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Prayer, and The Lord s Prayer
LIFTING UP HOLY HANDS.
(ALBERT DURER.)
The Lord s Prayer
By
Charles Gore, M.A., D.D.
Of the Community of the Resurrection
Canon of Westminster
London
Wells Gardner, Darton & Co.
Paternoster Buildings
105299
JUL 2 5 1Q7Q
PREFACE
THE following chapters are a reprint of papers pub
lished in Commonwealth, mostly in 1896. They are
reprinted at the request, and under the management,
of one of the Editors of that magazine. The text of
the Lord s Prayer employed in them is that of the
Revised Version.
I should like to call the attention of those who
desire practical assistance in praying on the model of
the Lord s Prayer, to the blank outlines for prayer,
personal and intercessory, in the late Mr. Bellars
Before the Throne.
C. G.
Lent, 1898.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. THE EFFICACY OF PRAYER . . .1
ii. PRAYER IN CHRIST S NAME . . . .11
III. WHAT MAY WE PRAY FOR? . . . .21
IV. OUR FATHER WHICH ART IN HEAVEN, HALLOWED
BE THY NAME ... AS IN HEAVEN SO ON
EARTH 30
V. THY KINGDOM COME ... AS IN HEAVEN SO ON
EARTH 39
VI. THY WILL BE DONE, AS IN HEAVEN SO ON EARTH 46
VII. GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD . . 56
VIII. FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS, AS WE ALSO HAVE FOR
GIVEN OUR DEBTORS 65
IX. BRING US NOT INTO TEMPTATION, BUT DELIVER
US FROM THE EVIL ONE . . . .72
X. [FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM, THE POWER AND
THE GLORY, FOR EVER AND EVER. AMEN] . 78
Prayer, and The Lord s Prayer
Ube Efficacy of
IF a man regards the thought of Christ and His
apostles as in any way representing spiritual truth, he
cannot but own that among the most powerful and rich
of human faculties is the faculty of prayer. It is not
necessary to quote passages from the New Testament
to prove this. But certainly if it be true that the
faculty of prayer to God is thus powerful and rich, it is
also sadly true that, in our modern world, the pains
bestowed upon it are not at all proportionate to its
value. Nor can it be said to be properly appreciated in
our ordinary estimate of things. We think of the men
and women of scientific intellect, of eloquence, of artistic
genius, of political and social activity, as being our
powerful men and women, rather than the diligent and
constant offerers of prayer. Truly from this point of
view the world knows nothing of its greatest men.
And our Lord at least hints to us that so it would turn
out. He describes under a startling figure the effective
ness of importunate prayer, and at the same time fore
casts the strains it will involve on human faith. The
effect of importunate prayer upon God is compared to
the effect of the widow s importunity upon the unjust
judge. The conclusion is drawn. Shall not God
avenge his own elect, which cry to him day and night,
and he is long-suffering over them ? I say unto you,
that he will avenge them speedily. Howbeit, when
the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith on the
earth ? *
I repeat the question and apply it. Does He find faith,
the faith which shows itself in systematic prayer for the
coming of His kingdom, now in our time, on our earth ?
If He does not, who can express the peril and the loss ?
Who can deny that we are ignoring one of the three
constant elements in normal human life ?
We look at human life broadly, in the long reaches
of history, and you observe it moving in three different
directions. It moves out toward nature to appropriate
its resources, and the history of this movement is the
history of civilization. It begins where the savage feeds
on berries, or hunts his prey, or scratches the surface of
the soil to throw in his seed ; and it advances to the
point of almost inconceivable power, skill, elaborateness,
1 St. Luke xviii. 1-8.
2
The Efficacy of Prayer
and subtle balancing of forces, which characterizes our
modern industrial system.
Secondly, we watch man moving out to develop his
relations to his fellow-men. It is the history of society,
beginning with the tribe and the family, and reaching up
to the social organization of to-day, with its breadth of
range and intricacy of relationship.
Thirdly, we watch mankind moving out towards God.
The movement, looked at in the broad, is quite as
perceptible and as important as the other two move
ments. It occupies, like the others, a large share of
human effort and attention. It passes through similar
stages. It has its rude beginnings in savage religions,
as men * ignorantly worship or seek after God, if
haply they may feel after him, and find him. Like
civilization and society, it has taken many different
developments. But the aim of all these different
developments of religion, and of prayer, which is the
most characteristic act of religion, is realized in the
religion and the prayers of the Son of Man, and of that
great catholic brotherhood which in His name worships
the Father in Spirit and in truth.
We are the heirs of the ages in the matter of
prayer, no less than in the matters of civilization and
society. But the question is, whether our zeal is in
proportion to our knowledge.
I remember once, in the early summer of 1884, seeing
a sight in India which made a permanent impression on
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Prayer, and The Lord s Prayer
my mind. In the modern busy street in Calcutta, called
Bow Bazaar, in which the Oxford Mission House used
to stand, I saw by the side of the tram-line a man, stark
naked, with chains round feet and hands. He was lying
flat in the dust, measuring his length on the ground.
He rose as I was looking, advanced a few paces, and
standing upright, with his feet where his nose had
marked the dust, he prostrated himself again, and pro
ceeded to go through the same motions. He was a fakir
or devotee of some sort, and I was assured that he was
going to travel in this manner all the hundreds of weary
miles which intervene between Calcutta and the sacred
city of Benares. My first feeling was, I fear, one of
disgust and contempt at the superstitious folly of the
man. But I hope it was soon overtaken and checked by
a consideration both worthier and with more of humility
in it the consideration, I mean, that he, in his belated
ignorance of the character of God and of the way to
serve Him, was taking a great deal more pains about his
devotions than I was in the habit of doing with my
better knowledge. This is the question for us : Do we,
with our superior knowledge of God, take trouble about
our devotion to Him, or put real effort of will and heart
and head into it, at all proportionate to the true know
ledge granted to us, at all proportionate to the amount
of effort we put into our businesses or our social duties
and pleasures ? Or is our life of business and our life
of pleasure organized and real, and our life of prayer
The Efficacy of Prayer
limited to a rather perfunctory hour on Sundays and a
few of the sleepiest moments of our day ?
Undoubtedly, if we have the privilege of intercourse
with God, we must take pains to realize it. Undoubtedly,
if there is a life of prayer, it will not be experienced or
developed without real effort and system and thought
and perseverance.
But to justify us in taking pains about prayer, we
must believe in its efficacy. I cannot seriously train
myself to hold intercourse with God, or make request to
Him, unless I really believe both that God exists and
that He hears and grants the prayers of men. Now com
paratively very few people doubt the existence of God,
but a great many people doubt whether He really hears
and answers human prayer, and accordingly, whether
it is worth while taking pains about prayer.
The difficulties most commonly experienced are per
haps these
1. It seems inconceivable to our common sense
that God, the ruler of the vast universe, should have a
personal relation to each individual, such as the belief in
prayer requires a personal relation implying aparticular
care and a particular providence. Like the man whom
the son of Sirach reproves, we mutter, Who shall
remember me from on high ? I shall not be known
among so many people ; for what is my soul in a
boundless creation ? l And no doubt to conceive how
i Ecclus. xvi. 17 (R. V.).
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Prayer, and The Lord s Prayer
the mind of God can attend to every one of the innumer
able individuals who make up the universe of men (to
say nothing of other existences) is impossible to us : that
is, it is impossible to imagine it or form a picture of it
in our mind. But our imagination is very far indeed
from being the limit of our reason. There are many
facts forced upon us by the science of astronomy, or
physics, or chemistry, which we cannot imagine, but
which we are rationally compelled to believe. So it is
with regard to this difficulty. Our reason demands it,
though our imagination is baffled. For let us think. To
get to know anything better is to get to know it more
widely, but also more in detail. The school-master not
only knows boys, but knows his own class of boys better
than another because he knows them individually. The
great generals are distinguished like Napoleon for nothing
more than this their combination of widest conceptions
and plans with attention to the smallest details. To
know well, therefore, is to know both broadly and in
detail. And to act well is to act with a wide grasp, and
also an insight into each individual case. So we must
grant that the absolute perfection of the knowledge and
action of God must mean that the universal range or
scope of the divine attributes, over all creatures what
soever, diminishes nothing from their perfectly indi
vidual application. God our reason assures us, though
our imagination is baffled must know each of us and
love each of us as if there were no other in the world to
6
The Efficacy of Prayer
know and love, and deals with each of us with an
individual providence, in which His universal laws
or methods of action are not violated but expressed and
exemplified. That is the verdict of reason, and it is
also the assurance of Christ. The very hairs of your
head are all numbered.
2. But, granted that God knows all we want, and
wills to give us what is best for us, what is the use of
praying ? To ask this question shows indeed a funda
mental mistake as to the purpose of prayer. No doubt
it is the judgment of reason, as it is again the assurance
of our Lord, that our Father knoweth the things we
have need of before we ask him, and knows them a
great deal better than we do. The object of prayer is
not to inform God or to correct His methods to drag
down His wisdom to the level of our folly : the object
of prayer is to educate us in intercourse with God. We
are sons of God, capable of something better than
mechanical obedience; capable of. intelligent corre
spondence with our Father, capable of fellowship and
communion with Him in one Spirit. There is to be
what the New Testament calls freedom of speech, 1
and an open avenue of inquiry towards God. 2 That
is our highest function; and that is the glory of our
eternal occupation. To train us for it now, in the child-
1 The word translated boldness in Eph. iii 12 ; Heb. iv. 16 ;
1 John iii. 21, etc.
2 1 Pet. iii. 21 (R. V. margin).
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Prayer, and The Lord s Prayer
hood of our immortal life, even though we babble with
half-inarticulate sounds, we are to be practised to pray.
We are to ask persistently and regularly, and according
to the loving wisdom of God, to receive in response to
our prayers, and so to be educated into personal relations
with God.
Who can deny that the end is worthy ? and who that
has ever taken pains about prayer, or got an answer,
can deny that the method is wisely chosen ?
3. Ah ! this kind of argument was all very well
before it was known that the world was governed by
fixed laws ; but now that the universal reign of law is
recognized, we cannot believe that our prayer can have
power to alter it, or affect the course of nature as it
moves on in its inexorable order/
This is an objection which it is better to press a little
further ; and, as in many like cases, if we press it to its
consequences we may be enabled to see that it will not
hold. So far as it implies that we cannot hope to alter
the universal laws of nature, it is certainly valid. Any
prayer which is an attempt to alter the laws of God s
natural government, or to drag down His wisdom to the
level of our short-sightedness, must undoubtedly fail of
its purpose. We do know that the world is governed
by fixed laws, that is, that God s method in governing
the world is a method of universal law or order. But
because the world is governed by fixed laws, does it
follow that nothing is left to our action? That the
8
The Efficacy of Prayer
laws work on without any possibility of fruitful effort or
co-operation on our part ? It is in accordance with fixed
laws that gold is extracted from the earth and turned
into coin. But will this happen unless we discover it
and extract it, and put it through all the processes of
manufacture ? Needless to say it will not. Here we
touch the mystery of free will : namely, the fact that
within certain limits the way the world shall go depends
on our action or inaction. I make here no kind of
attempt to solve this mystery. I only insist that the
responsibility involved in our freedom is a practical
truth that though the world is governed by fixed
laws, a vast deal of the utmost importance to us
depends on our co-operation and correspondence with
the system of nature.
As the great Francis Bacon taught the world, the
secret of power in nature is correspondence with its
laws. It was exactly the same lesson which Jesus
Christ taught the world in relation to prayer. Prayer
is fruitful, and is offered in spirit and in truth/ exactly
in proportion as it is not an attempt to fight against
the laws of God s good government, but an attempt to
correspond or co-operate with His purpose. Christian
prayer is one way of correspondence with God. And
there is I say it with perfect confidence no greater
difficulty in believing that God intends to give us whole
classes of good things for soul and body, but will not
give us them unless we correspond with His purpose by
.9
Prayer, and The Lord s Prayer
diligent prayer, than in believing that whole classes of
good things are stored up for us in nature, which will
not be our own unless we seek them by diligent hard
work. There is no more difficulty to our intellects in
one kind of co-operation than in the other.
We accept the fact that if we want wealth we must
work for it, though we cannot explain how inexorable
laws leave room for human freedom. We can, with
exactly the same reasonableness, accept the fact as
practically true, that there are multitudes of things
which God means to give us, but will not give us unless
we pray for them. This fact of the efficacy of prayer
rests on common human experience, on the witness of
experts, that is, of especially spiritual men and women,
and, most of all, on the authority of the Son of Man.
But here we touch the question of the grounds for
praying, and of the difference between ignorant and
enlightened praying the praying which is in the
name of Christ ; and we must leave the matter for
another paper.
10
II
prater in Cbrtst s name
IN my last paper I pointed out that prayer, in its
various forms, appears to be as truly a natural function
of human nature as the promotion of civilization or
of society; and this itself is a powerful argument for
the reality of the Object of prayer. We find the men
of science constantly reasoning in this manner. If
they see any organ or function in any plant or animal
strongly and constantly developed, they infer that there
must be something in nature, external to the plant or
animal, which renders this organ useful; for nothing,
they assure us, can become developed and maintain
itself, unless it is in real correspondence with some fact
or facts of the external world. To take only one
example, the eye is an organ which has developed and
become a constant part of animal organisms. It could
not have done this unless there was a reality called
light external to the animal, such as justified the
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Prayer, and The Lord s Prayer
existence of the eye, and made it useful. We may
argue in exactly the same way. It would have been
impossible for man to appear constantly and persistently
in the attitude of prayer, and for this religious tendency
to take shape and become persistent, unless God, the
object of prayer, were a reality, and man by praying
was brought into real and profitable relation with
Him.
And the force of this argument is increased when we
observe how the prayers of mankind pass through many
stages, in which they seem to be f feeling after their
object without truly finding Him, till at last, through
the teaching of the Son of Man, they appear to attain
for the first time to real correspondence with Him.
This, I say, increases the force of the argument, because
it is what we observe in the similar case of the investi
gation of nature ; and in this respect we may compare,
as has been already suggested, the -place of Jesus
Christ in the history of prayer with the place of Francis
Bacon in the history of science. There was investiga
tion of nature before Bacon, for nature is inevitably
fascinating and alluring to the imagination of man, but
through fifteen centuries it had made no progress.
Why? Because it made no serious attempt to be in
correspondence with the reality. It was seeking to
impose men s arbitrary whims the whims of the
astrologer and the alchemist upon nature. It was
seeking short-cuts to universal knowledge the philo-
12
Prayer in Christ s Name
sopher s stone, the elixir of life. It was arbitrary,
therefore it was unprogressive. Now Bacon made no
progress himself in the knowledge of nature ; but as a
sort of prophet he put into words the principles which
ought to guide men in their inquiries. Nature/ he
said, can only be controlled by being obeyed. He
that will make progress must enter the kingdom of
nature a little child/ The reverent investigation of
nature as she is, and the power won by submissive
correspondence to her actual laws, these were to be
the watchwords of scientific progress. These, in fact,
have been the watchwords of that gigantic advance,
both in the knowledge and use of nature, which has
characterized the last three centuries. The reverent
investigation of what nature s laws in fact are, has
resulted in the forces of steam and electricity being at
the disposal of mankind.
Now, as in many other respects, so also in this our
Lord differed from Bacon in that what He taught He
practised, and what He professed He realized. Still,
we may find in Bacon s teaching in regard to the know
ledge of nature, a suggestive analogy to our Lord s
teaching in regard to the exercise of prayer. Prayer,
before Christ, had expressed the indomitable human
instinct which drove men to seek relations with God.
But it was ignorant asking. Christ, by His teaching
and by His atonement, first put the instinct into perfect
relation with its object; into perfect relation both of
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Prayer, and The Lord s Prayer
knowledge and of power. He taught men the character
of God the Father. He taught them about human
nature, its capacity and destiny, the meaning of sin and
the remedies for it, the true use of physical pain, the
fruitfulness of sacrifice. He assured men of the final
victory of the divine kingdom, and pointed to the
Church as the society which is to represent that
kingdom in this world, and to prepare the way for the
kingdom which is to come. By all this body of teach
ing He did not, indeed, satisfy human curiosity about
divine things, for He still left man largely under the
discipline of ignorance. Still, we know in part, we
see through a glass darkly. But He did put us into
a correspondence, which is adequate for practical
purposes, with the mind and character of God. Hence
forth prayer can rise in real correspondence with known
truth, in the face of enemies whose nature and the
limitation of whose powers have been disclosed to us.
It can rise in accordance with the laws of the revealed
kingdom of God. In a word, prayer has become
intelligent correspondence with the manifested God,
the correspondence of sons with a Father.
Prayer in Christ s Name
II
When you examine the utterances of Christ with
regard to prayer, you find that they consist of large
general promises, subsequently defined and made more
exact. Ask, and ye shall receive. Here is a large
general promise. It arrests the attention by its obvious
contradiction to facts of experience. It stimulates
further inquiry, and further inquiry is met by exacter
statements. Therefore I say unto you, all things
whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye have
received them, and ye shall have them (St. Mark xi. 24).
Again, If ye aMde in me, and my words abide in you,
ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you
(St. John xv. 7). Once more, Verily, verily, I say
unto you, if ye shall ask anything of the Father, he
will give it you in my name. Hitherto have ye asked
nothing in my name. Ask, and ye shall receive, that
your joy may be fulfilled (St. John xvi. 23, 24).
When we come to consider them, these further defini
tions of the conditions of prayer are found to be in
close agreement. Thus it is morally impossible to
have a real confidence that the things we are asking
for shall be certainly received, unless our petitions are
grounded on some real knowledge of the mind and
method of God; otherwise asking would be a mere
crying for the moon. Thus the first of these passages
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Prayer, and The Lord s Prayer
is in correspondence with the second. The prayer
which secures its own answer is the prayer which is
determined by the mind of Christ, the prayer which
expresses not our own lawless and short-sighted wants,
but the will and purposes of Christ, who is the image
of God ; the will and purposes of Him whose victory
was the victory of complete self-surrender, and whose
triumph was the fruit of what in the eyes of men was
completest failure. And this is what our Lord means
by prayer in His name. It is a childish fancy that we
pray in Christ s name by adding the words through
Jesus Christ our Lord at the end of any petition we
like to offer. The name of God, the name of Christ, in
the New Testament expresses something much more
than certain syllables uttered by the voice. They
express the being of God as He has revealed Himself
in Christ. The ambassador who speaks in the name of
his country or his king, does so because he represents
not his own views, but the views of the power which
sent him. Thus, to pray in the name of Christ, is to
pray as one who represents Christ, whose mind is
Christ s mind, his point of view Christ s point of view,
his wishes Christ s wishes. With what force will now
come home to us those words of Christ, Hitherto,
have ye asked nothing in my name. So many things
we have asked, but in our own name. Perhaps we
have not prayed for many years with any reality, and
then some calamity seems ready to fall on us. We
16
Prayer in Christ s Name
fling ourselves on our knees, and pray, Oh, my Father,
avert from me this blow which I so sorely dread, or
Give me this boon which I so greatly desire. There
is value in all serious approach to God; but this sort
of prayer, which is selfish, and is strictly from our own
point of view, is not prayer in Christ s name, though
it may end up with the accustomed formula, through
Jesus Christ our Lord. Nor, if our friend or child is
sick unto death, and we pray with tears for the sparing
of his life, is such prayer prayer in Christ s name, unless
we have really risen to take His view of sickness and
suffering and death. Now we see that prayer in the
name of Christ is something which can only arise out
of a will and heart redeemed by Christ, and brought by
Him into union with God. It is the prayer of moral
correspondence ; it is the prayer of sons.
Ill
But here a number of questions arise. We may
fairly ask, what are the subjects of prayer in Christ s
name ? what can we pray for, and what can we not, in
accordance with His will ? For instance, may we pray
for health, for fine weather, for physical as well as
spiritual blessings? To these questions in detail I
propose to attempt an answer in the next paper; but
17 c
Prayer, and The Lord s Prayer
meanwhile I will point out, that our Lord did not
leave this matter in the region of abstract speculation.
He taught us by example. After this manner, there
fore, pray ye. The Lord s Prayer is not so much one
prayer among many, as the type and pattern of all
Christian praying, and if we want to know whether
any prayer can be truly described as a prayer in
Christ s name, we had better ask ourselves whether it
can fall within the scope, and be expressed in the
language, of the Lord s Prayer. Indeed, the lessons
of prayer find in the words of that great example their
deepest expression. There is both the full realization
of the broad human instinct of approach to God, while
at the same time there is the sternest rebuke of the
selfishness and the narrowness which ordinarily mix
with it. The prayer of untaught human nature is,
My Father, give me to-day what I so sorely want,
avert from me what I so utterly shrink from. The
very order of the Lord s Prayer, apart from the mean
ing in detail of its particular clauses, strikes the
broader, the diviner note. Our Father, the very
first words are the rebuke of selfishness. They force
us to place ourselves before the impartial God with
whom is no respect of persons, whose thoughts are
higher and purer and wider than our thoughts, as the
heaven is higher and purer and wider than the earth ;
but who yet is near to us with all the individualizing
love and care which belongs to His fatherhood. Hal-
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Prayer in Christ s Name
lowed be thy name; that is, let God s revelation of
Himself, His truth, His character, be held in honour.
That is the first petition. Probably there is no man,
however spiritual, who in the present age would have
put this petition first. The honour of God s truth is
so continually, in the modern mind, subordinate to
human needs. But in the Lord s Prayer we are first
forced to exalt into the place of supreme importance
the unchangeable honour of God Himself. Thy
kingdom come. We are interested in our narrow
schemes and wants, but here we are forced to merge
our littleness in that great and divine purpose, which
through all the ages is slowly realizing itself. No self-
centred will or desire can hold its own here. Thy will
be done. We are forced to bend our stubborn wills
and inclinations until they are brought into conformity
to that great will of God, to which all the hierarchies of
heaven find it their joy and glory to minister. Only
then, when we have exalted God s glory above man s
need, and merged our littleness into God s greatness,
and bent our wills to minister to God s will, only then
are we allowed to express our own wants for ourselves.
Give us this day our daily bread, and here again it
is us, not me; and daily bread, that is, just that
provision which enables me to be fitted for my place
and work in the kingdom of God, not anything that
I should like. And then, because we cannot do God s
work unless we are in His favour, therefore, Forgive
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Prayer, and The Lord s Prayer
us our trespasses, and that not anyhow, but according
to that law by which God deals with us as we deal with
our fellow-men, Forgive us our trespasses, as we for
give them that trespass against us. And then, because
we are frail, and Satan is powerful, * Bring us not into
temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.
We shall go on to consider somewhat of the rich
meaning which lies in these clauses in detail. For the
present let us only realize the depth of teaching which
lies in the very order of the clauses. Truly, a child
may pray that prayer, and the heart of childhood under
stands it; but it takes the wisest saint to realize
anything of the fulness of its meaning.
In this great prayer, then, as much in its general
outline as in the particular meaning of the separate
clauses, lies the secret of the mind of Christ. In the
praying of it consists prayer in His name; and the
principle inherent in it is the principle of correspondence.
2C
Ill
TKHbat mas we iprap fort
PRAYER is pleasing to God, that is, the prayer which
is undertaken in the proper manner. He therefore
that desires to be heard should pray wisely, fervently,
humbly, faithfully, perseveringly, confidently. Let
him pray wisely, by which I mean, let him pray for
those things which minister to the divine glory and
the salvation of his neighbours. God is all-powerful,
therefore do not in your prayers prescribe how He shall
act; He is all-wise therefore do not determine when.
Do not let your prayers break forth heedlessly, but let
them follow the guidance of faith, remembering that
faith has steady regard to the divine word. Those
things, therefore, which God promises absolutely in His
word, those pray for absolutely. Those which He
promises conditionally for example, temporal things
those on the same principle pray for conditionally.
Those things which He does not promise at all, those
also you will not pray for at all. God often grants in
His anger what His goodness would deny. Therefore,
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Prayer, and TJie Lord s Prayer
follow Christ, who fully conforms His will to the will of
God. So wrote the Lutheran Gerhard in his Holy
Meditations. His advice follows exactly the lines along
which our previous considerations have led us. Prayer,
we saw, is a form of intelligent correspondence with
the revealed will of God. This is the thought we are
to continually have in mind when we attempt to
answer the often repeated question what ought we to
pray for?
Confining ourselves first of all to the practical aspect
of the subject, we may put our answer under four
heads.
1. The main object of our prayers must be spiritual
things. If we are to pray in the name of Christ, we
must seek first the kingdom of God and His righteous
ness. That is the lesson of the Lord s Prayer. Nor
can we omit to notice, that if in one Gospel it is said
that our Father in heaven will give ,good things to
them that ask him, the good things are described in
another Gospel as the Holy Spirit. 1 For so far as
we are Christians in heart, it is upon the possession of
the Spirit, with all that that implies, that our desires
are concentrated for ourselves and others. For this we
can pray with certainty, with the certainty that our
persevering prayers for ourselves and others will be
heard and answered in proportion to our faith. I say
1 St. Matthew vii. 11 compared with St. Luke xi. 13.
22
What may we Pray for f
answered for ourselves and others : not that God will
force the wills of others any more than our own, but
that our prayers can secure for them at least the
offers of the divine love. This is the region in which
our Lord s promise is specially true, Verily, I say
unto you, whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be
thou taken up and cast into the sea; and shall not
doubt in his heart, but shall believe that what he saith
cometh to pass ; he shall have it. 1 Our Lord spoke
in a figure, but it was a figure familiar to Jewish
hearers. The mountain is the mountain of the world-
power which hinders the spiritual spread of the
kingdom of God in our own hearts and in the world.
This is the moral obstacle which the prayer of the
Church, in proportion to its reality and to the unity
with which it is offered, shall be able to remove.
What art thou, great mountain ? the prophet
Zechariah had said of old, before Zerubbabel thou
shalt become a plain. 2
It is then for spiritual things, for the manifestation
of spiritual power in the hearts of men, that we are
chiefly and primarily to pray. Nor is it easy to over
rate the importance of this right direction of our
prayers. True it may be (to take the converse of our
Lord s illustration) that even if we ask our Father for
a stone He will still give us bread, or for a scorpion, He
1 St. Mark xi. 23. Zech. iv. 7.
23
Prayer, and The Lord s Prayer
will give us fish, 1 but we cannot expect this to be the
case where we have the opportunities of better know
ledge ; rather, if we pray amiss, let us fear the judg
ment God gave them their desire, and sent leanness
withal into their souls. 2 Nor must we omit to notice,
that in controversies raised by materialists about the
efficacy of prayer, this characteristic of Christian prayer
has generally been left out of sight. It has been
proposed that we should have experiments to test the
efficacy of prayer in regard to the long life of kings,
or the recovery of the sick. But nothing can be more
certain than this, that prayer is meant to be an exercise
of faith which cannot be subjected in our present life
to external testing. And that chiefly because it is in
the region of character, in the region where results
only fully appear in the eternal world, that prayer is
to find its most assured and definite answer.
2. But not all spiritual boons can be asked for.
What is asked for must be in accordance with the
divine will. Thus, to ask (as many people do) that they
may escape sin, when they will not take reasonable
precautions to avoid the occasions of temptation; or
to pray for our children, without taking any proper
pains in regard to their education ; or to pray for
spiritual graces, while we refuse the means which the
divine will has appointed for their reception ; or to pray
1 St. Matt. vii. 9. 2 Peal. cvi. 15.
24
What may ive Pray for ?
for forgiveness for ourselves, when we will neither for
give others nor accept the punishment of our own sins
these are all examples of the way in which we may
pray for spiritual things lawlessly, or without reference
to the will of God.
3. But it cannot be doubted that we may pray also
for physical things. They must hold the subordinate
place that is given them in the Lord s Prayer, but that
place they must hold a lesser place than was given
them in the Old Testament, but still a place. A cer
tain supply of physical things, our daily bread, is
necessary to enable us and others to do the work of
God in the world ; thus Give us, we pray, our daily
bread. And that petition can be taken to cover prayers
for health of body, and bettering of social conditions,
and favourable weather. Only we can never pray for
these physical blessings with the same security or
absoluteness as for spiritual. Whom the Lord loveth
he chasteneth. Everything that is included in daily
bread He finally denied to His own Son. To Him He
finally gave no physical deliverance in this life, but left
Him in the extremest sense without physical support.
This is the profound lesson which we learn about
prayer from the prayer of Christ in the Garden of
Gethsemane. So clearly supreme are spiritual over
physical things as objects of prayer, that physical
things can only be prayed for conditionally Father,
if it be possible ; and may be denied even to the well-
25
Prayer, and The Lord s Prayer
beloved, even as the cup did not pass from Christ
without His drinking it. Still, granted this, there are
a great number of physical things which, as far as the
Christian in this world can see, it would be good for
him or others to have, such as health, supply of food,
weather, and so on. In regard to these we should put
up real petitions, which, if accompanied with a willing
ness to see them not granted, or prefaced by Not my
will, but thine be done/ should still be prayers which
expect an answer from the divine love. It is the great
function of the spiritual man to see to it, that within
that region where the human will has its exercise,
spiritual motives and forces shall have their full sway
in determining events; and for all we know the divine
government of the world may, for the testing of our
faith, have left a real function for prayer to fulfil in
reinforcing the springs of vitality in sick men, and
even in ordering, within certain limits, the character of
the weather.
4. I say, for all we know/ and I am looking at the
matter now practically, not metaphysically. How do
we know the divine will? We know it from the
revelation in conscience and through Christ. We know
it also in the order of the physical world. Science
has recently been disclosing increasingly what the
order of the physical world is, what its laws are. Like
the revealed laws of the spiritual kingdom, the known
physical laws are limits to prayer. No doubt from
26
What may we Pray for ?
time to time prophets and righteous men have been
specially inspired to pray for miracles. With such
exceptional inspirations we are not now concerned.
Ordinarily, a known law of the physical world is a
declaration of the will of God. So far, therefore, as the
physical laws of the world are known, so far as scientific
men can prophesy what will happen in accordance with
these laws, to pray against them would be to pray
against God. But there is a region into which human
prescience cannot penetrate. We know indeed that it
belongs to the fixed order of nature that we should not
have tropical weather in a temperate climate, but
within limits there is no fixed order in the sequence of
different kinds of weather which is known to us. It is
certainly true that men, by planting or destroying trees,
can in lapse of time modify weather. Nor can it be
said to be certain, from a scientific point of view, that
the action of free will by means of prayer may not
have a similar power within similar limits to modify
the weather conceivably through the mediation of
invisible spiritual forces or persons, as to which we
know nothing. We doubt very much whether those
scientific men who will be most peremptory in denying
this, will be prepared to admit that there is such a
thing at all as a real freedom within certain restricted
limits, assigned to human wills in ordering the course
of physical events ; or that we can, by the exercise of
our free wills, make the course of events different from
27
Prayer, and The Lord s Prayer
what it otherwise would have been. Granted there is
this freedom, for example, to modify weather by plant
ing trees or accumulating waters, there can be no
scientific demonstration that prayer may not have a
similar restricted but real influence.
Christians will certainly go on trustfully commend
ing their wishes about the weather to their heavenly
Father s attention, as well as the health of their friends,
until science has got a power, altogether different from
what it now wields, of predicting future events in these
districts of experience. For only such power of pre
diction would make it apparent that in these, as in the
vaster physical movements, events are simply determined
in accordance with physical laws, without any reference
to moral or spiritual causes. And if this seems already
certain to men of physical science, on the other hand,
the spiritual experience of men of prayer has in all ages
given them great encouragement in praying for the
recovery of their friends and for seasonable weather.
In this paper I have trespassed very slightly on
the speculative ground, and my main object was to
give a practical answer to the question, what are the
proper objects of prayer ? To deal at length with the
philosophic or scientific problem would require more
space than is at present at my command, and more
knowledge. But the broad position of the Christian is
this, and in occupying it he stands on the strongest
ground It is the business of the spiritual man to
28
What may we Pray for ?
assert, within certain limits, the mastery of the human
spirit in accordance with the divine will over its
material surroundings. It does this mainly through
the strengthening of character. It does it in part
through altering external conditions. How far the
power allowed to the human spirit extends into the
material world cannot be certainly said, but limits can
only be assigned to it with certainty at that point
where science can prove the importance of human
freedom by predictions of the course of events on a
basis purely physical ; and the power of prayer may be
commensurate with the power of the human spirit. If
we can alter circumstances by willing and working, we
may alter them also by willing and praying. But we
must not conclude this discussion without repeating
that the main objects of Christian prayer are spiritual
things. Only in regard to these can prayer rise with
the confident expectation of being answered.
29
IV
ur jfatber wbicb art in Ibeaven
OUR Lord, as was said above, did not give us mere
abstract principles of prayer, but something much more
intelligible an example or pattern of prayer. And
this, which we call The Lord s Prayer/ is not so much
one prayer among many, as for Christians the type
in which all their praying is to be moulded, the form
which is to express each petition they wish to offer, the
test of whether indeed it is a permissible petition at all.
We proceed then to reflect upon its several clauses.
Our Father which art in heaven.
We begin by solemnly invoking God under His
character as a Father. To approach God as our Father
was indeed in apostolic times understood to be the great
and distinctive privilege of Christians. God hath sent
forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying,
Abba, Father l And indeed it requires but little
thought to perceive that it makes the whole difference
1 1 Gal. iv. 6.
30
The Lord s Prayer
in prayer whether we in fact realize that God is our
common Father. What we ask of men, and the expect
ation with which we ask it, depends on what we think
of them. With what difference in our hopes do we ask
for some sacrifice or some kindness of different people !
With what fulness of hope ought we to present our
selves with our requests before God, whom we believe
in as Father. God s Fatherhood means that He has
brought us into being. The responsibility for bringing
other lives into existence rests indeed in large measure
on earthly parents. But behind all, it rests on God our
Creator. God, who has created us, because He is also
our Father, is bound to care for each of His creatures ;
bound to make the best of each. Not indeed that He
can exempt them from the moral discipline which
belongs to rational and free beings, or can exempt them
from the consequences of it. God, we may well say,
cannot prevent us experiencing the consequences, and
even the eternal consequences, of our own moral wilful-
ness. But, consistently with the laws of our being, He
can make the best of us. And this we can confidently
entreat of Him to do for each. None is forgotten in
His sight. None is under-rated. There is no forgetful-
ness and no favouritism. There is discipline for all, but
contempt for none. The God whom we approach is
the Father of all, and accepts nay, desires to have
pressed upon Him in prayer the responsibility of His
Fatherhood.
31
Prayer, and The Lord s Prayer
And we further qualify His Fatherhood by the
addition to Our Father of the words which art in
heaven? No doubt this expression recalls a time when
men thought of the sky as a vault not so very far above
their heads, and of God, or gods, as residing just be
yond the vault, as it were on the upper storey of the
universal house. Now in our scientific age we know
that there is no ceiling over our heads, and no possibility
of locating God somewhere above. But none the less
we cannot help thinking and talking in the old figures ;
and we know what lift up your hearts means as well
as our less scientific forefathers. Indeed, long before
the age of science, long before the time of our Lord,
God s residence in heaven had come to have a moral
meaning attached to it. His spiritual omnipresence
was asserted by psalmists and prophets, and the true
meaning of His heavenliness proclaimed. As the
heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways
higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your
thoughts. 1 The idea then that we are intended to
attach to God s Jieavenly Fatherhood is, that He is
infinitely raised above us in the height of His holiness
and the largeness of His wisdom. To call God our
Father in heaven, is to lift up our minds in awful
reverence above all the narrowness, short-sightedness,
shallowness, and defilement of earth, and to remember
1 Isa. lv. 9.
32
The Lord s Prayer
that the best we can think or imagine or hope is but a
feeble image of the largeness, the resourcefulness, the
richness, the holiness of the mind of God. God is in
heaven, and thou upon earth ; therefore let thy words
be few. 1 God is farther from us in the loftiness of
His revealed character than ever He seemed to be to
Greeks or Romans, who fashioned Him after their own
likeness in temper and lusts. But, on the other hand,
He is infinitely nearer to us in the condescension of
His love. It is only sin that kept earth, the abode of
men, apart from heaven, the abode of God. Now the
kingdom of heaven or of God is come ; it is
within us/ or among us. Our citizenship is in
heaven. The Christian institutions are heavenly
things. We are made to sit in heavenly places in
Christ. 2 All this language describes the intimate
closeness of union which in Christ has been granted us
with the heavenly God. Thus in appealing to our
Father which is in heaven we are appealing to one
who is closer than breathing and nearer than hands
and feet, to whom the slightest motion of the heart
and will is audible. How is it, then, that so many
people still in their spiritual imagination think of God
in heaven as if He were far off, so that it needed some
great effort to penetrate to His abode ?
1 Eccl. v. 2.
2 St. Matt. xii. 28 ; St. Luke xvii. 21 ; Phil. in. 20 ; Heb. ix. 23 ;
Eph. i 3.
33 D
Prayer, and The Lords Prayer
Hallowed be Thy Name.
The name of God means the revelation of God, or
rather God as He makes Himself known to men ; and
we may say, that human history is in one aspect the
record of the way in which God has gradually spelt out
His name among men, or suffered them to spell it out.
Something of that name is discovered in the aspect and
processes of nature ; something again is audible in the
whispered suggestions and threatenings of conscience ;
some elements of it have become apparent to the
founders of the different religions of the world ; but
nowhere is the gradual process of discovery so distinct,
as among the Jews. At the bottom of the Old Testa
ment revelation the personality and personal dealings
of God are indeed strongly emphasized, but the con
ceptions of His infinitude, His holiness, His spirituality,
leave still very much to be gained. That His holiness
is moral, not ceremonial, reveals itself to prophet after
prophet. His love is discovered to a Hosea, His
impartiality to an Ezekiel, His sympathy with the
sorrows of His people to an Isaiah. And all that was
disclosed to prophets was deepened in His revelation by
the Son, through whom the name of God is finally
spelt out as the name of the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Ghost, with all the moral significance attaching to
each of the elements of this threefold name.
In the Lord s Prayer the place of primary importance
is given to the petition that God s revelation of Himself
34
The Lord s Prayer
may be held in honour, " Hallowed be thy Name."
The matter of first and dominant importance is, that
men should believe and hold what is true about the
being and character of God, and believing aright, should
let their belief be expressed in the reverence of their
lives.
It may be said of the pagan religions not without
qualification, but generally that the character ascribed
to God in them is the simple reflection of the character
of His worshippers. The most powerful modern ex
pression of this lower anthropomorphism, this fashion
ing of gods after the image of men, is to be found
in Browning s poem of Caliban upon Setebos. Poor
savage Caliban is there represented as ascribing all his
own arbitrariness and fitfumess to Setebos his god.
This is an universal tendency ; but in the Bible we have
the record of the counter process, which, if it were going
on everywhere in a measure, was nowhere enacted as
among the Jews the process of God impressing Himself
as He truly is on the hearts and intellects of His people.
True it is that the self-revelation of God at its highest
verifies the belief in a special kinship of man to God.
Man at his best recognizes his own best self infinitely
glorified in the character of God as manifested in Christ.
Still, here is a revelation of God to man, not a fashion
ing of God after man s ideas ; and the result is, that it
lays on men a strong and searching claim to re-model
their own natures, that they may become truly in the
35
Prayer, and The Lord s Prayer
divine image. To believe in God as He is indeed,
is to recognize our need to be born again and fashioned
anew.
How is it that some people are so shallow-minded as
to suppose that it makes no difference what a man
believes about God ? The contrary lies written in the
record of history. For, however inconsistent are men s
beliefs and practices, if you look at individual men at a
particular moment, yet if you look at human nature in
its long reaches and over its broad surfaces, it appears
that men s conduct has depended on what they think
about God. The civilizations which have grown up
under the influence of Jewish, Greek, Mohammedan,
Buddhist, and Christian beliefs about God, have been
morally different civilizations. And the necessary con
nection between the intelligence and the will in man
makes it necessary that belief should, in the long run,
mould behaviour.
Hallowed be God s name then ! Let Christians
believe with all their hearts in the Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost one God ; and believing, have the courage
to profess their belief, and let it mould their public
conduct and their private lives. It is probably quite
true, in fact mathematically true, that there lives more
faith in honest doubt than in half the creeds, for half
the creeds, that is, the beliefs of half the believers, are
little more than formalisms, and of little moral value ;
whereas honest doubts, the sincere seekings of the
36
The Lord s Prayer
perplexed hearts from whom God s face is hidden, have
a great deal of moral value, and are undoubtedly on the
way to final light. But it does not therefore follow, nor
is it true, that there lives more faith, or more value, in
doubts in general than in sincere creeds. Indeed, quite
the opposite is the case ; and no one who knows any
thing of current society can fail to perceive that a great
deal which passes for religious doubt proceeds from
little but want of moral effort, and worldliness, and very
often lack of moral courage. Doubt, however inevitable
in some cases, need not be a normal condition of mind.
Renan used cynically to remark, that very few people
have the qualifications for being sceptics. And if we
want to play our part as men and Christians in the
world, we should do our best to believe simply, and to
confess loyally in worship and in conduct the faith
which we believe. How vast a part of what is worst in
modern society is due to lack of moral courage ! How
deep the truth in our Lord s question How can ye
believe which seek glory one of another, and the glory
which cometh of the only God ye seek not ?
Let us then learn to pray Halloivcd be Thy Name, and
indeed to give it the dominant and leading place in all
our prayers. God has revealed Himself. If under a veil,
He can yet be known by us, and we pray that the infinite
benefit of this revelation of Himself may be realized and
accepted by all men. Hallowed be Thy Name by being
believed. And believing on God in their hearts, we pray
37
Prayer, and TJie Lord s Prayer
that men may not be ashamed of their best selves, but
may confess Him in their lives, and pay to Him the out
ward reverence which is reasonable from men to God.
Hallowed be Thy Name by frank outward confession.
And we pray that the public worship of the Church may
be a worship in spirit and in truth, a worship worthy
of its great object; for we remember the sane words
of Hooker Duties of religion performed by whole
societies of men ought to have in them a sensible
excellency correspondent to the majesty of Him
whom we worship/ Hallowed be Thy Name by
glorious and spiritual worship. Lastly, we pray that
men may hallow the name of God in their own private
lives, and live worthily of that holy name in that
holiness without which no man shall see the Lord.
Hallowed be Thy Name in the continual sanctification of
the lives of Christians, that they may indeed be, in the
Son and through the Spirit, a holy priesthood to God,
even the Father.
38
ftlnsoom come * . . as in t)eat>en so
on Eartb
WHAT is a kingdom ? It is a society of men living
in an orderly manner a common life under one head or
ruler. The kingdom of God is this, but more. For
human rule is over men only, speaking generally ; the
rule of God is over all created things whatever. Thus
the kingdom of God is an orderly constitution of all
things visible and invisible, inanimate, animate and
spiritual, each in its own place fulfilling the divine will.
A kingdom is not a kingdom unless there is order.
A perfect kingdom involves perfect order. Thus the
idea of order in nature and in the world as a whole was
postulated by religion, from the point of view of the
kingdom of God, long before it was postulated by
science. God, says the Psalmist, has given to all the
parts of nature a law which shall not be broken.
The divine Wisdom, says the later Solomon, reacheth
from one end of the world to the other with full strength,
39
Prayer, and The Lord s Prayer
and ordereth all things graciously. 1 But as soon as
ever we have begun to think of the world as a divine
kingdom with a divine order, the question at once
arises, is this order perfect and complete ? And the
prompt answer is, No. Without doing violence to our
moral conscience, it is impossible to treat wickedness,
cruelty, falsehood, as a part of a divine order or the
keeping of a divine command. Thus we are landed in
the position of St. John. Sin is lawlessness. 2 St. John s
expression in the Greek language means exactly that
sin and lawlessness are coincident. Nowhere in the
world is there disorder till you come to the wilfulness or
sin of spiritual beings, and sin does not begin till wilful-
ness or lawlessness begins. This is the fundamental
Christian doctrine of sin. Sin is not imperfection
merely, the imperfection of undeveloped natures, which
it only requires time to develop more perfectly. Sin,
again, is not ignorance which it requires only right
knowledge to remove. Imperfection and ignorance
indeed are realities and have to be reckoned with ; but
the wilfulness of spiritual beings using their freedom to
rebel against God, and so spoiling the divine order in
the world down to the depth to which their power and
activity extend this and this only is sin. This rebel
lion of free spirits has its effects on the sinning
individual, and its results are also transmitted as a long
1 Wisdom viii. 1 (R. V.). 2 1 John iii. 4. (B. V.).
40
The Lord s Prayer
heritage of misery and disorder to those who come after.
This idea of sin was in a measure, by the help of their
consciences, arrived at by thinkers outside the revela
tion of the Old and New Covenant. There is, for
example, a splendid expression of sin as spoiling the
divine order of the world in that hymn to Zeus of
the stoic Cleanthes, from which St. Paul at Athens
quoted the expression, For we are also the offspring
of God. Nothing, cries Cleanthes, takes place on
earth apart from Thee, nor in the heaven above, nor in
the deep, except the things which bad men do in their
senselessness, . . . who neither perceive nor listen to
the common law of God. But the doctrine received
its most authoritative declaration in the New Testament.
Throughout that volume man is treated as a being
involved in sin, who needs therefore not only develop
ment and enlightenment, but also redemption. And
the beginning of this mystery of sin is not found in the
human will ; for broad and deep as has been the
development of sin among men, there is still beyond
men an order of rebel wills about whom we know little,
but of whose existence and activity we are assured, the
devil and his angels, to whose activity man s seduction
is traced, and who are represented as being at work not
in man only, but in nature.
Now all this is taken for granted when we pray Thy
kingdom come. The necessity for this prayer arises
only because the rule of God in the world has been
41
Prayer, and The Lord s Prayer
not indeed banished, but obscured. So that from the
point of view of sinful, alienated man, the kingdom
of God, His manifested rule, must be treated as an
absent thing to be desired and invoked.
But it may be said, Has not that kingdom come ?
Is it not the kingdom of Christ? Was it not to
establish or re-establish it that Christ came ? Quite
true. Our Lord taught us that it came with His
coming, and at the same time He taught His disciples
to pray for it as a thing not yet come. Here is a con
tradiction in words such as our Lord never shrank
from, because the apparent contradiction challenges
thought and reveals a deeper meaning underneath.
The kingdom of God or of Heaven has come. For
our Lord established a Church, or visible society, which
He identified with the kingdom. His parables of the
drag-net that gathered of every kind of fish (St. Matt.
xiii.47), and of the field of wheat amidst which tares are
sown by an enemy (St. Matt. xiii. 24), both represent
the kingdom of God as a visible institution or society
in which the good and evil are mixed together. They
identify, in fact, the kingdom of God with the visible
Church. Again, when our Lord said that John the
Baptist, though he was the greatest of those born of
woman, was yet, by his very position, outside the
kingdom of God, 1 so that the little ones in the king
dom have higher privileges than he, He identifies the
i St. Matt. xi. 11.
42
The Lord s Prayer
kingdom of God with the society He was founding.
The Church, then, is the kingdom of God, or the king
dom of Heaven, because it is an organized society of
men, in which Christ is the Head and King, in which
His will is known and obeyed, and in which visible
ceremonies and outward realities are interpenetrated
with the life of heaven. It was pointed out in the last
paper, how the language of the New Testament con
tinually supposes that to be in the Church is to be
among the heavenly things or in the heavenly places.
Thus the Church is, in virtue of the spiritual realities
that it enshrines, truly and really the kingdom of God.
But it is so within limitations ; for in the first place, if
the power of the kingdom is at work within the Church,
it is so secretly ; the kingdom is not manifested openly
before man s eyes. It requires faith to recognize it and
see it. And in the next place, the power is only felt
in a comparatively narrow region, within the limits of a
society which does not represent the whole of mankind,
still less the whole of the universe. Thus, if from the
point of view of the spiritual forces that are at work in
her, the Church is the kingdom, from another and
larger point of view the Church represents the kingdom
within a certain area of time and place, and prepares
for the larger and fuller representation of the empire of
God in the universe.
When we pray, then, Thy kingdom come, we are
praying for the spread of the Church, for all that
43
Prayer, and The Lord s Prayer
promotes her spiritual well-being and influence, for the
believing of her message, for the acceptance of the grace
which she is permitted to dispense, for the practice of
her discipline among those who are at present neglecting
it, and in the world of heathendom where men have
not yet learnt the meaning of the sacred name. All
that a Churchman can desire in the Church and for the
Church is contained in the prayer, Thy kingdom come.
But also, and perhaps more prominently, it is a prayer
for the second coming of Christ, that is, the manifest
and open exhibition of His empire, not only over and in
the Church, but in the whole universe.
Let us learn to pray, then, Thy kingdom come, over
our own lawless and rebellious thoughts, desires, and
passions ; and in the world outside us, wherever a selfish
luxury and sensuality, or jealousy, selfishness and cruelty,
or pride and wilfulness and contempt of the truth
prevail. And, to speak plainly, this is almost every
where, in our domestic life and commerce and politics,
very often in religion. Moreover, we cannot pray for
the kingdom unless we are prepared to fight for it also.
We all love peace and smoothness, but we forget that if
peace is the end of Christ s rule, war is the method by
which it is to be won. I came not to send peace on
earth, but a sword. That is what we do so terribly
forget. This duty of fighting for the kingdom of God,
for the cause of truth and righteousness and meekness,
belongs to all Christians : not to the clergy, but to the
44
The Lord s Prayer
Christians. We shall make no palpable way in the
world at all till we have learnt that the Church does
not consist of the clergy, but that every baptized
member of the body of Christ is pledged to be a fighter
for the truth and the morality of the kingdom in every
single department of his life. This is not comfortable
doctrine at all, yet it is the doctrine we want. And
Established Churches need more particularly to recollect,
that to be doing this is the only sort of Church defence
against the judgments of God that has any real value
whatever. Thy kingdom come, then, God, as in
heaven so on earth !
For the phrase, as in heaven so on earth, applies
in all probability not only to the clause after which
it occurs about the divine will, but also to the two
earlier ones Hallowed be Thy Name, as in heaven so
on earth; Thy kingdom come, as in heaven so on
earth. Let that day come when the supremacy of the
Lord and His Christ shall be an open and acknowledged
thing, which may be to some anguish unutterable, but
can be to none deniable. Meanwhile, let the J :ngs of
the earth stand up, and the rulers take council tog :ther
against the Lord and against His Anointed ; but we at
least will not be frightened. He that dwelleth in
heaven shall laugh them to scorn, and on the over
throw of all rebellious enterprises and long-dr:\wn-out
antagonisms open and secret, the kingdoms of the world
shall become the kingdom of the Lord and of His Christ.
45
VI
will be fcone, as in Deaven so on Eartb
PAUL BouRGET, the well-known French novelist and
man of letters, went three years ago for a visit to
America. What impressed him there, with a force
which appears continually in the fascinating account of
his expedition which he has given in Outrc-mer, was
the omnipresent spirit of enterprise. Everywhere in
men and women he met with a vigorous and powerful
will a will bent on being successful, bent on seizing the
exact situation under which present effectiveness was
most possible. This vigorous will, this enterprise, is,
as we all proudly recognize, the mark of the Anglo-
Saxon race ; but then, as we know it, this vigorous will
has a way of showing itself in the form of vigorous
competition. We walk down the streets of our towns,
and watch one tradesman contending against another
in a self-advertisement, to say the least of it, not over
scrupulous about truth, each using all his cleverness to
under-sell and make life impossible for the other. And
Hie Lord s Prayer
what we see among individuals appears also among
classes. If Labour organizes itself, it is against Capital.
If Capital combines, it is to offer more effective resist
ance to the pressure of a strong Trades Union. The
area enlarges itself, but its spirit is still the same. In
France, in Germany, in England, in Russia, in Italy
a vast expenditure is going on to arm every nation
against every other. And the same competition is at
least as apparent in the race for Africa, or the jealous
watching of one nation by another, lest any should get
an advantage over the others in the dismemberment of
the Turkish Empire. Nor is this spirit less apparent
in the matter of religion. The assertion of the in
dividual will, the determination to work a successful
enterprise, in a word, the spirit of competition, has
intruded itself there. It has split the Christian Church
into an infinite number of sects; and it is only too
lamentably apparent, that a large proportion of what is
called religious energy is occupied, not in combating sin
and falsehood, but in pressing against one another the
claims of different religious bodies. Enterprise, energy,
will, ambition, these are marks then of the human race,
and especially the Anglo-Saxon race, and the form in
which they show themselves is a universal and un
limited competition.
Now there is no doubt at all that, if we are to make
the best of ourselves, we must kindle to the very utter
most in all men the will to be, the will to realize all
47
Prayer, and The Lord s Prayer
that is in them ; nay, more, we must kindle even the
appetite for enjoyment, for after all enjoyment is, as
Aristotle says, the crown and accompaniment of every
completed activity, and to develop our faculties is in
the long run to secure the most permanent and deepest
enjoyment. And it is also no doubt true, that this
will to realize ourselves carries us far off from one
another and makes us different. To work at our best
is to work with the greatest amount of individual
difference. We work best when we are least restrained
by the cramping necessity of being like some one elsa
The development of individuality then means the
development of differences, means a world full of strong
and dissimilar modes of operation. Then the question
arises, must strong and unlike individualities be neces
sarily in antagonism ? Can there be no vigour except
competitive vigour, and no development of unlikeness
that is not also a development of hostility ? Now it is
to this question that the better conscience of mankind,
wearied with the waste of life which unlimited com
petition produces, is giving an emphatic No. Every
where men of all sorts are asking, how can we introduce
a spirit of co-operation to supplant or to modify the
spirit of competition ? Thus we are aiming at Boards
of Conciliation between Capital and Labour, which
shall represent to each party that their separate
interests lie not only in the strong organization of each,
but also in the recognition of a common interest over
48
The Lord s Prayer
both. There is more real hope than at any previous
time of the establishment of a system of arbitration, at
least between the two great and predominantly Anglo-
Saxon nations. Once again, when people see some
necessity of life, such as water, manipulated not always
in the interests of the consumer, to the profit of a body
of shareholders in a water company, they are asking
themselves, why should not the municipality (every
where, as has already been done in some places) take
the place of the private company, and let the water be
manipulated in the interests of all ? Tardily, moreover,
lamentably tardily, but still we hope with greater
promise of effectiveness the same class of questions
is being asked in the region of religion, and the anti-
Christian spectacle of rival and competing sects is at
least becoming a burden on the consciences of a greater
number of people. Thus everywhere the old Christian
idea of the body corporate is on the way to a revival.
The body represents unity in diversity ; it results from
the development of the most marked variety of function
in individual limbs, the most marked variety of differ
ences in their methods of working, but all dominated
by one common interest not competing, but co-operat
ing. For the body is one and hath many members,
and all the members of the body, being many, are one
body. If the foot shall say, because I am not the hand
I am not of the body, it is not therefore not of the
body ; and if the ear shall say, because I am not the
49 E
Prayer, and The Lord s Prayer
eye I am not of the body, it is not therefore not of the
body. If the whole body were an eye where were the
hearing ? If the whole were hearing, where were the
smelling ? But now they are many members, but one
body ; and the eye cannot say to the hand I have no
need of thee, or again, the head to the feet I have no
need of you. Nay, much rather, those members of the
body which seem to be more feeble are necessary ; and
those parts of the body which we think to be less
honourable, on these we put on (in the way of dress)
more abundant honour, and our uncomely parts have
more abundant comeliness; whereas our comely parts
have no need. But God tempered the body together,
giving more abundant honour to the parts which
lacked ; that there should be no schism in the body,
but that the members should have the same care one
for another, and where one member suffers all the
members suffer with it, and where one member is
honoured all the members rejoice with it.
This is the divine ideal of the Universe, that each
creature inanimate, animate, rational should find its
joy in realizing its own function, that is, in being the
thing it is meant to be, in experiencing the joy proper
to itself, and in seeing all the other creatures realizing
all their separate functions, while all together contribute
to a common end. No doubt sacrifice, the sacrifice of
one to the other, is more or less knit up into the heart
of this process. But God does not shrink from requiring
50
sacrifice. No doubt gradation is inseparable from
combination, and one must rejoice to be higher, and
another rejoice to be lower. But God has no sympathy
with the desire to excel each the other for vain-glory s
sake. When Dante in Paradise expected to find those
in its lowest places deploring that they were not
higher, he was reproved for introducing an idea of
competition and jealousy altogether subversive of the
life of heaven.
E la sua voluntade e nostra pace.
* God s will is our peace, was the reply of the questioned
spirit. That is the law of heaven, the law of archangels
and angels and just men made perfect, each joyfully
occupying his own place and fulfilling his own function
each obeying, and in obedience free ; free, because he
finds in obedience his essential good. And we pray,
like Richard Hooker on his death-bed, that this law of
heaven may become the law of earth to the over
throw of the principle of mere self-assertion and com
petition, Thy will be done, as in heaven so on earth.
It was for the realizing of this ideal that the Church
was divinely created. Its maxim is, let each man look
not to his own things only, but also to the things of
others ; and its ideal has been again and again realized,
at least, in great and effective measure. In the early
Church, in days when it cost men much to become
Christians, we have a spectacle of happy co-operation,
51
Prayer, and The Lord s Prayer
the like of which the world has never seen equalled.
And, again and again, when the spirit of worldliness
and competition has corrupted the Church at large,
earnest men have gathered themselves together and
formed fresh centres of unselfish life, centres of co
operation. Such were the religious orders, especially
in the West, both of men and women ; such was the
co-operative family life among the Moravians ; such is
to be found in the heart of every Christian parish or
enterprise where the Spirit of God is at work. Every
where there are men and women taxing all their
energies in work, for their own happiness, no doubt,
but also for the common good the good of the whole
body which is the glory of God, for the glory of God
is the living man. But, alas ! the measure in which
we have realized our ideal is nothing compared with
the boundlessness of our failure hitherto. In its own
proper sphere the Church has allowed the spirit of the
world to enter into her, and she has altogether failed
to realize her catholicity by making her power felt in
politics and in commerce. Once again we are waking
to our duty. Once again we pray with more earnest
ness, that the idea of service like Christ s co-operative
service may take the place of selfish ambition and
wasteful competition, Thy will be done, as in heaven so
on earth.
52
The Lord s Prayer
II
The prayer is a prayer against selfishness; it is
equally a prayer against sloth. No doubt, in the
world, and especially in our Anglo-Saxon world, there
is a great deal of energy, but side by side with it there
is a vast deal of sloth. Think of it! The sloth of
intellect ; the sloth which seems to make men unwilling,
for all our increasing education, to read anything longer
than a paragraph in a newspaper with a sensational
headline and perhaps a picture. The sloth of intellect
which, in religious things, is terrified by the appearance
of doubt and difficulty, and imagines that the only sign
of excellence in a religion is to be found in that clear
ness of authoritative dogma which will dispense the
individual from the trouble of thinking. Or again,
sluggishness in prayer, how widespread it is how
paralyzing to one of the richest of human activities !
Or, once more, what sloth there is with regard to the
imagination what a lack of will to regulate effectively
this powerful human faculty ! Thus, instead of its
being a storehouse of dominant ideas, inspiring, con
secrating, and ruling life, it becomes the mere passive
slave of every unclean spectacle, of every foolish sug
gestion, of every profitless day-dream. Once more,
what sluggishness of heart there is ! Where true love
is kindled every faculty brightens; but where the
53
Prayer, and The Lord s Prayer
heart is dead or cold, what paralysis ensues of the
faculties of thinking, and sympathizing, and contriving,
and willing!
Thy will be done, then, is a prayer against sloth.
It is the will sends the renewing nerve
Through flaccid flesh, that faints before the time
it is the will ; the human will, but most effectively the
human will possessed by the divine will, and following
along with it, as with Jesus of Nazareth, in whole
hearted and unconditional obedience to the mind of
God.
Let our imaginations rest, then, on the burning love,
the thrilling knowledge of those dimly known spiritual
beings, archangels and angels ; on the keen joy of vision
which has been obtained by the spirits of just men
made perfect. And let us pray that, with a like effect
iveness, now in our days of darkness and difficulty, an
effectiveness to be crowned at last with a like reward,
God s will may be done, as in heaven so on earth.
And who can tell what an utterly different place the
world would look, if those who do intend to be sincere
Christians would realize the duty of vigorous and
effective willing, vigorous and effective co-operation, to
bring about the kingdom of God in this world ! The
Christian religion is a religion of comfort, and comfort
(confortare), with its Greek original, means first of all
to make strong or to encourage. Religion is to put
54
The Lord s Prayer
heart and courage into us, both to work and to pray,
to co-operate according to the divine will both for the
overthrow of the kingdom of darkness and the establish
ment of the kingdom of God. Thy will be done in
earth as it is in heaven.
55
VII
Give us tbis Dag our Bails 3Brea&
THE first point to notice in this clause of the Lord s
Prayer is its moderation. In the prayer which is
prompted by our natural instinct we ask for everything
we happen to want: we put ourselves first; we are
immoderate in our desires ; we seek to bend the divine
will to our own wishes. In all these respects, as has
been already noticed, the Lord s Prayer puts human
instinct under the strongest check. This prayer for the
supply of our own needs is not allowed to be uttered
till it has been postponed to prayer for the honouring of
the divine name, the coming of the divine kingdom,
and the doing of the divine will ; and till, in all these
respects, the law of heaven has been taken for the law
of human conduct. It is only to state the same fact
in other words, to call attention to the suppression
of individualism which lies in the very words us and
our, words which prevent us praying for anything
for ourselves which we cannot equally request for the
56
The Lord s Prayer
whole society ; and, once more, the same principle finds
expression in the word bread. It is bread/ and
not anything we may happen to like, that we are
allowed to pray for. This, then, is the prayer of the
Christian Church, the prayer which the existing
Christian Church here in England to-day is continually
repeating. Yet it certainly is not an exaggeration to say,
that though there are among us always true Christians
praying this prayer in spirit as well as in letter, yet
a vast number of repetitions of the Lord s Prayer must
be blank hypocrisy ; for it is hypocrisy if the prayer of
our lips is a quite different thing from the prayer of our
hearts. Yet the prayer of our heart is expressed in
what we actually show ourselves to want and to expect
in our ordinary life. Listen, then, to two praying
Christians, who are discussing the marriage of their
son and daughter, and in the process are making a
number of assumptions as to what is the minimum
of wealth on which life can be reasonably conducted.
Look at that other person furnishing a house, or pro
viding for a dinner-party. Think, in short, of all the
things which in ordinary conversation Christians are
ready to say they can t do without. Think of the
money spent in a single rich household on a single
article of luxury like champagne, or a single article of
dress. Now, things which are the actual wants of
actual people are the prayers of their hearts. And if
they cannot possibly be expressed in a petition for daily
57
Prayer, and The Lord s Prayer
bread, then I fear, their saying of the Lord s Prayer is
nothing else than a more or less conscious hypocrisy.
What, then, can daily bread be explained to mean ?
Surely it is all that is necessary for us to make the best
of our faculties. It is nourishment ; and everything
may fairly be called nourishment which can be said to
fertilize and liberate the energies of human nature,
instead of cloying and clogging them. Once grant this,
and it is obvious that very different things are meant
by bread to different people. There is hardly any
luxury which has not its use to stimulate this or that
nature, or to meet this or that exceptional need. The
question whether this or that article of diet or comfort
can be used under the head of daily bread, can be
answered only by answering the question Do I work
the better for it and pray the better for it ? And in
answering this question there are two facts, closely
allied, which have to be kept in mind. The first is,
that comforts very soon reach the point where they
begin to clog instead of liberating human energies. A
venerable statesman has been often heard to remark,
that the things people say they can t do without are
like the pieces of thread with which the Liliputians
bound Gulliver. Each of them could be snapt by
itself, but taken together they bound him more tightly
than strong cords. Nobody, therefore, can find out what
he really needs for his work without constantly testing
himself in giving up things. No one can consider a
58
Tlie Lord s Prayer
number of well-to-do Englishmen without perceiving
that they are materialized ; that is, that the supply
of food and drink and comfort generally dulls their
intellectual and still more their spiritual powers. In
other words, the spirit in them is the slave of the flesh.
Here, then, comes in view the second fact. Fasting
has been historically a principle of Christianity, and
was so in Apostolic Christianity. Rightly stated, the
principle of fasting is but the recognition that the flesh
has in ordinary human life got the upper hand of the
spirit, and that it is time for the spirit to take revenges
upon the flesh, and to assert its mastery. Fasting, like
every other principle, must have its methods and its
rules and its order, or it will fail to take effect ; but I
am concerned only now with the principle, and it is
this The Christian will, from time to time, deliberately
deny himself in lawful comforts, and nourishments of
the body, in order to assert spiritual vitality ; in order
to find out what he can do without ; in order to main
tain the principle that man doth not live by bread
alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the
mouth of God.
Bread, then, is the nourishment necessary to make
the body an effective instrument for fulfilling the
spiritual purpose of our life, or, in other words, to enable
us to make the best of ourselves. And what his bread
ought to consist of the individual can never find out
unless he has steadily in view the encroaching tendency
59
Prayer, and The Lord s Prayer
of the flesh ; unless he is prepared, on the one hand, to
make courageous trials in doing without/ and on the
other hand is prepared thankfully to accept anything in
the way of holiday, or rest, or food, or drink, or comfort,
which reasonable experience shows to be necessary to
keep him in efficiency, and make him vigorous in profit
able industry and in communion with God. The body
is to be a serviceable instrument, and it is a good
creation of God. It is to be the instrument and not
the master, but it is to be kept as an efficient instrument,
and nob maltreated any more than any other of the
creatures of God.
Now when we reflect, we cannot fail to see that, if
over any large area of Christian society the principles
embodied in this prayer were really respected, there
would be plenty of God s gifts for every one s need.
Granted a society in which men would really pray Thy
will be done on earth/ and Give us this day our daily
bread/ and would live with even tolerable consistency
in accordance with their prayer, in that society would
be found a human life which, if it did not perfectly
realize the kingdom of God on earth, would at least be
a foretaste and convincing prophecy of it. It is a good
thing to take a walk and meditate upon such a proposi
tion. It fixes in our minds this conclusion the misery
of the world is manufactured by man. Certainly
To the flame that ruineth mankind,
Man gives the matter, or at least gives wind.
60
The Lord s Prayer
II
Oddly enough, in the simple language of this prayer
appears one of the most difficult words in the New
Testament. The word translated daily probably means
bread for the coming day. It has been recently
suggested, that its occurrence side by side with to-day
is due to the very early use of this prayer by Christians
both morning and evening : that in the morning they
said, Give us our bread to-day/ and in the evening,
Give us our bread for to-morrow. The suggestion
puts us at least on the right line of thought. The
prayer is the prayer of those who are content to depend
from day to day in trustfulness on their Father s love.
When our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount forbade
us to be anxious about food or drink or clothing, what
He forbade was anxiety, not providence. The birds
of the air and the flowers of the field, to which He
looked for examples, all in their unconscious way make
provision. From the time the seed is sown provision is
being made for the growth, and the flowering, and the
fruitage, which are each in turn to come. When the
birds build their nests they are making provision for the
future of themselves and their race. But they do it all
without any anxiety. They do each day the work ot
the day, and expect each day the supplies of the day.
Now granted a like providence, a like industrious work-
61
Prayer, and The Lord s Prayer
fulness, and the prayerful trust in God which is the
spiritual counterpart of their unanxious happiness, and
who can doubt that in ninety-nine cases out of a
hundred the prayer, Give us this day our daily bread,
would be found to be answered. In other words, the
misery of the world, the destitution which we con
tinually hear of, is due either to want of reasonable
provision, or to idleness, luxury, and vice, or to prayer-
less, thankless want of trust. The prayer, Give us
to-day our daily bread, is the prayer of men who are at
once thinking and believing and working.
Ill
I said the word translated daily means properly the
bread for to-morrow! But in old ,days it was very
generally translated super-substantial that is to
say, the bread that is higher than material or in
other words, spiritual bread, the bread of life. So
the prayer became associated with the service of the
Eucharist, with the continual feeding on the Bread of
Life, which is Jesus Christ, very God and very man.
Now, the translation was no doubt wrong. The prayer
is one for physical and not spiritual nourishment. But
yet to the Christian it can never be without the deepest
significance, that the bread of the Spirit is given us in
62
The LorcFs Prayer
common bread ; that the original Eucharist was side by
side with the love-feast, the highest things in closest
connection with the most ordinary. Alas ! the abuses
of the Corinthian Church separated the Eucharist and
the love-feast wide apart. Alas ! that it should have
been necessary to do so. But though it be necessary,
as necessary it is, the principle must never be forgotten
which is embodied in the fact, that it is common bread
which is made to become to us the body of Christ ; and
that the communication to us of Christ s own being,
the communion of His body and blood, was made on
the occasion and under the forms of a fraternal meal.
Thus common eating and drinking* are touched for
the Christian with a sacramental meaning; and the
sharing the good things which God provides for our
nourishment is one chief means of realizing the unity
of the Christian body which is in the one Spirit.
There is no real Christian meal which ought not to be
consecrated with the thought of unity with Christ, and
lifted by the sense of brotherhood and co-operation.
Give us this day our daily bread, the bread for the
body, and through the bread for the body that life of
the soul also which is communion with God and with
our brother men.
So let us pray Give us this day our daily bread.
(7s I it is the we of each household ; the we of each
parish, each town, in which all classes are mingled
together ; it is the we also of the whole Christian
63
Prayer, and The Lord s Prayer
family. Our thoughts when we pray this prayer ought
sometimes to go out to that unhappy community of
Armenians recently butchered and hunted in their
mountain homes, and massacred in thousands in the
streets of Constantinople, and still subject to con
tinual outrages and murders and forced conversions,
while Christian Europe looks on and does nothing,
because the nations of the Christian fellowship are
so jealous of one another, that no one can be allowed
to act without incurring the enmity of the rest. And
we ask ourselves can we pray this prayer for ourselves
and our families and our own country, without a feel
ing, deep-seated in our consciences, that somehow the
terrible but health-giving judgments of God must
fall upon a Christian Europe guilty of this horrible
acquiescence ? If we do find ourselves punished, and
in our distress crying out to a God who seems deaf
or powerless, there is one word of an ancient prophet
which would certainly apply to us, Your sins have
withholden good things from you.
."
64
VIII
3for0fve us our Debts, as we also bat>e
forgiven our Debtors
THERE is no better means of distinguishing true
religion from false, than by ascertaining whether its
desire is to be redeemed from sin, or to be merely
let off from punishment of sin. False religion is
everywhere occupied in persuading its God, by means
of intercessors or expiatory sacrifices or prayers, to let
it off the punishment to which its sins have laid it
open. True religion is never occupied with the
thought of punishment. Indeed, it recognizes that it
is better to be punished when we have done wrong.
What it asks is to be rid of the sin itself, its pollution,
its guilt, and its power. Make me a clean heart, O
God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me
not away from thy presence, and take not thy Holy
Spirit from me. That is always its cry, and the
response is always, I will sprinkle clean water upon
you, and ye shall be clean : a new heart will I give
you, and ye shall be my people, and I will be your
65 F
Prayer, and The Lord s Prayer
God. This being so, we are pulled up short by this
petition in the Lord s Prayer, because at first sight it
seems to express just the view of sin which falls short
of the truth. It represents the sinner as a debtor who
asks to be let off his debts, which, as we know very well,
from common experience, is just the request which has
least moral reality about it, and involves least moral effort.
We may think of sin, first of all, as the taint, or
flaw, or weakness in bur own nature. Considered from
this point of view, like the disease or weakness of the
body, it cries out for nothing else except actual healing,
it admits of no other remedy than that we should
again be made whole and strong and full of life. There
is no possibility here of our dreaming of being let
off without being changed. We can no more be let
off our sins than a diseased heart or a defiled blood
can be ignored or overlooked. Sins must be healed,
and probably by painful remedies.
Secondly, we may think about sin as an offence
against our fellow-men. Selfishness, lust, cruelty, in
justice, malice, dishonesty, are wrongs against society,
and society is quite right in utterly repudiating any
idea of forgiving us these things unless we amend and
show a disposition to practise the contrary virtues,
and make what reparation lies in our power for the
wrong that we have done our fellow-men. There
ought to be no social forgiveness, except where signs
are shown of a new recognition of social duty.
66
The Lord s Prayer
Thirdly, we may regard sin as an offence against God.
The character of sin in this relationship is best under
stood by the wrong which a lawless, rebellious, un
grateful son does to the heart of his father and mother.
The hearts of the parents will yearn over their son in
any case, but they cannot be satisfied with anything
less than some sign of amendment. They will not love
him the less for all his outrages. But he cannot come
back into the fellowship of home-life (except in a
purely external way) unless he shows a change of
heart; that is, sorrow for the wrong he has done
and the grief he has caused, the sort of sorrow that
means amendment for the future a frank recognition
of the laws of home, a loyal obedience to the righteous
will which rules there. Looking at sin in these ways,
we must pray, Heal our inward diseases, or, Give us a
new heart, or, Grant us true conversion of spirit. But
sin may also be regarded from a point of view which,
in the simplest sense, we may call legal. When a
man outrages another s rights, or fails to give him what
is his due, society holds him guilty; regards him as
under an obligation to restore or to make reparation.
And this attitude towards wrong-doing is a reflection
of the mind of God. Sin is an outrage upon God s
rights it makes us a debtor; and the debt we can
never pay, because we cannot undo the wrong that we
have done. Thus, as sin is a debt, the only prayer we
can pray is that it shall be remitted : let us off ow
67
Prayer, and TJie Lord s Prayer
debt. Are we to say that this is a shallow prayer?
Or, occurring as it does in the Lord s Prayer, must we
not alter the question, and ask, Why is this not a
shallow prayer ? I would answer this question thus :
1. The petition is guarded by the place it holds in
the whole. We most naturally put confession of sins
and prayer for forgiveness at the beginning of ser
vices, but it is very noticeable that in the Lord s
Prayer it comes at the end, and to pray the previous
clauses of the prayer ensures in the heart of him who
offers it everything that is most opposed to a shallow
view of forgiveness. No one who has not a changed
heart and a new spirit, no one who has not the gener
osity and nobility of true sonship, can possibly pray
that God s name may be hallowed, and His kingdom
come, and His will be done.
2. The clause is guarded by what follows it As we
have forgiven our debtors. God deals with us as we
deal with our fellow-men. There is no possibility,
therefore, of this prayer allowing any one to suppose
that he can get God to let him off the punishment
of his sins and live in the divine favour, while he
remains selfish and ungenerous towards his fellow-men.
There is no mere insistence upon our rights towards
our fellow-men possible, so long as we retain the hope
that God is not going to insist on His legal rights
towards us. It is only merciful men who can be
forgiven.
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The Lord s Prayer
3. It is evident from all our Lord s teaching in what
sense He would have His disciples pray to have their
offences forgiven. Whom the Lord loveth he chas-
teneth, that is, whom the Lord loveth He punisheth.
So God is recorded by the Psalmist to have dealt with
His saints of old. Thou answerest them, Lord our
God ; thou art a God that forgavest them, though thou
tookest vengeance of their doings/ l So it was with
Moses and Aaron among his priests. Truly whom
the Lord loveth He punisheth. Christ Himself, so far
from being exempted from the punishment of human
sins, even though the sins were not His own, was
conspicuous just for this, that the Lord laid on Him
the iniquity of us all, that is, suffered Him to bear the
consequences of other men s sins.
There are, we may say, two kinds of punishment
for sin. There is the eternal penalty which consists
in alienation from God, and that is over when the
sinful attitude is over. But there is also the temporal
punishment which in the course of nature is so allotted
to sin as to follow naturally from it; and when we
are forgiven, that becomes the healing chastisement
which the penitent heart awaits, with trembling indeed
but also with joy. To have our debts remitted then
does not mean to be let off all the temporal chastise
ment due to our sins, but to have in our hearts the
1 Psalm xcix. 8.
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Prayer, and The Lord s Prayer
consciousness that God has nothing against us that as
He has given us a changed heart, so He has no more
in ~nind the outrages against His majesty and His love
of which in the past we have been guilty.
4. To confess the wrongs we have done to the
righteousness of God, to own that we cannot undo the
past, and then simply to receive of God s undeserved
mercy free forgiveness this is what lays the heart
of man under a special sense of gratitude. There is
no joyfulness or willingness of service more glad than
that of the child who has done wrong and been sorry
for it and has been forgiven, and experiences all the
rebound of gratitude and love. So the absolved sinner
experiences the gratitude of the emancipated heart,
emancipated by the simple act of the divine bounty,
and the gratitude can show itself in nothing but
service.
5. Forgive us our sins. There is no forgiveness
for ourselves unless we are solicitous that others may
be forgiven too. St. John talks about the Christian
when he sees a brother sin a sin not unto death,
asking God for him and thus obtaining for him the
bounty of a fresh gift of spiritual life. 1 Such free
interchange of spiritual gifts from brother to brother
is not possible where the sin is most grievous where
it is the sin unto death ; but where it is, as we say,
1 St. John v. 16.
70
TJie Lords Prayer
a venial sin, there the continual saying of the Lord s
Prayer is the winning of a continual and free remission,
as for our sins so for the sins of others. Would to
God that before we criticize any one of our fellows or
our superiors we would say this prayer for him and for
ourselves, Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive
them that trespass against us.
Once for all the sacrifice of Christ won for men
acceptance with God and forgiveness of their sins.
Into that mystery we will not inquire. But we believe
that we are admitted within the scope of that forgive
ness when we become members of the body of Christ.
Out of that holy fellowship we may indeed, by our
persistent wilfulness, fall. But so long as we abide
in it, we bask altogether in the sunshine of the for
giving love, as a child under the face of his father and
his mother, and if we confess our sins, he is faithful
and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from
all unrighteousness.
71
IX
3Brfn0 us not into Uemptatton, but
oelix>er us from tbe Evil ne
THE first part of this clause has caused a certain
amount of difficulty to thoughtful Christians. For
does not St. James bid us count it all joy when we fall
into divers temptations, knowing that the trial of our
faith worketh patience ? How is it then we pray, Lead
us not into temptation? To this question one may
give a double answer.
1. It has been noticed that our Lord s prayers and
words in the hour of His agony before the Passion have
a close resemblance to some of the clauses of the Lord s
Prayer. Not as I will, but as thou wilt/ Thy will
be done. Watch and pray, that ye enter not into
temptation. 1 And in the prayer following the Last
Supper, Sanctify (hallow) them in the truth. I made
known unto them thy name. I pray that thou
1 St. Matt. xxvi. 39-41.
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The Lord s Prayer
shouldest keep them from the evil one. l This being
so, it is natural to interpret this particular clause in the
Lord s Prayer in the sense of Watch and pray, that
ye enter not into temptation. Temptation is there
treated as the punishment of the carelessness which
neglects to watch and pray. And from this point of
view we should naturally interpret Lead us not into
temptation thus: Suffer us not to live in spiritual
carelessness, so that temptation should come upon us
as a snare to our overthrow. This is a very necessary
prayer. People are very frequently anxious about their
spiritual condition when they actually find themselves
engulfed in temptation, who have been utterly careless
in running into it. If men in general gave real thought
to their truest welfare, it would be impossible for them
to pay so little attention to possible spiritual results in
making their great choices, such as determine largely
the future of their lives. Thus men rush into a profes
sion generally from no other point of view than that of
whether it is likely to pay. Afterwards they find that
their profession subjects their purity or their tem
perance or their honesty to a strain which is too much
for it, and they are full of what is partly complaint and
partly horror. But it might all have been foreseen and
guarded against, if, before the choice of their pro
fession, they had prayed the prayer, Lead us not into
* St. John xvii. 11, 15, 26.
73
Prayer, and The Lord s Prayer
temptation. Exactly the same consideration applies to
investing money or to getting married. They are steps
which in different degrees involve a man s life in new
conditions ; and unless he is spiritually a fool, he will
look well before he leaps what bearing his new
conditions will have upon his life towards God. Exactly
the same truth applies to our reading. It is all very
well to determine not to be narrow in the literature we
read, all very well to know the ways of the world, and
to ascertain what people who are not Christians have to
say for themselves and against our Creed ; but if there
is such a thing as spiritual temptation, and a personal
responsibility to preserve our innocence and our faith,
it is quite certain that there is a way of embarking in
the literature of sin and the literature of unbelief which
is precisely like walking into an enemy s country in
time of war unarmed and unprepared. To pray, Lead
us not into temptation/ then, involves a corresponding
course of action in preparing ourselves against it.
2. But, after all, this explanation of the clause does
not exhaust its meaning. It may be God s will that we
should not have our daily bread, and yet we have just
prayed for it in a previous clause. Thus also it may be
God s will that we should be tempted and tried, and yet
we may pray that it may not be necessary. We may
then, perhaps, paraphrase the prayer Father, if it be
possible, let the cup of temptation pass from me with
out my drinking it. Some temptation is necessary for
74
The Lord s Prayer
us, but this or that particular temptation may not be
necessary, and it may only need a little prayer to enable
us to escape it. The wise man knows that he is weak.
He can fight, indeed, when fighting is required of him,
and find his strength in God ; but he will not run into
temptation if he can avoid it. He will pray, for others
as for himself, Lead us not into temptation.
II
And all this precaution is necessary because, as
St. Paul says, we wrestle not against flesh and blood,
but against principalities, against powers, against the
world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces
of wickedness in heavenly places. 1 In other words, the
temptations that come from visible and tangible sources
draw their strength from a source which is unseen.
Behind visible foes there is an invisible; behind the
visible opposition of evil men there is an invisible prince
of darkness and an unseen host of fallen spirits in
truding themselves into the highest things, into the
heavenly places. I am quite sure that our Lord speaks
so confidently and so frequently of the existence of evil
spirits that a sober Christian cannot doubt their reality,
1 Eph. vi. 12.
75
Prayer, and The Lord s Prayer
and I feel sure also, that their existence interprets a
good deal which would otherwise be unintelligible in
our spiritual experience. When thoughts of poisonous
evil, distinct and vivid, are shot into our mind, like
suggestions from a bad companion ; when a tempest of
pride and rebellion against God surges over our soul ;
when voices of discouragement and despair tell us that
it is no use trying, and that human nature is hopelessly
bad ; when a sinful course of action presents itself to us
in a wholly false aspect until we have committed our
selves to it, and then strips off its disguises and shows
itself in its true colours, in its ugliness, in its treachery,
in its infamy in all such experiences we do well to
remember that, besides the weakness or pollution of
our own flesh, and besides the solicitations of the world,
there is the adversary, the devil/ that is, the slanderer
of God and of our human nature and the father of
lies/ actually at work to seduce our wills and sophisti
cate our intelligences. Moral evil, let us never forget,
exists nowhere except in rebellious wills, human or
diabolic ; and however great the mystery which wraps
the ultimate destiny of such rebellious wills, at least
we know that their power will have an end, that they
will be put manifestly and openly under the feet of
Christ, and that the power which by prayer we win
here and now, suffices on each occasion to give us
strength to triumph againt the devil, as well as the
world and the flesh, even as Christ triumphed. For
76
The Lord s Prayer
this is the victory that overcometh the world, even
our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but
he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God ? Yes,
God will not suffer us on any occasion to be tempted
above that we are able, but will with the temptation
also make a way to escape, that we may be able to
bear it 1
1 1 John v. 4 ; 1 Cor. x. 13.
77
[for Ubfne is tbe Iktngoom, tbe {power
ano tbe (Blors, for Ever ano Ever]
THESE words do not form part of the original text of
the Lord s Prayer. They are omitted accordingly in
the Revised Version of St. Matt. vi. 13. A doxology,
however, closely similar to this was attached to the
Lord s Prayer, in the custom of Syrian Christians,
before the end of the first century: It is based on
David s doxology l : Thine, O Lord, is the . . . power,
and the glory, and . . . the kingdom, and it expresses
nobly indeed the reason why we pray. God our Father,
who is in heaven, has, in spite of all that appears to the
contrary, always and everywhere the kingdom, and the
power, and the glory. Whatever royalty or power or
glory the kingdom of evil seems to have to our eyes, as
we contemplate the prevalence of lust and worldliness
and cruelty and selfishness all around us, is in truth
1 1 Chron. xxix. 11.
78
The Lord s Prayer
but a transitory show, like the imposing glory of
Nebuchadnezzar s image of gold in the plain of Dura,
of the province of Babylon. There is no real power in
it, because its doom is spoken and its overthrow is
certain. Therefore there is only one true refuge and
strength, and that is God, and only one thing worth
having, and that is the life according to God, the life of
the Kingdom of God.
II
I have come to the end of this brief explanation of
the Lord s Prayer, and I would not add anything, were
it not that I have just read in the newspaper a remark
able instance of the difference which I spoke of in an
earlier paper between the prayer of instinct and the
prayer which is in the name of Christ the Lord s
Prayer. It is well known that Australian primary
education has been, speaking generally, purely secular.
But recently a much-beloved inspector in South
Australia was lying on his death-bed, and an anonymous
advertisement in the newspapers, addressed to school
masters, brought it about that one minute before or
after regular school hours on a certain day, the children
were assembled and requested to repeat off a black
board the words, Our Father which art in heaven,
79
Prayer, and The Lord s Prayer
grant that our dear master and beloved friend . . . may
be restored to health. Now such a prayer is a remark
able instance of the way in which at any time of
imminent calamity the human instinct of prayer will
re-assert itself. But it is also a proof that the human
instinct does not reach to the point of offering the
prayer in Christ s name. The prayer of human instinct
is always, Give me to-day what I so sorely want/
whereas the prayer which is in the name of Christ
starts always from God s point of view, and puts the
special need of the individual, of the class, of the
country, in its true subordination to the will of God
and to the interest of His kingdom. A detached
prayer for something we want, apart from any wider
or diviner point of view, can never be a prayer in the
name of Christ.
May the good God teach us all to pray the Lord s
Prayer and the whole of it with heart and will and
intelligence and voice, in private and in public, in
Eucharist and in penitence, for ourselves, for the whole
Church, and for all mankind. For he who is ever truly
learning to say the Lord s Prayer cannot be far from the
kingdom of Heaven, and to say it perfectly is to be in
truth a heavenly being already.
WELLS GARDNER, BARTON AND CO., PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS.
/
J3V Gore. Charles,
210 Prayer and the Lord s
.G684 Prayer
1 DS2QQ
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