.

I, Weputemphasisonthephrase "Daily Bread."

"Daily." The original word, it is well-known,

is nowhere else found, either in sacred or classical

literature. It is conjectured that Matthew and

Luke coined it, as a translation of the Aramaic

THE FOURTH PETITION. I 57

phrase used by our Lord. More than thirty
different explanations of it have been suggested,
and the revisers make no attempt to settle its
derivation or meaning. As, however, gram-
marians have found much to say for the render-
ing, '' our bread for the coming day," they
have, in both evangelists, inserted this in the
margin, but have retained in the text, the word
" daily," — the translation to which we have been
accustomed. The word in the Greek Testament,
whatever may have been its history, appears to
be a compound of a noun meaning "substance,"
with the preposition.* As applied to bread, it
seems to mean, that which is proper or sufficient
for supporting life by being changed into the
substance of our bodies. It seems to stand for
good and nourishing food. Though it may be
impossible to give it a literal translation, our
conclusion is, that the general spirit and mean-
ing of the term daily bread must be accepted
as correct.

"Bread." The word is most simple, yet
most comprehensive. It includes, we think,
several things. In the statement of its mean-

* According to this, iirioiicnov is compounded of iin and
ovala, substance, or subsistence. An instance of this word
occurs in Luke xv. 12, rb e-m^dWou fxepos T-qs ovaias. Tho-
luck has given a long, full and very fair account of the
reasons offered for the rendering in the margin and
that adopted in our English text, but sums up in favour
of the latter,

158 THE FOURTH PETITION.

ing, we must begin at the lowest point, and
ascend.

I. "Bread" means that which is needful to
support the life of the body. This, surely, is not
restrictively the food that comes from corn, but
the food that our bodies live upon, whatever
that may be. The Arab who may live upon
dates gathered from the tree ; the Indian, who
may live upon food got by gun or net, or
spear ; the man whose food grows in the field ;
the man who earns it by toiling brain or by
skilful fingers — every man, however he gets his
living, is invited to offer this prayer, and in
praying for " bread " prays for the usual sup-
ports of material existence.

Some interpreters understand the petition as
having reference only to the bread of the soul.
Their theory is, that the wants of the body are
beneath the notice of God, and unworthy of a
place in the train of supplications taught by
Christ. They are afraid or ashamed to "trouble
the Master " about such a trifle ! The earlier
divines generally clung to a spiritual interpreta-
tion, and even Luther tells us that this is a re-
quest to be fed by the Bread of Heaven. But
this cannot be the only idea. We have no proof
that the half of man's nature, though it be the
lower half, is disowned by Him who made it.
It is no "counsel of perfection," whatever as-
cetics teach, that our souls are to starve or

THE FOURTH PETITION. I 59

trample out the instincts of our bodies. There
was no neglect of the body in Paradise. No
such neglect is taught by the theology of Nature
or by the standing lessons of " seed time and
harvest." He who made the body, will not
scorn to feed it. He, who, though Lord of all,
stooped under the lowly lintel of this, our
" cottage of clay," and dwelt in a body like our
own for more than thirty years ; He who gave
bread to the multitudes by the hand of miracle ;
He who pronounced a blessing on bread before
taking it with His disciples ; He who in many
ways in His human teachings, sanctified the
mystery of food ; He who has taught each be-
liever that His body is a temple of the Holy
Ghost ; He who guards it in the darkling decay
of the grave, so that no mystic atom, essential to
its continuous identity shall be lost and missing
on the resurrection day — stoops to no degrada-
tion, and speaks in no way unlike Himself, by
teaching us to pray for it, and we, the children
of God, feel that any interpretation is quite
unnatural as well as unscriptural that would
deprive us of the great privilege of casting our
bodily wants in this simple prayer, upon our
Heavenly Father.

2. The bread we pray for includes that which
is needful to support all our life in this world.
This is manifold more than the life of the body.
Our life is compound, made of earth and heaven,

l6o THE FOURTH PETITION.

dust from the ground, and breath from Deity. It
is even more than this, for it must mean the life
suitable to the particular station we have to fill.
Daily bread in the sense of needful support to
the life which fills a large sphere, daily bread for
the life on which many other lives depends, daily
bread for the life that needs property and social
influence to fulfil the functions of its place, is
totally different from that which is wanted to feed
the life of a mere human unit, just alive. Prince
and peasant, parent and child, persons of every
estate, with all varieties of claims upon them,
little or great, few or many, are all alike to ask
the Father in heaven for daily bread, but bread
for the Queen does not mean merely a loaf a
day. Bread for the poor old mother by the
cottage fire does not mean supplies enough to
meet the demands of empire. The bread we
are to ask for, is support for our differing lives
of body, of mind, of work, of trial, of office, of
station and responsibility.

3. Prayer for " daily bread " is prayer that
we may have enough. The word " bread " points
to what is simple and moderate. We have no
encouragement to say give us this day a banquet.
There is nothing to make us think that the means
of faring sumptuously every day are to be had for
asking. We are only to ask for supplies that
shall meet the average, inevitable demands of
life and station ; the spirit of this is that of
Agur's prayer, " feed me with food convenient

Till-: FOURTH PETITION. l6r

for me ; " but while the words forbid extravag-
ance they imply a request for sufficiency, and in
making them our own we ask for enough to keep
life in healthy, happy, growing power.

If we rebel against God's plan of our life ; if
our hearts clamour for more than enough of
life's good things ; if we insist on having what-
ever hits our fancy, feeds our pride or delights
our senses, we are on dangerous ground. The
sovereign may indeed hear the prayer of discon-
tent, but in that case the answer to a prayer may
be but the infliction of a curse. When his
typical people were passing through the desert,
though he gave them daily bread, they passion-
ately longed for something more. " He had
rained down manna upon them to eat, and had
given them of the corn of heaven. Man did eat
angels' food : he sent them meat to the full.''*
But they pined for variety ; wept, and said,
"who shall give us flesh to eat?" Then the
Royal message to their leader was — " Say thou
unto the people, sanctify yourselves against to-
morrow, and ye shall eat flesh : for ye have
wept in the ears of the Lord, saying who shall
give us flesh to eat .-• for it was well with us in
Egypt : therefore the Lord will give you flesh,
and ye shall eat. Ye shall not eat one day, nor
two days, nor five days, neither ten days, nor
twenty days," but even for a whole month ?
* Psalm Ixviii. 24, 25.
L

l62 THE FOURTH PETITION.

Our thoughts flash back into that ancient
scene, and in a moment, we seem to be hving
in it. It is a still day in the burning depth of
the wilderness ; no shadow flits across the glare ;
no sound, near or far, strikes upon the velvet
carpet of the sand. All at once, man after man
starts up and listens. A noise like a loud
whispering hangs in the air ; it comes nearer,
like wind in trees, nearer and nearer till it
sounds like the roar and hiss of a storm in the
sails of a ship at sea. The sunshine changes
into sudden darkness ; you look up ; and see
birds, and more birds, gathering overhead, till
they are wedged into a black, dense quivering
cloud ; they drop down on low, weary wing,
and fall in stacks all round the camp ; the
people run in a rage of delight to snatch and
rend them ; but not being prepared for so
sudden a change of regimen, and not being
temperate, the new food turns into poison, and
they take into the system, not life but death.
" So the Lord smote the people with a very great
plague, and he called the name of that place the
graves of lust, because there they buried the
people that lusted." * " Now," says our inspired
expositor of this episode, " these things happened
unto them by way of example ; and they were
written for our admonition, upon whom the ends
of the ages are come."f

* Numbers xi. 33, 34. t i Cor. x. 11.

THE FOURTH PETITION. I 6

O

11. We would now separate the phrase " Give
us," that we may think over its special meaning.

I. This phrase implies acknozuledginent of
dependence. It amounts to this, Father, give ns
our daily bread, or we shall never have it. Our
personal and unceasing dependence on Him for
the supports of mere existence is a fact that few
would formally question, but which, perhaps,
few adequately feel. We seem to need the
rack of material circumstance to work a present,
pending, urgent sense of it. When our lips
confess it, sometimes our souls are silent ; it is
more like a dead word in a book, than a word
alive within us. " Give us this day our daily
bread," is a prayer we are ready to say, fit for
the helpless sufferer who has just broken into
his last shilling, but is it natural to the man
whose "barns are filled with plenty," to the
prosperous merchant who has just contracted to
furnish a fleet with stores, or to the lord of large
estates } It might have fitted the lips of David
in the day when, starving, he asked the priest
for a fragment of the shew-bread ; but would it
have been suitable to Solomon in all his glory >.
Would it have been the natural language of
Job, in the days of health, wealth, and happy
family festival .-' Would it have been proper for
Joseph when opening the granaries in which
he had stored the produce of seven plenteous
years } Yes, verily, for all alike live on gifts.

164 THE FOURTH PETITION.

and in " the fulness of sufficiency " one fire, one
blight, one hurricane, one shipwreck, one rash
venture, one turn in the tide of affairs, the work of
one idiotic head, or of one random hand, may in
a week bring the highest to the level of the low-
est. In our grand impatience of common places,
we are tempted to slight these simple truths,
and to forget them because we think they are
too obvious to be forgotten. Let us not be too
proud to take them in with new and keen realiza-
tion, remembering not only our equal depen-
dence, but who it is on whom we depend. He
who of old sent the manna down : He who sent
the ravens with food for Elijah, He who guided
the quivering shoal of fishes like living, leaping,
lighted gold and silver, straight into Peter's net ;
is still the sovereign Lord of mine and moun-
tain, of field /and forest, of sea and sand. So
thought the Puritan Fathers of America, who
while eking out their scanty supplies of food
in their first years with the shell-fish of the shore,
thanked the Lord, with beautiful reverence, for
showing them "the treasures hid in the sand."
So think we, while we offer this prayer in spirit
and truth.

2. We say to our Father, " give us " this bless-
ing, because we know that it is His nature to
give, and that ^ivin^'- is His delight. If we think
of Him as of one who gives, but who would
rather not give ; who gives with grudging, and

THE FOURTH PETITION. 165

who counts out with cold, slow, reluctant fingers
what he gives ; who gives only when we pas-
sionately beg and pray, and who likes to say
No to us, — no words can measure the wrong we
do to Him or to ourselves. The joy of possess-
ing is in the power of giving, and this is the joy
of the Lord. Unless in some work of judgment
— " His strange work," we never see God, but
as we see Him giving. For ever working to
propel the sleepless forces that beat and throb
through nature — the soft drops, the quickening
airs, the searching rays, that make the swelling
leaf, the filling ear, the reddening fruit, we see
Him for ever giving exquisitely, variously and
with magnificent munificence, "seed to the
sower and bread to the eater."

In connection with gifts for the support of
existence, think of His gifts for its enjoyment.
James Hamilton said, if this world had been
meant as a place for the bare physical life of man
during his allotted time, " a world less beautiful
would have served the purpose. ... A big, round
island, half of it arable, and half of it pasture,
with a clump of trees in one corner, and a
magazine of fuel in another, might have held
and fed ten millions of people ; and a hundred
islands, all made on the same pattern, big and
round, might have held and fed all the popula-
tions of the globe. There was no need for the
carpet of verdure or the ceiling of blue ; no

I 66 THE FOURTH TETITION.

need for the mountains, and cataracts and for-
ests ; no need for the rainbow, no need for the
flower."

Look at the gift of flowers only. There are
in this world, wildernesses of beauty, where you
see rich mists of flowers, vast sweeps and
stretches of flowers, flowers billowing round the
tree stems, rippling rivers of flowers, tossing
cataracts of flowers, prairies, where you may
travel to-day, to-morrow and the day after,
still through nothing but flowers. Wherever
nature can get air and space enough, even in
our duller landscapes, we may see something
like it. Graces of shape and glorious fires of
colour are wherever they can be, and even a
wreath of snow is a bank of flowers, with tiny
stars of loveliness full of wonders. What a
noble, generous, resplendent King our Father is!
Everywhere, in illuminated letters, we read the
motto of His house, "Enough and to spare."
Never let us make our requests to Him, as if
taking a liberty or expecting a denial, for He
delights to give.

3. We mean give us this for Thou art our
Father. We see Him delighting to give to
countless creatures that have not His Spirit in
them, and of whom He is not Father. Give us
our bread. Why, He gives the birds tJieirs ! He
puts His living law and His subtle skill within
them ; He infuses into them the life that, while

THE FOURTH PETITION. I 67

in happy movement, singing happy songs, is in
perpetual happy quest for the food which He
gives them through stream and tree and air, and
what He gives, they gather. It seems that
sparrows, above all the other birds, are the
selected types to teach lessons of His providence
— the little, saucy, dingy London sparrows, chirp-
ing close about us, not scared by our stirs nor
stifled by our smoke, arc our Saviour's messengers
reminding us of His words, that not even one of
them is forgotten before God, and that we " are
of more value than many sparrows." Shall He
clothe His lilies and forget His saints, feed His
sparrows and starve His children .-' You know
a father's feelings. Even you "who are evil" do
not think that what is needful for the earthly life
of your child is too small a thing for you to care
about, and can you dream that God in heaven
does not care if His children are cold and hungry.^
Doubt of that, is doubt that He is your Father.
4. We mean "Give us" our daily bread through
a blessing on our own use of rigJit means. One
evening, we are told, Mahomet was conversing
with his followers, and overheard one of them
say, " I will loose my camel, and trust ; " on
which he said, " Friend, tie thy camel, and trust."
Do whatever is yours to do, then trust. Work
and trust, watch and pray. " If a man will not
work, neither shall he eat," is a law of the king-
dom. Work done, all is done that man need

I 68 THE FOURTH PETITION.

care about, God will care for the rest. In refer-
ence to daily bread, the faith that is without
care is expressed in unwearied activity, as a
dutiful fulfilment of the little as well as the great
obligations of life and time. " The man who
thinks Providence exists simply to make up his
lack of service, despises Providence."* In ordi-
nary circumstances, God gives in ordinary ways,
and this prayer, translated into the language
of practical life, mainly means — " Father, give
us work to do, and strength to do it." The zvork
must be His gift, as well as the bread which it
brings. That work v/hich God does not give,
and which is therefore without the sanction of
His holiness or the blessing of His love ; Avork
not in harmony with the three first petitions of
this model, work done in the spirit of the gambler,
work that implies any form of social injustice,
work of those who " make haste to be rich ; "
work that makes capital out of social sin of
others, or that panders to destructive passions —
for instance, the opium traffic and the like —
work of men who " fish foul bread out of the
standing pools and the slimiest ooze of human
depravity," who dip their daily morsel in that
which is the poison of human hearts, who make
a profit out of lost souls, and who bequeath to
their children the gains of unrighteousness, —
work of that kind, whatever its connection and
* Fairbairn.

THE FOURTH PETITION. I 69

whatever its degree, has no prosperity from
heaven, and the bread that comes of it is not
God's gift. In the spirit of this prayer we ask
Him to give us the means of supporting life
lawfully and honourably, and to give us working
faculties. If we live by the skill of our fingers,
we ask Him to give us this skill ; if by the sight
of our eyes, to let no curtain of darkness fall
over them ; if by strength of limbs, to let no evil
strike that strength; if our minds have to work,
that our minds may be kept from weakness or
eclipse, that so, giving us these, He may give us
our daily bread.

5. Another thought under this language is,
" Our Father, when common means are not
within our power. * Give us ' our daily bread, by
means of tJiine ownr When every door is shut,
every road blocked up, and we are at a loss,
come to our help by the ordinations of thy mys-
terious providence. We see with God, no waste
of power, no needless profusion of contrivance ;
miracles are not sights for every day, but when
all the dutiful and necessary things that we know
of have been done on our own part, we may say^
" it is time for thee, O Lord, to work." Power-
less to stir another step, although in the way of
his appointment, a Voice will say " stand still,
and see the Salvation of the Lord." ** He
reserves His hand," says a Puritan sage, " for a
dead-lift " The stones of our fathers' lives are

I JO THE FOURTH TETITION.

rich with proofs of this. Nathaniel Lawrence,
ejected from the living of Baschurch in 1662, sat
one day under a hedgerow, thinking of his hun-
gry family. What suddenly made his eye flash
and his foot spring .'' The sight of a shilling in
the ditch, seeming to him, so he said, to have
dropped straight out of heaven.

Oliver Hey wood, ejected from Coley Vicar-
age by the act of uniformity, lived on a little
stock of savings, until one day, he and his
children were at starvation point, and with no
earthly prospect of another meal. They sang
at family prayer —

" When cruse and barrel both are dry
We still will trust the Lord most High."

With empty purse and empty basket, their
faithful old servant then set out from the house,
and wandered through the streets of Halifax,
thinking of the famishing children whom she
loved like her own life, and wondering how
God would give them this day their daily
bread. Returning home, one of the tradespeople
of the place, standing at his door, knew her,
called her in, and told her that he was just
casting about for a messenger to take a re-
mittance of five guineas just sent him from
Manchester from the master. On her arrival
home with money and food, it looked like a
miracle, and the father said, when they met at
evening prayer — " The Lord hath not forgotten

THE FOURTH PETITION. 171

to be gracious. His word is true from the be-
ginning. " The young Hon may lack and suffer
hunger, but they that trust the Lord shall not
lack any good thing." *

III. We would next place emphasis on the
word " Our," in this connection. We only ask
for 07ir bread, not for the bread belonging to
others. One man is not to have more than his
share, or to live on that which ought to support
another man's life. A workman, high or low,
lives on bread not his own, when he takes a fair
day's wages without a fair day's work. A master
takes bread not his own, when he takes a fair
day's work without a fair day's wages. It is,
then, sin of any man who, while below the
horizon of solvency, carries on trade by false
shows and fictitious values ; who wears another
man's coat, drives another man's carriage, lives
in another man's house, calling what he thus
appropriates his own. " We are to ask for our
oiun bread, and we are not allowed to ask
the bread of others — we must not covet our
neighbour's goods, but must be content with
what God gives us in the way of honest industry,
or by the kindness of our friends." f

IV. We would next dwell on the power of the
phrase "This day."

* Dr Fawcett's " Life of Heywood."
t Dr John Brown's " Discourses and Sayings of our
Lord," Vol. I., p. 246.

172 THE FOURTH PETITION.

Matthew Henry, talking in his own quaint,
racy, simple style, like an old father to the
children round his chair, says, " The Lord's
prayer is a letter sent from earth to heaven.
Here, in the inscription of the letter, is the
name of the Person to whom it is directed^
'Our Father;' the place ivhere, "which art in
heaven." The contents of it in several errands
of request. The seal 'Amen,' and if you will,
the date, ' this day.' "

The distinct instruction of our Lord in the
first announcement of this prayer, that we are
to use the words " this day," goes far to prove
that the marginal rendering of another term in
the same verse, is wrong.* The original word
in question, and which is represented in our
English New Testament by the word " daily,''
may, indeed, be possibly traced to a root which
would admit of being represented under the
phrase " bread of to-morrow," as in the margin.
This is uncertain, for critics are divided in
opinion. The rule in the words " this day "
is a certainty, and we never allow a certainty
to be ruled by an ^//certainty. The request,
" Give us this day the bread of to-morrow,''
would be scarcely intelligible, and to adopt it
without necessity, would be, without necessity
to turn a plain thing into a puzzle. We cannot
admit a rendering that would contradict or
" Our bread for the comintr day."

THE FOURTH PETITION. I 73

nullify the power of the phrase " this day," as
reported by Matthew, or the extension of the
same petition in the report by Luke, in which
we are taught to ask for supplies one day at a
time — that is, " day by day."

The Lord of Life would not indeed have us
live only in the present, and have no readiness
for the future. The whole tendency of His grace
is to secure that readiness. But while under the
law of the prayer, " thy will be done," we lay
our plans for to-morrow, we are not to be dis-
tracted by the fear of to-morrow. This is the
dread spectre which the Master's language is to
lay, the wearing care which He seeks to tran-
quillize. In the discourse following the first
publication of the sacred prayer, He says, " Take
no thought for your life, what ye shall eat,
neither for your body, what ye shall put on, is
not the life more than meat, and the body than
raiment .'''' In this tender strain He goes on to
the close, when He says, " Take therefore no
thought for the morrow ; for the morrow shall
take thought for the things of itself Sufficient
unto the day is the evil thereof."'*

* Matthew vi. 26, adfittem. In Luke's report of a similar
discourse of our Lord (Luke xii. 29), we find after the
charge " Seek not ye what ye shall eat or what ye shall
drink," the words " neither be ye of doubtful mind.
yJi] iJL€T€upli^€(r9€. " Be not poised in suspense, unable to
settle to anything."

I 74 THE FOURTH PETITION.

All this chapter on Providence is in the spirit of
the words "give us this day our daily bread."
This day, Christians, is the only day you are
living in. Perhaps it requires all the faith you
can exercise, and all the strength you can
strain, to live it well. You have no overplus
of ability. If you bring into this day, the care
that belongs to to-morrow ; if you try to look
to-day at the scenery of to-morrow ; if you try
this day to cross the bridge of to-morrow ; if,
this day, being at the foot of the hill, you try to
see over the crest of it, which you propose to
reach to-morrow ; if you try to load to-day with
the pack of to-morrow, you weaken to-day. You
not only attempt an impossibility, but you live
over your troubles twice, before they come, and
when they come. Even the Arabs rebuke you
by their proverb, " The bread of to-morrow, to-
morrow." Your days are already provided for ;
each day, as each day comes. The standing
promise, "as thy days, so thy strength shall be,"
gives perpetual inspiration to the prayer that we
may have this day what the day's necessities
require. This day, whatever the day may be ;
tJiis day, whether day of peace or day of storm,
this day, living day, or dying day, for we depend
on Him one day as much as on another.

From the nature of this prayer, the date must
be " this day." " Prayer is the Christian's vital
breath." We do not live to-day by virtue of

THE FOURTH PETITION. 175

our breathing yesterday ; we must not put off
our breathing until to-morrow. We must breathe
to-day or die. As bread is the support of Hfe,
we want bread to-day that we may live to-day.*

V. This petition suggests a higher petition.

The grace of Christ is, in the symbohcal
language of Scripture, so frequently compared
by food, that we are not surprised to find nearly
all the primitive expositors adopting some
modification or other of the view that it in-
volves a prayer for the nourishment of the
higher life of the spirit, over and above the
material substance.t This is not our view ; but
while we regard it as a petition only for the
supplies needful for our life in this world, and
while we are comforted by the thought that
our Heavenly Father cares for our bodies as
well as our souls, the cry to Him for those
earthly supports which we sum up under the
term " bread," irresistibly suggests a prayer for
heavenly bread. It is one thing to say it pre-
scribes, another that it suggests this. The

* " Our bread, though in itself stale and mouldy as
that of the Gibeonites, is every day new, because a new
and hot blessing, as I may say, is daily begged and be-
stowed of God upon it." Thomas Fuller, " Meditations
on all kinds of prayer." —Sect. xv. "He who has what he
needs for to-day, and says what shall I eat to-morrow 1
has not faith. He who creates the day, creates the food
for it." — Talmud, quoted by Dr Gill.

t " Panis superstantialis."

I 76 THE FOURTH PETITION.

spiritual mind will from " the meat that
perisheth," naturally rise in thought to " the
meat that endureth to everlasting life.*

We say with Sir Matthew Hale, "O Lord
Thou didst at first freely give me my being.
I could not deserve it when I was not ; the
same title that I have to my being I have to
my preservation and support of my being ; it is
still free gift, and therefore I come to Thee for
my bread upon no other terms than as a poor
beggar to a bountiful Lord, . . . Give me, I
pray, bread for this day, and when to-morrow
comes, I will beg bread of Thee for to-morrow.
. . . But above all, ever give me the Bread of
Life, that whilst my body is fed, my soul may
not be starved, either for the want of that ever-
lasting Bread, or for want of an appetite for it."

This Bread can only be ours as a gift. Our
life must be one perpetual prayer for it. God
is always giving, we are always receiving, so
both the gift and the life supported by it, we
have " renewed day by day." The clause of the
Lord's Prayer which we are now upon, was read
by the Anglo Saxons, thus — " Our daily loaf
sell us to day." f The word sell has, in the
course of its history passed through a change of
meaning, but not a few are ready to take the

* " He who uses this petition would do well to keep
both in view." — Adam Clarke.

t " Urne da^gwamtican hlaf sylc us to-daeg."

THE FOURTH I'ETITIUX. I 77

old word in its modern meaning, and so to use
it when they ask God for earthly or heavenly
bread.

One sharp winter day, so runs a nursery
tale, a poor woman stood at the window of a
king's conservatory, looking at a cluster of
grapes, which she longed to have for her sick
child. She went home to her spinning wheel,
earned half-a-crown, and offered it to the
gardener for the grapes. He waved his hand,
and ordered her away. She returned to her
cottage, snatched the blanket from her bed,
pawned it, and once more asked the gardener to
sell her the grapes, offering him five shillings.
He spoke furiously to her and was turning her
out, when the princess came in, heard the man's
passion, saw the woman's tears, and asked what
was wrong. When the story was told she said
" my dear woman, you have made a mistake.
My father is not a merchant, but a king ; his
business is not to sell but to give ; " so saying, she
plucked the cluster from the vine and dropped
it into the woman's apron.

All good things from God are gifts. " Gratis "
is written on every one, but most vividly of all
on this. Do you ask "how much?" Do you
dream that salvation is for sale .'' Can God sell
pardon ? sell a new heart .'' sell love ? sell right-
eousness .'' sell strength ^ sell any or all of the
things included in what we call grace .'' It is a
M

iy?> THE FOURTH PETITION.

gift, and you can give nothing for a gift. You
may, however, ask for it, indeed you must. To
say "you have the promise, but you must pray
for its fulfihnent," is only as if a man should say
to a man, "you shall have the cheque cashed,
but you must first present it." Every day offer
with this application, the petition, " Give us this
day our daily bread," then every day you will
have it, and have it in sufficiency. God in
Christ is saying to each suppliant, "My grace
is sufficient," that is, enough " for thee," and each
suppliant may have in his heart the spirit of the
answering words —

" Thou art enough, O Lord, for all my sin,
Enough to cleanse me and to keep me clean ;
All down life's pathway, lone, or dark, or rough,
Thou art enough, O Lord, Thou art enough.

Thou art enough in days of light and gladness.
Enough in days of sickness and of sadness ;
Enough, when standing on death's solemn shore,
Alwavs enouijh — enough for ever more."

VIII.

THE FIFTH TETITION.

"And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors."
— Matt. vi. 12. Authorized Version.

" And forgive us our sins ; for we also forgive every one that
is indebted to us." — Luke xi. 4. Authorized Version.

"And forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our
debtors." — Matt. vi. 12. Revised Version.

" And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves also forgive every
one that is indebted to us." — Luke xi. 4. Revised Version.

I. Observe how this petition begins. "-And
forgive us our debts." This is not the only-
instance in the Record of an important passage
which has "and" for the significant opening
word. The ninth chapter of Matthew's gospel
begins in the middle of a sentence. The
first word in it is " and." Like a coupling chain
that links together two carriages, it links the
two chapters together into one consecutive train
of history. The last verse of one chapter is —
" The whole city came out to meet Jesus ; and
when they saw Him, they besought Him that
He would depart out of their coasts." The

I 80 THE FIFTH PF/flTION.

first verse of the next, is, "And He entered into
a ship, and passed over, and came into His own
city." The word " and " is the sign of connection
between the two statements. The people
wished Christ to go away, " and " He went away.
We might name other instances from the same
" Book of the Lord " in which the word " and "
is introductory, in which also, though scarcely a
word at all, it is used to carry a momentous
meaning.

This clause of the divinely given prayer begins
with the same conjunction. Christ uses no
waste words, and be sure this is not one. It
marks the connection and fixes the order be-
tween this and the preceding request. "Forgive
us our sins," fitly follows, "give us this day
our daily bread." Even life would not be a
boon if not connected with pardon. When
the great Inspirer gives continuous life through
the continuous gift of that which feeds it, we
find to our sorrow, that in this world, the life
thus given goes wrong — it is always sinning, and
therefore, always needing forgiveness.

II. A second peculiarity of this prayer is, that
it is a prayer for the forgiving of our sins as tJie
children of God. Not as outcasts, not as prisoners
of war, not as lost sinners, or as sentenced con-
victs, but as Christians do we thus pray. It is
in fact a prayer for the forgiveness of those who
have already been forgiven. The statement may

THE FIFTH PETITION. 15 1

seem to involve a contradiction. How shall
we declare this parable .-*

Our sins as rebels have already been forgiven.
From the happy moment when we became " the
children of God by faith in Jesus Christ," we
were forgiven the sins committed through all
the days of our unregeneracy, and on account
of which we had been condemned to die. Of this
forgiveness the Spirit of the Most High speaks
to us in metaphors intended to suggest a great-
ness that is beyond mortal comprehension. " As
far as the east is from the west, so far hath He
removed our transgressions from us."* What
calculus can help us to find out how far that is .''
" Thou hast cast all my sins behind Thy back."t
Though this was said in the rapture of poetry,
the poetry of Scripture can only speak the
soul of truth, and how far out of sight is that
which is behind the Infinite ? " Thou wilt cast
all their sins into the depths of the sea." X How
far down are the depths of that mystic sea .-' All
these are terms of infinity, and created faculties
will never grasp the greatness of the reality
they indicate. In the day of our surrender, our
sins as rebels, were forgiven with such total and
absolute completeness, that all the forgiving
power of infinite love could not make them
more forgiven than they are. The fact stuns
us with its wonderfulness, it seems too glorious

* Psalm ciii. 12. t Isaiah xxxviii. 17.

J Micahv. 19.

I 82 THE FIFTH PETITION.

to be true ; long after our Father has clasped
us to His heart, and welcomed us to His home,
there are times when, as if He had not spoken
one word of hope, we find ourselves still asking
Him to forgive us the sins of the life we wasted
in "the far country," as well as the sins com-
mitted since our welcome home, when it was
said over each of us, " this my son was dead and
is alive again, was lost and is found!" For
years after Dr Donne had been "accepted in the
Beloved," he implored pardon for his old sins of
rebellion, pouring out his anguish in this piteous
cry : —

" Wilt Thou forgive that sin where I begun,

Which was my sin, though it were done before ?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin through which I run

And do run still, though still I do deplore ?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
For I have more.

" Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have wonne
Others to sin, and made my sins their own,
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun

A year or two, but wallowed in a score ?
When Thou hast done. Thou hast not done,
For I have more.

' I have a sinne of fear, that when I've spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore ;
But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore ?
And having done that, Thou hast done ;
I fear no more." *

* Dr. John Donne, 1635. Donne's Poems, vol. ii. p.
341. Grosart's Fuller Worthies.

THE FIFTH pe:tition. 183

Like this old poet, many Christi^ins are still
asking the forgiveness of sins from the charge
of wliich they were cleared for ever, when, being
justified by faith, they crossed the line from the
lost to the saved state, they use up in needless
lamentations the life that is wanted for urgent
service, and their hearts melt with the misery of
doubt while they have a right to all the joy that
rings in our triumphant challenge. It is God
that justifieth ; who is he that condemneth ?"

In full gladness of assent to this, and as we
think, in perfect consistency with it, our creed is,
that even after the grand, initial forgiveness
which is included in our "justification," and
which is coincident with the birth within us of
everlasting life — that is, even after we have been
" born again," although we are children of God,
we are for the present, sinful children. "There
is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good
and sinneth not." "It is a shame that it should
be so," remarks Andrew Fuller, "but so it is.
To disown it, makes the matter, not better, but
worse. This direction of Christ contains an
insuperable objection to the notion of those
deluded people who imagine themselves to have
attained to a state of sinless perfection. No
man that is not blinded to the spirituality of
that law which requires supreme, perfect and
unabated love, can be insensible to his vast
defects. The highest degree of love that we at

184 THE FIFTH PETITION.

any time attain, comes immensely short of what
we ought to feel, and of what we shall feel when
presented faultless before the presence of the
divine glory. The only reply that can be made
is, that the petition may refer to past sins, and
not to present ones. But is it not prescribed
along with a prayer for our daily bread, and in
a prayer which is daily offered V *
t We would meekly join in this confession. To
say that we do not sin, is itself a sin. Sure as
1 that we sin daily, do we need forgiveness daily.
( What we may think to be our sanctities need it,
as well as what we call our sins. Our tears
need it, our prayers need it, our holiness, our
humility, our love. Brothers, there will be times,
when, I will not say altJioiigh you are children,
but because you are — that is, because you have
the new perceptive sense that belongs to the new
life, yvOi|iwill see in yourselves motives or actions
that are tinctured if not stricken through with
that which needs forgiveness, there may be
moments of fearful revelation when the sudden
sight of your sins may have upon you the force
of a blow, moments when mercy will be to you
the sweetest word in all the Bible, and forgive-
ness the greatest miracle of mercy.-f- There

* Andrew Fuller's works, vol. vii. p. 306-7.

t Life of John Duncan, LL.D., by Professor David
Brown, p. 408. Speaking four days before his death, " of
the carnal mind, enmity to God, which the best of men

THE FIFTH PETITION. [85

may also be moments, when, along with an
agonized sense of some sin into which, though
Christians, you have been surprised, you have a
fear that your cry for pardon has not been
heard.

A Puritan says, " Howsoever the child of God
hath his sinnes fully pardoned at once in God's
part on his true repentance ; yet he is not able
to receive pardon at once, but must receive it by
little and little, and as it were droppe by
droppe ; this we may see in David, who had the
pardon of his sinne pronounced by Nathan the
prophet, ' The Lord also hath put away thy
sinne, thou shalt not die' (2 Sam. xii. 13). Yet
after that, he penned the fifty-first Psalme
wherein he begged mercie and forgiveness most
earnestly for that sinne which God had already
pardoned, aiming no doubt, at a more comfort-
able assurance of pardon in his own heart.''*

In the ranks of those who profess and call
themselves Christians, we find persons who, from
two different reasons, are unprepared to join in
this petition.

Some, it appears, understand the forgiveness
of our rebellion to include, not only the grant of

has at times to fight against," the doctor said, " I never
get a sight of it but it produces horror, even bodily sick-
ness," p. 487.

* " The Workes of that Famous and Woithie Minister of
Christ in the Vniversity of Cambridge, M. W. Perkins,"
1609. Vol. III. p. 100.

I 86 THE FIFTH PETITION.

pardon, but the gift of holiness, and that by one
act only of faith, the receiver reaches the per-
fection of a sinless life — a life which therefore
has no further need of forgiveness, A youth
lately stood up in a mission room, and ad-
dressed a company of four hundred persons to
this effect : —

" My friends, I thank God that I can say to-
night that I am saved." There was a shout of
" Hallelujah ! " Then he went on to say, " I go
about the town like other folks . . . and
they cannot see my heart, but God can see it,
and when He looks at my heart He sees that it
is whiter than snow. For six months or more,
I have not had to ask Him at night to forgive
the sins of the day ; but I have had every night
to thank Him for keeping me from sin. If He
can keep me from sin for six months. He can
keep me all my life ; and if He can keep me.
He can keep you — every one of you."

We set down these words of random ignorance,
only because they serve to show in bold, blunt
plainness, one of those misconceptions and
burlesques of the glorious gospel, which seem to
be getting common, and which are sometimes
reckoned as belonging to the statistics of the
Saviour's victories. In giving this prayer,
though for the use of all the divine family with-
out an individual exception, he made no pro-
vision for a case like this, and was clearly not

THE FIFTH PETITION. uSy

aware that any single member of it would, while
in this world, ever become so free from sin as
not to need a daily share in the petition —
" Forgive us our trespasses " !

Others being of a different school, contend
that we have no need to use a prayer like this,
because, although it is quite true that we sin
every day, our sins, on to the end of life, are
already forgiven. As the ban of the empire is
lifted, and our justification in the court of heaven
proclaimed, it is impossible that we should have
any further forgiveness, and now, instead of
prayer for pardon wanted, we have only to offer
praise for pardon granted.

" How can a sin be forgiven before it exists ?
Where do we find a warrant for the idea of
pardon for sins before they are lamented or for-
saken ? Forgiveness invariably presupposes
repentance. It is not bestowed on tJiat account
yet it is inseparably connected with it. As
justification includes forgiveness, we may be said
to be fully forgiven from the first moment we
believe in Christ, but it is in some such way I
conceive as we are said to be glorified* The
thing is rendered sure by the purpose and pro-
mise of God ; but as in that case a perseverance
to the end is promised and provided for, so is
repentance and continual application for mercy
through Jesus Christ in this. If it were true
* Rom. viii. 30.

l88 THE FIFTH PETITION.

that a believer might not persevere to the end,
it would be equally true that he might never be
glorified : and if it were possible for him to live
in sin and never repent of it, it would be equally
possible that he would never be forgiven — but
He who has promised that which is ultimate,
has provided for everything immediate."*

The act of oblivion which makes our freedom
certain is already a fact ; but while we are mor-
tal, the pardon itself must be granted perpetually.
The treasury of forgiving love is already ours ;
the payment out of it is only when we ask for it ;
and this we shall continue to ask, and so con-
tinue to have until we have done with sin-
ning. Our salvation is a settled thing ; but we
shall always be " receiving the end of our faith,
even the salvation of our souls " until we lift our
voices in the shout of eternity — " Salvation to
Him that sitteth on the throne and to the
Lamb! " All the forgiveness is even now secured,
but we have not yet appropriated it all, and the
daily prayer " Our Father . . . forgive us our
debts," is the daily application for what is
already ours, by successive expressions of that
faith which grace has made the habit of our
existence.

n. It is a prayer for forgiveness in which sin
is described as debt. That which in the first
delivery of the prayer is called debt, in the
* Andrew Fuller.

THE FIFTH PETITION. I 89

second is called sin ; much as if the Teacher
had said, "it is sin that I mean by debt." In-
deed, the same doctrine is taught in both pas-
sages. What in the first case is asserted, is in
the second quite as distinctly implied, for the
plea recorded in Luke is, " forgive us ... as
we also forgive every one that is indebted to us."

It strikes us that in all the variety and wealth
of words used to show the evil qualities and
energies of sin, not one is more graphic than
this, and not one more mournful.

Even in this earthly life, and with reference
to earthly creditors, while still the conscience is
sensitive, and the soul alive, scarcely a word in
the English language drops on to us with such a
deadening blow. It is the horror that holy
poverty shrinks from. " I will go into the work-
house rather than go into debt ! " Yes, poor old
toiler, it would be less shame to be honourably
indebted to the laws of your country than to be
meanly indebted under false pretences, to any
individual.

Debt is the "thing of mystery and fear " that
for ever haunts the life even of many a man
who keeps up the appearances of wealth. The
spectre walks by his side with soundless footfall,
sometimes seems to put a freezing hand upon
his shoulder, sometimes quickens his steps, some-
times comes round and looks him in the face,
suddenly turning it white and wet, sometimes.

190 THE FIFTH PETITION.

when he is at home, makes each knock at his
door like a sting in his heart, sometimes, as he
sits at table, shoots out shadowy fingers to
write " on the wall over against him " letters
that make him tremble. Debt is agony. Debt
stuns the intellect. Debt suffocates. Debt,
like a nightmare, benumbs that which it clutches,
makes the " right hand forget its cunning, and
the tongue cleave to the roof of the mouth ! "
Debt creates many an evil habit — the habit of
staving off by temporary expedients a coming
crash ; the habit of trusting to chance ; the habit
of keeping up a desperate composure when on
the edge of the worst ; habits that gradually
harden a man, kill his heart, and blunt the
fine chastity of conscience, so that he is still able
to run up debts with frightful facility, and to let
them grow with soft, noiseless, unsuspected
accumulation — debts leading to debts, troubles
to troubles, and lies to lies.

Here, speaking of man's relation to God, and
his transactions with Him, the Saviour calls our
sins our debts. The principle taught is, that sin
is not as some would have us think, a weakness,
a sickness, an evil in ourselves, and which is only
our own affair, but an evil in its aspect towards
God. The antecedent sentences suggest, as per-
haps they were intended to suggest, what our
debts are. Is God our Father.-' We owe Him
lovine reverence. Is He in heaven .-' We owe

THE FIFTH PETITION. JQI

Him a life of heavenly affections and aims.
Should we say " Hallowed be Thy name .'' We
owe devotion to His glory. Is it right to say,
Thy Kingdom come } We owe Him the
tribute of subjects. Is it right to say, Thy
will be done .'' We owe Him, not only the
service of the active, but the surrender of the
choosing faculties. Is it right to say give us
this day our daily bread } We owe Him the
worshipping sense of dependence. These things
we owe. The word " owed " is related to the
word "ought," and here is a sad illustration.
Payment is not that which t's, but that which
ouo^/it to be — is still only that which is ozved.
Duty, the thing due, has not been paid, and out
of our own resources we have no means of pay-
ment. In the world of commerce, the secret
consciousness of being bankrupt is often mastered
by reckless levity or forced composure. Some-
times debtors, in despair of paying their debts,
afraid to look into their books, or to face the
facts of their position, put the whole question
away, launch into extravagance, run up tre-
mendous bills, and get into a rate of expenditure
beyond their calculations. So does the sinner
sometimes act with reference to sin, until God in
tender mercy, by His sovereign Spirit, brings him
out of his delirium, and makes him cry, " God be
merciful to me a sinner ! " Sin after conversion
is the same thing as sin before it. Sins are
alwaj's debts.

192 THE FIFTH PETITION.

IV. This is a prayer for grace. Forgiveness
is an act of grace. It might have been said in
the first hour of spiritual awakening : Debtor
to God, what do you propose } Compromise t
Composition "i Plea for patience .-' Request for
time } Engagement to pay by extra service .'*
Atoning for a sinful past by a sinless future .''
Doing what is over and above your duty ?

What, that becomes a man is more than your
duty } How can the future cancel the past }
Who has told us that keeping clear of debts
from this moment would liquidate obligation
already contracted .'' What merchant writes
" paid " on a bill simply because his debtor
undertakes hereafter to buy only with ready
money } Common sense feels insulted.

Our thoughts on the subject all tend to the
conclusion with reference to our sins after, as
well as before our adoption into the family of
God, that there is nothing left for us but to cast
ourselves on pure, unmingled clemency; that
we have no plea but the plea founded on grace.

V. We advance to the remark that in this
prayer for forgiveness, we of conrst fall in luit/i
the divine plan for its bcstoivnient. The words
here put into the mouth of the suppliant name
no plea, show no plan ; they suggest nothing,
stipulate nothing, but simply ask for the grace,
leaving it for the Sovereign to determine the pro-
cess by which that grace is to come. The first
utterers of the prayer knew not, what we all

THE FIFTH PETITION. I 93

know now, that it comes through him who
taught it, and that "we have redemption through
his blood, even the forgiveness of sins, according
to the riches of his grace." The time had not
struck for the outflash of the secret; we know it
now, and never separate in our minds the thought
of prayer for forgiveness from the thought of the
mediating Christ.

" In processes of commerce you see a double
page ; there is a column on the left hand and a
column on the right. The one is called Charge,
the other Z^zVcharge. You observe in settled
accounts that although on the side of charge a
vast page may be crowded with entries, on the
side of discharge there is but a single line ; yet
accounts at the bottom are equal and balancing.
There is a name written underneath the second
column ; that stands for all the money, and that
alone secures the discharge. In the day when
God's books are opened, revealing in long lines
our heavy debts, Christ's name marked to our
account is our discharge."*

In these simple and terse terms was the
doctrine once presented. All great ideas of
God's ways suffer and dwindle through being
distilled through our poor human thoughts and
Avords. Yet such in substance we believe to
be a true statement of the way in which grace

* Words of the late Rev. William Arnot, now remem
bered very impcrftctly.

N

194 THE FIFTH PETITION.

forgives sin, Christ is the representative man.
He has so taken upon himself the responsibihties
of our debt to God, and so discharged them, that
we who live in him and in whom he lives are
free!

The humanitarian contends that the doctrine
of forgiveness through the suretyship of Christ,
really controverts the principle of grace, " Grace
gives for nothing ; but according to this, God
gives for Christ's sake ; grace forgives without
any payment ; God forgives the debtor, because
a friend pays for him." So he argues.

Ah ! there would be something in this argu-
ment if the debtor himself found the friend.
But, not only does God himself find the friend,
but God is the friend — God, in the Son of God,
The Supreme Governor of the Universe alone,
furnishes the expedient which makes it con-
sistent with the laws of the Universe for Him
to forgive the violator of those laws. Inter-
preting this phrase of the prayer by the facts of
the completed gospel, we may fairly take the
words, " Our Father, forgive us our debts " —
as if they had been written — Our Father, forgive
us, for we come to Thee in the name of the
Surety whom thou hast appointed, aud who has
put our debts away !

VI. The declaratio)i connected with the prayer.
" Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our
debtors." This declarative sentence impresses

The fifth petition. 195

us with the certainty that unless we do in the
spirit and habit of our hves, forgive those who
sin against us, there is no hope for us of divine
forgiveness. "Unforgiving, unforgiven." Both
versions are faithful to the expression of this
meaning, but the new puts it even more
emphatically than does the old.

Of course, from what has been already said,
it is clear that our forgiveness of sin committed
against ourselves, is not the ground and reason
of God's forgiveness of our sins against Him.
It is not as if we said, " seeing that we forgive
those who are indebted to us, therefore, O Father!
forgive what we owe Thee!" A supposition
that would not only attribute to man the meri-
torious initiative in obtaining his own pardon,
but would imply an estimate that brings down
to the low level of an insignificant human injury
our sins against the Majesty of Heaven.

No ! the connection between our forgiveness
of each other and God's forgiveness of ourselves,
is not one of merit, not one of cause ; but one
of effect, one of evidence, and so one of unalter-
able necessity. The law of forgiveness taught
by Christ as binding between man and man,
like some other laws of his kingdom, is treated
as belonging to the class of things called
abstractions. Men are ready to say — " Very
beautiful, doubtless, and very exalted — of course
quite right, but impossible to be carried out in

u

196 THE FIFTH PETITION.

actual life." The thought of many an acute
practical man about it, would, if cast into
]anguage,be something like that lately expressed
by a great legislator in the House of Commons,
on a proposition that was not deemed to be
workable. " I am not friendly, as a general rule,
to the assertion in this place of propositions not
susceptible of immediate application to practice."
*' This is a hard saying, who can bear it .-"' cries
the heart. " It is hard indeed, and therefore,
likely to be evaded. Why else did Christ make
a comment on that petition, passing by the
others, when he taught His disciples to pray.?
And hence it is that injuries are registered in
sheets of marble when committed against us,
while benefits are written in the sand, ready to
be dashed out by the foot of the next that
passeth by." * Not only is this the one clause of
the prayer to which Christ comes back in the
preceptive sentences close following, — but He
gives it enforcement by an impressive parable.

" Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened
to a certain king which would make a reckoning
with his servants, and when he had begun to
reckon, one was brought unto him which owed
him ten thousand talents. But forasmuch as
he had not wherewith to pay, his lord com-
manded him to be sold, and his wife and children,
and all that he had, and payment to be made.
* Thomas Fuller, Sermons, 1648.

THE FIFTH PETITION. 197

The servant therefore fell down, and worshipped
him, saying, lord have mercy on me, and I will
pay all. And the lord of that servant being
moved with compassion, released him, and
forgave him his debt. But that servant went
out, and found one of his fellow-servants, which
owed him a hundred pence, and he laid hold on
him and took him by the throat, saying. Pay
me that thou owest. So his fellow-servant fell
down and besought him, saying have patience
with me, and I will pay thee. And he would
not, but went and cast him into prison, till he
should pay that which was due. So, when his
fellow-servants saw what was done, they were
exceedingly sorry, and come and told unto
their lord what was done. Then his lord called
him unto him, and saith unto him, thou wicked
servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou
besoughtest me ; shouldest not thou also have
had mercy on thy fellow-servant, even as I had
mercy on thee .-* and his lord was wroth, and
delivered him to the tormentors, till he should
pay all that was due. So shall also my Heavenly
Father do unto you, if ye forgive not everyone
his brother from your hearts." *

Perhaps the form of this parable is suggested

by the system of blind and oppressive misrule

common in eastern countries in olden time. A

king of kings would make one of his servants

* Matt, xviii. 23-25. — Reinsed Version.

198 THE FIFTH PETITION.

king under himself of some province in his
empire, with the understanding that he might
get what taxes he could out of the people, and
pay to him, the imperial master, a certain vast
amount annually, as a kind of rent. Such a
master, here calls such a servant to account
for arrears, and the story is used as a vehicle
for conveying a lesson on forgiveness. The
" certain king," represents God ; the " day of
reckoning," the day of judgment within us when
we stand at the court of conscience, and the
Spirit questions us about our sins ; the sum of
ten thousand talents — the sum owing by the
steward — hints at the immensity of what we
owe to God. It suggests something not
countable, not speakable, not thinkable. " Ten
thousand, or a myriad, being the highest number
in Greek arithmetical notation ; an enormous
sum, which, even if the silver talent be designed,
amounts to ;£"4,500,000 sterling, but which, if the
gold talent be meant, which is far the most
likely, then the amount is nearly equal to the
annual revenue of the British Empire, that
is, equivalent to more than ;^70,ooo,ooo ster-
ling." *

* Substance of a note made by Dr Adam Clarke in
1804. The revenue for the year 1881-2 was reported to
be ^85,822,000.

How great a sum it was, we may see by comparing
it with other sums of which mention is made in Scripture.

THE FIFTH PETITION. 1 99

I say — you man there ! looking so satisfied,
feeling so strong — so safe in your standing, so
calm in your sense of respectability, — you owe
more than seventy millions sterling ! unless
you pay it, you are lost ! This is a figure,
but it truthfully expresses a fact. "A duty
unfulfilled, is a debt unpaid:" admit this, and
you will also admit that your debts to God are
more than can be represented by this or any
other known symbol. The load is enough to
sink a soul, and you are lost !

"Oh no!" cries one, "thank God, no, no!
have you not heard .-' Christ has paid all that
debt for me ; Christ is my ransom ; Christ is
my surety ; for His sake I have been forgiven
all the old life of sin, have been freed from the
old sentence of condemnation; the "handwriting
that was against me " is crossed out ; my place
now is not the prison of justice but the palace
of the Great King. I am one of His children ;
I sit at His table ; it is true that, child as I am.

In the construction of the Tabernacle 29 talents of gold
were used (Exod. xxxviii. 24) ; David prepared for the
Temple 3000 talents of gold, and the princes 5000
(1 Chron. xxix. 1-7) ; the Queen of Sheba presented to
Solomon 120 talents (i Kings x. 10) ; the King of
Assyria laid upon Hezekiah 30 talents of gold (2 Kings
xviii. 14) ; and in the extreme impoverishment to which
the land was brought at last, one talent of gold was laid
upon it after the death of Josiah, by the King of Egypt
(2 Chron. xxxvi. 3).— Archbishop Trench.

200 THE FIFTH PETITION.

I sin every day, and I grieve for this, but I go
every day to Him with all His other children,
with the petition ' Forgive us our debts,' and so
I have forgiveness."

Well, but have you forgiven those who tres-
pass against you ? "Yes." Quite sure ? "Yes."
Have you forgiven and forgotten .? Ah no !
There is still in some instance a secret reserve,
a sleeping grudge. You say " I can forgive, but
not forget." Shall God say the same of you .-*
His word is, " I will blot out their transgressions,
and remember their iniquities no more."* This
is His way of forgiving. If He had said " I will
forgive your debts, but I will remember them";
this would have sounded ominously ; the forgive-
ness would not have been thorough, and you
would have been ready to cry out in your fear,
"Not to forget, is not to forgive."

Chrysostom intimates that many persons in
his congregation, when praying, suppressed this
clause — " as we forgive our debtors." Do you ?
Say this after me — " Forgive us, as we forgive
our debtors." As the meaning grows upon you,
you tremble beneath its weight. Some of you
are not able to lift your hand before the Al
mighty God of truth, and make this declaration,
you see also, that prayer for God's pardon so
worded, amounts to a prayer that His forgive-
ness of you may be like your forgiveness of
* Jer. xxxi. 34 ; Heb. viii. 12.

THE FIFTH PETITION. 20I

others — forgiveness, but with reserve, forgive-
ness of the offence, but with retention of thought
about it, therefore conscience keeps you speech-
less.

Yet if you are not forgiving, there is no
warrant for offering prayer that you may be
forgiven. It is the Master Himself who has
wrought this lesson into the pattern of praying
language into which we now look, and in the
parable just used as an illustration, he shows
the monstrosity of a spirit which a servant who
had been forgiven by his king a debt almost too
great to be calculated, refuses to forgive his
fellow servant one that in comparison with it
was almost too small to be named.

Once, when our Lord had been teaching this
law of brotherly forgiveness the difficulty of
obedience seemed so great to His disciples, and
the thought of it so filled them with dismay,
that their one instant cry was, " Lord increase
our faith " ! Let this be our cry, and when in
answer to it, faith gets stronger, and we cleave
closer to the Crucified One who ever lives to be
the medium of our renewed life, we shall have
more of His forgiving power. We shall not at
once have it to perfection, but we shall go on to
perfection in having it. We shall have it in our
measure, and as grace grows, that will grow.
The Spirit of Him who "creates all things

202 THE FIFTH PETITION,

anew," must be within us, to master our vexed
and excitable lives, and whenever that Spirit,
brooding over the troubled waters of a soul,
says, "Let there be forgiveness,'' there is for-
giveness.

IX.

THE SIXTH PETITION.

"And lead us not into temptation." — Matt. vi. 12;
Luke xi. 4. Authorized Version.

"And bring us not into temptation." — Matt. vi. 13;
Luke xi. 4. Revised Version.

The Lord's Prayer is for the use of the family
while travelling home. This is no easy travell-
ing. A poet, speaking of the modern * "Pilgrim's
Progress," reminds us that there can be no
railway to the Celestial City — that the journey
must still be made in the ancient fashion —
made so to speak, on foot — made not for us, but
by us. The onward movement is not like that of
a carriage, while we are asleep inside it, but must
be the result of our own individual volition and
exertion. " We zvalk ; " and we walk " by faith
not by sight." Some of us notice that the
shadows begin to lengthen. The day will soon
be over. Jesus, our Sun is gone before us,
is out of sight, and is already creating the glory

See Hawthorne's Allegory of the modern " Pilgrim's ^
Progress " b)' rail. '^^

204 THE SIXTH PETITION.

of the land that we call Heaven. So, we are
"stepping westward." Questioned as to this,
each one of us might answer —

" Stepping westward did you say ?
" Stepping westward ? Yes alway ;
" With staff and scrip,
" Wayfaring songs upon our lip,
" Stepping, stepping to the end."*

" Wayfaring " prayers as well as songs are upon
our lip, and this is one — " lead us not into
temptation."

I. This is an appeal to our Leader.

I. It implies that our Father is our Leader.
No other leader knows the way. It must be so,
for ours is a pilgrimage, not through space, but
through time. Whatever else we have seen, we
have not seen to-morrow. Whatever maps we
have consulted, we have never found a map of
the future. No Atlas can help us. The road
beyond the moment in which I now plant my
foot, is all mist. We know that at some time
or other, we may have to wade heavily through
black suffocating thoughts that make the
"Slough of Despond ;" or to toil wearily up
the " Hill Difficulty;" or, our spirits quivering
with awful touches, to go down into the " Valley
of the Shadow of Death," or to be locked in the
cell of " Doubting Castle ;" or to drink the air
and see the beauty of the " Delectable Moun-

* From " Poet's Harvest Home,"— WilHam Bell Scott.

THE SIXTH PETITION. 205

tains." There are lions in the way ; and giants
for each red cross knight to fight with, but when
or where these sceneries may break upon us, or
these adventures open, no horoscope can tell.
Our Father knows, for "He inhabiteth Eternity,"
and sees the " end from the beginning." In
Him therefore do we place our trust, and to Him
do we lift this cry. It does but continue the
train of appeal that began in the opening words
— " Our Father which art in heaven !" We are
not tired by repetition of our familiar hymn —

Lead Thou me on,
Keep Thou my feet, I do not ask to see
The distant scene ; one step enough for me.
I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou

Should'st lead me on ;
I loved to choose and see my path, but now,

Lead Thou me on.
I loved the garish day, and spite of fears.

Pride ruled my will.
Remember not past years.
So long Thy power hath blessed me, sure it still

Will lead me on.
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till

The night is gone,
And with the morn, those angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since,

And lost awhile. *

We should make this appeal with a correct
understanding of what is here meant by being
led. In both instances of its occurrence, the
J. H. Newman,

206 THE SIXTH PETITION.

latest translators have changed it for the word
bring. The authorised version in every other
instance where the Greek word in question is
used, renders it brmg, and there seems to be no
good reason why we should not so translate it
here. *

Every one sees the meaning of the word
lead ; we put the same meaning into the word
bring, only giving it greater strength. " Lead-
ing" may mean the gentlest of directive help
along the road, but " bringing " is something
more energetic. In order to bring, a leader
may have sometimes to carry, sometimes to
fight, sometimes to clear away obstructions.
The pilgrim is his charge, therefore by all
needful processes, and in the most effectual
way, he fulfils what he undertakes.

This view of our Father's leading is fraught

* fiT] eiaeveyijs. In the authorised version it is trans-
lated as follows, in the six other instances of its
occurrence in the New Testament.

Luke V. 1 8, 19. The men who carried the paralytic
sought means to " bring him on " to Jesus. The phrase
is twice used.

Luke xii. 1 1. "When they bring you into the syna-
gogues ."

Acts xvii. 20. " Thou bringest strange things to our
ears."

1 Tim. vi. 7. " We brought nothing into the world."

Hebrews xiii. 11. " The bodies of those beasts whose
blood is brought into the sanctuary."

In classical Greek this verb means to bring or carry.

THE SIXTH PETITION. 207

with inspiriting strength. It conveys the idea
which holy men by the rivers of Babylon ex-
pressed under their favourite phrase, the
" Hand of our God is on us." To bring me,
He holds me. A family of tourists climbed
up certain perilous rocks on the coast of
Cornwall ; as the father went on first, with his
little son, the mother from below, called out to
her boy, " have you fast hold of your father " ?
Then was heard the shrill ring of a voice,
answering with perfect sense of safety in its
tone — " No, mother, but he has fast hold of
me.'' So is our Father in Heaven leading us
by bringing us up through danger, and out of
it. Catching sight of certain dangers called
temptations, we utter this cry.

2. We make this appeal to our Father with
a sense of His nearness. We are not saying
this to a God who is afar off. Such a God
could not at any moment be within hearing, nor
could He be leading us. To many God is an
almost unimaginable Being, dwelling in the
light of infinite splendour, and the reserves of
awful solitude, countless millions of miles away,
no man having at any time seen His face, or
heard his voice, but it is not so with us. We
have already learned that just because He is
our Father in Heaven, He is everywhere : for
He is Lord in Heaven only because He is
infinite. The Father leads us through the Son

2o8 THE SIXTH PETITION.

by the Holy Spirit ; and by His Spirit, He is
with our spirits. From the necessity of His
perfection He is near — near as the hand is to
that which it brings, as the air is to that which
it fans, as the stream is to that which it laves,
as the sun is to the body, diffusing heat through
every atom of its frame, and every pulsation of
its life. Nay, unspeakably nearer is the inti-
macy of the Saviour to the saved, for their love
to Him is but the indwelling of His own love.
Sin is near, sorrow is near, danger is near, Satan
is near, death is near, but the soul's Leader
is always nearer. This cry is, therefore, not a
shout sent up to One who is at a distance ; it
may be but a thought that scarcely emerges
from silence, a mere movement of the soul to
Him who is nearer than near ; and, when from
the agony of my panic, I can find no voice, He
who is leading me is so close to me, that He
hears the trembling of the unspoken prayer,
" Bring us not into temptation."

n. This petition comes from the fear that
when in answer to our last petition, our sins are
forgiven, we shall be tempted to sm again. We
have just asked for forgiveness, because,
although heaven born and heaven bound, we
are always failing to pay what our spirits owe ;
are always like Christ's first disciples, even
while going with Him up to Jerusalem, hurting
His love by a spirit contrary to His own ; are

THE SIXTH PETITION. 20^

always needing to renew our entreaty for par-
don.

You therefore see the connection between
what we now are saying, and what has just
been said. This connection is suggested by the
introductory use of the word " and." Now, as in
the last instance in which the particle has this
peculiar place — it links two petitions together,
so that the spirit of the first still runs on into
the second. If the hurry of our joys at the
answer to our prayer " forgive us our debts,"
should make us forget to add, "lead us not
into temptation," the weight of debt may be
scarcely lifted, before we are in debt again.
That sentence is therefore followed up by
this. Having pardon for the past, we want
grace for the future, and so have within us the
longing which made an ancient suppliant say —
" Thou hast delivered my soul from death ;
will not Thou deliver my feet from falling, that
I may walk before God in the light of the
living .-* "*

We find that in the Bible, the word tempta-
tion is used with two different meanings.
Sometimes it simply means to try; some-
times to entice; the purpose in the one case
being good, in the other — evil.

When, on the one hand, we read that " God
did tempt Abraham," we understand the term
* Psalm Ivi. 13.
O

210 THE SIXTH PETITION.

as meaning that He tried him as the pruner
tries the tree, the refiner the silver, as the strong
strain or dead weight tests the efficiency of that
which has hard work to do.

When, on the other hand, we read that
"Satan did tempt David," we understand that
he enticed him to sin. Granted, that all
temptation includes trial — that even a tempta-
tion plied by Satan is often used by Satan's
Master, and over-ruled to be a Divine instru-
ment for the invigoration of our faith — that
what was meant for evil is transmuted into
good, and that the ultimate issue defeats the
primary design ; still, temptation is meant by
the evil one to work nothing but evil, and it is
against this kind of temptation that we now
pray. We tremble at the thought of sin : and
pray to our Leader that we may not be led
into it.

III. We thus pray, because we know that
our path abounds with instruments and occa-
sions of temptation.

These would not be so certainly dangerous,
if they all had open advertisement — if danger-
signals hung out near all danger — if everything
that had in it the nature of hell made itself
visible by the light of its own hell-fire — if every
snare had the word " Temptation " written on
it, by the hand of mystery that wrote on the
palace wall of Babylon, you would keep out of its

THE SIXTH PETITION. 2 I I

way ; "for in vain is the snare spread in the sight
of any bird." You would not bathe in brightest
waters while seeing sharks play there ; you
would catch up no basket of flowers like Cleo-
patra's if you saw the asp lifting its head from
below, for only the lunatic will " dally with the
crested worm." Life is not in love with death ;
and the instincts of holiness would make the
Christian shun a sin when known to be a sin,
even without the warning, " avoid it, pass not
by it, turn from it and pass away," But it is not
so. The sin that is near us constantly hides
itself under a false colour and a wrong name.

We may be led into temptation, when in
business. Business is not in itself a sin. It is
not a sin to make the most of the earth, to get
the most out of it, to make it answer, to turn it
into value, and to do that with it which creates
wealth. The commandment to " dress and
keep " the garden in Avhich God has set man,
so as to " replenish and subdue the earth," was
given before the fall, and is still binding on us ;
but in the world as it now is, who does not
know that while in pursuance of this lawful end,
we may be led into something that is unlawful }
When a thing that is in itself only subsidiary, is
interesting, there is a tendency to take too keen
an interest in it. Dealing with earthly things,
we may be too eager to gain them, too grasping
to keep them, and too sorrowful to let them go.

212 THE SIXTH PETITION.

We may be mastered by the law of assimilation,
and so become like the elements that we work
in. "Bury a man in earth," says the shrewd Owen
Feltham, " and he himself will soon be earth."

We may be led into temptation by the habits
of society. Let me try to make my meaning
plain by a parable.*

Sometime after the last of the Apostles died,
there lived at Ephesus a thriving man of business
named Marcus, who was an elder of the Church.
His wife, though, like himself, an accredited
member of the church, was scarcely reclaimed
from the prevailing heathenism, and still
cherished with sentimental interest, though not
with belief, the old poetic stories of Apollo and
Venus, Jove and Diana.

Their children, as the children of persons
rising in life, were sent to schools suited to the rich
or the risen class, and where it was thought a sign
of respectability to honour " the fair humanities
of old religion." Naturally, the associates of
these children, as they grew older, were the
fashionable heathen. They entreated and coaxed
their parents in one thing after another to con-
form to heathen usages. " Why should we be
singular.?" it was said, " Why should we not be
at feasts where, just for mere form's sake, libations

* This is suggested by a story read long ago, though I
fail to remember the thread of it, nor can I say where it
is given.

THE SIXTH PETITION. 213

are made to Apollo, so long as we do not believe
in Apollo ? Why should we refuse meats con-
secrated to the heathen gods, when every one
knows that this consecration means nothing ?
How are we to reclaim the heathen, if we never
mingle with them ? and besides, did not our
Master sit with publicans and sinners ?"

Marcus was a man courteously inclined, easily
entreated, happy to see others happy, especially
sympathetic with the happiness of youth ; and
just now, on the principle "that extremes beget
extremes," was tempted to the extreme of
laxity because some Christians had gone to the
extreme of stringency — making as he justly
thought, religion appear to the young, less like a
divine principle than a hardy, narrow, censorious
prejudice. So, afraid to create a prejudice in
young minds against religion, gradually, but
uneasily, the good Marcus gave way.

Gradually, you saw his children at heathen
festive meetings held at their friends' houses.
" Why not ! The heathen should never have
ground for saying that Christians are morose."
Gradually, toiler though he was, his own house
would become the scene of a sumptuous enter-
tainment, where, between the toil of yesterday
and the toil of to-morrow, hot, exhausted crowds,
in hot exhausted air, would be in mazy motion
most of the night. " Why not ? Entertain-
ments of this kind," it would be said, " are ab-
solutely necessary to maintain our position, and

2 1 4 THE SIXTH PETITION.

if we accept them, we must return them." Grad-
ually you saw about his walls, silver or marble
statuettes of Jupiter or Venus. "Why not?
They are not for worship, of course ; they are
placed there simply in compliance with the
general usage of good society." Gradually in
the course of these evening entertainments, ex-
quisite perfumes from censers richly wrought,
would be waved before these images. " Why
not .'' It is always done ; nobody means any-
thing by it ; and as for the statuette, we know
that an idol is nothing in the world."

At last, fellow Christians would venture on
remonstrance. Then the young people in the
family of Marcus would fire up, and answer
grandly — " You tell us that we are in danger.
We tell you that we know when to stop. You
tell us that we distress the consciences of persons
in the church, who keep to the simplicity of the
old faith, and check the decision of converts.
We beg to reply, that we glory in everything
broad, and scornfully repudiate everything
narrow. The meanest of all influences over con-
duct, is that which comes from the thought of
what others may think. Others may think it
religion to shut themselves up and read the old
gospel manuscripts ; we stand up for our own
rights ; and, whatever others do, as for us, and
our house, we will please ourselves." So by
degrees, they were led into temptation, and at

THE SIXTH PETITION. 2 I 5

length it became impossible to tell from any
social signs, whether these advanced Christians
were servants of Jesus or of Jupiter. Let us, as
far as it is needful, apply the principle thus
suggested, to the circumstances of our own
day.

We may be led into temptation by retiring
from the world. It must be plain to every one
who forms a fair estimate of men as they are,
that the great majority of them regard Christian
principles as expounded in the New Testament,
with dead indifference or sarcastic hostility.
The many are of the world ; Xh^fezv are not of
it. So patent is this fact, and so patent has it
ever been, that according to the supreme book,
the term " world," marking the ungodly, is the
term that also represents the idea of society in
general ; obviously importing, that, in the judg-
ment of inspiration, the ungodly form the mass
of mankind. This is an alarming consideration,
for it implies that if we are thorough-going
Christians, we have to hold our ground or make
our way against an opposing mass. Surely that
which has at once mass and momentum, weight
and velocity, must carry all before it ! It has
often been thought therefore, that there is no
safety for those who are " not of the world " but
by getting out of its way.

If we attempt this by retirement into some
scene of quiet happiness, we may there meet with

2l6 THE SIXTH PETITION.

new temptations. In the middle ages, when
it was a common article of belief that the garden
of Eden, though a holy secret, guarded by-
angels, still flowered in all its glory in some
Eastern land, many a terrified soul in wicked
city or monastic cell, would doubtless dream of
the blessedness there would be in finding the
spot, and dwelling there guarded from Satanic
spells.

Yet, Paradise was the scene of the fall, and
there it was that man was first led into tempta-
tion. Be sure that if we could find or make
some earthly Paradise of our own, where we
might hear " the voice of the Lord God walking
in the trees of the garden," where " the world
forgetting and the world forgot," holy love
would tremble into tenderness, thought into
flame, and where there would be no outward
interruptions to prayers, even there, a tempting
spirit would find us.

If, on the other hand, we fled into a wilder-
ness, we should still be followed. In the same
old times at which we have just glanced, devo-
tion has often sped in alarm from the world
into the wilderness. The devotee has many a
day made his escape to some stern solitude,
where, a cave his house, a litter of leaves his
bed, roots his food, his drink the crystal spring —
he has tried to crucify every natural inclination,
to strain all humanity out of his body, and to

THE SIXTH PETITION. 21/

steep his soul in ghastly meditations, that thus
he might keep out Satan. But old legends
testify that on such lives Hell has often spent
its utmost fury, and that in such conditions,
poor souls have suffered most from the poison
of idle thought or polluting fancy.

Though the first Adam was tempted in a
garden, the second was tempted in a wilderness.
There it was, that through forty days, with no
rich fruits to stay the sting of hunger, no clear
stream rippling over golden sands to slake his
thirst, no shelter from the fiery day or the freez-
ing night, and where — beauty banished, grim
desolation sat enthroned. He who afterwards
died for us, was tempted, and the wilderness
was the memorable field in which man's great
representative fought with man's great foe.
After this, let no follower of His hope to escape
" the fiery darts of the wicked one," by living in
any wilderness of self-inflicted poverty or pain.
The principle of seeking retirement from the
world of temptation, either in some kind of
Eden or in some kind of wilderness is always
being tried in some form or other, and always
fails.

We may be led into temptation even when we
feel most secure from it by communion with God.
When was Christ himself tempted } Bishop
Hall says, " No sooner has Christ come out of
the waters of baptism, than he comes into the

2 I 8 THE SIXTH PETITION.

fire of temptation. No sooner does the Spirit
come in the form of a dove, than he is ' led by
the Spirit into the wilderness.' No sooner doth
God say 'this is my beloved Son in whom I
am well pleased,' than Satan darts the sug-
gestion of doubt, ' zyThou be the Son of God.' "
We have in Christ's experience a rehearsal of
what is likely to be our own. It is a specimen
of what is common in the tempter's strategy.

After a season of profit and privilege, you may
expect to be caught in some artifice or chal-
lenged to some deadly fight. The robber of
the soul waits for the moment when the soul,
being most happy, is least cautious, and has
most to lose. " It is the man bringing his
dividend from the banker's door who has most
cause to dread the pilferer's hand."*

IV. It implies a sense of our oivn teviptable-
ness. When angels have been sent to this
world on errands of wrath or love they have
moved sinless through an atmosphere of sin,
and amidst its worst infections, they could no
more be infected than snow flakes could catch
fire, or sunbeams take pollution. But even
before it was vitiated, mere humanity was in
itself temptable. The perfect Son of Man was
in " all points tempted as we are." It was a
real temptation that He suffered. His victory

mplies this, for there could have been no victory
* Cardiphonia.

THE SIXTH PETITION. 2 I 9

in an imaginary conflict with an imaginary foe.
At least, there is always in our nature a certain
weakness to which the tempter can make his
appeal. Of this weakness a thoughtful writer
remarks, " There lies deep down in every man's
nature an unsuspected weakness to which temp-
tation may make a sudden appeal with success,
and he may do some wicked thing in conse-
quence unlike his general character altogether.
The tempter may come, and the tempter does
come in — to storm and command the very cita-
del of his soul. In that instant the man is
not himself, but another. He is himself in so
far as that he himself is responsible. He is
not himself, but another, and that other the
evil one, in so far as that the evil one is for the
moment master in that house of clay, and the
man himself seems to be living, breathing,
thinking, doing by substitution. It is then that
he acts as he never acted before, and never will
God helping him, again. It is then the great con-
tradiction takes place. He will do that to which
his nature has most instinctive repulsion, and
which will rob his after life of all tranquillity."*
Besides natural weakness, we have severally
and constitutionally, a bias in the direction of
some particular sin. " Every man is tempted
when he is drawn by his own lust and enticed. ""f*
There are moments when he will feel drawn,

* The Rev. Page Roberts in " Law and God."
t James i. 14.

220 THE SIXTH PETITION.

as a vehicle is drawn — when perhaps some
propensity will pull him, as a horse pulls
towards its own stable, where it gets what it
likes. This peril is in his own being. He
may go away out of the circle of most urgent
instruments and occasions of temptation, but
he can never go away from himself. Every
one has a soul, and every one has a body.
Once a disciple might have said, " I at least,
am safe ; I have seen the Lord ; I am a
spiritual man ; I am inspired." Let it,
however, be remembered that it was to
disciples who could each say this that
the alarming charge was given, "Take heed
to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts
be overcharged with surfeiting and drunken-
ness, and cares of this life."* What Christ
said to his own immediate followers, He
says with seven-fold emphasis to us — "Take
heed to yoiirselvts T

Preaching to Wiltshire ploughmen, Augustus
Hare says that each man must shun things that
tempt him to the sin he himself most likes, and
must remember that these things, though
perhaps no snare to another man, when that
other man most likes some other kind of sin —
may be to himself full of deadly danger.

" What may be no temptation to another man,
may, from some weakness of character or dis-
* Luke xxi., 34.

THE SIXTH PETITION. 221

position, be a crafty snare to me. Therefore it
becomes me to avoid it. If you had a ditch to
cross on your way to work, and it was so broad
that you could not leap over it, after trying and
tumbling once or twice perhaps, you would go
round by the bridge. It would be no reason to
you that neighbour such a one could leap it.
You would say, He is welcome to leap it then ;
but I can only leap into it : I have tried twice
already : twice have I only wetted myself and
dirtied my clothes : so I will not run the risk
again ! The safe way over the bridge is good
enough for me.

In like manner, if by frequenting such a place,
or such a company, you have fallen once or
twice into sin, listen not to the tempter when
he bids you try again. Say within yourself: I
have tried too often . I will run no further risk
of hurting and dirtying my soul. Christ has
cleansed it with His blood ; it is too precious a
thing to be polluted." *

Let us apply the principle thus given out
with such homely force to certain things which
in our day are increasingly connected with the
question of temptation. To theatricals, or to any
other mode of popular amusements. Is it true
that all these things are in their essence wrong }
Who says they are .-' Is it true that certain

* The Alton Sermons, by Augustus W. Hare. 1874,
pp. 479, 480.

222 THE SIXTH PETITION.

institutions for amusement, look to their support
from the majority, must therefore please the
taste of the majority, that majority having no
taste for holiness ? Is it true that their pro-
prietors must meet the market or lose their
money ? Is it true in consequence, that they are
likely to hinder rather than help the highest
life ? Such questions claim thoughtful and
prayerful consideration, but set them aside at
present, for a question that practically comes
first — and that is, what will be the probable
effect of such recreations on yourself as a
Christian ? Whatever dissipates the force or
chills down the fervour of your devotional life ;
whatever weakens your working life, your teach-
ing life, or your missionary life ; whatever
indisposes you to read your Bible, whatever
prevents you from joyfully inhaling the spirit of
the Scriptures as a hot and weary man drinks
the air of the spring morning ; whatever makes
infrequent the moments of Divine visitation and
exalted spirituality, the thoughts of clear criteria
and the flashes of revealing light by which you
better understand yourself, and better under-
stand your Saviour; whatever makes the thought
of Christ fall like a cold shadow on the sunshine
of your joy ; whatever you would rather not
try to thank God for, or to ask a blessing on ;
whatever brings a chilling change from bright
and blissful faith to dull despondency, or froni

THE SIXTH PETITION, 223

spiritual manhood to second infancy ; whatever
is the cause of failing trust, or freezing love, or
slackened service — however lawful it may be to
another man, is not lawful for you. Recreation
is lawful. Yes, it is lawful as the sparkling dew,
lawful as the spring, lawful as the flowers — but
says Richard Baxter, " there is no mirth like the
mirth of believers," and any particular mode of
recreation that in my own experience, still to
borrow his words, " impairs the mirth which faith
doth bring from the precious blood of Christ,
and from the promises of the Word, and from
experiences of mercy, and from fore-apprehen-
sions of everlasting blessedness," is no recreation
for me.

It would be simply rational for any man
to say, When I know, and I ought to know,
what are my own sinful propensities, I would
not of my own will be led within the range of
what might stir them into activity. There is
in old Arabic fable, the story of a great rock
that was a great magnet, drawing ships, so that
they were dashed into splinters on it. If I
have been magnetized by a certain sin, I would
not be led near the loadstone that might
draw me into destruction by its malignant
potency. If I carry in me, the gunpowder of
some slumbering badness, I would not be led
where sparks are flying. If I am " Little Faith"
bearing precious jewels, I would not be led

224 THE SIXTH PETITION.

through " Dead Man's Lane,'' where robbers
lurk. If I am short-sighted, I would not be
led into " the land of pits." If I am timid, and
fear " the power of the dog," * I would not be
led near his chain, but far as may be beyond
the reach of his spring. If I am constitutionally
passionate, I would not be led into the company
of those who are likely to put me into a passion ;
if sceptical, I would not give myself to the
study of sceptical books ; if I am vain, I would
not be led through " Vanity Fair ; " if I am in
danger from sympathy with any one particular
sin, I would avoid the familiar thoughts that
slope the way to it, as I would keep away from
the top of the smooth granite slope that borders
the black, deep well. I would not tempt the
tempter, by bringing what is so temptable
directly under his power, and would never cease
to cry to our Father, "Lead us not into tempta-
tion."

V. By this petition, we mean that zee Jiave no
will to go into temptation unless it be the will oj
God to lead ns into it.

* Psalm xxii. 20. " I remember to have read a story
of one Gunno, king of the Danes, that having overcome
a people, he set a dog over them to be their governour :
that is, he would have his commands to go out
under the name of the dog, and they should be under
the government of the dog ; this he did in disdain and
indignation against those people he overcame. Much
more debasement is it for a soul to be under command
of the devil." — Jeremiah Burroughs.

THE SIXTH PETITION. 225

We have heard of a man who had unlawful
possession of another man's estate, through
concealing the knowledge of the former owner's
last will, which had unexpectedly to him left
it away to some one else. He was tempted to
destroy it, but had not quite made up his mind
to do so. One night he fought his conscience
down, kept his qualms under, and tried to sleep.
He even repeated the Lord's Prayer to himself
when under the sheets ; struggling, however,
as he did so, not to think about the petition,
" Lead us not into temptation." Do we know
that state of mind }

If in uttering these words, we dare not weigh
their meaning, if we are in the mood of yielding
to some evil besetment, and have some dormant
intention which we would rather not wake up
to look at — then, while in the very act of speak-
ing to the Almighty God of truth, we say one
thing and mean another, and, however uncon-
sciously, utter words of worship in the spirit of
profanity.

It is essential to the reality of this, as of the
connectional petitions, that before coming to
it, we should pray, " Thy will be done." The
larger petition governs the smaller. It may
seem like inconsistency first to say, " Lead us
into temptation if it be Thy will;" then to say,
" Lead us 7iot into it " — but there is no incon-
sistency. It is only akin to the Saviour's prayer,
p

2 26 THE SIXTH PETITION.

when He went into Gethsemane, saying with
shrinking and tremulous dread, " Father, if it
be possible, let this cup pass from me, neverthe-
less, not my will, but Thine be done." The
innocent instincts of His appropriated nature
shuddered at the cup, but were not allowed to
keep Him from drinking it, when the Father put
it into His hand. The spirit that offers this
petition in the model prayer, is still a spirit that
will, if commanded, make us " count it all joy
when we fall into manifold temptations," while
the Lord is there. Jesus was led up into
"the wilderness to be tempted of the devil."
Led like Him, we will venture to go like
Him, into that which would be in itself pain
the most exquisite, and peril the most extreme.
That which is the leading power, will be the
sustaining power. He who guides, will hold.
While you say, my soul abhors this place, you
will be able to add, but my God brought me
into it, it is therefore the pathway of promise,
the thoroughfare to the land of triumph. The
trial of your faith Vvill be turned into a proof
of your sonship, for " as many as are led by the
spirit of God, they are the sons of God."

It is said of Jesus whose steps we are to tread
in, that " He being full of the Holy Ghost, re-
turned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit
into the wilderness." *

* It is said (Matt. iv. i), that "He was led up," {av-nxO-n)
and (Luke iv. i) that " He was led C^jTei-o) by the Spirit

THE SIXTH PETITION. 22 7

This strikes us as a strong contrast to the
reckless rush and flippant levity with which
men often plunge into dangers so great that it
would need a miracle to bring them out un-
scathed. " Be ye filled with the Spirit," is the
Divine law for us. Can we, when thus filled, go
from our own preferences into the haunts of sin?
Our Father never sends His children into them
on any needful errand, or for any wise discipline,
without this preparation. " He never," says an
old writer, " suffers His castles to be besieged
till they be provisioned." With this equipment,
it may be His will that we should enter fields
where we have to face the full array of evil, and
brave the full blast of storms. But however
charged with the Spirit's influence, we shall not
step into a post of great moral hazard without
clear orders. Once, while William of Orange
was laying siege to a town on the Continent,
an officer with a message ventured to go to the
spot where he was in the act of directing the
operation of his gunners. When the message
was delivered, and the answer to it received, he

into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil." The
word means that going into the wilderness was His own
act, though not of his own desire, but with a will that
consented to the will of the Father. The word " bring "
(ei(T€viyT]s) in our prayer points to the act of God in taking
us into temptation, and in this case, our consent of will
takes the form of resignation rather than of active
obedience.

2 28 THE SIXTH PETITION.

still lingered. " Sir," said the prince, " do you
know that every moment you stand here is at
the risk of your life ? " " I run no more risk,"
replied the gentleman, " than your highness."
" Yes," said the prince, " but my duty brings
me here, and yours does not." In a few minutes
a cannon-ball struck the officer dead. While
only led by our own inclination into a risk, we
have no divine guarantee of protection. Led
and filled by God Himself, our souls are safe
anywhere. Not only so, but temptations will
be made subservient to the highest purposes of
profit to man and glory to God. Overcome,
they will keep us closer to Him who is leading
us, make us lowlier God-ward, and more sym-
pathetic man -ward. Victors who have been
tempted are the wisest teachers, and the strong-
est helpers of those who are tempted now.
Still, though the result may be so gracious,
the process is so trying that it is right to say,
" Father, if it be possible, spare me. It is not
my own choice to go, if it be Thy will lead me
into some other path, but if it be Thy will to
lead me in this I will go. I will go in the
strength of the Lord God, making mention of
Thy righteousness and that only."

X.

THE SEVENTH PETITION.

" But deliver us from evil." Matt. vi. 13 ; Luke xi. 4. —
Authorized Version.

"But deliver us from the evil one." Matt. vi. 13. —
Revised Version.

Omitted from the Gospel by Luke.

We glory in our old English Bible. The know-
ledge of eternal life first reached us through its
pages ; it is our counsellor ; it has been our
solace in many a trouble ; and apart from its
intrinsic preciousness as a divine revelation, its
mere style is matchless. The longer we live,
the more do we feel its serene grace, its moving
music, and its grand, antique simplicity.

We have, however, no share in the sentiment
of those who seem to think that any attempt to
revise this translation, is to take a liberty with
things sacred. The element of sacredness
belongs to the Word, not to this or that trans-
lation of it. The first is the gift of God, and as
such, is perfect ; the second is the work of man,
and partakes of man's imperfection. When
God's flour is ground in man's mill, " it is apt

230 THE SEVENTH PETITION.

to get mingled with grit from the mill-stone," *
and we are always glad when this can be cleared
out again. Perfection admits of no improve-
ment, but scholarship is in its nature a pro-
gressive thing ; and in no department has it
been more remarkably progressive than in this.
When Erasmus published his Greek Testament
in 1516,1 he had access to only six MSS. t
Instead of six, we have now more than sixteen
hundred. Very ancient versions in other
languages have also been found out within this
period of 365 years; still further helping to
settle the true text. During the same time
there has been much research into the folios of
the Fathers, where are Biblical quotations so
numerous that if the sacred MSS. had perished,
most of the Greek Testament might have been
recovered from these authorities alone. There
has been a growing knowledge of materials, and
a growing education of power to estimate their

* Bengel.

t The New Testament in the Complutensian Polyglot
though printed in 15 14, was not pubhshed till 1522.

J Five of these are now in the public library of Basle,
and one is in that of the Prince of Oettingen-Wallerstein.

It is said that two of these MSS. he only used for
occasional reference. For the gospels, he only had what
Dr Scrivener calls "an inferior manuscript," of the
fifteenth century ; for the Apocalypse, a mutilated manu-
script of the twelfth century. For the Acts and Epistles
he had a manuscript of the thirteenth century.

THE SEVENTH PETITION. 23 I

value. The result is, that " the critical appar-
atus of the New Testament has increased a
hundred-fold." We who are honestly concerned,
first to know what God really says, next to know
what He really means, eagerly avail ourselves of
these helps ; and feel in particular immeasurably
indebted to the twenty-eight scholars, who, after
ten years of patient labour, have given us the
last Revised Version of the New Testament.

Still, some of us would have been glad if a
few of the alterations given in the text, had only
been placed in the margin ; and glad especially
if this had been done here. The evil person,
and the evil tJiing are both expressed in the
Greek Testament by the adjective with the
article. In the nominative and accusative cases,
the difference in the ending leaves no doubt as to
which is meant ; but the masculine and neuter
of genitive and dative are alike. In this instance,
the original words are only these two — "the
evil," and we are unable at present to see just
cause for adding a third, so as to read "the
evil oner The change from the abstract to the
personal is not imperative from the termination
of the Greek word which in this petition we
have been accustomed to render "evil;" nor
does the word for " deliver " require it, nor the
preposition for " from." In the Revised Version
of 2 Tim. iv. 18. we read, " the Lord will deliver
me from everyevil work, and will save me untoHis

232 THE SEVENTH PETITION.

heavenly kingdom;'' yet the verb, the preposition,
and the adjective for " evil," are all the same as
in the Lord's Prayer. In the Septuagint, the
phrase is constantly employed in the abstract,
never in the personal sense. It is said, indeed,
that the Greek Fathers use it in the latter sense,
but on the other hand, it might be contended
that the only expositors thus quoted, lived two
hundred years after the Apostles ; and the
meaning of the word should, we think, be settled
not by the usage of their day, but by that of
the day when Christ uttered it, if that could be
ascertained.* Upon the whole, the change
made by the revisers expresses but a supposed
probability, and not an ascertained or ascer-
tainable fact. It is no presumption to say this,
for the most competent scholars are divided in
opinion about the matter.^ Feeling must not

* Origen tells us in his treatise De Oratiojic^ that the
words dXXa pvaai. tj/jlols awb rod irovripov are not a part of the
prayer as found in the gospel of Luke. We believe that
no reference is to be found to this in the writings of any
Greek Father before his time. He died about a.d. 254.

t Among the critical and textual expositors who are in
favour of adopting as the reading, " The evil one," are
Doddridge, Adam Clarke, Olshausen, Mayer, Godet, Keim,
Ebrard, Samuel Davidson, Plumptre, Wordsworth, Elli-
cott. Among those who decide for " the evil," Tyndale, the
Geneva Version, Isaac Barrow, Weiss, Keil, Ewald, Tho-
luck,Bleek, Lange, Stier,Mansel, Canon Cook, and Alford.

Alford thinks that the general meaning of the two
closing petitions is this : " Bring us not into conflict with

THE SEVENTH PETITION. 2 7,3

colour judgment. Only the laws of language
can settle what is only a question of language.
But this is a question which these laws alone are
not competent to settle. Mere grammar would
allow of either translation. The connection,
together with appearances of probability must
help us to decide as to which of the two is most
likely to be right, and thus ruled, we are in-
clined still to vote for the common reading.
We are convinced of its natural force and
reasonableness. It is exactly what might have
been expected ; it accords with the ideal of a
prayer with this comprehensive scope, and this
view to universal use. The prayer has in it no
personal term excepting the invocation, and it
would indeed have been surprising to find it
end with this appeal against a personal enemy;
it would have been stranger still to find that
all through we had been travelling up to this
climax, that we should end in a cry for deliver-

evil, but rather deliver (rid) us from it altogether." He
regards the last petition "as expressing the deep desire of
all Christian hearts to be delivered from a/l evil (for toO
irov-qpoh is here certainly neuter ; the introduction of the
mention of 'the evil one' would here be quite incon-
gruous and even absurd), these words form a seventh and
most affecting petition, reaching far beyond the last.
They are the expression of the yearning for redemption
of the sons of God (Rom. viii., 23), and so are fitly
placed at the end of the prayer, and as the sum and
substance of the personal petitions."

234 THE SEVENTH PETITION.

ance from one solitary wicked spirit, and that
the very last word of the Lord's Prayer should be
the one that stands for the devil. Jesus, we think,
was unlikely to make His last word one of terror
on account of his conquered and humiliated foe.
I. We shall try to identify " the evil " here
named. The words here descriptive of what we
seek to be delivered from, are only these — " the
evil." Our Authorised Version reads ^' evil''
simply ; but in the original there is the article,
Take notice also that this word "evil" is, as
grammarians say, in the singular case. Christ
names " the evil." He seems to score the word,
and to speak it in capitals: "The evil!"
He who sees all things, past, present and to
come, in all their deep meanings, vast connec-
tions and mystic mighty spells ; and Who
knows the nature and history of all evils in the
darkness and under the sun, here separates and
singles out one thing from all the rest, and calls
it the evil. As if amidst the millions, this is the
only one worth a notice or a name, amidst all the
present perils of our being, this one stands out in
such dread, lurid, lone pre-eminence, that all
the rest are nothing to it. It is the one to fear,
the one to fight with, the one to be held in
perpetual abhorrence, and against which we are
to make perpetual prayer. It is the one arch
mischief and master sorrow of humanity, for
deliverance from whose vassalage we should be

THE SEVENTH PETITION. 235

ready to part with all else that we most care
for. " If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it
out, and cast it from thee ; for it is profitable for
thee that one of thy members should perish, and
not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.
And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and
cast it from thee ; for it is profitable for thee
that one of thy members should perish, and not
that thy whole body should be cast into hell."*
"The evil." It is a terrific phrase ! Like an alarm
sounded over a congregation of sleeping spirits,
it should ring them up, make them all broad
awake in a moment, and listen as if they had
never listened before ! We say that the evil is
Sin. What else can it be }

Not the world. Language, sometimes in
books, sometimes " floating on the lips of the
wise," gives the impression that some disciples
think that by "the evil" Christ means the world.
What world } The world which at the call of
God, sprang beautiful and perfect from the
maze of primitive confusion .'' The world which
at the beginning, He six times over pronounced
to be very good .-* The world out of whose
seeds, roots and hidden forces, grow into
lovely and wonderful expression, the thoughts
of God Almighty .-• The world out of whose
forms prophets drew their imageries, and the
gospel its types } Do they mean the world
* Matthew v. 29, y:).

236 THE SEVENTH PETITION.

of social existence ? Many think so. They
would indeed disclaim the old ascetic doctrine
that we have lately hinted at. They love the
landscapes and the seasons, because they are
God's handiwork, and study natural life, archi-
tecture, and history with delight, because these
aid them in marking the evolutions of the all per-
vading Mind ; but they turn away from the foci
of human life, and exclaim with Cowper, " God
made the country, but man made the town."

No ! God made the town as well as the
country. " He who gave to the bee or the bird
or the beaver instincts for their own wonderful
works and ways, has also furnished the human
mind with those faculties and tendencies which,
under favouring circumstances, develope in rail-
ways and palaces as surely as the beaver-mind
developes in moles and embankments, or as the
bee-mind developes in combs and hexagons.
The skill is Jehovah's ; in eveiy fair work of
skill, every fine result of calculation, and more
especially in everything that helps happy
development of human life, you ought to recog-
nise the divine perfections as their ultimate
origin no less than if you read on every object
' Holiness to the Lord.' In art, science,
machinery, intellectual achievement, an enlight-
ened disciple may discern the manifestations
of that mind which is ' wonderful in counsel, ex-
cellent in working,' and so far as skill, adaptation

THE SEVENTH PETITION. 237

and elegance are involved, will hail the Eternal
Builder Himself as the Maker of the town."

In the prayer which sums up His intercession
for all disciples, our High Priest draws a dis-
tinction between the world and the evil in it.
" I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out
of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them
from the evil."

If you want to know what this evil* is, ask
one who, more than any other of those immortals,
known as inspired men, was most at home in
divine thoughts, and he will say, " Ye have over-
come the evil one. Love not the world, neither
the things that are in the world. If any man
love the world, the love of the Father is not in
him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the
flesh, and the lust of the eye, and the vain glory
of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.".

Affliction is not " tJie evil." It would be
another thing to say it is not an evil. We call
that ancient, not a stoic merely, but a mono-

* John xvii. 15. Here, according to the Revised Ver-
sion, we are to read " the evil one," but as in the Lord's
Prayer the meaning of 6 Trof T^pis has to be determined solely
by the requirements of the context, and these appear to
me to decide for the old reading rather than for the new.
We are quite unable to think that our Lord, in words
spoken when leaving the world, prayed so emphatically
that His disciples might be kept from him whom He had
already conquered, and whom He had seen "fall like light-
ning from Heaven." By the evil He must have meant sin.

23b THE SEVENTH PETITION.

maniac, who cried when in mortal agony — " Oh
pain, pain, 'tis to no purpose this, thou shalt
never make me confess that thou art an evil."
We own pain to be an evil, poverty an evil,
slander an evil, every kind of sorrow an evil.
And when all these seem to burst upon a man
in one driving storm, he may naturally
cry " Innumerable evils have compassed me
about." " From lightning and tempest ; from
plague, pestilence, and famine ; from battle and
murder, and from sudden death, good Lord
deliver us." This language of the Litany is
the dictate of nature, and has the sanction of
grace ; but we must only use it in continuance
of the secret prayer, " Thy will be done." For
lightning and tempest, plague, pestilence and
famine, and all other evils, belong to the system
in which "we know that all things work together
for good to them that love God, to them who
are the called according to His purpose." The
plan of the divine Disciplinarian is not to take
us out of troubles, but to make troubles our
teachers. Even worldly wisdom can see that it
is often a grander thing to strengthen the back
than to lighten the burden on it ; to bring out
the steel of the arm than to lessen the work it
has to do ; to make a ship fit for a hurricane
than to keep it for ever in a dead sea. Under
the rule of the spirit, such ends do many of
these evils work, and we must have a care how

THE SEVENTH PETITION. 239

we pray to be delivered from^ them, lest, such
prayers being answered, deliverance should itself
be an evil.

A "tribulum" is a flail;* "tribulation" is
only the process ot using it, but the corn is
brought under that process for good and not
for evil. Hear the song of a Puritan poet : —

" Till from the straw the flail the corn doth beat
Until the chaff be purged from the wheat,
Yea, till the mill the grains in pieces tear,
The richness of the flour will scarce appear ;
So, till 'men's persons great afflictions touch,
If worth hefoiend their worth is not so much,
Because like wheat in straw they have not yet
That value which in threshing they may get.
Until the bruising flail of God's corrections
Have threshed out of us our vain affections ;
Till these corruptions which do misbecome us
Are by Thy sacred spirit winnowed from us ;
Until from us the straw of worldly treasures —
Till all the dusty chaff of empty pleasures —
Yea, till his flail upon us He doth lay
To thresh the husk of this our flesh away.
And leave the soul uncovered ; nay, yet more.
Till God shall make our very spirit poor,
We shall not up to highest wealth aspire ;
But then we shall ; and that is my desire." t

Only as you call a flail evil, that separates
the grain from the chaff; a wheel evil that
grinds jewels to burn in a crown; a knife evil

* Virg. Geor. I., 164.
t George Wither.

240 THE SEVENTH PETITION.

that prunes a tree ; a tree evil that bears good
fruit ; a plough evil whose colter crashes through
the hard soil, opens it to the chemistry of nature,
and makes it a soft, porous, receptive seed-plot
for the harvest ; the medicine evil that brings
back the colour of health to the white face, and
the flash of gladness to the dim eye ; the hand
evil that snatches back a heedless child from
the nest of the serpent, or the lip of the river,
just in time to save its life — only in this qualified
sense can you call an affliction an evil. Out
of our greatest sorrows grow our greatest joys.
The worst of all these is not evil itself ; not all
these together could make what is here set down
as " the evil."

It is not death. With soft step and by
mysterious ways, the last enemy may approach
us. We may come slowly into his power
without knowing it. Indeed, the captive may
not for a long time be aware that it is he who
is holding him. He may say, "What is this
freezing, malignant presence } This pain, how
is it to end } Tell me, can this be death .''
Into what unknown land is this fearful thing
carrying me .'' "

A little blind child, close clasped up against
her father, was carried by him into a room in
a strange house. One who was in the room,
stepped quietly up, unclasped his arms, and
without saying a word, or making a sign, lifted

THE SEVENTH PETITION. 24 T

the child away. " You seem not to be much
frightened," said the father ; " do you know
who has you ? " " No," she said, " but I am
not afraid, for I know you know who has me,"*
Like that little child, though in the grasp of
mystery, while I am near my Father, " I will
trust, and not be afraid."

To those, indeed, who are not ready, it is a
horror. They only know death as life's great
foe, and have no antidote to its natural re-
pellency. Fixing our thoughts on certain
refusers of Christ, we say, " O God, spare them !
Let them not see the face of Death yet ! Spare
them, ' that they may gather strength, before
they go hence, and are no more seen ! ' Spare
them awhile, though to suffer ; spare them that
if even brought by the discipline of sorrow they
may come to Thee, that they may have life ! "

Once, in the days of the Scottish Covenanters,
when a congregation met in a great green cup
of wild heather, while watchers were posted on
peaks of the round rim above ; suddenly an
alarm was given ; bibles were shut, swords
were snatched out of their sheaths, the
dropping shots told that soldiers were close
upon the spot, and that in a minute or two
there would be a battle. Then, the pastor
threw up his hands, and cried, " Lord, spare the
green, and take the ripe ! " So now, when
^Mentioned by Dr Ciilross.

Q

242 THE SEVENTH PETITION.

Death's troops are on us, and the alarm has been
rung, we would pray, " Lord, spare the green,
and take the ripe ! Take us, for whom to
die would be gain ; spare those for whom it
would only be loss, and this once, deliver them
from this evil ! "

On the other hand, to a man whose heart is
ready and whose time has come, going out of
this world, is only going out of evil, and becom-
ing in the flash of a moment sinless, sorrowless
and deathless. Death means perfection for ever
and progress for ever. The thing that to others
would be the worst, is to Him the best. Arch-
bishop Leighton, when once raised from a bed
of sickness, which everyone thought would have
been his bed of death, looked sorry, and when
asked why .-' said, " I thought my voyage was
over, that I had done with sin, and that I was
about to cast anchor ; but now, though I had
reached the harbour's mouth, I find myself once
more driven out to sea." If, unlike that holy
man, we still feel some natural fear of the enemy,
let us seek through Christ the power that will
make us face our fears, that will make us do the
holy right," come what may, breathing the spirit
of Luther, who, as he set out at the risk of his
life, to make a great confession of faith, said, " I
really am afraid of Death, but there are things
worse than Death, and if I die, I die."

Sin is " the evil," — we can accept no other

THE SEVENTH PETITION. 243

conclusion. This is not because we have sym-
pathy with many, who, while calling the Bible
the standard of faith, are still apt to say, " Mind
yourself ; never mind Satan : the only Satan you
have to fear is Sin." When we mark the grow-
ing tendency of men to connect the idea of
Satan with comic associations, to use the name
for enhancing the sparkle of festive speech, or
to toss it about like a mere plaything of poetic
fancy ; we are marking one of the alarming
signs of the times. Such triflers trifle with one
of their most terrible perils. Such mutations
of sacred and tremendous words we look upon
with wonder, and mourn over as the sin of
trifling with God's great revelations. You
smile perhaps ; but depend upon it, the " evil
one " is a real enemy, from whom you are in
real danger. He may laugh at you, but it may
be death for you to laugh at him.

With all this, we hold that the present passage
brings before us an evil even more terrible.
" Brethren, what made the devil a devil } Noth-
ing but sin." So said a famous leader in the
"Assembly of Divines;" and we are of his
opinion. Sin is the evil that makes the " evil
one " what he is. We find no evil in the world
of souls of which it is not the spring. It may
may sometimes look like a little thing, but it is
a seed, and all the future forests of hell are in it.
Sin is "damnation in its causes." It is evil in

2 44 THE SEVENTH PETITION.

itself, and nothing but evil can come of it. If
we read our instructions correctly, we are here
taught to pray that we may be delivered from
" the evil," not simply from one who tempts us
to it. One glance at it inspires the cry, " O God,
give what Thou wilt, take what Thou wilt away,
but deliver us from the evil !" *

11. We shall proceed to some notes on the
Petition for deliverance.

I. In offering this petition we have still to
keep in mind the ivJioIe connection. Here are
three prayers, all different, all in vital con-
tinuity, each having reference to sin, and one
should not be offered without connecting it with
the others.

* "There is no good at all in sin. First, there is no
good of Entity or Being : God hath a Being, and every-
thing that hath a being, hath some good in it, because it
is of God : but sin is a Non-Etitity ; a no being : it is
rather the deprivation of a Being than any being at all ;
and here is a great mystery of iniquity, that what is a
Non-Entity, should have such a mighty efficacy to trouble
heaven and earth. Secondly, it hath no good of Causality:
that is, sin is so evil that it can bring forth no good.
Afflictions do bring forth good. Sin is such an evil that
it cannot be made good nor an instrument for good.
When God brings good out of sin, he does so occasionally,
not instritnientally. An instrument gives some efficacy
towards the effect, but sin has in itself not even an instru-
mental efficacy towards a good effect, as afflictions have ;
though God may take occasion to bring good out of sin
committed, he never makes sin itself an instrument of
good." Jeremiah Burroughs on ''The Evil of Evils." 1654.

THE SEVENTH PETITION. 245

Connect this for instance, with tJie prayer
for forgiveness. The "sins," also called the
"debts," for which we ask forgiveness, are the
formations and activities of that which is here
called " to the evil." Some suppliants seem to
be concerned only that they may have for-
giveness, but sin itself seems to give them
but little concern. Although they take deep
interest in their own spiritual symptoms ; they
are nervous rather than penitent, and what they
want is simple impunity. They will tell you
that they glory in the cross, because the right-
eousness of Jesus there " finished," is the only
righteousness that will satisfy the justice of God,
and save the soul of man. They watch the
Lamb of God, not as bearing away sin, but
simply the consequejices of sin. Like the priest
of old, who in the name of the people, laid his
hand over the head of the scape-goat, and cere-
monially transferred their sins to it ; they in
fancy, put a hand on the mystic burden-bearer,
and think with a selfishness that passes for
Christian joy, that their sins are now clean for-
given and taken for ever out of sight. This is
the one thing they seem to think of, or to care
for. But just as might have been expected, in
this standard prayer for the use of sinners, we
are solemnly taught not only to pray for the
forgiveness of sins, but for deliverance from
" the evil " out of which our sins have sprung.

246 THE SEVENTH PETITION.

Connect this particularly with the prayer
against temptation. In being taught to say,
" Lead us not into temptation, but deliver
us from evil," we are taught to seek that we
may be led out of the way of what might
tempt to sin, only that we may be delivered
from sin itself As we speak, we shudder at
that thing of awful malignity, to save us from
which the Redeemer died ; and remember that
the salvation consists not merely in remission
of its penalty, but also in rescue from its
power.

2. We offer this prayer that Jesus is the
meditim of deliverance. This thought must
run through each successive petition from the
very first. We say " Our Father " in accord-
ance with the rule, " I am the Way, the
Truth, and the Life ; no man cometh unto the
Father but by me." We say, " Hallowed be
Thy name" through Him who says "I have
declared Thy name, and will declare it." We
say, " Thy kingdom come '' through Him who
has said, " All power is given unto Me in heaven
and in earth." We say, " Thy will be done,"
trusting inthe "Second Adam" who "quickeneth
whom He will " ; and who works within us to
" will and to do." We say, " Give us this day
our daily bread " through Him who is the
" Bread of Life," and in whom we have all the
promises. We say, " Forgive us our sins,"

THE SEVENTH PETITION. 24/

looking for this forgiveness through His blood,
according to the riches of His grace." We say,
"Lead us not into temptation," trusting the
high priest who was " in all points tempted
like as we are, yet without sin," We say,
"Deliver us from evil" through Him who once
cried, " Deliver them from going down to the
pit." All through the phrases of the prayer
we remember Christ as the channel of its
acceptance. At the time this prayer was de-
livered there was a necessary reticence as to
the distinctive doctrines of the Gospel. These
doctrines could not be fully shown until the
facts on which they were founded were finished
on the Cross, and lighted up by the glory of
the Pentecostal day ; but, revealed or un-
revealed, he was, from the time when the evil
came into the world, the one Deliverer.

3. This prayer specially fits the lips of
christians in a time when old sins seem to recover
new pozver. Long after words of Divine for-
giveness have filled our souls with sovereign
tranquillity unspeakable ; and after Christ has
given us the right to say, " Now are we the
sons of God," we may find a sad need for this
petition. The mystery of grace descends into
us, not to change the nature of " the evil that
dwellcth in us," but to fight it down, to keep it
under, and at length to destroy it utterly.
Whatever essence is evil once, is evil for ever.

248 THE SEVENTH PETITION.

The old nature is still the old, unconverted and
inconvertible. It fights holiness to the last, so
that the dying bed is often part of the battle-
field, and the dying frame a castle to be
stormed. Between the first day of grace and the
first day of glory there may be many an alarm.
Even now, we may be recalling the memory of
a crisis, when the battle seemed to waver, the
tide to turn, and hope to be almost lost. The
most resolute soldier and most exalted saint,
has had most to feel the truth of this. While
perhaps one of " the saints at Rome " was
mourning over the evil that still dwelt in his
own heart, and saying of Paul — " Blessed man ;
his spirit seems to be always in heaven ; what
can chill his burning love, or ruffle his serene
repose .-* Would that I could be just like
him ! " he Avho was so envied was at this
very time inditing the confession, " I delight
in the law of God after the inward man ; but
I see another law in my members, warring
against the law of my mind, and bringing me
into captivity to the law which is in my mem-
bers. O wretched man that I am ! Who shall
deliver me from the body of this death ? " *

The battle takes dift"erent forms and phrases.

Sometimes " the evil " is practically a great

spiritual dulness. We " cleave to the dust " ;

try as we may, we cannot rouse ourselves. We

* Rom. vii. 22, 23, 24.

THE SEVENTH PETITION. 249

kneel, and all on a sudden, as if our kneeling
had been the signal, the mind is crowded with
frivolities or crushed with cares. We speak,
but we seem to speak into vacancy, prayer is
mechanical as the movement of a mill, and
though all our heaven depended on our prayer,
we feel as though we could not pray. We try
to read, but the book is a blank. We try to
work, but the spirit is gone out of us. We try
to realise the Unseen, we try and fail. We seem
to see and hear and speak only with the body,
not with the soul. The soul is in a dead calm.
" No stir ill the air, no stir in the sea,
The ship is as still as a ship can be."
This is our story, and our thought is, better
the wild hurricane than the pestilential quiet.
What ails us .'' Are we growing torpid under a
spell .'' " Deliver us from the evil." At other
times the evil within us suddenly breaks into
action. Every man has some weak point on
which evil is always at work, in which he is
always in danger of giving way, and at. which it
is always possible for some evil habit to begin.
One is naturally apt to be frivolous, another to
be exaggerative, another to be morose, another
to brag of what he has done, another to do
nothing, another to be too fond of money, an-
other of scandal, one was formerly possessed
by the demon of a bad temper, " mean, con-
temptible, and unjust, as any of the peerage of

250 THE SEVENTH TETITION.

hell." The cast out sin that was once master
will be always trying to recover lost ascendancy ;
and though the new life loathes that besetting
sin to very sickness, there is still left a nature
in sympathy with it, through the treachery of
which the heart may yield to it a little. With
every new indulgence its demands will be more
imperious, its spells more seductive; still yield-
ing by little and little, a day may come when
the man finds that his power is gone. He is
surprised into a snare, and is all at once a be-
numbed and helpless captive, soon to wake up
in the consciousness of a sorrow that drowns all
the world in darkness. Though he may fall
into sin, no saved man can live in it, yet he
may feel as if he never could escape from it,
and as if " the evil " that has now fastened on
him will not be shaken off. In the oldest of
all known languages, the word " throttler" — the
old word for serpent, is the word also used for
sin. Like the serpent in that antique marble
so familiar to us — turning, twining, and clasping
round Laocoon and his sons — so " the evil "
twines round the soul, fastens with deadly
clench, strikes to sting, and makes him cry,
" Who shall deliver me ? " *

* The serpent was called aid in Sanskrit. The root is
all, or anil, which means to press together, to choke, to
throttle. Here the distinguishing mark from which the
serpent was named, was his throttling, and alii meant

THE SEVENTH PETITION. 25 I

4. Our thoughts rush forward to the day
when this prayer for deliverance from " the
evil " ivill Jiave its finisJied and perfect anszver.

Earthly things are but poor types of heavenly
things, yet they are the best we have. When
we try to rise above them, and our impatient
thoughts break through the shells of words, they
are lost in the infinite, and we feel all about us
in blank darkness ; but by what comparison
taken from the things of earth — the only things
we now know, can we set forth the joy of this
deliverance }

In the old wars between king and Parliament,

serpent, as expressing the general idea of throttler. " In
Sanskrit the word meaning throttler was chosen with great
truth as the proper name of sin. Evil no doubt presented
itself under various aspects to the human mind, and its
names are many ; but none so expressive as those derived
from our root ajth, to throttle. Anhas in Sanskrit means
sin, but it does so only because it meant originally throttling
— the consciousness of sin being like the grasp of the
assassin on the throat of his victim. All who have seen
and contemplated the statue of Laokoon and his sons,
with the serpent coiled round them from head to foot,
may realize what those ancients felt and saw when they
called sin anhas, or the throttler. This anhas is the
same word as the Greek agos, sin. In Gothic the same
root has produced agis^ in the sense oi fear, and from
the same source we have awe, in awful, i.e., fearful, and
ug, in ugly. The English anguish is from the French
angoisse, the Italian angoscia, a corruption of the Latin
angnsticE, a straight." — Max Miiller's Lectures on the
cience of Language, 1862, p. 388.

252 THE SEVENTH PETITION.

the town of Taunton, attacked by Lord Goring,
and defended by Robert Blake, sustained a long
siege. Food rose to twenty times its market
value. Half of the houses were blown down by
a storm of fire, many of the people perished of
hunger. Through all this, the townsfolk had
been accustomed to meet in St Mary's Church
to pray, and be sure that the burden of their
daily prayers to the Father was, " Deliver us ! "
One day when assembled for this purpose,
hoping to hear that the enemy had at last re-
treated, a trusty messenger came to the church
door, and spoke but this one word, " Deliver-
ance ! " In a moment the magic word flew
through the vast assembly, and all shouted with
one voice, " Deliverance ! "

We can understand the feeling that rang in
that note. We ourselves have had many a
great earthly salvation. Often and often have
we had reason to sing, "our soul is escaped as
a bird out of the snare of the fowler, the snare
is broken, and we are escaped." We have been
delivered from the grasp of death, we have been
delivered from many a terrible temptation, we
have been " delivered from the power of dark-
ness, and translated into the kingdom of God's
dear Son ; " but we have not yet been fully
delivered from " the evil." " The evil ! " why it
sometimes seems as if we should never be
delivered from it !

THE SEVENTH PETITION. 253

When, in the course of our fight with sin, we
are in the very act of exulting over some great
victory, it shoots us down again, and we are
gnashing our teeth in the dust. When it seems
to sink in one part of our nature, it seems to rise
in another. As we felt the first bliss of forgive-
ness, we almost thought that we had done with it
for ever, and that Christ would make it as easy to
be holy as it is to breathe. We felt ready to
borrow the exclamation, " O my soul thou hast
trodden down strength." But sin seems to be
strongest when it has had its death blow. The
eagle when down, strikes at you with a beak
like a bolt of iron, and may flap you dead with
its wing. The red deer when down, may
fell you with its antlers. The dying horse may,
in the plunge of its agony, break a man's limb.
A harpooned whale may dash a boat over. Sin
is like that. Speared through by its conqueror,
it may grasp us in its last convulsions, and seem
to be stronger dying than living ; but we shall
soon spring out from it, and cry, " Deliverance! "

All the gladness that ever lived in that word
as spoken by mortal lips, will be forgotten in
the glory of the joy that shall swell in the word
" Salvation ! " when spoken as the spirit of the
prophet heard it in vision, " Lo, a great multi-
tude whom no man could number, of all nations,
and kindreds, and peoples, and tongues, stood
before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed

2 54 THE SEVENTH PETITION.

with white robes and palms in their hands, and
cried with a loud voice, saying. Salvation to our
God which sitteth on the throne and to the
Lamb." *

" When did I die ? Am I in the body or out
of the body .-* Is it all over .'' Is this real, can
it be ? Am I in heaven at last ? Is this no
bubble to snap at a touch, no dream to vanish
at the cold light of day ? "

After the first questions of the wakening
spirit, and the cry of its first rapturous " Rab-
boni ! " in the first flash of eternity, and the sur-
prise of the first moment in heaven, each
delivered one will deem no path to have been
too steep, no trial too long, by which the spirit
of God led to such an issue. The memory of
the night will only brighten the miracle of the
morning, and all the pains that have been fought
through will enhance the blessedness of the
final rest.

* Rev. vii. g, lo.

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