PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 BV 230 .S73 1883 
 
 Stanford, Charles, 1823-1886 
 
 The Lord's prayer 
 
 ..\4?S 
 
^be Iboueebolt) library of lEyposition. 
 
 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 
 
T H E 
 
 LORD'S PRAYER 
 
 / 
 
 CHARLES STANFORD, D.D., 
 
 NEW YORK: MACMILLAN & CO. 
 1883. 
 
\>^ « — 
 
 APR 8 IBoo ^ 
 ^^^ _ , ,A 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The following homilies were in substance first 
 preached in the ordinary course of the author's 
 ministry, and have since been written out from 
 rough notes, or from memory. In November 
 1 88 1, while engaged in thus getting them ready 
 for the press, it became needful for him to con- 
 sult an oculist, and his sentence was, " Glaucoma: 
 fast fading sight." In consequence of this, much 
 of the manuscript has been written by him with 
 shut eyes, and much set down at his dictation 
 by the hand that has helped him in all other 
 things. 
 
 "All is said, and we come too late."* Nearly 
 two centuries are gone since this remark was 
 penned ; and if it had some truth in it then, 
 how much more now, especially as to the great 
 subject of this small book ! 
 
 The same argument for silence would, how- 
 
 * Jean de la Bruycre. 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 ever, have equal strength against the discussion 
 of any other vital subject of Christian truth or 
 duty, and although the Lord's Prayer has al- 
 ready been so fully discussed by men of the 
 highest worth, even now, any Christian who, 
 as in this instance, utters his own living 
 thoughts about it, in his own natural way, and 
 with a simple wish to honour God, may hope 
 thus to be of some service to his fellow Chris- 
 tians. May this grace be given. 
 
 Charles Stanford. 
 
 Camberwell, April 1883. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAl'. 
 
 I. Jesus, the Teacher of Prayer 
 
 "Lord, teach us to pray." 
 
 II. The Lord's Prayer given as a Patierx 
 
 "After this manner therefore pray ye." 
 
 III. The Invocation 
 
 "Our Father which art in heaven." 
 
 IV. The First Petition • . . . 
 
 '■ Hallowed be Thy Name." 
 
 V. The Second Petition 
 
 "Thy kingdom come." 
 
 VI. The Third Petition 
 
 "Thy will be done in earth." 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I 
 
 53 
 
 84 
 
 112 
 
 130 
 
 VII. The Fourth Petition . . , .156 
 
 " Give us our daily bread." 
 
viii CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 VIII. The Fifth Petition . . . • i79 
 
 " Forgive us our debts." 
 
 IX. The Sixth Petition . . . • 203 
 
 " Lead us not into temptation." 
 
 X. the Seventh Petition . . • • 229 
 
 "Deliver us from evil." 
 
JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. 
 
 "Lord, teach us to pray."— Luke xi. i. (Authorized ahd 
 {Revised Version. 
 
 This discourse is simply introductory. Only in 
 the smallest degree does it profess to offer notes 
 on any passage in the Lord's Prayer, or>n any 
 of its historical circumstances ; yet it is hoped 
 that, by the blessing of the Highest, it may 
 help to tune some spirits for the thoughts that 
 follow, and waken some hearts into sympathy 
 with the lessons that Christ is about to teach, 
 by showing from the Scriptures in general, these 
 two things: — 
 
 I. Why Jesus is to be regarded as the Teacher 
 of prayer, 
 
 II. How He teaches. 
 
 I. We have to show wJiy Jesus is to be re- 
 garded as the Teacher of Prayer ? 
 
 It should be taken for granted that knowing 
 how to pray is the first of all essentials. Men 
 may know, or think they know, how to discuss 
 questions of Divine metaphysics, and may talk 
 as if they thought themselves " privy councillors 
 A 
 
2 JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. 
 
 to the King of kings," but, after all, without a 
 knowledge of prayer, they have only a know- 
 ledge of surfaces. God is still a secret ; a veil 
 hides the mercy seat, and though they may claim 
 to know all about the cabinet of Gospel truth, 
 with all its treasury of things " new and old," 
 they only know the outside of it ; the door is 
 locked, and there is no key. Yet no one need 
 "perish for lack of this knowledge." If we 
 want information, we may have it. 
 
 There was once a man in Palestine who said 
 that He was the Son of God, and what He did, 
 proved that what He said was true. Of Him 
 it was written by the pen of the Holy Ghost, 
 " No man hath seen God at any time ; the only 
 begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, 
 He hath declared Him." When He had lived 
 the three years which made visible the eternity 
 of unseen Divine love, had spoken out the 
 simple, great, creative words of eternal life, and 
 had wrought out, by the sacrifice of Himself, 
 the one plan for restoring the bond which sin 
 had broken between the Maker and the made, 
 He carried our nature alive and uninjured right 
 through the death of the cross, — still in the 
 body, though changed into a body of glory ; He 
 then went up into the throne of mediation, and 
 there He ever lives to bestow what here He 
 died to procure. 
 
 When we would know how to pray, we, like 
 
JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. 3 
 
 the first disciples, think that if anyone can tell 
 us, He can. It is plain from the sequel to their 
 request, that they were not only right in making 
 it, but right in making it to Him, and that we 
 therefore shall be right in repeating it. He is 
 the Teacher of prayer. This is His business. 
 Now He is ascended. His disciples are always 
 learning to pray, and He is always teaching. 
 
 No ! some will say, this teaching is the pro- 
 vince, not of the Son, but of the Holy Ghost. 
 But not a single instance do we find in all the 
 New Testament of a request for instruction 
 made to the Holy Ghost. It is not to the 
 Spirit that disciples may go with the petition — 
 "Lord, teach us to pray." In all our approaches 
 to the Infinite Unseen, we have first to do with 
 Jesus ; every prayer must reach His ear before 
 we have the answer to it ; like Stephen, like 
 Paul, like those who followed Him during 
 His earthly life, it is still our delightful right to 
 speak out all our fears, all our cares, and all 
 our questions, to Him as to our present Lord, 
 with this difference only — that He is not with 
 us as He was with them, veiled in a human form.* 
 When we speak to Him, we speak to the Spirit, 
 for the Spirit is in Him, and in Him as the 
 
 * That human form, having answered the ends for 
 which it was taken, would, if still retained on earth, be 
 but a veil before His divine glory, Sia rod KarcnreTdix/xaTos, 
 tovt'' ^crrt, ttjs aapKhs duroO. — Heb. x. 20. 
 
4 JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER, 
 
 Head of the Church, that He may give out 
 holy influences. It is as much as ever one of 
 His functions and part of His work as our 
 Saviour to be the Teacher of prayer, and He 
 teaches by the agency of the Spirit — of the 
 Spirit of whom it is written — "He shall not 
 speak of Himself, He shall glorify Me." " It 
 is the Spirit that quickeneth." "The Spirit 
 helpeth our infirmities, for we know not how to 
 pray as we ought, but the Spirit Himself maketh 
 intercession for us with groanings which cannot 
 be uttered, and He that searcheth the heart, 
 knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because 
 He maketh intercession for the saints according 
 to the will of God." * 
 
 II. Next, let us enquire how He teaches. We 
 must distinguish between agency and instru- 
 mentality. The agent is One — that is, Jesus, 
 by the Holy Spirit's influence ; the instruments 
 are many — and we now propose to glance at 
 some of the many instruments through which this 
 influence works, in order that we may answer the 
 question before us. 
 
 I. He sometimes begins to teach us by 
 means of an overheard prayer. The first neces- 
 sity in the process of teaching us is, that there 
 should be roused in us the wish to learn. The 
 sinner never anticipates the Saviour. He begins 
 to teach before we begin to ask Him, and it is 
 * Rom. viii. 26, 27 {Revised Version). 
 
JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. 5 
 
 at His own mystic prompting that we pray to 
 be taught. The instrument of this prompting 
 is frequently an overheard prayer. It was so 
 in the chapter of events to which the text be- 
 longs. 
 
 " And it came to pass that, as He was pray- 
 ing in a certain place," I think it was in secret, 
 "when He ceased, one of His disciples said 
 unto Him, Lord, teach us to pray." 
 
 John Bunyan, telling the story of his pilgrims, 
 says in one passage, "Now, when they were 
 almost at the end of the ground, they perceived 
 that a little before them was a solemn noise as 
 of one that was much concerned. So they went 
 on, and looked before them, and behold they 
 saw, as they thought, a man upon his knees, 
 with his hands and eyes lift up, and speaking, 
 as they thought, earnestly to one that was 
 above. They drew nigh, but could not tell what 
 he said, so they went softly till he had done. 
 When he had done, he got up, and began to 
 run towards the Celestial City." 
 
 If I read aright the short notes that Luke has 
 left us, the disciples, on the occasion here noti- 
 fied, overheard the secret prayers of God's Holy 
 One ! The deep impression left on me is, that 
 there was not only something extraordinary in 
 the prayer itself, but in the circumstance that 
 they heard it — that it was not a family prayer, 
 such as, doubtless, they had already many a 
 
6 JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. 
 
 time heard Him utter, and in which they had 
 taken part, but one in which they could not take 
 part, and with which mortals could have nothing 
 to do — one in which He was terribly alone, 
 gloriously alone — one which made them feel 
 that they had never prayed before, and had now 
 to begin learning. If, in old time, a man with- 
 out meaning it had overheard^ the secret prayer 
 of Jacob, when, under the stars, he wrestled 
 with the "Traveller Unknown ;" if a man had 
 overheard that prayer of Elijah which shut the 
 heavens ; or that which, three years after, opened 
 them again ; if a man had overheard the prayer 
 of Daniel in the night when he was left with 
 the tremendous lions ; if a man had lost himself 
 in the Temple, and had somehow got shut 
 within the curtains of the Holy Place, so that 
 he oversaw the secret glory flame out, and over- 
 heard the secret, lonely priest pray — what would 
 such overhearings have been in comparison with 
 this ! No seer has told us how it came to pass, 
 but our minds seem just now to have a vision 
 of it. Jesus has been praying in the mountain 
 all night. In the morning His disciples go out 
 to meet Him as He comes down. They are 
 pushing up through the dewy leaves, and round 
 by the boulders, when — hush ! 
 
 There, in " a certain place," is Jesus, praying. 
 Suddenly they feel as if they had been caught 
 up into the third heaven, and were hearing 
 
JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. 7 
 
 " unspeakable words, not lawful for man to 
 utter." It seems to them that they have no 
 right to be there, and they try to step softly 
 away, but a power, not their own, holds them 
 like a hand, and with a fearful joy their thrilled 
 and lifted spirits hear the prayer all through. 
 " Whether in the body or out of the body," 
 whether rich or poor, whether in trouble or in 
 joy, they cannot tell. They are carried quite 
 out of themselves. Jesus is not in their world. 
 We read that when He ceased, "one of the 
 disciples said. Lord, teach us to pray." * 
 
 No wonder ! Such a prayer as that will 
 never more be heard on this our star. We 
 must die before we can see the face of Jesus, as 
 He now is, or hear His voice like " the sound 
 of glory ringing in our ears." But we still have 
 his spiritual presence, and in a great sense He 
 is still on earth incarnate — incarnate by His 
 grace — incarnate now not in one form only, 
 but in millions. His Spirit being still with 
 us, still we may hear Him pray through human 
 lips. 
 
 Among the many surprises by which He 
 
 * In speaking of the prayer overheard by the disciples, 
 as one of our great Intercessor's own solitary prayers, 
 the preacher only presumes to give his own view of what 
 was probable. Of course, others have an equal right to 
 make a different statement, but no one must speak with 
 positiveness. 
 
JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. 
 
 wakes in us the wish to pray, such an overheard 
 prayer is still one. Some of you can bear 
 witness to this. There is a man whose first 
 wish to pray was prompted by the praying life 
 of ^ his mother. There is a man, a father in 
 Israel now, whose first wish to pray was 
 prompted by the overheard prayers of an old 
 farm servant, as he knelt amidst corn-sacks and 
 under cob-webbed rafters, yet as before the lone 
 Majesty of majesty. There is a man whose 
 first wish to pray was prompted by the over- 
 heard prayers of his own little child. " Little 
 children," we have been told by a great sage, 
 " are professors in Christ's college." Sometimes, 
 when you open the book of wonderful things, 
 intending to teach your child, he will suddenly 
 teach you. Sometimes he will ask you precisely 
 the right questions — the next thing to knowing 
 precisely the right answers. SomxCtimes he will 
 pierce the centre of some great truth with start- 
 ling ease and directness ; and sometimes while 
 he is talking to his Heavenly Father with 
 artless, fearless faith, and with quaint, loving 
 prattle, adding a prayer of his own to that he 
 has been taught to say — he makes you, old 
 Christian as you are, ashamed to find how much 
 you have to learn, and how far you are from the 
 secret place of the Most High. Though there 
 may for the moment be a smile on the lip, t\ ere 
 will be a tear in the eye and a prayer in the 
 
JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. 9 
 
 heart, making the words leap out ahuost before 
 you are aware, " Lord, teach me to pray." 
 
 2. Jesus teaches us to pray by oitr troubles. 
 " Head over all things to the church," one 
 function of His mediating love is to rule and 
 sanctify events, sending through them to human 
 hearts the memories of His truth and the forces 
 of His Spirit. In this part of His saving work 
 it is His way to use trouble as an incitement to 
 prayer, and so teaches how to pray. We shall 
 not be understood to mean that every cry to 
 God in trouble is an outforce of Christ's teaching 
 Spirit. In many an instance such a cry is only 
 instinctive, like the cry of the sea birds in a 
 storm. 
 
 " There is no God," the foolish saith ; 
 But none, " there is no sorrow," 
 And Nature, oft the cry of Faith, 
 In bitter need will borrow. 
 
 " Nature in an agony is no atheist." Once, in a 
 case known to me, a man who had argued him- 
 self into the most self-complacent materialism 
 had a great affliction ; the blow broke him 
 down ; nature was too strong for his mere 
 theories, and looking round on the silent com- 
 pany of those who had come to comfort him, 
 he said, " perhaps there is a God — somewhere — 
 pray, somebody ! " Once, a man whose very 
 name had passed into a proverb of sarcastic 
 infidelity, when in a crisis of trouble, cried, " O 
 
lO JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. 
 
 God, have mercy ! " This was no new thing in 
 the history of souls. Five hundred years before 
 the words " Lord, teach us to pray " were spoken, 
 a poet penned this similar story, — "When the 
 Grecian forces hotly pursued our host, and we 
 must need venture over the great river Strymon, 
 frozen then, but beginning to thaw, and a hundred 
 to one we had all died for that thaw, with my 
 own eyes I saw many of those gallants whom I 
 had heard before so boldly maintain there was 
 no God, everyone upon his knees and devoutly 
 praying that the ice might hold till they got over." 
 Perhaps before the Son of God came into this 
 world as the Son of man, He did by virtue of 
 His yet unrevealed expiation, and by the influ- 
 ence of His mysterious spirit, not yet formally 
 inaugurated, speak to men in times of the power, 
 or of the tender listening sensibility, or of the 
 yearning after God, incited by trouble, and by 
 means of this trouble began to strive with them, 
 thus in som.e degree teaching them to pray. 
 We know He does so now. Almost all our 
 Ebenezers have been set up, like the memorable 
 one of old, in some place out of which trouble 
 compelled us to cry for help, and in the acute 
 instant of that cry we said our first lesson. 
 After a time of terror, John Newton wrote, 
 " About this time I began to know that there is 
 a'God who hears and answers prayer." * After 
 Letter to Rev. Mr Haweis, January 19, 1763. 
 
JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. I I 
 
 such a time you might make the Hke memoran- 
 dum. The time when the soul seems to be 
 slipping off some cliff of life, or going over the 
 pitch of some dread Niagara, or the time when 
 all standing ground seems about to open, or the 
 time when going down to " do business in deep 
 waters," your ship seems about to split — such is 
 often the agony point of time when the soul is 
 surprised into its first prayer. There is beautiful 
 order in the very hurricane of trial, and the 
 calm Jesus is in the very heart of the cyclone 
 teaching that prayer. The moment of love un- 
 speakable, intolerable, alone ; the moment when, 
 thrilling at the touch of a clay hand, or the 
 sight of a dim, still face, done with time ; the 
 moment when the heart was weak as a breaking 
 wave, and all the world seemed to snap like a 
 touched bubble, when all the use seemed to die 
 out of you, and yet you had to live somehow, 
 was the moment perhaps when you first felt a 
 prayer moving within you. It came without 
 any call of yours, but in truth it was the Saviour 
 talking in your heart, and teaching you to pray. 
 Sad to say, after such an initial moment, and 
 when a praying life has been startled into exist- 
 ence, that life will have its fits of apathy or 
 levity, making it needful that it should be 
 startled again. The levity of the Londoners in 
 old time, whose churches were full during the 
 scaring visits of the plague, but empty when it 
 
12 JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. 
 
 was gone, originated the proverb now long out 
 of use, " No prayer, no paternoster." In the 
 spring of the year 1588, when the Spanish 
 Armada was expected, all England seemed to 
 be alive with prayer, and, says an old annalist, 
 " it might have been written in golden letters 
 over the door of every sanctuary in the land, 
 cor 111121111, via tma ; but when the fear was over, 
 and the year grew old, the prayers grew cold." 
 Do such public facts seem to have their reflec- 
 tions in the facts of our own secret history } 
 Are we, with all our evangelical daylight, dull 
 to God as were the people of the Gothic ages .-' 
 Are we such unconscious materialists that we 
 only have a life of spiritual intensity and realis- 
 ing prayer when terror knocks us down, or when 
 trouble desolates our outward lot .'' Must it be 
 said of us, " Lord, in trouble they have visited 
 Thee," " They poured out a prayer when Thy 
 chastening was upon them ; " and must we add 
 the life of prayer began to droop with the return 
 of prosperity .-' Then we shall have to find that 
 " trials give new life to prayer." The Lord will 
 repeat the lesson. Somehow we must learn it, 
 and if we will learn by no other way, it must 
 be by trouble. This principle will account for 
 many a dispensation that we have been accus- 
 tomed to call mysterious. If we can find no 
 other reason for it, we can almost always find 
 this one, that it makes us pray. When the 
 
JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. I 3 
 
 elements of true piety, which are the elements 
 of true prayer, have become hardened in a 
 worldly atmosphere, they are brought into fusion 
 again by the fire of adversity, all your glowing 
 soul is " melted within you because of trouble," 
 and flows forth to God ; and what is this but a 
 process by which Christ is teaching you to 
 pray ? 
 
 Old English divines, in homely dramatic 
 fashion, sometimes used a certain passage in 
 Old Testament story as a parable to expound 
 how the Lord of our dull reluctant spirits makes 
 them pray. A certain Eastern prince once rode 
 up to a certain farmer's gate and said, " Come 
 out, I would speak with thee ! " The farmer took 
 no notice. Again the prince cried out, " Come 
 out ! " There was still no notice. " Come 
 out ! " he shouted ; and when there was still 
 no notice taken of his call, he flung a lighted 
 brand over the gate into the dry, rustling barley. 
 Then the man (his name was Joab) came out 
 and said, " Wherefore hast thou set my barley- 
 field on fire .'' " The reason was not far to fetch, 
 the prince had thus gained his end, and had got 
 the sullen man out for an interview. We may 
 question the taste of this apologue, and say that 
 it is almost an act of irreverence to weave out 
 from the fact of a man's fury a lesson of God's 
 love ; but, at least, no one can mistake its point, 
 and no one can deny its truth. No doubt, when 
 
14 JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. 
 
 we will not consent to an interview, man alone 
 with God alone, God often lights up a great fire 
 of affliction. He makes "burning instead of 
 beauty." He begins to burn down some " dear 
 delight " that we would most fondly cherish, or 
 some possession that we had set our hearts 
 upon ; then we, who had shut ourselves up from 
 Him, come out ; we who had dropped into a 
 habit of indolence, and had become unwilling 
 to offer energetic prayer, are stirred to pray at 
 last ; and it may be said of the disciple whose 
 praying life, long declining, is thus quickened 
 by trouble, as was said in an ancient poem of a 
 certain hero in trouble, " Out of his heart there 
 poured a mighty cry." So the Lord teaches us 
 to pray. 
 
 3. Jesus teaches prayer by revealing Himself 
 as the one medium of prayer. This He does, 
 first by the letter, next by the spirit of His 
 instructions. By the letter, we mean the 
 language. If we would know the Christian 
 theory of sin, and the Christian conception of 
 prayer, we go to the Fountain-head, and ponder 
 the language of Him in whom all Christian life 
 begins. He says to us at once, " I am the way, 
 and the truth, and the life, no man cometh to 
 the Father but by Me." "Whatsoever ye shall 
 ask the Father in My name, that will I do, that 
 the Father may be glorified in the Son." All 
 His other instructions are built on these lines. 
 
JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. 1 5 
 
 When we enter His school, the school-book 
 which He puts into our hands has, for its central 
 peculiarity, the doctrine that He is the one 
 avenue by which a sinner's prayers reach God, 
 and that He is so by virtue of His atoning 
 sacrifice. This principle of our acceptance 
 through Him is awfully told in the word "blood" 
 — the " red word " — the word which we would 
 only utter with a tremble of reverence — the 
 word which spoken lightly in our hearing, even 
 by a preacher, makes a hush in our spirits, a 
 wish to cover our faces, and a fear that would 
 cry " Holy, holy, holy ! " This word meets us 
 in almost every page of the law, and is as much 
 to be seen in the plain statements of the New 
 Testament as in the typical pictures of the Old. 
 If we have fellowship with Him who is "the 
 Light," "the blood of Jesus Christ His Son 
 cleanseth us from all sin ; " if we would " draw 
 nigh to God," we " draw nigh by the blood of 
 Christ ; " if " we have boldness to enter into the 
 holiest," it is "by the blood of Jesus, by the new 
 and living way." 
 
 We are told by doubters of the Atonement 
 that this is only poetry, and that the " blood of 
 Jesus Christ " is only a phrase used to give out 
 the general idea that Jesus Christ does in some 
 way cleanse the soul and make it holy. But 
 this is no mere poetry ! Poetry takes its laws 
 from Nature. Poetry delights in the beautiful ; 
 
I 6 JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. 
 
 does Nature suggest the imagery of Leviticus ? 
 Is blood beautiful ? Does blood in the battle- 
 field make that which it washes whiter than 
 snow ? Sprinkled on the golden mercy-seat of 
 old, did it make the gold flash ? or on the book, 
 did it make its leaves clean ? or on the vessels 
 of the sanctuary, did it take out the stains of 
 service ? Is not its red, wet mark, a foul thing ? 
 and do not men sometimes turn sick, faint, and 
 dark at the sight of it ? Mere man's poetry of 
 purity never created this emblem. Poetry made 
 the murderess in Macbeth look at her hand, 
 shiver, and cry as against the intolerable — 
 " Out, damned spot ! Out, I say ! One, two, 
 . . . There's the smell of the blood still ! All 
 the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this 
 little hand. Oh, oh, oh ! " If poetry had selected 
 a symbol of cleansing, the symbol would not 
 have been blood, but water. Water is the 
 universal solvent, purity making purity ; the 
 crystal beauty, beauty. Used by the Only 
 Wise as a word for teaching lost souls the way 
 back home, it must point to sacrificial cleansing, 
 and its use all through the Bible would con- 
 found our reason unless as the sign for sacrifice. 
 Once an inspired interpreter speaking of the 
 blood that his hearers were looking at, when in 
 attendance at the Temple services said, " The 
 blood is the life 1 " How ? He must have 
 meant life not in the body, but out of it ; life 
 
JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. I 7 
 
 which, being then out of the body, implied the 
 death of the body — " a life laid down." Jesus, 
 fulfilling the words, " I lay down my life for the 
 sheep," fulfilled the typical meaning of " the 
 blood." The blood " shed," or " poured out," or, 
 " offered in sacrifice," was his very life, " shed," 
 or " poured out," or " offered in sacrifice," life for 
 life. In the Divine plan of things, it is only for 
 the sake of this offering, that the sinner, and so 
 the sinner's prayers, can be acceptable. 
 
 Pleading this, though once banished out of 
 sight and speech from God as his Father, he 
 may now " come with boldness to the throne of 
 grace." Doubtless the Atonement has endless 
 aspects heavenward and earthward, and glorious 
 ramifications of meaning that open into infinity. 
 It is not to be supposed that the few proof texts 
 that we are accustomed to quote — precious as 
 they are as exquisite definitions, short sum- 
 maries, or watch-words of telling brevity, were 
 ever intended to exhaust or explain the whole 
 wonder ; but many of these, while they say little 
 about its influence beyond our immediate 
 necessity for it, and nothing about reasons, state 
 the plan of the Gospel with such plainness, that 
 the simplest child in the nursery, or the poorest 
 man at the crossing, may understand enough of 
 it to rest all his weight on it and be saved — 
 enough to use it as that which shall surely carry 
 his prayers up into heaven — enough for practical 
 B 
 
t8 JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. 
 
 purpose — enough for the present, all that there 
 is now time for. You may have the teaching 
 of the latter to perfection, yet be far from 
 mastering the secret of acceptable prayer. It is 
 the heart that must pray ; the heart must be the 
 real scholar. When Christ teaches, it is the 
 heart that is the critic ; the heart that rebels. 
 Out of the heart comes the voice that cries — 
 Why should prayer by way of Christ's sacrifice 
 be the standing order of salvation .? Why 
 should I come to God this way t Why will not 
 another way do as well t If I come somehow, 
 what does it matter how } It is the heart that 
 infects the conviction of the intellect ; but some- 
 times, when the creed of the intellect is that of 
 the Epistle to the Romans, the creed of the 
 heart may be heathen, and under words of 
 Christian truth there may slumber the hope of 
 being heard, not as a sinner by the rights of 
 Christ, but by virtue of some right thing of your 
 own. In a recent voyage an iron gun was in 
 such a position on board that it drew aside the 
 needle of the compass, and kept it from point- 
 ing quite truly; the effect was, that, spite of 
 skilful seamanship, the ship nearly ran upon a 
 rock. Owing to the iron in the heart, conscience, 
 the compass of the soul, will often deviate, and 
 your prayer may get into a wrong course. 
 Christ can change that iron, and so practically 
 teach you the right. Each tried Christian is a 
 
JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. IQ 
 
 witness to this. More than one who listens to 
 me now might make the confession, Long after 
 I had thought myself a Christian, I failed to 
 appreciate the mediatorial element in the 
 groundwork of prayer, and there was a certain 
 slight of Christ in my habits of devotion, then, 
 by the Holy Spirit, who comes in the name and 
 place of Christ, and whose province is, not to 
 speak of Himself, but to take of the things of 
 Christ and show them to us, Christ taught my 
 heart, dissolving my doubts, melting my pride, 
 charming me into sympathy with His own way 
 of saving me, and inspiring in me a spirit of 
 total surrender, until I could say, "Jesus, I see 
 it all now, it is all beautifully right. Thou hast 
 undertaken my cause for me. Joyfully do I 
 give up to Thee, and live in Thee. In Thee I 
 appear before God in prayer, in Thee I stand 
 accepted." 
 
 4. Jesus teaches us to pray by making His oivii 
 Spirit the spirit of mtr lives. That indwelling 
 Spirit will make your life a prayer, so that pray- 
 ing words will become only some of its natural 
 expressions. The most loving Christians, how- 
 ever, have their dull seasons, when the soul is 
 sadly under-vitalized, and has to cry, " I cleave 
 to the dust, quicken me, according to Thy 
 Word." 
 
 Then, prayers seem like dead things. The 
 suppliant has thought of the right petitions, and 
 
20 JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. 
 
 given them the right shape, but seems unable 
 to give them wing. There is an ancient story 
 about Christ's childhood to the efifect that, 
 one day when He was with other children, they, 
 in their play, made some clay into the shape of 
 birds, and that the child Jesus gave life to 
 these clay birds, making them fly. 
 
 My prayer-bird was cold— would not away, 
 Although I set it on the edge of the nest. 
 Then I bethought me of the story old— 
 Love-fact, or loving fable, thou knowest best- 
 How, when the children had made sparrows of clay, 
 Thou mad'st them birds, with wings to flutter and fold ; 
 Take, Lord, my prayer in Thy hand, and make it pray. 
 
 So sings George Macdonald, although he has 
 not yet given his song to the world. " Beautiful ! " 
 we cry. When we have shaped our prayers — 
 and yet, somehow they will not rise— let us offer 
 the words over again, and wait on Him who is 
 our life, to breathe Himself into them and give 
 them wing ; only let us never forget that, first 
 or last, the life He puts into our prayers He 
 first puts into us. He makes them alive, by 
 first making us alive, and so teaches us to pray. 
 
 As we speak, a recollection strikes us of 
 certain vivid words of His which compel us to 
 change our metaphor, but only to get another 
 aspect and a yet happier conception of the 
 same truth. Talking to the Woman of Samaria, 
 He said, "Whosoever shall drink of the water 
 
JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. 2 I 
 
 that I shall give him, shall never thirst, but the 
 water that I shall give him shall be hi him a lucll 
 of zuatcr springing up into everlasting life." 
 This may help to account for a common 
 phenomenon of the Christian's inward life. He 
 may say, sometimes, without meaning it, with- 
 out a thought beforehand, and occasionally even 
 without words. Amidst the activities of the day, 
 and when I wake in the night, I find myself 
 speaking to God ; I have hopes, fears, yearn- 
 ings, hurries of feeling Godwards ; all my life 
 seems to turn and tremble that way, waves of 
 prayer seem to throb and swell in my soul. 
 What is the meaning of all this .? I know it is 
 Jesus, teaching me to pray, and this commotion 
 within me is the " well of water " that He gives 
 "springing up into everlasting life." Did you 
 ever stop to trace the beginning of a river .<* 
 Down in the solitude, in the dimness, amidst the 
 tangled roots of things, under the grass, the 
 water springs and palpitates, breaks up through 
 ferns and mosses, bubbles into beauty, leaps and 
 lightens, darkles and sparkles, wells and swells, 
 bursts through all obstacles, works up through 
 the sand, will find a way out into the sunshine, 
 till that which began in secret becomes a broad 
 and tranquil river helping to carry the fleets of 
 nations and to make the boundaries of empire. 
 So the water that Christ gives us is " in us a 
 well of water springing up." In mysterious 
 
2 2 JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. 
 
 intuitions, stirs of life, sanctities of feeling, and 
 longings after the Infinite, it springs and springs, 
 works and works, down amidst broken stones, 
 in the tangle, in the heart, in the dark, in the 
 secrecy which only the eye of God can search. 
 These mystic movements in me, inclining me 
 Godwards, seem to show that Jesus has me in 
 hand, that He has begun the good work in me, 
 and is teaching me to pray. Work in me 
 mightily. Spirit of Jesus, "spring up, O well ! " 
 
 5. Jesus teaches to pray by quickening the 
 sense of difficulty. Paley has told us that when 
 he was a college tutor he found it easy to make 
 his pupils understand the solution of a thing ; 
 the difficulty was to make them alive to the 
 difficulty. The same principle works in every 
 kind of learning, human and Divine. In learn- 
 ing prayer, unless you have a sense of difficulty, 
 you will not make much way. Jesus, by His 
 Spirit, gives the praying power ; by difficulty. 
 He educates it. 
 
 Unhappily, the notion is everywhere afloat 
 that prayer, though a good and holy thing, is 
 something dreamy, something wordy, something 
 easy, something for women, children, ministers, 
 and other good people who have no more know- 
 ledge than is necessary, and who have nothing 
 to do. It may be hard to master a language, 
 they think, hard to see through a science ; hard 
 to study, hard to preach, hard to practise, but it 
 
JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. 23 
 
 must be easy to pray. A distinction is made 
 between working and praying, and it is under- 
 stood that praying is not working. The man 
 of the world says, " Work is worship ; " we say, 
 " Worship is work." 
 
 One great difficulty is realising God. It may 
 be easy to kneel, easy to speak, but it is not 
 easy to feel with all the life of reality that there 
 is in the silence a listening ; in the vacancy a 
 power ; and so to keep up a real and effective 
 communication between the Spirit and the 
 Father of spirits. Once this realization might 
 not have troubled you much, but since you have 
 been trying to pray in good earnest under the 
 direction of Christ, there are moments when 
 you feel that it makes even a torment of diffi- 
 culty. 
 
 Another difficulty is the frequent coldness of 
 desire Godward. The simple Christians of 
 Labrador said to the Moravian missionaries, 
 " We wish to have such a longing after God as 
 a child has towards its mother, or as a man in 
 the chase has for the reindeer." This coldness 
 of heavenly desire had never been felt a diffi- 
 culty in the way of their prayers to their old 
 heathen gods ; it was altogether a new sense, 
 quickened into existence by their new Lord and 
 Master. Our experience is often a similar 
 sorrowful sense of check and incapacity arising 
 from spiritual coldness. 
 
2 4 JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. 
 
 Another difficulty, and one much felt by 
 Christian men amidst the hard work and keen 
 competitions of modern life, is the effect on their 
 souls of the atmosphere in which they have to live, 
 making it on many occasions, even when they 
 try to pray, long before they can fix thought, 
 or burn with a praying spirit. Even our 
 leisurely ancestors felt it. " Our thoughts," 
 wrote one of them, " are like green sticks lying 
 on the fire, sobbing and smoking long before 
 they burst into a blaze." It is Christ who 
 makes us fret and chafe at this "power of the 
 air " on our souls, seeming to saturate and damp 
 them so that prayer will not burn. This gave 
 us no trouble before we knew Him. 
 
 Another difficulty is from vain thoughts. 
 " If," said Philip Henry, " our prayers were 
 written down and our vain thoughts interlined, 
 what nonsense there would be! " Vain thoughts 
 were not counted amongst the difficulties of 
 life, before Christ began to teach him prayer. 
 
 A kindred difficulty is the restlessness we often 
 feel in the act of prayer. Every one of us can 
 understand the entry made by homely William 
 Smith of Coalville, in the diary of his soul, 
 " While at prayer my mind was rather shifting. 
 I had to bring it back and ask it to sit down." * 
 We are baffled and weighted by ignorance, by 
 infirmity and by countless things, which to- 
 *" Hanani," Dr Grosart, p. 52. 
 
JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. 25 
 
 gether make such a total that we feel inclined 
 to think with Coleridge that "the act of praying, 
 in its most perfect form, is the very highest 
 energy of which the human mind is capable." 
 The difficulty does not begin when we begin to 
 pray under the teaching of Christ, but the seiise 
 of it does; and this He uses for carrying on His 
 purpose. When you have made acquaintance 
 with a thing through difficulties you are more 
 sure of your ground. Altogether, your know- 
 ledge has more depth and your practice more 
 facility than it could have had in any other way. 
 By quickening the sense of difficulty the Angel 
 wrestles us into strength, and teaches the 
 suppliant to say, " I will not let Thee go except 
 Thou bless me." 
 
 In these, and in other ways, Jesus teaches 
 prayer. It is remarkable that He only teaches 
 prayer, never the philosopJiy of prayer. The 
 sentiment of not a few appears to be, that this 
 philosophy is the very thing that we first have 
 to learn. The first questions, even of Christians, 
 are too often simply speculative ; and in almost 
 every one of the many treatises on prayer they 
 have given to the world in recent years, a large 
 space is taken up with the discussion of such 
 questions. More than they are aware, they are 
 influenced in this direction by the spirit of the 
 times. Each young believer is now likely to be 
 brought more or less in contact with some 
 
26 JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. 
 
 theorist who owns no higher teaclier of religion 
 than science, who smiles down upon him, assures 
 him that the discoveries of science prove the 
 alleged power of prayer to be impossible ; and 
 says, " It is useless for you to expect that the 
 laws of nature will be set aside because you 
 pray !" 
 
 "Who wants the laws of nature to be set 
 aside?" might be the reply. "Assuredly I do 
 not. I know very little about the laws of nature, 
 and even you know very little more. For aught 
 your science can show, it may be quite possible 
 for God to answer prayers, without in the least 
 degree touching the settled constitution of the 
 universe." 
 
 Our conviction is that we find wrought into 
 our very nature, as one of its primary principles, 
 the instinct that prompts to prayer. We find 
 in the Bible a renewal of this law, together with 
 directions, incentives, and promises encouraging 
 our obedience to it. On evidence that satisfies 
 our reason, we believe the Bible to be as much 
 the word, as creation is the work of God. 
 Then, as a matter of course, our common sense 
 refuses to believe that when He " who seeth the 
 end from the beginning," made the world, He 
 shut Himself out of it, establishing such fixed 
 and strong arrangements that they have totally 
 mastered Him, so that although He has pro- 
 mised to hear our prayers. He is in the position 
 
JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. 2"] 
 
 of one who has to say — I am sorry, very sorry, 
 but circumstances quite unforeseen, and entirely 
 beyond my control, have now made me unable to 
 keep my word ! When, therefore, the Nebuchad- 
 nezzar of modern opinion demands that we 
 shall answer all his questions before we pray, 
 and that we shall bow down before the golden 
 theories that he has set up, on pain of being 
 cast into "the burning, fiery furnace" of his 
 contempt, we say what the three confessors said 
 to the royal dogmatist of old, " O king, we are 
 not careful to answer thee in this matter !" 
 
 We would yield to none in enthusiasm for the 
 study of natural science, nor in our admiration 
 of those who are working out the process of its 
 endless and fascinating discoveries. Only what 
 is false in faith can depend on what is false in 
 science. Every truth must be consistent with 
 every other truth in the universe of God. Sure 
 as that there is truth in the doctrine of prayer, 
 the power of prayer must be in harmony 
 with the reign of law ; the efficacy of the one 
 with the stability of the other. These are our 
 convictions. Up to this time, however, we are 
 not entirely satisfied with any solutions of the 
 problem in question. Perhaps we shall find 
 one, some when and some where ; but we think 
 not, in this short and germinal stage of exis- 
 tence. Some day in the infinite future, He who is 
 the sole Master in this school, may grant some 
 
28 JESUS, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER. 
 
 of these explanations that naturalists ask for so 
 eagerly that he may or may not do. We see no 
 reason why he should. As we take food and 
 get nourishment from it, before we can under- 
 stand the philosophy of nutrition ; as we think be- 
 fore we can understand the laws of thought, and 
 move before we can understand all the mysteries 
 of motion ; so we may realize all the advantages 
 of prayer before we can understand its place in 
 the system of the universe, and in the counsels 
 by which the universe is swayed. If a truth be 
 ascertained, and the mind of the man who knows 
 it be healthy, no dark things connected with the 
 philosophy of it will disturb his faith. Know- 
 ing, as a matter of fact, that God is the hearer 
 of prayer, we shall not be stopped in our prayers 
 by arguments drawn from theoretic difficulties. 
 It is enough for the present that Jesus teaches 
 the practice of prayer ; we can wait for know- 
 ledge of the philosophy. 
 
II. 
 
 THE lord's prayer GIVEN AS A PATTERN. 
 
 " After this manner therefore pray ye." — Matt. vi. lo. 
 "When ye pray say . . ." — Luke xi. 2. 
 
 Aiithorizcd and Revised Version, 
 
 The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews says, 
 " Moses was admonished by God when he 
 was about to build the Tabernacle, for, see, 
 saith He, that thou make all things according 
 to the pattern shewed thee on the mount." * We 
 venture to borrow this phrase. When the 
 disciples said, " Lord, teach us to pray," the 
 prayer that we are now reading was shown as a 
 pattern. Here, we have a ground plan to fill in, 
 and on whose lines we may build the structure 
 of our petitions every time we pray. 
 
 I. Observe, it is not one of our Lord's own 
 prayers that is given for a pattern. This we 
 think is what the inquirers mainly meant and 
 asked for. When the sound of His prayer was 
 over, their thought was, " well, this is prayer 
 indeed, would that we could pray just like it — 
 Lord, teach us ! " 
 
 * Hebrews viii. 5. 
 
30 THE lord's prayer 
 
 Many crude and random words are now in 
 the air about Christ as our pattern. "A 
 Christian is one who aims to take Christ as 
 his pattern in everything, is he not?" When a 
 secularist asks you this question, you are apt at 
 once to say "Yes," for what is thus spoken, 
 so rings Hke a truth, and so looks like a first 
 principle, that you let it pass without a challenge. 
 He has you now. Then he proceeds to argue 
 that, if all Christians said and did exactly 
 similar things to those which the four gospels 
 report Christ to have said and done, they 
 would dissolve society, and the world would 
 be no place for us to live in. Thus he works 
 out the conclusion that no one is, no one ever 
 can be, a thorough Christian, and goes on to 
 prove, as he thinks, that the creed of Christianity 
 is untrue because the practice of it would be 
 impossible. 
 
 There is an error in the seemingly indisputable 
 statement that a Christian is in all respects to 
 copy Christ. In the great Puritan allegory, one 
 old pilgrim, reviewing his life as he stands at 
 the brink of the river, is reported to have said, 
 " I have loved to hear my Lord spoken of, and 
 whenever I have seen the print of His shoe 
 in the earth, there I have coveted to set my 
 foot too." His words make an echo in my 
 heart, yet they can only be mine with an 
 important element of reserve. I see the foot- 
 
GIVEN AS A PATTERN. 3 I 
 
 mark of my Lord in places where it would be 
 proud profanity for me to try and " set my 
 shoe." As my Prophet, Priest, and King ; as 
 the Sinless One ; as the Searcher of hearts ; as 
 the Revealer of truth ; as the Judge of all the 
 earth, who is always right, — He had to step 
 where it would be death for me to venture ; and 
 this was not only in the path of action but in 
 the path of prayer. 
 
 See Him at nightfall, as, amidst the gloom 
 that wavers and the mist that clings, — when the 
 birds are still, and man is dropping his weary 
 head upon the pillow, — He walks with grass- 
 muffled feet up the steep cleft, through the 
 trees, out into the open at the mountain top, 
 the peaceful infinite above, the white world 
 below — there to be alone with the Father. May 
 I go up into that holiest place with Him, 
 and can I dare to tread in the print of His feet? 
 Is prayer like that which He is breathing any 
 rule for me .'' Am I, though His follower, bound 
 thus to spend my nights .'' Surely I must not 
 be in despair because this is impossible; I have 
 not His cup to drink. His Calvary to climb. 
 He walked through sublime passages of prayer, 
 not as a sinner such as I am, but as the Saviour 
 of sinners ; He prayed as the Son of God, who, 
 in His adopted nature as the Son of man, had 
 but three years in which to accomplish His 
 awful minisrty. From the first, only what 
 
32 THE LORD S PRAYER 
 
 looked like a little moment lay between Him 
 and Gethsemane ; He was always under the 
 shadow of that cross on which He had to know 
 the utmost secrets of agony, and on the efficacy 
 of which all salvation depended ; no wonder 
 that He spent long nights in prayer. You might 
 as well ask me to walk the waves like Christ, 
 to heal the sick like Christ, to raise the dead 
 like Christ, or to die on the altar of sacrifice 
 like Christ, as to pray like Christ. Besides, 
 being alone in His intercessions as the Saviour, 
 He was alone as the perfect man. He had no 
 sin to confess, no pardon to implore ; He never 
 joined in saying " Our Father," but when speak- 
 ing to His disciples about God, made the 
 careful distinction, " Your Father and My 
 Father. Your God and My God." There must 
 have been secrets in His communion with 
 which no stranger could intermeddle, and 
 thoughts as much beyond our comprehension 
 as His work is beyond our power. We are to 
 be like Christ, not in doing the like deeds, or 
 in saying the like words, but in having the 
 like Spirit, animating us in the infinitely dif- 
 ferent offices we have to fill, and works we have 
 to do as saved sinners. It is out of the question 
 that we should offer for our daily prayer the 
 very words once used to express the prayers of 
 Christ for Himself. When, therefore, the dis- 
 ciples asked for a pattern that they might pray 
 
GIVEN AS A PATTERN. 33 
 
 just like Christ, the spirit of this the opening 
 sentence in His reply was — " No, your prayers 
 are not to be just like mine, I pray after that 
 manner. After tliis manner pray ye. I pray 
 as the Lord; but when ye pray, say," — and then 
 He gave them these words. 
 
 n. You will also take notice that this 
 pattern was granted after the petition — " Teach 
 us to pray as JoJin also taught his disciples. 
 The speaker, and those for whom he was the 
 spokesman, had, no doubt, been in the school 
 of John before they had come into that of Jesus. 
 Yet you are ready to wonder how they could 
 have thought of him just then. They had just 
 overheard that sacred secret, a secret prayer of 
 Jesus. They were still thrilling in the sound 
 of it. You say each one ought to have felt 
 his whole being tenfold alive and awake in that 
 moment of glory and exaltation, and you think 
 there ought then to have been no room for the 
 memory of anything mortal. Yet that prayer at 
 once reminded them of their old master, and 
 their first wish was that Jesus would use John's 
 method of teaching them to pray. He must 
 have been a tremendous man to leave an im- 
 pression on the minds of his scholars that was 
 keen even in the sharpness of such an excite- 
 ment. Surely we cannot yet have realised what 
 he was, or what power he had for a time, on 
 the men of his day. After a night of four 
 
34 THE LORD S PRAYER 
 
 hundred years, up sprang this flaming morning 
 star. The nation was startled by a holy novelty. 
 When all the romance seemed to have faded 
 out of its life, and all its religion had sunk 
 into common place, John was like one of the 
 old prophets alive again. We must not sup- 
 pose that he only rang the monotone, " Repent, 
 for the kingdom of heaven is at hand ! " In 
 this phrase is given only a summary of his 
 sermons. Though we have no preserved 
 memorabilia of his teaching, it is certain that 
 there was great variety in it. Passages written 
 by the evangelists, show that Pharisees and 
 Sadducees, publicans, soldiers, and persons of 
 every class, went to him with questions of con- 
 science, and had his counsel. No notes survive 
 of the instructions he gave to his disciples, but 
 there can be no doubt that some of these were 
 precious as the gold of heaven, and naturally 
 some of the most precious would be on the 
 subject of prayer. Perhaps no man then living 
 knew more about this than did he. " Filled 
 with the Holy Ghost " from his childhood, he 
 had lived in the wilderness in all weathers. 
 When the wind sang dismally along the river, 
 when the sun struck down with silencing blow, 
 then was he alone with God, inspired with the 
 thoughts that God speaks only to the seeker 
 who dares to be thus alone. He was specially 
 a man of prayer, and prayer must have been 
 
GIVEN AS A PATTERN. 35 
 
 one of his special subjects as a teacher. He 
 had secrets to tell about it, and methods to 
 prescribe which his disciples would think match- 
 less. We cannot by any means agree with 
 those expositors, who imagine that he was like 
 the Rabbis, who each gave to the students of 
 his own school some particular form of prayer 
 for daily repetition. The glory of John as a 
 teacher would most likely be, that imitating 
 no Rabbi, and using no conventional plan, he 
 would teach prayer in a way that was all his 
 own. He might have given his pupils a pattern, 
 but would not have taught by pattern only. At 
 the same time it is probable that the request, 
 " Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught 
 his disciples," had reference in the first instance 
 to the grant of such a form. Anyway, there 
 was much imperfection in it. The disciples 
 had no right to speak to their Lord in anything 
 like the tone of dictation. While they asked 
 Him to teach them, they told Him how to do 
 it, and indicated the kind of teaching they pre- 
 ferred. They named the best model. They 
 seemed, as they pointed to John, to say, there 
 — we want you to give us a form like one of 
 his ! But Jesus passed by the fault, recognized 
 the necessity, and was pleased to formulate a 
 prayer for the help of their weakness, and also 
 of our own ; for on us also His eye rested as 
 He gave it, and all who are trying after closer 
 
36 THE lord's prayer 
 
 fellowship with God, may now feel their way, 
 think their way, and pray their way through 
 these great words. 
 
 III. Take note of the fact that this pattern ivas 
 given twice. Christ had already given it once, 
 that is, in the sermon on the mount. These 
 suppliants, as if they had never heard of it, asked 
 Him to give what He had already given. How 
 was this } We suppose that, besides the 
 disciples who came from John to Jesus at the 
 commencement of his ministry, and the story of 
 whose call is told in the opening of the fourth 
 Gospel, there were others whose enrolment 
 came later, and that some of these having been 
 with John during the first delivery of the Lord's 
 prayer, made the appeal which led to this, the 
 second delivery. 
 
 Strange that they should have been content 
 to miss so much ! Why did they stay with 
 John after he had pointed out Jesus to be the 
 Saviour .'' and how could they stop looking at 
 the finger post instead of travelling in the road } 
 Perhaps they considered themselves, so to speak, 
 to be all the time, scholars in Christ's school, 
 though in John's class, and as spiritual infants, 
 still needing his elementary lessons ; perhaps 
 they understood that they were bound to wait 
 with him who said, " The kingdom of heaven is 
 at hand," until that kingdom had come; perhaps 
 there were times when he wavered, making 
 
GIVEN AS A PATTERN. 3/ 
 
 them waver ; perhaps as his fame fell away, and 
 his strength broke down, the spirit of chivalry 
 kept them at his side ; perhaps he was a man, 
 who under his roughness had, as rough men 
 sometimes have, a loving gentleness that held 
 them with more than magnetic charm. But one 
 day there was a feast in the castle, perhaps on 
 the very floor under which the prophet was im- 
 prisoned, when, all at once, amidst flowers 
 fragrances, and shooting rays of gold and silver 
 amidst the clink of drinking cups, and the crash 
 of pitiless laughter, a dead head was placed on 
 the table in a charger. Whose head ? John's 
 disciples knew. It was the head of their dearest, 
 their most revered ; of the man who had said, 
 " Behold the Lamb of God ! " and who had 
 taught them how to pray. They took the body, 
 buried it, then " went and told Jesus." Did they 
 not stay with him from that time, and would they 
 not say, " Lord, to whom shall we go but unto 
 Thee .'' thou hast the words of eternal life " .'* 
 But they had come late to school ! They had 
 more to learn than their class-mates. They had 
 missed the sermon on the mount. Their new 
 companions, spiritually dull and slow, had not 
 told them that the Lord had already given a 
 pattern of prayer, they therefore asked for one, 
 and the compassionate Saviour gave them the 
 substance of his former words. This was only 
 like Himself, the Teacher who has infinite 
 
38 THE lord's prayer 
 
 patience with our dulness, stoops to us, repeats 
 His lesson, and is for ever saying, " Learn of Me, 
 for I am meek and lowly in heart." 
 
 IV. Let me now remind you that this pattern 
 of prayer must always be taken in connection zvit/i, 
 atid be explained by, the wliole of the CJiristian 
 revelation. If you are in the stir and current of 
 modern thought, spoken or printed, you will often 
 hear one man say "I want none of your theology, 
 give me the sermon on the Mount ;" and another, 
 " I want none of your creeds, the Lord's prayer is 
 enough for me;" and another, "Jesus Himself 
 taught, not a creed, but a prayer." There is a 
 spirit of intolerance abroad usurping the name of 
 liberality. Persons will tolerate Christ on the 
 Mount, who will not tolerate Christ on the Cross ; 
 they will tolerate Him as giving the Lord's prayer, 
 but will not tolerate Him as the living way for 
 its acceptable presentation ; they will tolerate all 
 who think as they do, distinguishing them as 
 " broad," while those who differ, they brand as 
 "narrow." It is common for disciples in this 
 school to take the sermon on the Mount, in- 
 cluding this prayer, as containing the perfect 
 fulness and finality of Christ's teaching, and 
 because they think it does so, they have at 
 least a dormant belief that all other parts of the 
 Bible are comparatively inferior if not needless. 
 At the same time, they regard these words as 
 so wonderfully plain and easy as not to need 
 
GIVEN AS A PATTERN. 39 
 
 explanation. " Is it not an odd thing," writes 
 one whose genius gives his words great influence, 
 "that the common fishermen and boatmen by 
 the Lake of Galilee, understood the message 
 that Christ taught them just at once ? and now- 
 a-days, when we have millions of churches built, 
 and millions of money spent, and tons upon 
 tons of sermons being written every year, we 
 seem only to get further and further into con- 
 fusion and chaos. Fancy the great army of 
 able-bodied men that go on expounding and 
 expounding, and the learning, time, and trouble 
 they bestow on their work, and scarcely two of 
 them agreed, whilst the people who listen to 
 them are all in a fog. Simon Peter and Andrew, 
 the sons of Zebedee, must have been men of 
 extraordinary intellect. They understood at 
 once, and were commissioned to preach." We 
 quote this as a fair summary of opinions now 
 afloat with respect to theology and the Lord's 
 prayer, but we venture to say that certain 
 mistakes run through these opinions. 
 
 It is a mistake to take this, or any other 
 sectional part of revelation, as if it were the 
 whole. All words spoken by Christ, whether 
 by His own lips directly, or by men whose lips 
 His fire had touched, are of equal authority. 
 The New Testament is one Book, It is now 
 present with us totally, is offered to us at once, 
 is all before us at the same time, one part 
 
40 THE LORD S PRAYER 
 
 as well as another. Take one, take all. We 
 are to read this part of the book in connection 
 with the other parts, carefully, constructively, 
 putting two and two together, and trying to see 
 how all the parts fit into one development. 
 
 It is a mistake to treat this as Christ's final 
 disclosure of grace. That was given gradually. 
 The sermon on the Mount, including this model 
 of prayer, was at an early stage of it, and His 
 earlier words are to be explained by His later. 
 It was not His way to anticipate. The time 
 had not come for Him to "speak of His suffer- 
 ings " as man's way to God. The discourse to 
 which this prayer belongs is a description, not 
 of the Gospel, but of the kingdom to which the 
 Gospel is the gate. 
 
 It is a mistake to say that this part of the 
 Scriptures is so plain as not to need exposition. 
 The multitude did not understand it, or they 
 would not have insisted on its Teacher being 
 crucified. His disciples did not understand it 
 until the facts of the Gospel were accomplished 
 and the spirit was given. With astonishing 
 dulness they constantly missed their Lord's 
 meaning, and when He gave them this prayer, 
 so far from seeing what it meant, it seems to 
 have slipped from their memory, and they at 
 least said nothing about it to the new recruits. 
 
 When, therefore, anyone says, "the sermon 
 on the Mount is gospel enough for me, the 
 
GIVEN AS A PATTERN. 4 1 
 
 Lord's prayer is silent about the doctrines of 
 the Trinity, the Atonement, justification by 
 faith, and the regenerating Spirit," we might 
 answer, " Who gave the Lord's prayer ? — the 
 Lord," the Lord who has been crucified, and 
 who offered on the cross the sacrifice by which 
 forgiveness is possible ; who has said, " I am 
 the Way;" who is our "righteousness;" "who 
 ever liveth to make intercession for us ; " who 
 has told us that we " must be born again ; " and 
 has given us " the Holy Spirit of Promise." 
 All the prayer is in harmony with these 
 doctrines, and must be taken in connection with 
 them. Speak of which you will, the Gospel or 
 the Lord's prayer, the one is woven into the 
 text, and is essential to the completeness of the 
 other. 
 
 V. It is a pattern meant for the use of all 
 the children of God, whatever their differences 
 in age, capacity, or attainment. Some of them 
 belong to one tribe, some to another ; some are 
 very young, some very old ; some have been 
 learning for half a century, some have only 
 entered school to-day ; yet this is for them all. 
 " Not for all," some object. So far from think- 
 ing with those who regard it as a lesson in 
 prayer, so very easy that it is too simple to be 
 simplified, we have met with some on the other 
 hand, who regard it as too profound for the use 
 of any but pilgrims of great experience. " It 
 
42 THE LORD S PRAYER 
 
 is SO deep," we have heard an old Christian say, 
 "that I never teach it to a child." As this 
 exposition is for a Household Library, pardon 
 a simple household story. 
 
 Dr Jonas King once went into an orphan 
 school for infants, stepped on to the platform, 
 and beckoned the children to stand around him. 
 
 "So this is an orphan school?" said he. " I 
 suppose that if I were to ask you, you little 
 scholars would tell me that you have no father 
 or mother." 
 
 Some shrill voices said, " Yes." 
 
 " How many of you have no father .? Answer 
 by holding up your hands." 
 
 There was a forest of little hands held up. 
 
 " So you have no father 1 " 
 
 The children said they had not. 
 
 " Now say the Lord's Prayer .-* " 
 
 They began, "Our Father who art in heaven — " 
 
 "Stop, stop! " said the doctor, "is that right.''" 
 
 They began again — " Our Father — " 
 
 " Stop again," he said. " Did you say. Our 
 Father ? Yes, you are right, you have a Father. 
 I want to speak to you about Him." 
 
 Then, when their attention was awake, he 
 told the story of their heavenly Father's love. 
 The Lord's Prayer was not quite a mystery to the 
 congregation of infants. 
 
 As we look into this well, we look through 
 words of wonderful clearness down into a 
 
GIVEN AS A PATTERN. 43 
 
 wonderful depth. The oldest saint has not 
 sounded it, yet it is so simple that even a child 
 can understand enough of its real meaning to 
 make it his own real prayer. It names the 
 whole world's wants, yet that little one can use 
 it. It fits the child, it fits the man, it fits the 
 father and mother, it fits the youngest saint, 
 and the saint with reverend head — 
 
 " On which from opening gates have shone. 
 The glories of the great white throne." 
 
 If Christ had left for our pathway of praying 
 language, words of passion, or utterances of sub- 
 lime expression, true only in moments of rare 
 light or exaltation, that sometimes would 
 not have been true prayer for us, for it would not 
 have fitted our average life, but this always fits 
 us. It fits every mood and stage of our soul's 
 history — it fits us when our wants are few, when 
 our pulsations are quiet, when our thoughts are 
 level ; it fits us when we are just beginning 
 and when we are just ending our journey. So, 
 when I am but a very young child of the Most 
 High, the moments of weakness will be rare 
 indeed when I cannot speak this language, and 
 be stronger for it, but if I have just come down 
 from the third heavens, feeling that henceforth 
 I shall be more than I ever yet have been, all 
 the life of my soul rides out in these words, 
 and by this expression, that life gets to be more 
 
44 THE LORD S PRAYER 
 
 strong, rapid and victorious. The prayer is, to 
 borrow the beautiful words of Augustine, 
 " Httle to the little and great to the great. 
 Each word is a seed, and the growing power of 
 the praying life we put into it, gradually makes 
 it throw off the husk and become a tree." 
 Christ has taught doctrines in human words 
 which may be understood more or less by every 
 mind, each mind having its own separate 
 power of understanding them. All the while, 
 does still deeper truth lie hid in his language, 
 waiting to be growingly discovered by growing 
 grace — the more grace, the more knowledge. 
 As it may be said of Chemistry and Botany, of 
 the arts and sciences, of music and beauty — their 
 laws do not stop where our minds lose them ; 
 so it may be said of the truths here. From 
 infancy to age, it helps everyone who has in 
 him the life of God, to fresh visions of his glory, 
 fresh discoveries of his meaning, and no part of 
 his Word should make us more ready to say 
 with Luther — " I adore the Divine fulness of 
 Scripture." 
 
 VI. This pattern is intended to fnrnisJi certain 
 rules and methods of prayer. Some of these we 
 may be allowed to make notes of, abstaining 
 from enlargement. 
 
 Petitioners are here taught brevity. A classic 
 biographer says of one who made a great show 
 in his day, yet had but a shallow soul, that " he 
 
GIVEN AS A PATTERN. 45 
 
 could speak much, and yet say little." Some 
 prayers seem to be after this standard. Writ- 
 ing to the Lady Proba, Augustine reminds her 
 that " much speaking is quite a different thing 
 from much praying." 
 
 It must be understood that this has no 
 reference to secret prayer. Such prayer is 
 seldom too long. Perhaps it would be well for 
 some of us, if sometimes we rose in the night, 
 or contrived to break away from occupations in 
 the day, so as without the sense of hurry to wait 
 upon the Lord " in praying silence or speech." 
 Indeed in our united as well as in our individual 
 histories there may be special times calling for 
 special continuance in supplication. But when, 
 from much work or much weakness, we are 
 short of time or scant of breath, it inspirits us 
 with new vigour to read how the Supreme 
 Teacher, after telling his pupils that they will 
 not be heard for their much speaking, gave 
 them this scheme of devotional words as if from 
 example of "the much in little." 
 
 They are taught to shun vain repetition. Per- 
 haps the term " battology " which is thus trans- 
 lated in our English New Testament, does not 
 merely refer to the repetition of words, but also 
 to their senseless multiplication,* repeating the 
 same prayer in our devotional appeal is not 
 
 * Matt. vi. 7. The charge M^/3aTToXo7?;(rr;rf is explained 
 by 7roXi/Xo7ta " much speaking." 
 
4-6 THE lord's prayer 
 
 always a vain thing, for Christ Has sanctioned 
 it by his own example. The real meaning of the 
 charge seems to be " babble not." It has often 
 been said that " battology," the word used by the 
 Evangelist as the nearest Greek equivalent for 
 the Syriac word used by our Lord, came into 
 circulation and grew into force from Battus, the 
 name of a hymnist known proverbially in his 
 day for saying the same syllables over and over 
 again in his addresses to the gods. Whether so 
 or not, the habit was not peculiar to him, but 
 has been the mark of heathenism all time 
 through, and all the world over. We have one 
 sample in the prayer of the priests who cried 
 from morning even until noon, saying, " O Baal, 
 hear us!"* We have another in the Ephesian 
 mob, shouting for two hours, the liturgical 
 phrase, "great is Diana of the Ephesians ! "-j- In- 
 stances have been quoted from poets to show 
 how the fashion belonged to all ancient idolatry. 
 Indian monks, we are told, echo for days to- 
 
 * I King xviii. 26. t Acts xix. 34. 
 
 Gilbert Wakefield in his New Translation of the Gospel 
 by Matthew (1782), quotes in illustration: Terence 
 Heautont, v. 880. " Ohe ! jam desine deos, uxor, gratu- 
 lando obtundere .... illos tuo ex ingenio judicas, ut 
 nihil credas intelligere, nisi idem dictum est centies. 
 Pray thee, wife, cease from stunning the gods with 
 
 thanksgiving unless thou judgest them by thyself 
 
 that they cannot understand a thing unless the same 
 thing is repeated a hundred times." 
 
GIVEN AS A PATTERN. 47 
 
 gether, the sacred syllable Uvi. Hindoos repeat 
 the name of Ram over and over thousands of 
 times. Mahomedan dervishes keep on repeating 
 the word for God, going round in circles while 
 they say it, until they faint. Some phrases are 
 repeated thirty times in a single Mahomedan 
 prayer.* A more remarkable thing however, is 
 the way in which professing Christians vainly 
 repeat the very prayer given by their Master 
 as an antidote to vain repetitions, "f* No section 
 or class of Christians can claim freedom from 
 the sin ; not one can venture to " cast the first 
 stone," and say, look at us, we never utter 
 needless or thoughtless words in our speech to 
 God — but all need this hint from heaven. 
 
 They are taught to pray using these very words. 
 The second announcement of the pattern was 
 prefaced by the phrase " when ye pray, say," the 
 language following. But mark the proviso. It 
 implies that when we do not pray we may not 
 say it. The point is, that we may only say it 
 when we do pray. Prayer is a distinct thing 
 from the vehicle of prayer. Beautiful as this 
 
 * " Land and Book," 26. 
 
 t See Tholuck on Matt. vi. 7. He says 'according 
 to the Rosary, the Paternoster (Patriloquia, as it was 
 called) is prayed fifteen times, and the Ave Maria 150 
 times.' We have in a Psalter addressed to Jesus the 
 word Jesu repeated fifteen times together, with only 
 " have mercy on us, help us," intervening. Beza has 
 said "Battologis pontificee vel Satanum ipsum pudent." 
 
48 THE lord's prayer 
 
 frame is, it is only a vehicle of praying life, not 
 a substitute for it. It is no rigid and iron en- 
 closure holding prayers that are ready made for 
 us ; it is no petrified prayer, waiting outside our 
 living selves ; it is no mere lesson that we may 
 learn with diligence and repeat with senseless 
 accuracy, as birds learn to speak ; it is no 
 written Paternoster for priests or saints to touch 
 and bless ; it is no verbal spell to conjure with ; 
 but it is a divine formula which we may use 
 daily to our unspeakable advantage, and while 
 it is a model, it is also a mould through which 
 we may pour out our new, living, flaming sup- 
 plications. 
 
 / It is a social prayer. " Souls are not saved 
 in bundles, the Spirit saith to the man, how is 
 it with thee — thee personally ? " * So, in teach- 
 ing us to pray, Jesus begins with the individual. 
 After He has said to each apart, " Thou, when 
 thou prayest enter into thy closet, and when 
 thou hast shut to thy door, pray to thy Father, 
 which is in secret ; "f He goes on to say " after 
 this manner pray ye',' then when each child 
 has been with the Father alone, he comes out 
 into the family circle and joins with the other 
 children in this praying concert. 
 
 They are taught to pray " after this matiner!' 
 Such is His own phrase, used in giving this 
 edict of grace for the first time. " After this 
 * Emerson. t Malthcw vi. 6. 
 
GIVEN AS A PATTERN. 49 
 
 manner," as to our devotional temper, " after 
 this manner" as to the things to be sought 
 for, however we may expatiate or particu- 
 larize in the language of our request, every- 
 thing we need, comes under the head of one or 
 other of these seven summaries or breviates. 
 "After this manner," as to the order of our 
 petitions ; so that we may give to each petition 
 its right place in the scale of urgency, and its 
 right subordination to, or power over, the other 
 petitions in the train. There is touching pathos 
 in the plaint of Job : — " O that I knew where 
 I might find Him ! I would order my cause 
 before Him, and fill my mouth with argu- 
 ments !"* Important as he felt it to have right 
 arguments, he felt it to be also important 
 that they should be presented in right order. 
 By the framework of devotion here raised for 
 us, Christ teaches us this right order, showing 
 not only what we should ask for, but what we 
 should ask for first, what next, and on to the 
 end. If in the mere mechanism of our prayers, 
 we may not always choose this progressive 
 sequence, we must, at least, keep this pattern 
 before us as a general guide to their spirit 
 and structure. " It is a regulator by which all 
 ages should set their devotions." -f- 
 
 * Our pater noster'is apt to begin at panem nostratn. 
 Anthony Faringdon, Works, iv. p. 262, 1829. 
 t Hannah More's " Sketches," &c., 1819, p. 472. 
 
 D 
 
50 THE LORD S PRAYER 
 
 VII. — It is right to call this pattern the Lord s 
 Prayer. This title has been strongly disputed, ^ 
 but we still stand up for it, regarding the ques- 
 tion as one not only of verbal accuracy, but of 
 practical importance. 
 
 Some would prefer to call it tJie Rabbis 
 prayer. They tell us that Jesus is not the 
 author of it, but that He only caught up certain 
 Rabbinical phrases current in His day, and 
 wrought them up into this composition. If so, 
 it would be impossible for them to prove it, for 
 no written collection of Rabbinical sayings 
 was commenced until nearly two centuries 
 later ; but what if they could prove it .'' Say 
 that the Rabbis gave some of their sayings to 
 the Lord. Who first gave them to the Rabbis t 
 The Lord. "Truth," saith St Ambrose, "by 
 whomsoever uttered, is of the Holy Ghost."* 
 It is possible, indeed, that at the time of the 
 Incarnation, forms of petition were used by 
 certain devout " masters in Israel " with which 
 the sentiments of some petitions in the Lord's 
 prayer are in harmony, for, " with the Law and 
 the Prophets," why should not gracious souls 
 express themselves graciously .''"•f* In that 
 case, however, they were only original with 
 Him Who in all ages is the Teacher of prayer. 
 
 * " Veritas, a quocunque dicator, a spiritu sancto est." 
 t Note on Lord's Prayer in Geikie's " Life of Christ." 
 619. 
 
GIVEN AS A TATTERN. 5 I 
 
 The Lord's Prayer was not culled from 
 Pharisaic rosaries, and was not merely made 
 up of pearls picked from the dust-heaps of the 
 Talmud.* 
 
 Others would prefer to call it the Disciples' 
 Prayer. They say, " It is not the Lord's 
 Prayer, but the Disciples' Prayer, for only the 
 disciples are to offer it. We might as well say 
 of the Remembrance Feast, it is not the Lord's 
 Supper, but the Disciples' Supper, for only the 
 disciples are to keep it. In the one case as in 
 the other, the common denomination is plainly 
 the correct one ; for the social use of this prayer 
 and the social celebration of the supper, are 
 alike the Lord's appointment. To say, " our 
 tongues are our own, who is Lord over us .-' 
 We are our own judges of what we should say 
 in prayer, we see no necessity for what has 
 been urged and we disallow dictation," is to run 
 a great risk : we must be careful lest we not only 
 slight a privilege but break a law. The Lord 
 had spoken. The disciples said, " Lord, teach 
 us to pray," then, accepting the title, and 
 exercising the authority of Lordship, He gave 
 
 * In all commentaries now within reach of everybody, 
 quotations are made from Lightfoot, Wetstein, Scottgen, 
 and others, of passages collected from Jewish sources, 
 said to have parallel in the Lord's Prayer. One need 
 only look at them to see that our Lord's teaching was 
 altogether independent of anything that the Jews had 
 already taught themselves. 
 
52 THE LORDS PRAYER AS A PATTERN. 
 
 this. As the Lord's Supper is a remembrance 
 feast, this is a remembrance prayer, always to be 
 in our ears, always before our eyes, to show 
 what we should pray for, and how we should 
 pray; until at "our Father's loved abode, our 
 souls arrive in peace." 
 
III. 
 
 THE INVOCATION. 
 
 "Our Father which art in heaven." — Luke xi. 2; "Our 
 Father which art in heaven." — Matt. vi. 9. Authorized 
 Version. 
 
 " Father." — Luke xi. 2. Revised Version. 
 
 This passage is in two parts, and for the sake 
 of greater clearness we shall think of the two 
 successively. 
 
 I. "Our Father." 
 
 In the revised version the reading of the text 
 in Matthew is that of the ordinary translation, 
 but the reading in Luke is only "Father." 
 This, however, when interpreted by the con- 
 nection, comes to the same thing, for if we, 
 with all the other children, speaking to the 
 same Hearer of prayer, say " Father ! " of 
 course we mean our Father. 
 
 I. From the title "Our Father," applied to 
 God, all who bow to the teaching of Jesus in- 
 fer at least, and before anything else, that God 
 
54 THE INVOCATION. 
 
 is a Person. " It is the tendency of many- 
 minds to regard the Deity as a principle rather 
 than as a person." * When this doctrine rules, 
 it puts prayer out of the question, for who could 
 pray to a principle, appeal to the abstract idea 
 of friendship, supplicate the law of gravitation, 
 or intercede with the unknown essence of 
 infinite space ? While the world is full of sun- 
 shine, and life is a dream of enchantment, you 
 may not care about the subject, one way or the 
 other ; but when you have to pass through 
 sharp tests, stern changes and black storms, the 
 want of a watching, speaking, looking, listening 
 God, will be felt as an infinite want. A leader 
 of thought in Germany, famous as a poet, 
 famous as a man of letters — who had through 
 his long literary career fought against the idea 
 of a personal God, — when poor in purse, paralytic 
 in body, and in his last week of life, wrote thus 
 to one of his old class-mates, and under its style 
 of banter I detect a pathetic minor of earnest 
 feeling. 
 
 " A religious re-action has set in upon me for 
 some time. God knows whether the morphine 
 or the poultices have anything to do with it. It 
 is so. I believe in a personal God. To this we 
 come when we are sick to death and broken 
 down. Do not make a crime of it. If the 
 German people accept the personal King of 
 * Chalmers's " Natural Theolojrv." 
 
THE INVOCx\TION. 55 
 
 Prussia in their need, why should not I accept 
 a personal God ? My friend, here is a great 
 truth. When health is used up, money used up, 
 and sound human senses used up, Christianity 
 begins," 
 
 There is an atheism abroad that has in its 
 language a tincture of almost pious devotion. 
 Some of our neighbours are trying to divorce 
 Christianity from Christ, and to have a religion 
 for their God instead of having a God for their 
 religion. Theorists there are, who call them- 
 selves Christians, and who profess their belief in 
 the usefulness of prayer, who yet, when asked 
 if they believe that God is a person, will answer 
 — " Not exactly." Perhaps they confuse the 
 idea of personality with certain other ideas per- 
 fectly distinct from it. The Avord suggests to 
 them the idea of a life shut up within the 
 boundaries of form, or in some other ways 
 limited like the life of human beings — who are 
 the orAy persons they know ; and perhaps simply 
 from what they mean to be reverence for the 
 Great God, they are unable to regard Him as a 
 Person. Yet they will tell you in confidence 
 that they would feel uneasy to begin the day 
 without the prayer which they had been 
 accustomed to repeat from childhood. What is 
 the use of praying to that, which, not being a 
 person, cannot hear or speak .-' Extremes meet. 
 The savage who prays to a stone, meets on the 
 
56 THE INVOCATION. 
 
 same level with this man of refinement. We 
 say, in the words of the mystic — 
 
 " To own a God who does not speak to men, 
 Is first to own, and then disown again ; 
 Of all idolatry the total sum 
 Is having gods that are both deaf and dumb."* 
 
 Jesus, the teacher of prayer, has given us the 
 first rule, "when ye pray, say Our Father." 
 His first doctrine therefore is, that God is a 
 Person. You never say Father to a force; 
 Father to a law ; Father to a mist ; Father to a 
 mile, nor to infinite millions of miles in a line ; 
 "Father" is not the name for Thought apart 
 from the Thinker, nor for Friendship apart 
 from the Friend ; nor for a Link, though the 
 first link in a long chain of grand phenomena. 
 If we mean more than a figurative father, we 
 mean by that word a living Person. In our 
 world, sure as a son is a person, a father is 
 a person ; and Fatherhood implies personality 
 in God, truly as it does in man. 
 
 II. The title "Our Father" belongs to God 
 as the Father of all mankind. What is said 
 now, and what will be said in the next section, 
 make two halves of one complete statement, 
 and must be taken, not separately, but together. 
 I say now, Man ; whoever you are, and even 
 though you are now under a sentence that 
 deprives you of every family title, the glorious 
 * Dr John Byrom. 
 
THE INVOCATION. 57 
 
 Person of whom we have been speaking is your 
 own Father, He is so in this sense : all human 
 life began in Him. Although He has given us 
 our bodies transmissively, He has given us our 
 souls immediately; it is the doctrine of our 
 philosophy as well as of our faith, that, while 
 He is the Framer of our bodies. He is the 
 "Father of our spirits," and that each man of you 
 received his soul direct from God as the first 
 man did. Glimpses of this truth seem to have 
 been caught in the twilight of ancient Heathen- 
 ism. Ages before the Gospel sunrise, a poet 
 had spoken of the supreme Spirit as "Father 
 of gods and men." The name Jupiter was 
 compounded of Deus and Pater ; and the like 
 sentiment was breathed in a certain Greek 
 verse* quoted by Paul in his oration to the 
 men of Athens, and which was at the same 
 time turned by him into an argument against 
 idolatry. " As certain even of your own poets 
 have said ' for we also are his offspring.' For- 
 asmuch as ive are the offspring of God " — we 
 thinkers, we reasoners, we sculptors, whose 
 magic almost makes the marble breathe, — we 
 who have wills of our own, we who have love, 
 conscience, and all the powers of personality, 
 " we ought not to think the Godhead " — that is, 
 to think that our Father " is like unto gold, or 
 
 * Sir Walter Raleigh gives several instances of this 
 kind in his " History of the World." Book I. section 2. 
 
58 THE INVOCATION. 
 
 silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device" * 
 The argument is, "as certain of your poets 
 have said," so it is, God is your Father ; then, 
 appeaHng to the principle "like father, like son," 
 he blames them for paying the honour due 
 only to their Father to that which is no relation 
 to them whatever, but altogether of another 
 and an inferior nature. In doing so he takes 
 this old sentence from their literature, stamps 
 it, gives it currency as a divine saying, and it is 
 now a doctrine welded into the sacred text, 
 that even idolaters are " the offspring of God." 
 
 It is true that " all have sinned and come 
 short of the glory of God." It is true that 
 while men are " alienated from the life of God," 
 God is nothing to them, as the most tremendous 
 reality in the living world is nothing to the 
 dead. And it is true that no one while in that 
 state, or on the strength of the creative tie, has 
 a right to a child's place or a child's inheritance 
 yet it is also true that God is the Author of all 
 human being, — this, once a fact, is always a 
 fact. Speaking to all men, however wide their 
 wandering, or deep their fall, we are permitted 
 to say. Although sin has destroyed the filial 
 spirit in you, and made you by your own act, 
 outcasts from the presence of God, the change 
 is not in Him, but in you. He is to you, not a 
 foe, not a stranger, not a taskmaster, not even a 
 * Acts xvii. 28, 29. 
 
THE INVOCATION. 59 
 
 king-, first of all, — but a Father. In Him is 
 an infinite store of unappropriated love, and of 
 power waiting to be trusted. Why are you so 
 slow to believe in this glorious reality .'' When 
 your children go wrong, do yoti fathers cease to 
 be fathers ? Do you not care .-' Have they 
 become nothing to you .'' 
 
 A rumour once reached Andrew Fuller that 
 his wild son Robert, w^ho had been impressed as 
 a sailor on board a man-of-war, had been tried 
 for desertion, and had died under the infliction 
 of a stern sentence.* The father's words about 
 this, have condensed into them all the agony of 
 grieved affection, and seem like bitter drops of 
 distilled pain : 
 
 " In former cases my sorrow found vent in 
 tears ; but now I can seldom weep. A kind of 
 morbid heart-sickness preys upon me from day 
 to- day. Every object around me reminds me 
 of him! Ah! . . . He was wicked, and 
 mine eye was not over him to prevent it ; . . 
 . . He was detected and tried, and con- 
 demned ; and I knew it not ; . . . He cried 
 under his agonies, but I heard him not ; . . . 
 He expired 'without an eye to pity or a hand to 
 help him! . . . O Absalom my son! my 
 son ! would God I had died for thee, my son! " 
 
 Does any father think this the language of 
 extravagance ? Did not this father feel so much 
 
 * This rumour was afterwards proved to be false. 
 
6o THE INVOCATION. 
 
 for this wanderer, just because he was a wise 
 and good man ? Is there less concern on 
 account of rebellious sons in the heart of the wise 
 and good God ? and is human paternity more 
 tender than the divine ? Is there no pity in the 
 cry " Hear O heavens, and give ear O earth ; 
 . . . for I have nourished and brought up 
 children, and they have rebelled against me ? " 
 Hear how he vindicates his parental character : 
 " How shall I give thee up, Ephraim ? How 
 shall I deliver thee, Israel ? How shall I make 
 thee as Admah ? How shall I set thee as 
 Zeboim ? mine heart is turned within Me ; my 
 repentings are kindled together ; I will not 
 execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not 
 destroy Ephraim ; for I am God and not man" : — 
 not less than man^ but infinitely more. 
 
 We endorse the sentiments on the Father- 
 hood of God expressed by Luther. He was one 
 day catechising some country people in a village 
 in Saxony. When one of the men had repeated 
 these words, " I believe in God the Father 
 Almighty," Luther asked him what was the 
 meaning of "Almighty".' The countryman 
 honestly replied " I do not know ; " " Nor do I 
 know," said the catechist, " nor do all the learned 
 men in the world know ; however, you may 
 safely believe that God is your Father, and that 
 He is both able and willing to save and protect 
 yourself and all your neighbours." " Almighty 
 God is the lovely Father of mankind." 
 
THE INVOCATION. 6 1 
 
 III. God is "our Father," tJirough Jesus Christ. 
 We proceed to this statement, on the principle 
 ah-eady noted, that this pattern of prayer must 
 always be taken in connection Avith, and as 
 explained by, the whole of the Christian reve- 
 lation of which it forms a part. This revela- 
 tion as given by Christ in person began in His 
 discourse to Nicodemus. Speaking to "the 
 master in Israel" in the dialect of ceremonies 
 which he was supposed to understand pro- 
 fessionally, and as a matter of course — Jesus 
 said, "Except a man be born of water and 
 of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the king- 
 dom of God," "ye must be born again." 
 There is, so it seems to us, a plain refer- 
 ence to the prophecy of Ezekiel.* " Then 
 will I sprinkle clean water upon you and ye 
 shall be clean." . . . "a new heart also 
 will I give you, and a new spirit will I put with- 
 in you: "-f- The water spoken of, being that 
 which was familiar to the Jewish worshipper 
 water stained by the blood of sacrifice, and 
 called "clean" in a ceremonial sense, because 
 in that sense it made clean the man on whom it 
 was sprinkled. The fulfilment of the type 
 shewn in the "water" is therefore now to be 
 found in "the blood of Jesus Christ .... which 
 cleanseth from all sin." Reading the whole of 
 what Christ said to this enquirer, we see that 
 * John iii. 5, 6, 7. t Ezekiel xxxvi. 25, 26. 
 
62 THE INVOCATION. 
 
 the Spirit is the agent of regeneration, that 
 " the precious blood " is the instrument of it, 
 that faith on man's part is the medium for re- 
 ceiving it, and that the first act of that faith is 
 identical in time with the first moment of the 
 "life everlasting,"* "For God so loved the 
 world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that 
 whosoever believeth in him should not perish, 
 but have everlasting life." So does He "devise 
 means that his banished be not expelled from 
 Him."-!* When, for every purpose of communion, 
 sin has dissolved the original tie of sonship, thus 
 does He answer His own question to the sinner, 
 ** How shall I put thee among the children ? " | 
 God was in Christ, therefore, in giving ///;// He 
 gave Himself. His rebel children would not 
 believe that He loved them. They always 
 thought that He had to be placated by some 
 terrible sacrifice of their own. Jesus came to 
 show that they had quite misunderstood the 
 Father, and that the Father by the gift of His 
 own Self in His own Son, would give the atone- 
 ment which they had supposed Him to demand. 
 In the moment when we begin vitally to know 
 this, and to trust ourselves to it, we begin in reality 
 to live, for in that moment the new and ever- 
 lasting life is born. True, God is already our 
 Father, and while we are still in rebellion He so 
 
 * John iii. i6. t 2 Sam. xiv. 14. 
 
 X Jeremiah iii. 19. 
 
THE INVOCATION. 6^, 
 
 loves us as to ofifer us the " Unspeakable Gift," 
 but if we refuse it, this Fatherhood may not law- 
 fully keep us from perishing. The Fatherhood 
 that saves, begins not with the first creation, but 
 with the second ; not when we are born, but 
 when we are born again. So Christ teaches us 
 in His first discourse on Salvation, and in His 
 last, we hear Him say, " I am the way, and the 
 truth, and the life, no man cometh to the Father 
 but by me."* 
 
 Besides his own direct instructions, we have 
 the following and similar words written by his 
 inspired scribes: "He came unto his own, and his 
 own received him not. But as many as received 
 him, to them gave he power to become the sons 
 of God, even to them that believe on his name ; 
 which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of 
 the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." •!- 
 "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ, 
 is born of God." | "//" any man be in Christ, 
 he is a new creature ; old things are passed 
 away ; behold, all things are become new." § 
 " Ye are all the children of God by faith in 
 Christ Jesus." 5[ "And because ye are sons, 
 God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into 
 your hearts, crying, ' Abba, Father.' " || 
 
 Then, after all, some will say, your doctrine 
 
 * John xiv. 6. t John i. ii, 12, 13. 
 
 t I John V. I. § Cor. v. 17. 
 
 ^ Gal. iii. 26. 11 Gal. iv. 6. 
 
64 THE INVOCATION. 
 
 of the Divine Fatherhood comes practically to 
 this, — that He is only the Father of a few- 
 Christians. According to you, miUions of the 
 human race who have the natural right to say 
 " Our Father," are no better for that right, 
 because they know nothing of Christ who is the 
 only way to the Father. This is not what I 
 say. The most of what I venture to say may 
 be cast into the form of two suppositions : — 
 Suppose on the one hand the case of a man 
 brought up with a Christian education and liv- 
 ing in a Christian atmosphere, holding in his 
 hand or having within his reach, the whole 
 gospel revelation ; suppose that man shall 
 make a small selection from it and fling away 
 the rest — suppose that he will not accept the 
 doctrine of sacrifice, will not own himself be- 
 holden to Jesus Christ for salvation, — suppose 
 him to say, I scorn theology, I repudiate media- 
 tion, I will go on my own responsibility straight 
 into the presence of God, and shall deem it 
 enough to repeat this beautiful Lord's Prayer — 
 would that prayer be accepted ? Not, certainly, 
 if the words just cited, which reveal the way of 
 a sinner's access to God, are true — and true they 
 must be, for they are the words of God. Indeed, 
 if prayer is to be regarded as an act of faith, 
 this would not be a prayer at all, for it would 
 not be an expression of faith. No man can be 
 said to have faith in God who has not faith in all 
 
THE INVOCATION. 65 
 
 God's plain words. If the gospel be true, to 
 utter even the Lord's Prayer without acceptance 
 of the gospel is to defy the law of God and to 
 refuse His love. 
 
 On the other hand, take the case of some 
 poor waif of humanity, young or old, in our 
 land or in any other, who had never even heard 
 the name of Jesus, knowing nothing, but feeling 
 much ; sorry for sin, yearning for love, suppose 
 him just to say out of his heart these two words 
 — " Our Father," having heard them spoken 
 somewhere — I should say that such a prayer 
 was prompted by the unknown Holy Spirit and 
 accepted through the unknown J«esus. I am 
 reminded of the man healed by Jesus, of whom 
 it is said, " he that was healed wist not that it 
 was Jesus." There would be, I think, in that 
 poor suppliant's heart, and ready to spring from 
 his lips, the question — " Who is the Lord, that 
 I might believe ? " Though he does not know 
 him yet, he will know him soon. The dawn 
 has begun that will shine " more and more unto 
 the perfect day." 
 
 I do not know the secret history of our 
 ignorant prayers in their movement in the 
 mediatorial counsels of God. I do not know 
 how far the efficacy of the dying intercession 
 extends — " Father, forgive them, they know 
 not what they do ! '' I do not know, definitely, 
 but I indulge the happy thought that through 
 E 
 
6 THE INVOCATION. 
 
 Jesus, when there has been no opportunity for 
 Him to be heard of, many a prayer Hke a 
 rocket of distress shot up from the wild sea and 
 the dark night, has brought help from the 
 heavenly Father. It is gloriously true that the 
 Fatherhood in the thought of which Christians 
 rejoice, is the correlative of that sonship which 
 we receive when we believe. For all that, I 
 would say do not wait to utter this prayer until 
 you are sure that you are regenerate. Let any 
 one of the race, conscious or unconscious of 
 regeneracy, cry out these words from the depths 
 of his life, then that fact will be a proof that 
 Jesus is teaching him to pray, and a prophecy 
 that his prayer will be heard. 
 
 IV. In teaching us to say " 02ir Father," 
 Jesus would remind us of our Brotherhood. 
 Common prayer to the common Father, suggests 
 a common interest, and helps to keep it alive. 
 Sin separates. The sinner is an egotist. The 
 motto of the world is, " Every man for himself." 
 An isolating principle is at work in every one 
 who has turned his back on the Father, the 
 result of which is seen when, in the language of 
 the world's own shrewd vernacular, his one 
 thought is for " number one." This is mirrored 
 in the parable of the prodigal. When the 
 younger son left the Father, he wished to divide 
 his interests from those of his brother; and his 
 demand was — " give me the portion of goods 
 
THE INVOCATION. 67 
 
 that falleth to me ; but when he came back, his 
 greatest joy was to be received as one of the 
 family. The individual child is not indeed 
 merged in the family ; but though each one 
 may and must pray for himself, and say " my 
 Father, give me my daily bread, forgive me, 
 lead me; at the same time, every one whose 
 heart beats with the new life, will not only sing 
 a new song, but breathe a new prayer — this 
 prayer, that rises in concert with all the family 
 and that opens with the cry. Our Father ! " 
 
 First and chiefly are we reminded by it oi the 
 fellows J lip that knits together Gods elect. On 
 the evening before his death, Dr Chalmers, 
 while walking in his garden, was overheard to 
 say in earnest, low tones, " O my Father, my 
 heavenly Father!" When I can say that, then 
 any man in the world who can also say it, is 
 my brother. " Dost thou see a soul that has 
 the image of God in him ? Love him, love him ! 
 This man and I must go to heaven some day. 
 Love one another, do good to one another." 
 This charge to all the holy brethren spoken by 
 John Bunyan in his last sermon, has lost none 
 of its point by change of circumstances, none of 
 its sacredness by lapse of time ; I must not, 
 however, insist on seeing in a soul all that 
 special family likeness which Bunyan calls the 
 image of God, before I give that soul my love, 
 nor must I mistake for love what is only a 
 
68 THE INVOCATION. 
 
 romantic tenderness for the distant or the dead — 
 for the distant, whom I suppose to show, for 
 the dead whom I suppose to have shown, this 
 likeness, more than it is shown by Christians 
 living near me now. Christians living now, and 
 with whom I have now to do, may sorely try 
 my loving power ; but so, if brought into 
 actual contact with them, would those have 
 done whom I exalt as my ideals. Much of the 
 charm that good men of other lands or times " 
 may have for me, may be but the charm of that 
 " distance which lends enchantment to the view ;" 
 or the magic tinting of a visionary picture ; 
 contact with their very counterparts living in 
 my own land and time might shatter my dreamy 
 preconceptions, and make my radiant fancies 
 fade. Let me be sure of this and act on it ; if 
 I, and the man at whom I am now looking, 
 are both in Christ, he and I are brothers, and 
 " brothers evermore." Whatever may be the 
 drawback, whatever the weakness, whatever 
 even the vulgarity on the surface — there is the 
 family life below — sense under the nonsense, 
 soul under the body, truth under all the mis- 
 takes ; within the earthern pitcher the fire ; 
 behind the rough shell the pearl ; beneath the 
 ragged thistles and stinging nettles of the field, 
 the treasure ; and concealed for the present by 
 much that may excite the scorn of the foolish 
 and the pity of the wise, that which will shine 
 
THE INVOCATION. 69 
 
 out gloriously in the day of "the manifestation 
 of the Sons of God." Not only am I one with 
 that man, but one with all the multitudes who 
 hold " like precious faith." 
 
 " Our teachers taught that one and one make two. 
 Later, Love rules that one and one are one." 
 
 Later still, the love of God works a greater 
 wonder, for grace turns millions into one. " We 
 who are many, are one body in death." The 
 waves are many, the sea is one ; the boughs are 
 many, the vine is one ; the stones are many, the 
 temple is one ; the children are many, the family 
 is one ; and as one family, we say, "Our Father !" 
 
 While " in spirit and in truth " we pour out 
 our prayers in these divine, delightful words, 
 we pray down blessings not on ourselves re- 
 strictively, but on the church at large. If we 
 believe in the real power of prayer, we must 
 believe that this prayer which we offer as a 
 family, has real power to bless us as a family. 
 I gain good from it as offered by my brothers 
 and sisters ; they gain good from it as offered 
 by me. In some sense, sometimes traceless, but 
 always true, multitudes whom I have never 
 heard of, and who have never heard of me, 
 are the better for it. Ordained by God, it has 
 an instrumental value and a mystic potency in 
 fetching down daily supplies, daily applications 
 of forgiving love, daily shelters from temptation 
 
70 THE INVOCATION. 
 
 and daily deliverances from evil in which all the 
 children share. " There is a certain spiritual 
 traffic of piety betwixt all God's children, 
 wherein they exchange prayers with each other. 
 Am I weak in spirit and faint in my supplica- 
 tion } I have no less share in the holiest 
 suppliants than in my own : while there is life 
 in their devotions, I cannot go unblessed." Such 
 is Bishop Hall's commentary. And Leighton, 
 with the like spirit says, " Every believer hath 
 a share in the prayers of all the rest, he is a 
 partner in every ship of that kind that goes out 
 to sea, and hath a portion in all their gainful 
 voyages." 
 
 Besides the good from it shared by all Chris- 
 tians, there is a further benefit. " Our," is a zvord 
 of love that takes in all men, for, " have we not 
 all one Father } Hath not one God created us" } 
 Those who offer it with more or less conscious- 
 ness, in the name and grace of Christ pray for 
 and try to pray with all men. As belonging to 
 the human race they pray that the good things 
 here named may be given to the human race, 
 where they are wanted. In the spirit of the 
 prophet, when he said *' unto us a child is born, 
 unto us a Son is given," in the spirit of the 
 Apostle who, speaking to an angry crowd, said, 
 " Men and bretJiren^' the disciple who makes 
 this his prayer honours all men, carries out the 
 rule " add in your love of the brethren, love, * — 
 * Malachi ii. lo. 2 Peter i. 7 — Revised Version. 
 
THE INVOCATION. 7 1 
 
 love to those outside the church, love after the 
 pattern of the great love wherewith God loved 
 us, even when we were dead in sins." 
 
 II. 
 
 We now come to the second section of the 
 verse — " which art in heaven." 
 
 There is a relation between the word "heaven" 
 and the word " heave." We have these words 
 from our Saxon fathers, who were not given to 
 think ideally, and who, pointing up to that life 
 or state of life which they thought of as lifted 
 or heaved by the Creator to the utmost possible 
 glory and bliss, called it " heaven." * This word 
 gives the essence of the meaning conveyed by 
 the Greek original, which seems to have been 
 derived from a root signifying "to rouse, or 
 stir up," and which therefore suggests height, or 
 elevation. f Physical altitude has always been 
 used as the type of what is the purest, noblest, 
 and best ; we speak of high standards, high prin- 
 ciples, and high aims ; in this way, we find that 
 all through the Bible, the word " heaven " repre- 
 sents the idea of loftiness, and the two phrases, 
 " high as heaven," " deep as hell " express the 
 two extremes of height and depth. While we 
 confess our inability to unfold the import or to 
 grasp the strength of the word heaven, it seems 
 
 * On heofonum. t 'Opw. 
 
'll THE INVOCATION. 
 
 to US that it is used here mainly to remind us 
 how high in excellence God is above earthly 
 fathers. The relation He sustains to us is too 
 comprehensive and too intimate to be perfectly 
 represented by any earthly tie, but that in which 
 it finds its nearest equivalent, and from which 
 he takes His favourite name is " Father ; " but 
 the fatherhood is that of the "high and lofty 
 One," and Father " in heaven " means " Father 
 in perfection." 
 
 I. Perfection of love. We can only learn 
 heavenly things from earthly types. Looking 
 at such types, what is your idea of what a 
 Father should be .-' At least you understand that 
 the word represents love — love that thinks, love 
 that works ; the love of one who is wise, who is 
 strong, and who takes trouble. It means this 
 in man, it means this in God, and to perfection. 
 Does not a natural father take pleasure in his 
 child.-* How is it in your own knowledge and 
 experience .-* Is not that pleasure in your heart 
 one of the most pure and tender that you 
 know .'' Is it less so in the heart of the heavenly 
 Father } That which makes a father gentle to 
 infant weakness, that which makes him, though 
 " master of sentences," listen with delight to his 
 child's first stammering speech, that which 
 cheers the young life in all its blundering steps 
 upward, that which makes a father pleased when 
 the child gets on well at school, pleased to see 
 
THE INVOCATION. 73 
 
 his own likeness come out in the child's face ; 
 that which makes him live in his loved one's 
 honour, ready to die in his shame ; that which 
 makes him feel no gladness like that in his son's 
 promotion ; that which gazing on the clawed, 
 stained, and trampled garment brought for him 
 to look at, says, " It is my son's coat ; an evil 
 beast hath devoured him, ... I will go 
 down into the grave unto my son mourning ; " 
 that which, after all, makes him willing rather that 
 some " evil beast " Jiad devoured him than that 
 he should live to forsake his principles or cloud 
 his stainless fame ; that which makes a father 
 "take pleasure in infirmities '' and self-denial, in 
 working days and sleepless nights, and in what- 
 ever may enable him to lay up for his child, — 
 a pleasure which delights to be trusted and which 
 hungers for love — all that — has its existence 
 from, and its highest perfection in, Him who is 
 our Father in the Highest. 
 
 We know it now. But there was a time when 
 each one who now is a Christian, was ignorant 
 of it. Perhaps his heart said to God " Oh Thou 
 great Iron " !* 
 
 There was once a son who left his father's 
 house, and went to " a far country," that he 
 might live in glorious independence. Divine 
 influences moved in his heart one day, and a 
 
 * So began a threatening letter to Prince Bismark, 
 Berlin, July 29, 1881. 
 
74 THE INVOCATION. 
 
 new spirit started into life. He was like an out- 
 cast saying to himself: — 
 
 " Does that lamp still burn in my father's house 
 Which he kindled the night I went away ? 
 I tarried once beneath the cedar boughs, 
 And marked it gleam with a golden ray ; 
 Did he think to light me home some day ? " * 
 
 " Then he arose and came to his father." How 
 he, though the vilest sinner, sorry for his sin, was 
 received, is told in the well-known tale which 
 is a prophecy as well as a parable. That loving 
 picture of a father, who, in the gaunt, weary, 
 haggard, tattered tramp, while yet " a great way 
 off," sees his long lost child, rushes out to meet 
 him, clasps him to his heart, wraps round the 
 rags of his disgrace the folds of his own garment, 
 weeps over his neck the tears of enraptured affec- 
 tion, calls for the best robe, and has struck up 
 for him the music of the instant festival, — re- 
 presents the mighty love of our Father to us 
 on the day, when through the secret impulsion 
 of His grace, our ragged, starved souls, weary 
 of sinning, weary of repenting, weary of self — 
 came home to Him ; and since that day, we 
 have been making ceaseless discoveries of that 
 love ; we have been going on to verify the 
 fulfilment of the parable, and to understand the 
 mysteries of the ring, the robe, the sandals, the 
 feast, and the music of God Himself, as He 
 * Christina Rossetti. 
 
THE INVOCATION. 75 
 
 " compasses us about with songs of deliver- 
 ance." 
 
 Perfection of help. " If ye then, being evil, 
 know how to give good gifts unto your children, 
 how much more shall your Father that is in 
 heaven give good things to them that ask 
 him V * That word " if" seems meant not only 
 to imply an argument, but to suggest a question. 
 " //" ye . . . know how ! " Do fathers and 
 mothers always know } Look at Hagar, when 
 the bread was gone, the water spent, and Ishmael 
 ready to die of want, did sJie know .-* " She cast 
 the child under one of the shrubs " — and " she 
 went and sat down a good way off, as it were a 
 bow-shot ; for she said — Let me not see the 
 death of the child. And she sat over against 
 him, and lifted up her voice and wept." Look 
 at certain times, into certain houses not far from 
 your own, and you might hear a child ask for 
 bread, and then hear the father say "there is 
 none." He would help but he does not know 
 how. When the tiny frame is racked with 
 agony ; when the white little face turns on the 
 pillow, when the lips quiver with rapid breath, 
 and no words come, when the eye of pitiful 
 entreaty looks into the father's very soul, and 
 seems to say "cannot you help me?" what can 
 he do } He does not " know how to give the 
 good things" needful, and in blind sorrow 
 Matthew vii. 1 1. 
 
76 THE INVOCATION. 
 
 bursts out of the room. It is natural for the 
 father to be the helper of the child. The 
 siiper-n3X\xYd\ is not the contra-natural : it is 
 only nature heightened to a degree above any- 
 thing that we can understand. God, as our 
 helper, because he is our Father in heaven, 
 might say to us " as the heavens are high above 
 the earth, so " — in helping you, " are my ways 
 higher than your ways, and my thoughts than 
 your thoughts." * 
 
 Perfection of nearness and observation. Joseph 
 would have been saved from the rage of his 
 brethren in the day when they sold him into 
 slavery if his father had been looking on. It 
 was well for the little Shunamite when under 
 the blow of the sun-stroke that his father was 
 near, so that he could say to him " my head, 
 my head." But the earthly father cannot be 
 always with his child : the heavenly Father can 
 be. Men are slow to understand this. When 
 they say the words " Our Father which art in 
 heaven " ; — they seem to feel that " heaven " is a 
 lact in their astronomy rather than a doctrine 
 of their faith ; and they have the drifting fancy, 
 if not the distinctly outlined thought, that their 
 Father lives in one world, and they in another. 
 " Do not I fill heaven and earth," saith the Lord. 
 " Heaven is my throne, earth is my footstool." 
 He who is in His nature so exalted, that heaven 
 Isaiah Iv. 9. 
 
THE INVOCATION. ']'] 
 
 being His throne, He rules the universe, must 
 fill the universe. As God, His nature is with- 
 out limitation. When Jesus was dropping the 
 garment of our limited nature, and was about to 
 ascend into the glory which He had for our 
 sakes laid aside for a time, He said to Mary, 
 " Touch Me not, for I am not yet ascended ;" 
 that is, " touch Me not while I am on earth, 
 wait till I am in heaven, then touch Me." 
 
 The Jesus whom men once saw was farther 
 off than the Jesus of whom we say "whom not 
 having seen, we love." Wanting His help the 
 sisters of dying Lazarus despatched a messenger: 
 we need only despatch a cry. The messenger 
 brought Him in four days ; a cry brings Him 
 directly. Are you in some sore strait .'* Quick, 
 quick, let your heart run, your feet need not. 
 Cry to the Father, and God will come to you in 
 Christ. We speak of the rate at which light 
 travels, or electricity, or sound ; but who shall 
 say how short the time prayer takes in reaching 
 the ear of the Father, and gaining the reply ! 
 " It shall come to pass, that before they call, I 
 will answer, and while they are yet speaking I 
 will hear." * 
 
 Ages ago, a man was telling his companions 
 
 the story of how he had been nearly shipwrecked 
 
 within sight of land. At one moment the ship 
 
 was riding over the crest of a mighty wave, when 
 
 Isaiah Ixv. 24. 
 
yS THE INVOCATION. 
 
 there was a glimpse of the pier crowded with 
 people, — the next moment it would be like a 
 thing groaning and hissing in the trough of the 
 sea. Some of the passengers wildly prayed to the 
 virgin mother, some to St James, some to St 
 Christopher and some to other saints in glory. 
 His friend said, " to whom prayed you.''" His 
 answer in substance was, " What could Dominic, 
 or Thomas, or Catherine do for me ? thought I, 
 St Peter is nearer to the throne than they, and 
 if I pray even to him, I shall be drowned before 
 he has time to plead my cause. I must needs 
 go straight to Him who made me, and the sea, 
 and the saints, so I went straight to my Father 
 myself, saying * Our Father which art in heaven, 
 save these poor souls and me that now cry to 
 Thee for bare life !' Not one of the saints can 
 hear more quickly than He, or grant more 
 freely what is asked." * 
 
 Perfection of homeliness. Let no one take 
 exception to this word. The grandest being in 
 the universe is the homeliest, the Being of all 
 beings least to be afraid of, and to whom the 
 frightened child who knows Him runs for com- 
 fort. We have no perfect sense of rest in God, 
 until we have along with our adoration, this feel- 
 ing of homely rest, for we are so made, that He 
 
 * This is the idea given in the dialogue entitled 
 " Naufragium ;" a long passage in the "Colloquies of 
 Erasmus." 
 
THE INVOCATION. 79 
 
 is our heart's dwelling-place, and we are restless 
 until we rest in Him. Pity the mortal who 
 sees nothing in the universe more than awful 
 order, dread magnificence, and the working of 
 cold material laws. 
 
 Times there will be, in the history of a man 
 without God in the world, when he will feel like 
 a child who has wandered into a factory, is lost 
 amidst the machinery, is at once fascinated and 
 empowered by its heavy, invariable motion — 
 motion without a soul in it — who feels that he 
 cannot get out of the way of its grind, and 
 "dare not let his shriek go free." One who had 
 held the creed of atheism, afterwards told his 
 friends that when at length he was able to 
 believe that a God was really alive, he " danced 
 with delight," although he had not then reached 
 the experience of hope in Christ. " It is a 
 blessed thing," cried he, " that we are not placed 
 amid the grinding and wheeling of a great 
 Machine of a universe without guiding hand or 
 animating heart. There is a God ! there is a God ! 
 Jehovah, he is the God! Jehovah, he is the God "* 
 He got to believe in God yet more grandly 
 and tenderly, and no disciple was ever led more 
 than he into the secret of rest that comes from 
 saying to the God of the universe, " Our Father 
 which art in heaven." The child yearns to be 
 at home with the Great Spirit ; amidst the vast- 
 * Dr John Duncan. 
 
8o THE INVOCATION. 
 
 ness and glory of the scenery around him he 
 cries for his Father ; longs for his loving ear, his 
 familiar voice, and the shelter to which he may 
 nestle with a sense of friendliness, security and 
 peace. This unspeakable want is met when we 
 find the Father, whom the Teacher of prayer 
 reveals. 
 
 The words — " Our Father which art in 
 heaven," suggest to us the perfection of our home. 
 Although the word "heaven" is here used mainly 
 to remind us of our Father's perfection, it is 
 meant also to remind us of the family home. 
 Some Christians seem not to care for this 
 doctrine, and in giving us their own views they 
 are almost as refined as Confucius, who said. 
 " Heaven is Principle." Our notion, although 
 it includes this idea, does not stop at it. It 
 includes not only character but condition, not 
 only principle but place. We look upon heaven 
 as the perfect home of perfect human nature, 
 Human nature has a body as well as a soul, 
 and the body asks for place. These expecta- 
 tions chime with and are cheered on by the 
 words of our Teacher. " In my Father's 
 house are many mansions : if it were not so, I 
 would have told you, I go to prepare a place 
 for you ; and if I go and prepare a place for 
 you, I will come again, and receive you into 
 myself ; that where I am, ye may be also." * 
 * John xiv. 2, 3. 
 
THE INVOCATION. 8 I 
 
 We distinguish between presence and manifesta- 
 tion. We think of God as a Spirit who is pre- 
 sent in all places at all times ; yet we think of 
 heaven as the one place of his highest personal 
 manifestation through Jesus, " the Lamb in the 
 midst of the throne." There, and thus, God is 
 at home ! In this, as in other things, the 
 earthly must furnish us with the types of the 
 heavenly, A man's house is the centre of all 
 that he lives for, and all that he does. It is 
 the place which he will be sure to fit up and 
 adorn in a way equal to his resources and 
 worthy of his station. There the man of rank, 
 the man of wealth, the man of refined taste or 
 various information, will have his appropriate 
 surroundings ; and there, where he is at home, 
 his children will be. What must that place be 
 in which even God is at home ! We cannot tell, 
 and it is astonishing that any mortal has ever 
 tried to tell. It is written in an old story that 
 an artist, led by Indians, once went to paint 
 Niagara ; but that when he saw it, he dashed 
 his disappointing pencil down the precipice, for 
 he felt that he could as soon paint the roar, as 
 the fall, the foam, the great sheets of light, the 
 arch of coloured rays, with all the other won- 
 ders that went to make up the surprising catar- 
 act ; and shall we who have only seen earth, try 
 to picture heaven ! No ! poems of glory, 
 pictures of magnificence, all fail, " imagination 
 F 
 
82 
 
 THE INVOCATION. 
 
 in its utmost stretch, in wonder dies away ; " in 
 our present state, our future state is a mystery, 
 though a mystery of delight. It is our home, 
 but the celestial homeliness is beyond us now. 
 The "gates" 7//^j/ be "ajar," but they are not 
 wide open ; only a blinding ray shoots through 
 from the light within. We see that there is a 
 glory, but not what the glory is. Not only 
 because we are so sinful, but because we are so 
 human, the idea sometimes seems to us as 
 appalling as it is glorious, alarm almost over- 
 powers delight ; and we understand the con- 
 fession of a saint who said, " If I saw a door 
 opened in heaven," I should be afraid, and cry 
 " O Lord not to-day ! " Yet no child need fear. 
 The heavenly condition will be natural, as soon 
 as we are born into it, and sure as we are now 
 born into grace, we shall one day be born into 
 glory. The heavenly antitypes of sky and 
 water, trees and flowers — things of nature and 
 art, will be to us there what these things are to 
 us here. Human dearness will wax, not wane ; 
 God will make it all perfectly right, familiar 
 and delightful, and each timid Christian must 
 now learn to say, "then shall I be satisfied 
 when I wake in Thy likeness ! " 
 
 While we are like children at school, or out 
 on the travels that belong to our education, it 
 is good for us that there should be this reference 
 to heaven wrought into the very texture of the 
 
THE INVOCATION. 83 
 
 pattern prayer, and connected with the very 
 name of our Father. The thought of heaven 
 thus minghng with our prayer is to have a 
 power over all the life. Heavenliness is to 
 influence our earthly pleasures, earthly sorrows, 
 earthly cares, and earthly business. " So," says 
 Chrysostom, "withdrawing him that prays 
 from earth, and fastening him to the place on 
 high and the mansions above." 
 
IV. 
 
 THE FIRST PETITION. 
 
 " Hallowed be Thy name." — Matt. vi. 9. Lukk xi. 2. 
 Authorized ami Revised Versions. 
 
 I. What do we mean by the Name of the 
 Father > 
 
 II. How can we "hallow" it .-' 
 
 I. What is meant by the phrase, " my name " .-* 
 The learner might say, you have been speak- 
 ing of " our Father," zuho is he ? To answer 
 this question would be to give you His name. 
 A name is now only a mark to distinguish 
 one person from another ; but originally it was 
 not only indicative but expressive. We still 
 keep to this old meaning when speaking of 
 God's name. His name is the expression of 
 Him, or the discovery of Him, written out or 
 spoken out, in this, that, or the other language. 
 We know that one language differs from an- 
 other language in glory ; that some languages 
 are not made to carry so much meaning as 
 others ; that the language of savages is mainly 
 adapted to express the meanings that belong to 
 
 J 
 
THE FIRST PETITION. 85 
 
 the life of the senses, and that the language of 
 educated persons is adapted in addition to ex- 
 press the life of the soul. In illustration of this, 
 we may quote a remark once made by John 
 Henry Newman — " It is of no use trying to 
 translate the ideas of Plato into the words of the 
 Hottentot." So, as to the languages that God 
 speaks or writes. He reveals His name through 
 them all, but all are not adapted to convey 
 those highest and latest revelations which we 
 are dying to know. 
 
 I. His name is the expression of Himself 
 through the language of Nature. With more or 
 less distinctness of inscription and splendour of 
 enchantment His perfections express themselves 
 there, and there those living letters start forth 
 by Avhich we spell out His name. In the smallest 
 as well as in the greatest things, we see some 
 revelation of the Infinite. We all know what a 
 little desert flower said to Mungo Park, whose 
 eyes were perhaps the first and last to see it. 
 There, blooming alone in what looked like a 
 wilderness of sifted ashes, the little thing caught 
 his eye, and just as he was at the point of de- 
 spair, whispered in his ear the name of his 
 Father, so rousing him to noble enterprise. 
 The Name is revealed everywhere to those who 
 have eyes to see and ears to hear. Go out in 
 the sunny wind of spring, look on the awaken- 
 ing loveliness, listen to the enchanting commo- 
 
86 THE FIRST PETITION. 
 
 tion of Nature's harmonies, and you must learn 
 something of the Name. Go out into the har- 
 vest field, and it shines in burning glory. Look 
 up into the sky through showers, and certain 
 words of Mr Ruskin may come to mind — " All 
 these passings to and fro of fruitful shower and 
 grateful shade, and all those visions of silver 
 palaces built about the horizon, and noises of 
 moaning winds and threatening thunders, and 
 glories of coloured robe and cloven ray, are but 
 to deepen in your hearts the acceptance and 
 distinctness and dearness of the simple words, 
 'Our Father, which art in heaven.'" Look out 
 into the white, wavering snow ; if, yesterday, 
 you had caught up one of the million million 
 snowflakes then falling, that you might look for 
 your Father's name even in that, you would have 
 found it. What a wonderful wealth of beauty 
 was in the crystal flowers of tender whiteness, 
 melting the moment you put them under the 
 microscope, yet not before you had caught a 
 vanishing glimpse of what you wanted to see. 
 Look on the winter landscape, you see it ; on 
 the winter water, you see it ; for God expresses 
 Himself on the water as much when the frost 
 has shot its tracery over it, as when in the spring 
 it reflects the fringing flowers. Look up into the 
 heavens that declare His glory in the night ; 
 then look down on the glory that shines reflected 
 in silver glance and gliding wave, that makes 
 
THE FIRST PETITION. 87 
 
 magical sights in misty distance, and that spreads 
 itself in broad imperial sheets of light, revealing 
 hints of the unfathomable name. 
 
 Yes, but Nature's language, wonderful as 
 it is, is not rich enough to speak out all that 
 I need to learn. There is much after all to 
 be learnt about Him before I can feel safe or 
 happy. To say the least, I find that changes, 
 working death as well as life, are always going 
 on in Nature. Mornings are not always 
 clear and cloudless, the lark is not always 
 pouring out its morning hymns, the dews 
 are not always on the grass like dazzling 
 drops of light, nor is the river always a ripp- 
 ling splendour. Blights, infestations, and east 
 winds make desolating changes in what was 
 bright with hope and beautiful with promise. 
 Do these changes express the name of God ? 
 Is He kind to-day, cool to-morrow ? Does He 
 take me up to-day, drop me to-morrow .'' Some- 
 times for me, sometimes against me .'' Nature 
 has no answer. I meet with greater perplexities 
 still, when passing through the deeper experi- 
 ences of life. If in my distress I study Nature 
 by the help of such books as the " Bridgewater 
 Treatises," designed to shew " the Power, Wis- 
 dom, and Goodness of God as manifested in 
 the Creation," still I am confounded. God is 
 kind to the innumerable living things in air or 
 water, and has wonderfully fitted them each for 
 
88 THE FIRST TETITION. 
 
 happiness in its own element. But God is very- 
 kind to the shark as well as to the life which the 
 shark snaps at The African tourist riding 
 through the wilderness pauses to notice the 
 gazelle waft with airy grace down to the lip of 
 the river — stop, shiver lightly, then stoop to 
 drink. He may say, "you thing of beauty, you 
 express a thought of Him who is the Infinite 
 Beauty ! " While he says so, he is magnetically 
 conscious of another presence, — turns in his 
 saddle to look, and in a moment feels as if lifted 
 and lighted, for what is that ? He sees silently, 
 swiftly trailing through the leaves, straight to 
 that "beauty," a bristling lion, with eyes like 
 electric lights, with a bound and a spring, and a 
 roar that shakes the air — down with smashing- 
 blow, the lion drops on to the gentle creature 
 at the stream. God made the lion. He is very 
 kind to him. " The young lions roar after their 
 prey, and seek their meat from God." So in 
 human life the inequalities, the mysteries of 
 pain, the sufferings from heredity, the long 
 years of injustice that once made a poet cry, 
 " Right is for ever in the dungeon. Wrong is for 
 ever on the throne ;" and the vast spaces of the 
 earth where the people, as it seems to us, for no 
 special fault of their own, " sit in darkness and 
 the shadow of death ; " all these things seem to 
 cloud over the glory of the Father. Much may 
 be learnt of Him from the kingdom of Nature 
 
THE FIRST PETITION. 89 
 
 and the chapters of Providence, but not enough 
 for the like of me, a sinner. After all that is 
 told, so much remains untold, that I am some- 
 times in a storm of consternation. I try to be 
 righteous, but it is poor work. Looking at the 
 name of the Lord only as revealed here, I am not 
 able to say, " the name of the Lord is a strong 
 tower, the righteous runneth into it, and are safe;" 
 and I am not inspired with confidence to sing, 
 " The glories that compose Thy name, are all 
 engaged to make me blest." No, when I feel 
 fit for nothing, there is no comfort for me in 
 the doctrine of the " survival of the fittest " — the 
 doctrine which seems to be written on the 
 pages of Nature; when I am sinking in weakness, 
 it is no comfort to me to hear from Nature, the 
 only gospel Nature preaches, the Gospel of 
 " salvation to the strong." When my heart is 
 breaking because I have to say, " Lover and 
 friend are put far from me, and my acquaintance 
 hast thou hid in darkness ; " there is no comfort 
 for me in the things that naturalists discover, 
 however great or educated my interest may be 
 in such discoveries. There is no whisper of 
 rest from the wave, or of pardon from the breeze, 
 or of immortality from the sunshine ! Nature is 
 to me a realm of riddles. Providence shows 
 me the universe, " not in plan, but in section." 
 I am not able to form a judgment of the temple 
 from a stone, nor of infinite machinery from 
 
90 THE FIRST PETITION. 
 
 the wheels that move just in sight of me, God 
 refuses to let us see all that He is ; to use a 
 blunt phrase, but with reverence, " I cannot 
 make Him out!" and my heart cries, "O Thou 
 great, beautiful Mystery, tell me, I pray Thee, 
 Thy Name!" 
 
 A recent sage whose decisions are still 
 accepted by many as those of an oracle, having 
 on one occasion spoken of the first Epistle to 
 the Corinthians as being part of a Bible about 
 the divine authority of which many wise and 
 good men have been doubtful, went on to say, 
 " at anyrate we are sure that in the rocks, and 
 seas, and stars we have the authentic hand- 
 writing of the Most High." * Yes, but we are 
 equally sure that since the rocks, and seas, and 
 stars were made, the family calamity and disgrace 
 has come to pass that with terrible brevity we call 
 the fall ; for common sense tells us that the Holy, 
 Wise, and Happy God is not the Fountain out of 
 which sprang the unholy, unwise, unhappy life 
 of men as men now are. There must have 
 been a change since the first. It is small 
 comfort to know that we have in the creation 
 " the authentic handwriting of the Creator ;" for 
 what He wrote before the fall tells us nothing to 
 meet the case that comes after it. I hear that 
 there is another will, and indeed there must be, 
 for the arrangements made for unfallen creatures 
 Carlyle. 
 
THE FIRST PETITION. 9 I 
 
 could not fit the fallen. I want the last news 
 from heaven ; a fresh message from the throne, 
 telling us what is to be done noiv, and how the 
 new dilemma must be met 
 
 2. His name includes the further expression 
 of Himself through the medium of inspired 
 words. " The last news from heaven," " the 
 fresh message from the throne " made needful 
 by the changed condition of things, we have in 
 the words of the Bible. Thus we have an 
 advance not only in the matter of revelation 
 but in the mode of it. Words are more distinct 
 and exact instruments of expression than are 
 things. Thoughts, reasons, definitions can only 
 be sharply outlined and vividly tinted by words ; 
 therefore, while some reasoners are asking the 
 question with a smile at the comedy of the idea, 
 " is it likely, now, that the eternal Spirit should 
 reveal Himself to man by a book-revelation.-*" 
 I am thinking that it is just what might have 
 been expected, and that in so doing He acted 
 like Himself. He who at the fitting time always 
 uses the best means in order to the best ends, 
 has done so in this instance, and when the case 
 required it, poured out the glories of His name 
 through words — words of prophecy or history, 
 words of gracious talk, or stately oration, or 
 pungent proverb, or thrilling verse, spoken or 
 written by holy men of old who were the con- 
 secrated organs of divine expression. Some 
 
92 THE FIRST PETITION. 
 
 powerful disclosures of Himself were gradually 
 given in those various titles which we call His 
 names. Read some of them. Jehovah, the" I am," 
 the Everliving One, who is, and who was, and who 
 is to come ; El Shaddai, the Almighty ; Jehovah- 
 jirah, the Lord providing a ransom ; Jehovah- 
 rophi, the Lord our Healer ; Jehovah-nissi, the 
 Lord under whose banner our souls win victory ; 
 Jehovah Sabaoth, the Lord of the hosts of 
 heaven whom idolators worship, the Lord of 
 the hosts of Israel, — the title one day to be 
 merged in the famous title of Christ, " Head 
 of the Church ; Jehovah-Zidkenu, the Lord 
 our righteousness ; Jehovah-Shalom, the Lord 
 Peace; Jehovah-Shamma, "the Lord is there," 
 making the glory of the mystical Jerusalem. 
 These and other appellatives, usually called 
 names of God, were in fact different revelations, 
 helping to disclose the one great Name. In 
 the earlier dispensations, to those who trusted 
 Him, God was all that these words stand for. 
 The time had not come for them to know why, 
 for the saving grace which these and other 
 words revealed, existed on account of a certain 
 basic principle, or central arrangement, as yet 
 out of sight, and which was to be explained in 
 "the fulness of time." While we have only the 
 Old Testament in our hands, still we wait, 
 there is more to come than this ; beautiful and 
 inspiriting as they were, most of the revelations 
 
THE FIRST PETITION. 93 
 
 by words were founded on, and were prophetic 
 of a greater revelation still to be made. 
 
 3. His name is perfectly expressed to me in 
 the language of the Incarnation. "To whom 
 will ye liken God ? " not to a man, surely ! 
 Yes, to a man. But " His thoughts are not 
 as our thoughts, neither are His ways as our 
 ways." " No, the sea is not as the standing 
 pool by the road side. Yet, when the breeze 
 crisps the pool, you may see the image of the 
 breakers and the likeness of the foam. Nay, 
 in some sort, the same foam. If the sea is 
 for ever invisible to you, something you may 
 learn of it from the pool. Nothing, assuredly, 
 any otherwise."* The great enquirers of anti- 
 quity had reached the truth that a perfect 
 human person is the most perfect conceivable 
 form of a personal revelation — that we can 
 have no clearer notion of a perfect person than 
 through a perfect man. They looked round 
 for one, and when he was not to be found, 
 genius tried to give the ideal of him in 
 statuary. If a Greek had said to his priest, 
 show me God the Father, he would have 
 taken him to a temple, would have lifted a 
 veil, and pointing to a certain colossal image 
 wrought by Phidias, would have said, " there, 
 tJiere he is ! " Never before on this earth had 
 been sculptured a form into which had been 
 * Ruskin. 
 
94 THE FIRST PETITION. 
 
 struck such towering majesty^ or a face into 
 which had been flung such soul. Mailed in gold 
 of the morning, girdled with gems of rarest 
 water, when the sun shone on it, it shone back 
 a second sun ; and it was verily thought that 
 the Deity had come dow^n to inhabit that 
 miracle of man's device. Yet, the poor trem- 
 bler, looking at that sculptured man, would 
 have said in his heart, " No, no, that will never 
 do, that is not ' the brightness of the Father's 
 glory, the express image of His person ; ' that 
 is not the exponent of God ; if it be so — hard as 
 His jewelled coronet, cold as His marble throne, 
 high above all passion or compassion, there is 
 no sympathy to be looked for from a God like 
 that. A flash from that eye I can understand, 
 but not a tear in it ; his very whisper would 
 deafen me, if he were to speak I should die." 
 
 Christians as w^e are, we bow to an image, 
 and God himself has given it. The use of an 
 image in worship is a sin only when it breaks 
 the law, " thou shall not make to thyself a 
 graven image to bow down to it and to 
 worship it." It is the obedience of faith when 
 the soul has for its resting-place of thought and 
 help to prayer that living image which is 
 furnished in the divine plan of redemption. 
 " God is only knowable through the medium of 
 humanity," and the humanity set apart for 
 this, is that of the perfect man, Jesus Christ, 
 
THE FIRST PETITION. 95 
 
 " the man who shall be as a hiding-place from 
 thewind and a covertfrom the tempest, as a voice 
 of water in a dry place, and the shadow of a great 
 rock in a weary land ;" the man "who is the 
 image of the invisible God, the firstborn of 
 every creature : for by Him were all things 
 created, that are in heaven, and that are in 
 earth, visible and invisible, whether they be 
 thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or 
 powers ; all things were created by Him, and 
 for Him ; and He is before all things, and by 
 Him all things consist." * " Lord, show us the 
 Father," said Philip. "Jesus saith unto him. 
 Have I been so long time with you, and yet 
 hast thou not known Me, Philip > he that hath 
 seen Me hath seen the Father, and how sayest 
 thou then. Shew us the Father ^ " Would you 
 know the love of the Father .'' look at Jesus ; 
 to know his holiness ? look at Jesus, to know 
 how He feels toward mankind. Do you wonder 
 how men dare to love a Perfection so grand 
 and high ? look at Jesus. Do you find in an 
 ancient declaration of His name that He "will 
 by no means clear the guilty," and do you 
 wonder, therefore, how He can save sinners ? 
 look at Jesus on the cross. Jesus is our theology. 
 Jesus is the Word — all words in one, and through 
 Him, God is no longer the Great Anonymous. 
 He explains Creation ; He explains the Old 
 Col. i. 15, 16, 17. 
 
96 THE FIRST PETITION. 
 
 Testament. When in the last stage of His 
 journey to the cross, the dark shadow of it 
 fell upon His spirit, He said, " Now is my soul 
 troubled, and what shall I say ? Father, save 
 Me from this hour : but for this cause came 
 I unto this hour. Father, glorify Thy name! " * 
 and at the close of His high priestly prayer, 
 spoken just before he stepped down into 
 Gethsemane, He said to the Father, with refer- 
 ence to His disciples, " I have declared unto 
 them Thy name, and will declare it." Jesus 
 is the revelation of God, and the New Testa- 
 ment is the revelation of Jesus. 
 
 n. What do we mean by praying that the 
 name of our Father may be hallowed .-' In the 
 language of the Old Testament, to hallow a 
 thing was to set it apart ceremonially, as a thing 
 specially august and sacred. The temple en- 
 closure was hallowed ground, because it was set 
 apart from all other ground, as the one spot 
 sacred to the ministrations of the priesthood. 
 The vessels of the temple were hallowed because 
 they were so set apart for sacred purposes, that 
 their use for common purposes would have 
 been profanation. The word used in the Lord's 
 prayer is meant to convey the same idea.f 
 
 * John xii. 27, 28. 
 
 t Perhaps the word 'AytaaO-qTu is from a negative, and 
 and yv, the earth. It answers to the Hebrew K^^'^pn and 
 
 \ir\p- This meant first, to make holy an unholy thing ; 
 
THE FIRST PETITION. 97 
 
 "What is this?" asks Augustine, "can God 
 be holier than He is?" Not so, but our con- 
 ception of Him may be holier than it is. We 
 pray that He who is separated only by His 
 perfections from all other beings, may be so 
 regarded ; and that more and more, in our own 
 souls as well as in the souls of all men, — in our 
 thoughts, motives, desires, and actions, also in 
 theirs, He may be thus venerated and glorified. 
 2. "Hallowed be Thy name," by the indzvdling 
 of the Holy Ghost in us. We shall not even sec 
 the name so as to hallow it, until the divine 
 enlightener creates the seeing spirit. When 
 Peter, in the flash of an amazing moment, read 
 God's name in Jesus, it was said to him, "Blessed 
 art thou Simon Bar-jona, for flesh and blood 
 hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father 
 which is in heaven."* As it was in him, so it is 
 in us. We must say of the things of Christ, 
 " Eye hath not seen " them, " but God hath 
 revealed them to us by His Spirit." "The 
 heart," says Pascal, " has reasons which the 
 reason does not understand," and by the Spirit 
 in the heart making the heart see things which 
 
 next, it came to mean to treat a holy thing as holy, that is 
 to honour it as such. Ex. xx. 8 ; Lev. xxi. 8 ; Num. xx. 
 12; Deut. xxxii. 51. In these passages, to sanctify or 
 hallow, means to set apart in a venerating way from 
 earth, and all mere earthly purposes. 
 * Matt. xvi. 17. 
 
 G 
 
98 THE FIRST PETITION. 
 
 confound the intellect, He inclines us to under- 
 stand Christ, and to trust Christ — brings us into 
 intimacy with Him, and this intimacy works a 
 likeness, — "Beholding as in a glass the glory 
 of the Lord, we are changed into the same 
 image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit 
 of the Lord;" so, the beginning of all that 
 hallows the name of the Father in us, is the life 
 of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 2. " Hallowed be Thy name " by our trust. 
 This is our joint prayer, yet let each one in 
 offering it, distinctly pray for himself as well 
 as for others. Looking to Jesus, who is the 
 Father's name alive — alive in one personal, per- 
 fect, final revelation, I would say, there, my 
 soul's trust is all there — there alone, as on that 
 which is gloriously separated from and exalted 
 above " every name that is named, not only in 
 this world, but in the world that is to come;" 
 there only, there for everything, there for ever. 
 As " God manifest," as a Being all by Himself, 
 I separate this Saviour in my own mind from 
 all other Saviours. " He hangeth the earth 
 upon nothing ;" let my faith like the earth 
 be hung upon nothing but God ; by human 
 will as well as by divine ordination, by me, by 
 others, by more and more, may He be set apart 
 as the one foundation of hope, the one life, the 
 one strength, the one righteousness, the one 
 manifested Perfection ! 
 
THE FIRST PETITION. 99 
 
 3. "Hallowed be Thy name" in the spirit of our 
 prayers. A graphic writer has pictured to us 
 the story of an African journeying to offer his 
 petition when in trouble, to a certain wizard or 
 Obe man — his only ideal of Him who hears 
 prayer. He and his companions on their way 
 to the secret place where this " hearer of prayer " 
 had his sanctum, travelled for miles through 
 the wilderness. Spurred on by fear they 
 plunged into the shadowy forest ; in the dark- 
 ness, now and then they were caught in swing- 
 ing loops of the bush ropes, or were tripped up 
 by treacherous vines, or tangled among the 
 trunks of tree-ferns, or tumbled over vast nests 
 of ants. On, on, they pushed through the dull, 
 green light. They reached at length a spot 
 where the ground was so damp, the foliage so 
 dense, and the atmosphere so faint that it 
 seemed like poison. They had to brave sting- 
 ing leaf, teasing insect, and deadly snake — when 
 it seemed impossible to get through the tight 
 and netted undergrowth another inch, then, 
 dropping down on hands and knees, they glided 
 silently after their guide through a scarcely 
 discernible opening in the bush, when the man 
 who had the consultation to make, now went 
 on alone. As he crawled, he suddenly touched 
 with naked knee, a large, cold, smooth object, 
 which snatched itself away, and shot back a hiss 
 that thrilled him through. As he still pushed 
 
lOO THE FIRST PETITION. 
 
 on, he could hear the noise and sway of snakes, 
 disturbed by his entrance ; he crept, and crept 
 on, till at last he found himself entered upon 
 a wide, cleared space of considerable size, shut 
 in with splendid vegetation around and above. 
 Against the majestic pillar of a central tree, 
 midst mixed bamboos and tree ferns, surrounded 
 by the dense wood, like the very house of death, 
 was the home of the strange Negro. At the 
 sight of him, he began to creep back again, but 
 he no sooner did so, than on all sides there arose 
 a commotion of swarming snakes, that slipped 
 and rustled out of his way.* This may serve as 
 a parable. It shows how some persons think 
 of prayer. They have in their hearts some 
 echo of the ancient cry, " O that I knew where 
 I might find Him ! that I might come even to 
 His seat ! I would order my cause before Him, 
 I would fill my mouth with arguments," but they 
 think of the way to God as a long and difficult 
 journey. They suffer from a sense of hard 
 work, of having to travel over desperate ground, 
 of going through an effort of conscience, making 
 fatigue. The thought of God is always a 
 weight upon their spirits, and there are times 
 when it is a cold horror. They must pray, but, 
 more or less, they are sorry for it, and some- 
 times it costs them agonies. Making it a 
 terrifying process, they turn it into a violation 
 * From " Liitchmee and Uilloo ;" much abridged. 
 
THE FIRST TETITION. lOI 
 
 of reverence and a mode of profanity. This is 
 not the prayer of one who knows Christ, and 
 who has been born again. Yet it is to be feared 
 that in some instances, at some times, from a 
 stern theology, or through a depressing spiritual 
 atmosphere, even the sons of God pray too 
 much like slaves, and that even by them, the 
 Father, though not ?/;^known, is piisknown. 
 Nothing in one who ought to know better, so 
 grieves the Spirit ; gives such a wound to the 
 love of God, does such a wrong to His name. 
 His name is Love ; let us hallow it. There is 
 no love like His love. To any one who has 
 the faintest faith* in Christ, yet who at this 
 moment holds back from the Father, feeling 
 half afraid to take the liberty of prayer, it may 
 be said, "Dost thou think Him 'altogether 
 such an one as thyself.''' touchy, jealous, apt 
 to take offence, slow to make allowance, hard 
 to be entreated, difficult to please .'' Are you 
 thinking of God only as an infinite man — man 
 as man is now ? The only man who reveals 
 what He is like, 'is the man Christ Jesus,' and 
 are you afraid of Him ? " If your hearts have 
 learnt the words Christ has here taught us, 
 "ye have not received the spirit of bondage 
 again to fear, but ye have received the spirit of 
 adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father!" 
 Fear, indeed, you have, but the fear that lifts the 
 soul, not the fear that lowers it. It sends no 
 
I02 THE FIRST PETITION. 
 
 shudder over the Hfe. Instead of a terror, you 
 feel a glorious awe. By the life of the Holy 
 Spirit within you, live up to your new standard 
 of privilege. Separate thoughts of your Father 
 from thoughts of all imperfect beings, fling off 
 all doubt of welcome, all freezing dread, and 
 with happy freedom, letting yourselves go, run 
 into the all-embracing love. 
 w 4. " Hallowed be Thy name " in our lives. 
 It is indisputable that it is Christ in us that 
 makes our Christianity. Christians with no 
 Christ in them, are only cheap imitations and 
 hollow shells that infinite Love itself must fling 
 away with infinite impatience. Such lives, 
 more than anything else imaginable, cause the 
 name of God to be blasphemed. The life of 
 Christ in the lives of His people, is that by 
 which it may be most hallowed. " Beloved, let 
 us get holy lives, and leave the rest to God."* 
 Life takes form. The apostle said to the 
 Galatians, " My little children, of whom I am 
 again in travail, until Christ ht formed in you."-|- 
 Sure as that life is in us, the form, beginning 
 in the heart, will come out into human sight. 
 What is the form of Christ's life t "He is holy, 
 harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners." 
 The same life in us, must, in the degree of its 
 existence, take the same form. We are to be 
 
 * Fletcher of Madely. 
 
 * Gal. iv. 19. Revised Versiofi. 
 
THE FIRST PETITION. IO3 
 
 separate from sinners, not like the ancient as- 
 cetics, who to avoid spiritual infection fled from 
 their presence, and lived in solitary places ; but 
 separate while in the midst of them ; separate 
 by distinctness of nature ; separate, as the salt 
 which though it may be in contact with the 
 earth, is separate from it ; and as the light 
 is separate from that which it illuminates. 
 It is said of the glorified ones, who are before 
 God in heaven, " His servants shall serve Him, 
 and they shall see His face, and His name 
 shall be written on their foreheads." The spirit 
 of this petition is, let it be so on earth, so that 
 wherever His servants are, His name may be 
 seen. May His name be in us, and on us, 
 " known and read of all men ! " Where we 
 live, there, by the indwelling, formative life of 
 Christ, the Manifestor of the Father's name, 
 may that name be hallowed through our lives ! 
 Most hallowed where the most of our lives have 
 to be spent, that is, not in splendid places, but 
 in common places. You have, perhaps, to 
 spend most of your own life amidst things for 
 manufactory, things for cultivation, or things for 
 sale ; you are inclined to tell me that there are 
 many small transactions in a sphere like yours, 
 which I 'might call sins, but which are quite 
 necessities as the world now is. Society has 
 such claims, business is so sharp, life is so rapid, 
 competition is so frantically desperate, that if 
 
I04 THE FIRST PETITION. 
 
 you were, in any sense of the phrase, to hallow 
 God's name in your secular occupations, you 
 would not be able to go on for a twelvemonth. 
 Then you are not able to feel ready for the day 
 when " there shall be upon the bells of horses, 
 'holiness unto the Lord;'" you are not able 
 to feel that you are always priests, — your work- 
 ing dress priestly raiment; your working place, 
 holy ground, — you are not able to offer the 
 Lord's prayer. 
 
 5. " Hallowed be Thy name " in our language. 
 Of course, where any temptation exists to the 
 profane use of any word that, like a symbol, 
 stands for God, this is forbidden first of all. 
 It may seem to us quite inconceivable that any 
 Christian should ever thus be tempted, or any 
 persons who frequent Christian assemblies ; 
 yet, when a man who has been accustomed in 
 a passion to rap out " bad language " becomes 
 a Christian after his habits of life are settled, 
 there may be a burning moment, when some 
 evil word long unheard on his lips, but all the 
 while sleeping like a memory, a wicked misery, 
 or a motionless torpedo on the floor of the 
 soul's deep sea, may suddenly explode, and 
 rage on the surface, as did the cursing words 
 of Peter when he denied his Lord. In olden 
 times, when the disciples of Christ were new 
 converts from heathenism, and much mire 
 from the " horrible pit,'' out of which they had 
 
THE FIRST PETITION. IO5 
 
 been lifted still clung to them ; or in the dark 
 ages when the Bible was a sealed book to the 
 multitude, preachers dwelt almost restrictively 
 on this use of the clause, " hallowed be thy 
 name." Chrysostom, for instance, knew that 
 large numbers in his congregation were profane 
 swearers, and twenty of his homilies against 
 profane swearing still survive. 
 
 Bishop Jeremy Taylor, discoursing on this 
 subject, with splendid eloquence and rich 
 mosaic of illustration, speaks thus : " The name 
 of God is so sacred, so mighty, that it rends 
 mountains, it opens the bowels of the deepest 
 rocks, it casts out devils, and makes hell to 
 tremble, and fills all the regions of heaven with 
 joy ; the name of God is our strength and 
 confidence, the object of our worshippings, and 
 the security of all our hopes ; and when God 
 had given Himself a name, and immured it with 
 dread and reverence, like the garden of Eden 
 with the swords of cherubim, and none durst 
 speak it but he whose lips were hallowed, and 
 that at holy and solemn times, in a most holy 
 and solemn place ; I mean the high-priest of 
 the Jews at the solemnities when he entered 
 the sanctuary — then He taught all the world 
 the majesty and veneration of His name ; and 
 therefore it was that God made restraints our 
 conceptions and expressions of Him : and, as He 
 was infinitely curious, that, from all the appear- 
 
I06 THE FIRST PETITION. 
 
 ances He made to them, they should not depict 
 or engrave any image of Him ; so He took care 
 that even the tongue should be restrained, and 
 not be too free in forming images and repre- 
 sentments of His name ; and therefore, as God 
 drew their eyes from vanity, by putting His 
 name amongst them, He took it off from the 
 tongue and placed it before the eye ; for 
 Jehovah was so written on the priest's mitre, 
 that all might see and read, but none speak it 
 but the priest. But besides all this, there is 
 one great thing concerning the name of God, 
 beyond all that can be spoken or imagined 
 else; and that is, that when God the Father 
 was pleased to pour forth all His glories, and 
 imprint them on His holy Son in His exaltation, 
 it was by giving Him His holy name, the 
 Tetragrammaton, or Jehovah made articulate ; 
 to signify ' God manifested in the flesh,' and so 
 He wore the character of God, and became the 
 bright image of His person, 
 
 " Now all these great things concerning the 
 name of God are infinite reproofs of common 
 and vain swearing by it ; God's name is left 
 us here to pray by, to hope in, to be the 
 instrument and conveyance of our worship- 
 pings, to be the witness of truth, and the 
 judge of secrets ; the end of strife and the 
 avenger of perjury, the discerner of right and 
 the severe exactor of all wrongs ; and shall 
 
THE FIRST PETITION. IO7 
 
 all this be unhallowed by impudent talking of 
 God without sense, or fear, or notices, or 
 reverence, or observation ? " * 
 
 It is not the common swearer only, who does 
 that which we thus pray against. It is the sin of 
 prayer-utterers who speak the words of devotion 
 while they are thinking of something else; so 
 making the service a work done by machinery ; 
 it is the sin of any speaker or writer who uses 
 the name of God on the vehicle of his own 
 glorification ; it is emphatically the sin of those 
 who, perhaps, habitually sit on thrones of judg- 
 ment, each as an incarnate perfection, and see 
 the children of this world, or the members of the 
 church pass before them with the one idea of 
 determining what sentence they shall pass, but 
 who out of their shallow religiosity, and in their 
 slipshod, random talk, passing for religious 
 conversation — sometimes make such free use of 
 the sacred name, that we hear them with a 
 spiritual shiver, and feel a shock almost as great 
 as when a poor ignoramus carelessly let slips a 
 round oath ; it is the sin of all flippancy and 
 levity in connection with anything chosen by 
 God as a special medium for the expression of 
 Himself. The Bible, the day of holy rest, the 
 institutions of His grace, are things marked by 
 the King's broad arrow as sacredly His own, 
 therefore, as such, set apart from common uses. 
 * Sermon on the Good and Evil Tongue. 
 
I08 THE FIRST PETITION. 
 
 We must stifle in its first conception, the sense 
 of the comic in connection with the thought of 
 the divine. "Jest not," says Thomas Fuller, 
 "with the two-edged sword of God's word. Dan- 
 gerous is it to wit- wanton it with the majestic 
 of God ; wherefore, if, without intention, and 
 against thy will, by chance medley thou hittest 
 scripture in thy ordinary discourse, yet fly to 
 the city of Refuge, and pray God to forgive 
 thee." We think of all these possibilities of sin, in 
 ourselves or in others, when we cry, " Hallowed 
 be Thy name." 
 
 6. " Hallowed be Thy name in the church by 
 the ascription to Thee alone, of the honours 
 due to Thee." One day during the course of 
 recent disturbances in Ireland, an Irish Bishop, 
 giving the people in his discourse a direction on 
 the subject of secret societies, said, "We have 
 received this direction from our Holy Father," 
 Our Holy FatJier ! what is his name ? We are 
 told that his name is " Leo the Thirteenth." 
 There must be a mistake here. This is not the 
 person meant by Jesus Christ, when He said, 
 " Holy Father, keep through Thine own name 
 those whom Thou hast given Me, that they may 
 be one, as we are." * The devout and loving 
 common sense of Christianity recoils from the 
 application to a man of the title Christ gives to 
 " the High and Lofty One." It is not as if it 
 * John xvii. 1 1. 
 
THE FIRST PETITION. IO9 
 
 were simply used as the language of venerating 
 courtesy ; it is used as the language of religion. 
 It is not so much the title itself that we now 
 think of, as the doctrine it stands for, and which 
 is at the root of the system represented by him 
 who means it. God's title is taken by the 
 sovereign Pontiff, on the theory that he is 
 God's Word and representative. It only means 
 this. Some years ago, in answer to an address 
 read by an English deputation, the Pope 
 said, " I alone, despite my unworthiness, 
 am the true successor of the Apostles, the 
 Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth ; I alone have 
 the commission to steer and guide the bark 
 of Saint Peter ; I alone am the Way, the 
 Truth, and the Life ; all who are with me are 
 with the Church ; all who are not with me are 
 without the Church ; without the Way, without 
 the Truth, and without the Life. Let all men 
 understand this, that they may not be deceived 
 and led astray by fancy Catholics, who teach 
 and desire something very different from that 
 which the Head of the Church teaches and 
 desires." If these serene assumptions are to be 
 accepted as true, of course he who utters them 
 has a right to be called Holy Father. If they 
 are not true, in so calling him, we hallow the 
 wrong name. We know that the words, " I am 
 the Way, the Truth, and the Life," are the clear 
 and final words of Jesus Christ Himself, that 
 
IIO THE FIRST PETITION. 
 
 His was the glory seen by the prophet in his 
 rapture, and that to him rose the cry of the 
 seraphim, " Holy, holy, holy." Only the Father 
 whom we see when we see Him, is the Holy 
 Father, and if we are consistent in the utterance 
 of this ascription, we shall only send it up to 
 God as in Christ, " Head over all things to His 
 Church." 
 
 7. "Hallowed be Thy name" in the overthroiv 
 of idolatry. An idol is that which men on their 
 own responsibility set apart as the name or ex- 
 pression of God, and therefore as the proper 
 object of their worship. Millions in the days 
 of antiquity have so regarded their imperial 
 masters. Where religion is another name for 
 fear, and God another name for Force, this was 
 not so much to be wondered at, for nothing so 
 represented to the multitude the idea of awful 
 power as an Eastern king of kings, or a Roman 
 emperor. Yet He was not only worshipped by 
 the uneducated. Valerius Maximus, addressing 
 Tiberius in the preface of his book, said " Other 
 divinities are only in opinion ; thy Divinity we 
 see and touch in thee." Antoninus called him- 
 self Father Bacchus ; Caligula said to Jupiter, 
 " kill me, or I will kill thee ; " Domitian signed 
 his decrees, " your Lord and your God." Helio- 
 gabalus proclaimed himself "the Lord Sun." 
 In the day when Christ was giving His disciples 
 their model of prayer, men were finding their 
 
THE FIRST PETITION. I I I 
 
 ideas of God's names in emperors, in the storied 
 or sculptural expressions of classic mythology, 
 and in the grotesque shapes before which crowds 
 were kneeling in India. In our own day, there 
 are lands full of idols that look like foul, fan- 
 tastic, scaring dreams of sin and misery struck 
 into stone. Countless fellow subjects of our 
 own are still in such darkness, that when they 
 think of God, they know no better expression 
 of His name then such images can give. In the 
 Bombay Presidency alone, we are told that 
 more then thirty thousand temples are still 
 devoted to objects of worship like these. When 
 we call these things to mind, when we also re- 
 member that an idol is not only an object of 
 worship fashioned with the hand, but is also 
 anything that is instead of God to us, or from 
 which our life takes its supreme law ; when we 
 try to count the idols now worshipped in 
 London, and feel that they are numberless ; 
 when we lift the veil, look into the shadows 
 within our own spirits, and descry idols there, 
 as the penitent Manasseh saw idols in the 
 Holiest place, we wake up to see the meaning 
 and to feel the solemnity of the pra}-er, "Hal- 
 lowed be Thy name ! " 
 
V. 
 
 THE SECOND PETITION, 
 
 "Thy kingdom come."— Matthew vi. lo. Luke xi. 2. 
 Ajithorizcd and Revised Versions. 
 
 Martin Luther, writing in the year 15 18, 
 remarks, that when the children say, " Hallowed 
 be Thy Name," The Father asks, " How can 
 any honour and name be sanctified among you, 
 seeing that all your hearts and thoughts are 
 inclined to evil, and you are in the captivity of 
 sin, and none can sing My song in a strange 
 land?" 
 
 Then the children speak again, thus : — 
 " O Father, it is true. Help us out of our 
 misery; let Thy kingdom come, that sin may 
 be driven away, and we be made according to 
 Thy pleasure, that Thou alone mayest reign in 
 us, and we be Thy dominion ; obeying Thee 
 with all the powers of body and soul." * 
 
 These antique sentences help to show the 
 vital connection between the first and second 
 
 * This is part of a long and interesting quotation made 
 by Dr Saphir at the opening of Lecture VI. on the 
 Lord's Prayer. 
 
THE SECOND PETITION. I 13 
 
 petitions. It is not a connection without con- 
 sequence, like that of pearls in a circlet, or links 
 in a chain ; but thought grows out of thought, 
 and prayer out of prayer, like bough out of 
 bough in a stately, flowering tree. 
 
 I. The kingdom. The phrase, "Thy kingdom," 
 means Thy " reign.'' In our language we have 
 one word for a kingdom, another for the reign 
 in it ; for instance, we make a distinction 
 between the kingdom of Queen Victoria, and 
 her reign in that kingdom. It was lately said 
 in the House of Commons, that in certain parts 
 of Ireland, the Queen does not reign, but the 
 Land League. Then, although the kingdom is 
 hers, the Queen's reign in it is to come. In the 
 original language of the New Testament, one 
 word is used for both meanings — in one place 
 it stands for the territory under kingly rule ; 
 in another place, for the kingly rule itself. 
 Here it stands for the kingly rule. Of course, 
 the earth is already the kingdom of God in 
 the first sense of the word. It cannot come 
 to be so, for so it already is. But other lords 
 have dominion in it. " An impious war has 
 been declared by the subjects on earth against 
 the Sovereign in heaven : there has been a 
 revolt of the heart, of the intellect, of the senses, 
 and of all the faculties. A general insurrection 
 of the human race against the Creator has been 
 organized in this world. The degraded senses 
 II 
 
1 14 THE SECOND PETITION. 
 
 have said, ' Let us break His bands asunder 
 and cast away His cords from us ;' the fickle 
 and infatuated reason in its turn has said, 
 ' Where is the promise of His coming ?' Selfish- 
 ness and pride have leagued together, and 
 when the Father appeared in His Son, have 
 exclaimed we will not have this man to reign 
 over us." * 
 
 This doctrine is often contemptuously denied. 
 You know many persons who would say, 
 " Nonsense ! that doctrine of the fall ; — of course, 
 man is as God made him." Facts contradict 
 their dogma. The Greek magician in stone 
 did not make the statue as you find it, — stained, 
 shattered, flung down in the nettles ; the Gothic 
 builder did not make Chepstone Castle as you 
 find it, a ruin ; the workman did not make the 
 king's banner as you find it, torn, trampled, and 
 ground into the mire ; so, God did not make 
 man fallen, lost, and a rebel. Do you say, he is 
 made with instincts to ascend .-' then some 
 malign hand has arrested " the ascensional 
 development," and brought him down to be 
 what you now behold. True, the heart of 
 humanity is part of God's kingdom ; but does 
 He reign in it .-* Pride reigns, self reigns, 
 animalism reigns, death reigns, but the reign of 
 the Father is to come. In the remarks now 
 following, although we may occasionally use 
 * Vinet. 
 
THE SECOND PE FITION. I 1 5 
 
 the word " kingdom," it is with the understand- 
 ing that we use it in the sense of " reign." 
 
 II. TJie zvay this kingdom zvill come. 
 
 I. It will come by the mediation of Jesus 
 Christ. Intimation of this, couched in " dark 
 and cloudy words," was given on the very day 
 when the rebellion broke out. Then it was 
 said to the serpent, " I will put enmity between 
 thee and the woman, and between thy seed 
 and her seed ; it shall bruise thy head, and 
 thou shalt bruise his heel." * This promise of 
 Eden was a bud in which the future flower of 
 all revelation lay folded. As time went on, it 
 gradually opened, and the announcement of a 
 Saviour's coming reign was given with growing 
 distinctness. A promise was made to David 
 that a son of his should have universal 
 sovereignty. " He shall have dominion," so 
 declared the oracle, "from sea to sea, and 
 from the river to the ends of the earth. All 
 kings shall fall down before him ; all nations 
 shall serve him, and shall call him blessed. 
 In his days shall the righteous flourish, and 
 abundance of peace, so long as the moon 
 endureth."t In a few years it became clear 
 that neither Solomon nor Solomon's son ful- 
 filled this prophecy; but still, while the glory 
 of the Hebrew nation was waning into gloom, 
 and its power was sinking into nothingness, 
 * Genesis iii. 15. + Psalm ii. 7, 8. 
 
Il6 THE SECOND PETITION. 
 
 the prophecies of the coming King kept glowing 
 on with greater vividness through message 
 after message, until the last prophet made 
 Him the subject of His last message : when, 
 after the silence of four hundred years, the 
 Spirit spoke again, the speech was still about 
 the King, and the burden of John the Baptist's 
 ministry was, " the reign of heaven is at hand, 
 get ready for it." While this herald's voice 
 was sounding, the King came. He had not 
 been long here — in fact, had not yet in a 
 formal way commenced His undertaking, when, 
 all eyes being fastened on Him, all minds exer- 
 cised on the question what His kingdom would 
 be like, he issued a manifesto, and we have it 
 in the Seven Beatitudes.* The first beatitude 
 is, " Blessed are the poor in spirit, for their's 
 is the kingdom of heaven." " This," says 
 Augustine, " is inclusive of all the beatitudes, 
 for all the beatitudes that follow are the un- 
 folding of this first one." " We have here, the 
 beginning both of the principles and the bles- 
 sings that make up the kingdom of God."t 
 Let but these principles, with their consequent 
 blessings, have ascendancy, and there, in all its 
 perfection, is the kingdom. This kingdom, or 
 reign, is one. Part is on earth, part is in 
 heaven, part is present, part is to come ; this 
 * Matt. V. I-I2. + Auff. de Serm. Dom. in jMonte. 
 
THE SECOND PETITION. I I 7 
 
 is the bud, that is the flower ; when we die, 
 going through the gate of death is not going 
 into the kingdom, but going into its perfection. 
 
 Jesus having in the first section of His sermon 
 on the Mount, told His disciples what the king- 
 dom would be like, before He brought that 
 sermon to a close, taught them to say to the 
 Father, with reference to it, "Thy kingdom 
 come." Guided by the instructions contained 
 in that sermon, the cry of our life must be, 
 " Father, let that reign come, when men shall 
 be poor in spirit, so that all the advantages of 
 the reign may be theirs ; when they shall 
 mourn so that they may be comforted ; when 
 they shall be meek, and so inherit the earth ; 
 when they shall hunger and thirst after 
 righteousness, and so be filled ; when they shall 
 be pure in heart, and so see God ; when they 
 shall be peace-makers, and so be called the 
 children of God. Let that reign come in which 
 shall come that royal truth, that royal kind- 
 ness, that royal fairness, that royal peace, that 
 exaltation of graces — which, because common, 
 current language is not intense enough to 
 describe, is set forth in the bold hyperbole of 
 this sermon on the Mount ! Let that reign 
 come, which will be the beginning of heaven 
 on earth !'' 
 
 2. It will come through the instrunieutality 
 
I I 8 THE SECOND PETITION. 
 
 of the cross. By the cross, we mean what was 
 consummated on the cross. God in Christ 
 founds the new reign of grace in that only. 
 The peace that is signed in the palace of the 
 Most High, is peace through " the blood of the 
 cross." War ceases only when this is operative. 
 We take God's word for this, and lay aside 
 man's opinion about it. On the one hand, it 
 is enough for us to know, that in some way, 
 through the perfection of the life, and the 
 mystery of the sacrifice finished there, the 
 rebel may be forgiven, and yet the eternal 
 order not be broken ; on the other hand, to 
 know that while the rebel is looking at and 
 trusting in " Christ crucified," enmity melts, a 
 new life of love is inspired, and that, as far as 
 the influence of the cross extends, the reign of 
 God comes. 
 
 Christian men sometimes seem as if they only 
 half believe in this. They seem as if, like the 
 Emperor Constantine, they see a glorious cross, 
 and read the celestial inscription under it, " by 
 this conquer," yet, believers as they nominally 
 are, it is not by this, that is, not by the cross 
 alone, that they expect to conquer, but by the 
 fitness of the means they employ in using the 
 cross, and their real hope seems to be, after all, 
 in the instrument of the instrument. There was 
 great hope when the emperor, who has just 
 been named, became champion of the Christians, 
 
THE SECOND PETITION. I IQ 
 
 but that hope was disappointed. It is true, his 
 conversion, such as it was, made Christianity an 
 aristocratic thing, — wealth, honour, office were all 
 on its side, and the creed of the monarch be- 
 came the creed of the people, but influences 
 were thus set working that tended to poison 
 Christianity and to postpone the coming of the 
 kingdom. When an old Saxon king gave up 
 his gods and was baptized, he would bid his 
 riders to do the same, and they would, as a matter 
 of course, obey their master's bidding. Equally 
 as a matter of course, Christianity would be- 
 come the fashion, but the heathen people though 
 marked with the sign of the cross, were heathen 
 people still, — still trembling in terror of the 
 spiritual world and the hidden wrath of nature. 
 The unknown powers they once worshipped 
 through such old names as Freya, Thor, and 
 Woden, they still worshipped, though under such 
 new names as the Virgin Mary, Saint Giles, or 
 Saint Lawrence ; and the kingdom of the 
 Father seemed to be very little nearer than it 
 was before. It is true in modern as in olden 
 time, that when fancy Christianity, or any 
 other version of it, gets married to rank and 
 social status, even the world will join that 
 church, fashion will profess that truth, and in- 
 fidelity will make believe to believe ; but it is 
 not in this way that the kingdom will come. 
 Great things for the Gospel have been expected 
 
I20 THE SECOND PETITION. 
 
 from education, from traffic, and from the ad- 
 vancement of science, but these are not the 
 primary instruments for bringing about a chosen, 
 cheerful subjection of hearts to the King who is 
 a Spirit and whose name is Love. Sometimes, 
 when a nation professing to live under the 
 standard of the cross, has had brilliant martial 
 successes, and heathen peoples have thus been 
 brought under its sway, this has been gloried in 
 as a fact on the side of the Gospel. The horse 
 " paweth in the valley, and rejoiceth in his 
 strength, he goeth on to meet the armed men. 
 He mocketh at fear, and is not affrighted ; 
 neither turneth he back from the sword. The 
 quiver rattleth against him ; the glittering spear 
 and the shield. He swalloweth the ground in 
 his fierceness and rage, neither believeth he that 
 it is the sound of the trumpet. He saith among 
 the trumpets, Ha, ha ! and he smelleth the 
 battle afar off, the thunder of the captains and 
 the shouting." * It is not in such fields that He 
 who leads " the armies of heaven " rides forth to 
 victory. War may in a single day stop the 
 beat of thousands of hearts, quench the light of 
 thousands of eyes, and make showers of tears 
 fall, but though the Master of all things, good 
 and evil, may use this evil thing for clearing 
 obstacles out from the path of His kingdom, it 
 is not by it that the kingdom will come whose 
 * Job xxxix. 21-25. 
 
THE SECOND PETITION. I 2 I 
 
 gentle glories are depicted in the sermon on the 
 Mount. The one instrumentality for setting up 
 that kingdom in human hearts is the cross. 
 This alone makes it possible for the Father to 
 Avelcome the wandered ones who come back to 
 Him, and, at the same time, makes them glad 
 to obey Him as their King. When even by the 
 humblest words or deeds we publish this cross, 
 we are taking part in some degree in working 
 the machinery which the King Himself has 
 appointed, and in the single use of which He 
 will win back His dominion over the human will. 
 3. It com.es by the pozver of the Spirit. Think 
 of an avalanche coming down from above the 
 snow-line of the Alps. See it, it is coming with 
 stern, conquering sway, to carry all before it, 
 but at first, its kingdom " cometh not with ob- 
 servation." It slips along with slow, scarcely 
 perceptible motion. In time, you begin to see 
 it crawl, crawl dovv^n the incline, " It is coming ! " 
 cry some watchers from the valley below ; but 
 they get used to it, give over fearing, and go 
 on with their work or their play. One day, all 
 the people are in terror ; it is coming, and they 
 now know it, but what can they do ^ Set up a 
 barrier .'' raise an army .-^ plant and point great 
 guns at it } say " stop ! " Do what they may, on 
 it comes. It comes faster and yet faster, " dart- 
 ing down the slopes, flitting from shelf to shelf, 
 jarring the mountain where it strikes," still 
 
122 THE SECOND PETITION. 
 
 glancing, shooting, bounding on, starting vast 
 rocks, loosening forests, sweeping away grassy- 
 acres along with it as it flys, — with gathering 
 mass it gains gathering mountains, until it 
 thunders over into the vale below and entombs 
 a village. 
 
 Whose hand cut that stone from the Alp ? 
 who shot it ? who flung it into the green gulph.? 
 Ah ! it was cut without hands, and in our world 
 of forms, forces, and movements, it is the most 
 impressive symbol we know of gathering, rush- 
 ing power that is not of man. 
 
 Once in a vision of the night, the Spirit of 
 Prophecy showed an avalanche to the King of 
 Babylon. He had in the same vision seen "a 
 great image," whose " brightness Avas excellent," 
 and "the form thereof was terrible." Then "a 
 stone cut from the mountain, without hands," 
 smote the image, \vhich was of iron, clay, brass, 
 silver, gold, and broke all these in pieces. 
 Through the lips of Daniel the prophet, the 
 " Revealer of Secrets " showed that the terrible 
 image, fashioned in different parts, of different 
 materials, represented the great, successive ruling 
 powers in the future of this world. " In the 
 days of these kings," thus said the Lord, " shall 
 the God of heaven set up a kingdom which 
 shall never be destroyed ; and the kingdom 
 shall not be left to other people, but it shall 
 break in pieces, and consume all these kingdoms. 
 
THE SECOND PETITION. I 23 
 
 and it shall stand for ever. Forasmuch as 
 thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the 
 mountain without hands, and that it brake in 
 pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, and the gold ; 
 the great God hath made known to the king 
 what shall come to pass hereafter ; and the 
 dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof, 
 is sure."* So will the kingdom of God come. 
 Man works with his hands, and this kingdom 
 will come as such a stone comes, " without 
 hands." It will come, that is, without that 
 power of motion which begins in man's working, 
 here fitly symbolised by "hands." It will come 
 by the power of its own divine vitality and 
 momentum. It will come in Gospel truth, 
 instinct with the life of the Holy Spirit, reign- 
 ing in the lives of more and more believers, until 
 " the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the 
 Lord as the waters cover the sea." So mighty 
 and universal shall this reign be. It will come 
 not as a blow scattering terror, not as an 
 avalanche of death, but as that which will only 
 kill evil, and under whose prevalence, " mortality 
 shall be swallowed up of life." Thus shall rise 
 the " Stone of vision, overlooking all the realm 
 of the earth." 
 
 Ill, Hoiv we should pray for this. 
 
 I. Every one of us must pray that the king- 
 
 ' Daniel ii. 
 
124 THE SECOND PETITION, 
 
 dom may come in his own heart. The speech 
 of each one must be, though I am the king's 
 child, through " having received the Spirit of 
 adoption ;" His reign in my heart is still a pro- 
 cess, not a complete result, and in the full sense 
 of the word His kingdom though coming, is not 
 yet come. My prayer ought to be more than 
 it is, — Let thy kingdom come in me. It is sadly 
 symptomatic of my soul's ill health that I find 
 myself offering prayers for so many other things 
 before this. I want His forgiveness, I want His 
 comfort, I want His light and protection, I want 
 His support in what I suffer, and His blessing on 
 what I do, but I do not yet feel as I ought to 
 feel, and pray as I ought to pray for the reign 
 of His grace in me. I am sometimes ready to 
 say. Father, save me out of my afflictions, let me 
 come home ; let this wicked Absalom, my soul, 
 see the King's face; yet the work of His subduing 
 spirit comes on so slowly within me, that I 
 almost doubt it should yet be ready to enjoy 
 the condition of the glorified — 
 
 " I cannot heal, I cannot hide 
 My leprosy of sin and pride ; 
 And were I summoned thus unmeet 
 To join the saints on Zion street — 
 Now, would my envy knit her frown 
 At one who wore a brighter crown ; 
 And now, my sullen discontent 
 Would mar the work o'er which I bent. 
 
THE SECOND PETITION. I 25 
 
 For earthly joys my soul would long, 
 Soon weary of the heavenly song — 
 The sweet unrest, the holy care. 
 The yoke of love, the raiment fair." * 
 
 Heaven must be in me, before I can be heaven, 
 and I need the power of the new life to master 
 the sickness of sin. My heart would Hft its 
 gates daily that the King of Glory may come 
 in. I want Him " to lodge in the castle, with 
 His mighty captains and men of war, to the joy 
 of the town of Mansoul."*!* Therefore, on my 
 own account, my prayer shall be daily this, 
 " Thy kingdom come." 
 
 2. Let all join in prayer, that the kingdom 
 may come in the world. The absolute certainty of 
 the event does not render prayer for its accom- 
 plishment the less imperative. The promises 
 were given, not to supersede, but to encourage 
 prayer, and when we turn the promises into 
 prayers, we do but conform to the order be- 
 tween cause and effect, and the end is not more 
 certainly a matter of decree than are the 
 various means to its attainment. When Jehovah 
 promised to "restore the waste places of Judah, 
 and to plant that which was desolate," He 
 subjoined the order, " I will yet for this be 
 inquired of by the house of Israel, to do 
 
 * G. S. Outram. 
 
 t Bunyan's " Holy War," chapter ix. 
 
I 26 THE SECOND PETITION. 
 
 it for them." Just as when He promises 
 bread, it is through the implied use of our 
 hands ; when He promises knowledge, it is 
 through the implied use of lessons ; when 
 He promises grace, it is through the implied 
 use of the " means of grace ; " when He has, 
 in manifold language, assured us that His reign 
 in this world will come, it is implied that it will 
 come through the working of the law of prayer. 
 The sight of the world's sin in its inveteracy 
 and universality, sometimes makes the lips 
 whiten, and the heart fail. " In the multitude 
 of thoughts " that hold parliament within us, 
 one sceptic thought will sometimes rise to say 
 of the Almighty, " What profit should we have, 
 if we pray to Him.?"* Though we go on 
 praying for the kingdom, our spirit is cast 
 down. " How long it is in coming ! " we say. 
 A poet sings of God, " His purposes will ripen 
 fast, unfolding every hour." Will they.? It 
 seems that, as a matter of fact, they do not. 
 It is now 1883 years ago since Christ was born, 
 yet look at the world ! " We see not yet, all 
 things put under Him." We must have patience. 
 " He inhabiteth eternity ; " we inhabit only a 
 few years of time. The soul flutters amongst 
 those buds of beautiful purpose, said to " ripen 
 fast," and we think of a butterfly hovering 
 about the buds in a spring garden. Does it 
 * Job xxi. 15. 
 
THE SECOND PETITION. llj 
 
 fancy that the hard, green sheaths will never 
 burst into flower ? Before they do, perhaps 
 the frail little hoverer will shrivel and drop, 
 but for all that, the roses will come out one by 
 one at the right season ; so let our impatient 
 spirits be assured, it will be with the promises 
 of the kingdom. Oh, it is coming ! although 
 at times the world may be at moments as little 
 like heaven as when it crucified Christ, the 
 reign of the Father is sure in due season to 
 show itself, for no power can ever frustrate His 
 purpose, or falsify His word. 
 
 Prayer speaks different languages, takes 
 different forms. Sometimes it takes the form 
 of words, sometimes of gifts, sometimes of 
 actions, sometimes of strenuous fight ; and, 
 perhaps, at the moment when in this world the 
 fight has reached its most exciting crisis, and 
 the soldiers of the Cross have done and suffered 
 to their utmost extremity, there may be wit- 
 nessed one grand and final illustration of the 
 proverb, " Man's extremity, God's opportunity." 
 I look for Christ to come somewhat as His 
 coming is described by the seer of the " Holy 
 War'' — in the thick of the battle between 
 Captains Credence and Diabolus. The brave 
 men of Mansoul had fought hard all day out- 
 side their walls, to beat back the Powers of 
 Darkness. The battle seemed to waver in the 
 balance. At one time victory seemed to be 
 
I 28 THE SECOND PETITION. 
 
 on the side of Faith, at another on the side of 
 Faith's terrible foe, when, just as the sun was 
 setting, and when the armies were in deadly 
 wrestle, " Captain Credence lifted up his eyes 
 and saw, and behold, Emmanuel came, with 
 colours flying, trumpets sounding, and the feet 
 of his men scarce touching the ground."* "Then 
 the lords of the pit made their escape," and 
 forsook their soldiers, leaving them to fall 
 before the Prince. Over the dead doubters 
 rode the royal army, and the victorious church 
 saluted its victorious Lord. So, let us believe, 
 will Christ come, and thus shall be brought to 
 pass the saying that is written, " The kingdoms 
 of this world are become the kingdoms of our 
 Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign for 
 ever and ever." 
 
 Let us, while striving to learn in the stillness 
 of secret meditation, how to offer aright this 
 prayer when we come into the praying com- 
 pany, think and- pray our way from passage to 
 passage deliberately, and with great searching 
 of heart. Before we go on to the next petition, 
 let us pause at this — give time for it to sink 
 into our souls, strike with its own power, and 
 do its own work there. Let us take home the 
 words of John Bradford, the martyr, " When a 
 man shall say, ' Thy kingdom come,' and then 
 shall be thinking with himself, ' Oh, but if it 
 * " Holy War," chapter xvii. 
 
THE SECOND PETITION. I 29 
 
 should now come, what a case I am in ! ' then, 
 let him not in the midst of these thoughts say, 
 ' Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven ' 
 — so letting the tongue go on with something 
 else before his heart has done with this ; but let 
 there be deliberate attendance and careful 
 dwelling on one particular before the next be 
 presented." * 
 
 * Quoted from memory. 
 
VI. 
 
 THE THIRD PETITION. 
 
 "Thy will be done in earth; as it is in heaven." — Matt. 
 vi. lo. "Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth." — LuKE 
 xi. 2. Authorized Version. 
 
 "Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth." — Matt, vi, lo. 
 Omitted from the Gospel by Luke. Revised Version, 
 
 According to the revisers, this sentence is 
 given only in St Matthew. His report of the 
 wonderful prayer appears to be the standard ; 
 the report in St Luke to be, in some respects, 
 an abridgement ; the design of our Lord in 
 this renewed utterance, not being to tell it 
 over again word for word, but to recall the 
 attention of His disciples to it, as to something 
 which they had not properly kept in mind. 
 The second form refers back to the first. Both 
 breathe the spirit of this petition, but the first 
 expresses the spirit in the letter. All who are 
 saying, or trying hard to say, " Thy will be 
 done," may well be thankful still to know that 
 these very words are in the original and com- 
 plete prayer. 
 
THE THIRD PETITION. I 3 I 
 
 I. What do we mean by this petition ? 
 
 I. In presenting it, we pray that the will of 
 God may be done by the will of man* Without 
 this as a primary meaning, the prayer is need- 
 less, for what would be the use of saying to 
 the omnipotent Sovereign of the universe, 
 " Thy will be done " ? As far as He is con- 
 cerned, it is done already, and ever must be, 
 whether we pray for it or not. "Who hath 
 resisted His will ? '' " He doeth according to 
 His will in the army of heaven, and among the 
 inhabitants of earth, and none can stay His 
 hand, or say unto Him, What doest thou } "t 
 " I will take the city, whether Zeus wills it or 
 not ! " cried the furious Kapaneus, as he rushed 
 up the scaling ladder at the siege of ancient 
 Thebes, but a thunderbolt struck him dead. 
 " I will take Moscow," was the resolve of 
 Napoleon, and when the old saying was cited, 
 " Man proposes, but God disposes," he declared 
 that he intended both to propose and dispose. 
 *' Words are but air, and tongues but clay '' 
 — we know that, after all, he was defeated, and 
 that the retreat from Moscow was almost a 
 miracle of disaster. While men in the intoxi- 
 cation of absolute power, and in the worship of 
 
 * Non ut Deus facial quod vult, sed ut nos facere 
 possimus quod Deus vult." — Cyprian, " De Oratione 
 Dominica." 
 
 t Daniel iv. 35. 
 
1 3 2 THE THIRD PETITION. 
 
 their own wills, forget their human limitations, 
 and refuse to own a superior, the King of 
 kings is all the while using them as blind 
 instruments, is bending with infinite ease the 
 mightiest and most refractory elements into 
 the service of His own determinations, and is 
 shewing that whether it is man's will or not, 
 His will must be done. 
 
 Then, is war His will ? is ignorance His will ? 
 
 is injustice His will ? is misery His will ? Is 
 
 it His will that life should dwindle and pine 
 
 through filth, neglect, or overcrowding in great 
 
 cities ? Is it His will that infants should die 
 
 through quieting mixtures and ardent spirits ? 
 
 Is sin His will ? Had His will been done when 
 
 He said to the favoured nation of old, " O that 
 
 thou hadst ^hearkened to My commandments ! 
 
 then had thy peace been as a river, and thy 
 
 righteousness as the waves of the sea " ? * 
 
 " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the 
 
 prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto 
 
 thee, how often would I have gathered thy 
 
 children together, even as a hen gathereth her 
 
 chickens under her wings, and ye would not ! 
 
 Behold, your house is left unto you desolate ! " t 
 
 We have to distinguish between His will of 
 
 command and His will of control. Included 
 
 in the fact that on this earth His reign has not 
 
 yet come, things exist here that are not in 
 
 * Is. xlviii. 17. t Matt xxiii. 37, 38. 
 
THE THIRD PETITION. I 33 
 
 accordance with His will of command, and 
 these things, therefore, are simply under His 
 will of control. Failing to see this distinction — 
 holding the hazy creed that somehow, whatever 
 thing happens, it is His will — regarding things 
 as His will which are in reality only obstruc- 
 tions to the free workings of His will — some 
 persons have glided into the habit of mistaking 
 quiescence in evil, for the trance of Christian 
 resignation. 
 
 We do the will of God in the sense intended 
 by our Teacher, when, His spirit in our hearts, 
 and His book in our hands, we pay Him our 
 obedience — active obedience to His will as 
 recorded in the words of revelation, passive 
 obedience — that is, the obedience of lowly and 
 patient submission to His will as expressed in 
 the direction or discipline of events. From the 
 nature of this, it must be done willingly. It is 
 by the exercise of God's own will that the 
 material creation obeys Him. He himself 
 sways to unsinning obedience the tides in 
 their beat and the stars in their courses. It is 
 by Himself that His will is done in the happy 
 things of the earth, and air, and water. What 
 child of God cannot enter into the words of one 
 who, years ago, wrote in a time of distress — 
 "The sight 01^ innocent birds in the branches 
 and sheep in the pastures, who act according 
 to the will of their Creator, hath at times 
 
134 THE THIRD PETITION. 
 
 tended to mitigate my troubles."* His will is 
 done in the birds, insects, and flowers ; but we, 
 who are beings with wills of our own, "are 
 required to do willingly, what the flowers do 
 unconsciously," We, by our own choice, are to 
 spread ourselves out to His light, drink it in, 
 and pour it out again in the beauty and frag- 
 rance of holiness. We would not obey His will 
 against our own will, as slaves do, but would be 
 as happy children delighting in the " dear God 
 who loveth us." 
 
 "Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done." 
 At first these two petitions seem to be but two 
 forms of one and the same. The second has 
 been called an " amplifying and explicative 
 sentence," repeating the spirit of the first. As 
 we look again, we see a difference. When we 
 say, " Thy kingdom come," the turn of thought 
 is chiefly towards the Father, when we go on to 
 say, " Thy will be done," we are thinking more 
 especially of ourselves, the children. In the 
 one case we pray that He may rule ; in the 
 other, that we may boiv to His rule. In the 
 one, we say, "be Thou our gracious king;" in 
 the other, " make us Thy willing people." hi 
 us, thro2igh us, /or us, over us, — "Our Father," 
 " Thy will be done." This is our will. 
 
 2. This is the prayer of a renovated will. 
 
 We pray with our ivill that the will of God 
 * John Woolman. 
 
THE THIRD PETITION. I 35 
 
 may be done. Some Christians dimly think that 
 a Christian is to have no will at all, and that 
 the consummation prayed for here, is that our 
 own wills may die, and that the only will left 
 living, should be God's. This practically is the 
 doctrine of the monastery, which we may be 
 allowed to illustrate by an oft-told tale from the 
 life of St Francis. The grand rule of his order 
 is the implicit submission of each monk's will 
 to the will of his superior. " One day, a monk 
 proved refractory ; his will had to be conquered. 
 * Dig a grave,' said Francis to the brothers. 
 They dug a grave deep enough to hold a man 
 standing upright. ' Put him into it.' They 
 put him down into it. * Shovel in the earth.' 
 They did so, while he stood by stern as death. 
 When the mould had reached the victim's knees, 
 the superior bent down, fixed his eyes upon him, 
 and said, ' Are you dead yet .-" ' No answer. 
 Down in that grave stood a man whose will 
 was iron as his own. The signal was given, 
 and the burial went on. Up to the knees, up 
 to the neck, up to the lips the mould was 
 shovelled in. Then Francis bent once more, 
 and said. Are you dead now .■'' The man in the 
 grave looked up, and saw, in the cold, grey eyes 
 that were fixed upon him, no spark of human 
 feeling. Dead to pity, dead to nature, St 
 Francis stood ready in another moment to give 
 the signal for the complete entombment. Just 
 
136 THE THIRD PETITION. 
 
 in time, the iron broke, the will died, the funeral 
 stopped, for the crushed man — a man no longer, 
 because he now had no will, said, ' I am dead,' 
 and was lifted out to join the dead men called 
 monks of the order of St Francis," 
 
 That kind of death is not the death gloried 
 in by him who said, " I am crucified with Christ." 
 Man would cease to be man if he ceased to 
 have a will, and God could not be our God 
 if we are dead ; for " God is not the God of the 
 dead, but of the living." The death we wish 
 for, is the death not of the will, but of self as 
 its master, through the new and enthroned life 
 of Christ. God's will is that our will should 
 by renovation be more energetically alive than 
 ever, working in harmony with His own. This 
 is what we pray for here. We pray that our own 
 lives and all related lives may be brought into 
 such entire unanimity with God, that what He 
 wills, we may, and that so His will may be 
 done. The great Augustine, speaking of this 
 prayer, tells us that it is another way of saying, 
 " Grant that we may never seek to bend the 
 straight to the crooked, that is. Thy will to ours, 
 but that we, and all doers, may bend the crooked 
 to the straight," our will to Thine, " that Thy will 
 may be done." We do not thus pray naturally. 
 Naturally, we put self, not God in the first place. 
 It is therefore proof of renovation, it is the 
 
THE THIRD PETITION. 1 37 
 
 prayer of children who have been born again, it 
 is the zvill that speaks, and the will all alive 
 with " the power of an endless life." 
 
 3. In this prayer to our Father, we say with 
 emphasis, TJiy will be done. 
 
 Here, therefore, in the form of prayer given to 
 us by Jesus Christ, not only for its own literal 
 use, but for use as a directory to prescribe and 
 govern the method and spirit of all prayer and 
 supplication, we are taught to ask for nothing 
 but with the distinct proviso that it accords with 
 the will of God. Before we ask for a single thing 
 on our own account, we lay this foundation stone 
 to build it on, " Thy will be done," and we de- 
 liberately pray that our other prayers may be 
 refused if they clash with this. Our real prayer, 
 our ruling prayer, the threefold prayer, out of 
 which as out of a root, all the following prayers 
 are. to spring, is, "Hallowed be Thy name, 
 Thy kipgdom come, Thy will be done." 
 
 This principle has not always received its 
 due prominence. In many minds there is the 
 impression, if not the distinct belief that prayer 
 is simply the request that our wills may be done 
 — done in this or that specified particular. The 
 notion often is, that if we do but set our hearts 
 on certain things and offer prayers for them — 
 prayers that are long enough or strong enough — 
 pleading the merits of Christ, " asking in faith, 
 nothing doubting,'' what we ask for we shall 
 
138 THE THIRD PETITION. 
 
 certainly have. The thoughts of some good 
 people are in a tangle about this, and no great 
 injustice is done to their views by the definition 
 thus put by a certain secularist, — *' Prayer is a 
 machine, warranted by theologians to make God 
 do what His clients want." After what Chris- 
 tians have sometimes said, we are hardly sur- 
 prised that in some instances the Christian 
 doctrine has been understood to be that prayer 
 is one of the laws of nature, so that if used by 
 one who understood it, the prayer-power, like 
 any other natural power, must work out certain 
 known and invariable results according to the 
 will of the operator, that will giving sole direc- 
 tion. This led to the well-known challenge 
 made a few years ago by a scientific enquirer : 
 " I ask that one single ward or hospital, under 
 the care of first-rate physicians and surgeons, 
 containing certain numbers of patients afflicted 
 with those diseases which have been best studied, 
 and of which the mortality rates are best known, 
 &c., should be, during a period of not less, say, 
 than three or five years, made the obj ect of special 
 prayer by the whole body of the faithful, and 
 that, at the end of that time, the mortality rates 
 should be compared with the past rates, and 
 also with those of other leading hospitals^ simi- 
 larly well managed during the same space of 
 time." 
 
 No test could have been more fair and rational 
 
THE THIRD PETITION. 1 39 
 
 than this, if we had to regard the question about 
 prayer simply as a disputed principle in natural 
 science. In that case, as after a certain use of 
 the galvanic battery, a shock will follow, so, 
 after certain prayers, we should expect certain 
 answers in the natural order of cause and effect, 
 and we might fairly try prayer in the wards of an 
 infirmary, just as we try quinine, or bark, or any 
 other natural means for making a sick man 
 well. 
 
 But prayer is not one of the powers of nature ; 
 it is one of the means of grace. It is not like 
 a medical prescription, the efficacy of which is 
 quite irrespective of a right moral spirit of the 
 person who tries it. It is not a mere applica- 
 tion to God in language, with whatever confi- 
 dence in our success. Its power altogether 
 depends on its spirit. While it is an instru- 
 ment by which God gives good things to His 
 children, it is a process by which He educates 
 them ; for thus their souls are brought into 
 sympathy with Himself. We are to ask for 
 nothing but with the understanding that in our 
 receiving it. His will may be done. His will 
 includes obedience, purity, love, and all Christian 
 grace. We are to have the things we pray for, 
 if they are, and if we are in harmony with this. 
 We are in this way fitted to receive the gifts 
 God is waiting to grant, and if not spiritually 
 
140 THE THIRD PETITION. 
 
 fitted to receive them, common sense tells us we 
 are better without them. 
 
 We disclaim every form and degree of the 
 doctrine that prayer is simply an expedient for 
 getting our own way. Such a theory creates 
 infidels, and its acceptance as true would make 
 prayer itself the ruin of us. It would be fatal 
 to faith in the power of prayer, or in the good 
 of it. Fatal to faith in its power. It is plain 
 that all the prayers prompted simply by the 
 will of man could not be granted. Prayer by 
 some suppliants that certain things may be ; 
 by others that they may not be ; by some for 
 the success, by others for the defeat of the same 
 cause, could not both be granted at the same 
 time. The prayer of devout Lord Falkland that 
 the king might win, and prayers by the devout 
 Colonel Hutchison that the Parliament might 
 win the same battle, could not have both been 
 granted. Prayers on a sunny day, of certain 
 farmers in a country church that fine weather 
 may last because their hay is down, and prayers 
 of others on the other side of the road that rain 
 may come, because their hay is stocked, and 
 crops of other kinds may be damaged by dry 
 weather, are prayers not likely to be both 
 granted. 
 
 But if the unqualified prayers that our own 
 wills may be done, were such that the answer 
 to them would not of necessity imply physical 
 
THE THIRD PETITION. 14I 
 
 contradictions and impossibilities like these, and 
 if, without reference to the way of the Supreme, 
 you gained by prayer your own way in every- 
 thing, what would be the effect ? What would 
 be the effect on your own child, if you allowed 
 him by prayer to you, to gain his own way in 
 everything ? If, while in the nursery, when he 
 cried for a thing, he always had it ? If, while 
 still a little one, scarcely able to lisp his wish, 
 he asked for fire, or sharp steel, or explosive 
 chemicals to play with, and had what he asked 
 for? If, when in a fit of industry, he asked 
 leave to weed up all the choice plants in the 
 garden, he had it ? If, because his •^ill was 
 against school, he was not sent to school ? If, as 
 life went on he could always plead a promise of 
 yours, that he had only to fill up the blank of a 
 cheque according to his own will, and you would 
 always sign it ? We need not ask, and indeed 
 such an experiment would be so extreme, that 
 our minds refuse to take in the idea. 
 
 Yet you know infinitely less of the great God's 
 thoughts and ways than your nurseling does of 
 yours. For his will to be the rule rather than 
 yours, would be infinitely less disastrous than 
 for your will to be done rather than God's. You 
 will not allow your child to have everything he 
 asks for, simply because it is his will to have it, 
 yet most likely it is the wise law of your house 
 that he should ask you for things he wishes for, 
 
142 THE THIRD PETITION. 
 
 when they are beyond the routine of his life, 
 that when he does so, you will if you can, and it 
 is for his good, give him those things ; that you 
 will not, as a rule, give them unless he asks, and 
 that you only give them with the understand- 
 ing that your will is thus done. So the Heavenly 
 Father deals with us. The child asks for what 
 seems best. The Father reserves to Himself the 
 right to decide on what is best. The child recog- 
 nizes that right, and says as Jesus did in the gar- 
 den, "Father, not My will, but Thine be done." 
 
 If, indeed, we regarded prayer as "a machine 
 for making God do the will of man," or as a 
 power in nature, like any other such power, sure 
 as law, to take effect according to the will of 
 those who know how to use it ; if we sought to 
 change the will of God ; if we held the mons- 
 trous creed that, by the law of prayer God 
 places his Omnipotence at the disposal of our 
 weakness, so that we could make ourselves or 
 others, rich or poor, well or ill, live or die by 
 our prayers ; if we taught that His power could 
 be wielded by man's ignorance, and be subject 
 unconditionally to man's will ; if the praying 
 habit which Christ enjoins and Christians prac- 
 tice were such a dangerous instrument, having 
 under the name of a blessing the reality of a 
 curse ; we should have no more to say. 
 
 As it is, the very act of prayer helps to 
 make our will go along with God's. Each one 
 
THE THIRD PETITION. 143 
 
 whose own will has been renovated, is learning 
 to sing — 
 
 " I worship Thee, sweet will of God, 
 And all Thy ways adore, 
 And every day I live, I long 
 To love Thee more and more." * 
 
 Some will must be done. Whose .-• Thy will, 
 our Father ! The will of the Best, Wisest, most 
 Holy, most Loving ! We adore, we obey, we 
 delight. Ours is not a mere submission to the 
 inevitable, but a choice of the charming, for it 
 is Thy will, the one will that is perfect. 
 
 " O Almighty and most merciful God, by 
 Thy bountiful goodness keep us, we beseech 
 Thee, from all things that may hurt us ; that 
 we, being ready both in body and in soul, may 
 cheerfully accomplish those things that Thou 
 wouldest have done ; through Jesus Christ our 
 Lord. Amen."-|- 
 
 4. We pray that the will of God may be 
 done " on earth as it is in heaven." In the New 
 Version, the substituted phrase, " as in heaven, 
 so on earth," amounts, as far as we can see, to 
 the same thing. Take which rendering you 
 choose, it is not in the nature of an appendix to 
 what has gone before, but is the flower, the very 
 crown and climax, the glory and intensifica- 
 tion of the petitions, " Thy will be done," It 
 
 * Faber. 
 
 t Prayer Book. Collect for the Twentieth Sunday after 
 Trinity, 
 
144 THE THIRD PETITION. 
 
 speaks of the measure and degree in which 
 God's will ought to be done by us — namely, as 
 it is done in heaven. "The measure which 
 Christ lays down for us, is always an infinite 
 measure, and the pattern is always a heavenly 
 pattern." Our heaven is not a mere heaven of 
 the senses. It is the world where God is 
 revealed with most impressive power and most 
 enchanting beauty ; and where His will is done 
 — done in creation and in history ; done within 
 and without ; done in body and in soul, done 
 by all beings, in all ways, to perfection and for 
 ever. The inhabitants of heaven, says Baxter, 
 " obey understanding^, speedily, sincerely, fully, 
 readily, delightedly, unweariedly, and concord- 
 antly." " Willingly, speedily, sincerely, fully, 
 and constantly," so responds Archbishop Usher. 
 This is a prayer that the world may be just what 
 it ought to be. It is the very highest ideal of 
 perfection and felicity for the race. Greater 
 thought never dawned on man, grander prayer 
 never rose to God. Only by degrees can we 
 rise to a true conception of its sublimity. It 
 means, let every nation on earth, every province 
 in that nation, every family in that province, 
 every person in that family be saved. Let every 
 house be a temple of God, let every meal be 
 cucharistic, let every man be a priest, and every 
 place be consecrated. Let the Father be 
 revealed through the Son all over the earth, 
 
THE THIRD PETITION, 1 45 
 
 let every hand bring a tribute ; every eye a 
 glance, every voice a song. From every land 
 on which the sunshine strikes, on every shore 
 the ocean laves, let praise softly rise, and 
 sweetly linger. 
 
 II. How shall we use this petition ? With 
 such applications as the following — 
 
 I. Thy will be done in obedience to orders. 
 The first meaning is an active one. It speaks of 
 doifig. Too often this prayer is thought of 
 as a holy sigh ; and sounds like a dismal, 
 melting, mournful cadence ; an echo to the sobs 
 of Gethsemane; a cry of captives while their 
 harps are hung upon the willows, and tears are 
 mingling with the stream on whose banks they 
 are flung ; a plaintive note wafted from some 
 mourner who may hereafter say, " like a crane 
 or a swallow, so did I chatter, I did mourn as a 
 dove;" — a groan from a cowed and exhausted 
 nature ; a phrase meaning, " we can do nothing, 
 it is of no use to try, we are very sorry, but, — 
 O God, Thy will be done!" 
 
 " Thy will be done." Yes, but the first 
 question is, who should do it .'' and the answer 
 to this question is, " You." The prayer is not, 
 Thy will be put up with. Thy will be suffered, 
 Thy will be borne as a heavy yoke ; but " Thy 
 will be done." It is not, Thy will be thought 
 about, Thy will be cried about, but " Thy will 
 be done." The language is resolute, spirited, 
 
146 THE THIRD PETITION. 
 
 full of spring ; it has in it the eagerness of the 
 enquiry, " Lord what wilt Thou have me to do P" 
 The Lord's life breathed this Lord's prayer. 
 When from the distance of ages He spoke of 
 His advent, He said " I delight to do Thy will 
 O my God;" and " Thy will be done" is the 
 inscription we see displayed over the manger at 
 Bethlehem, over the well of Samaria, and over 
 all the strenuous activities of His obedience no 
 less than over the sorrow in the Garden, and 
 the sacrifice on the Cross. 
 
 Let this also be our motto. By making it 
 our prayer we mean that we desire to be " up 
 and doing " in obedience to orders. Our 
 life is all under orders. Because God is 
 our Father to perfection. He is also our King 
 to perfection, and His orders are therefore 
 absolute. Our desire for ourselves is, that we 
 may fall into no mistake about them, that we 
 may clearly know what they are, and then, that 
 we may thoroughly carry them out. We may 
 not always " know the reason why," — this is not 
 essential ; the thing essential to know is, what 
 we have to do, not why we have to do it. The 
 Infinite Reason makes no mistakes, and at 
 every pause of demur, or hint of enquiry, the 
 majestic answer is " what I do, thou knowest 
 not now, but thou shalt know hereafter." Our 
 eyes therefore are on God in Christ, we would 
 wait for a signal from the centre of supreme 
 
THE THIRD PETITION. 1 47 
 
 authority, before we do anything which is 
 not already clear, and we would wait with 
 watchful patience. The son of Antiochus once 
 said, "Father, when will the battle begin?" 
 " Dost thou fear," replied the king, " that thou 
 only in all the army wilt not hear the trumpet ?"' 
 We are not to act before the commander gives 
 the word, not to delay to act after he has given 
 it, not to be anxious when we have to wait for it. 
 When the time comes for action, the trumpet 
 will give no " uncertain sound ;" we shall know 
 what to do, — then, it will be " ours to do or die." 
 When the steamer BirkenJiead, with a regiment 
 of soldiers on board, struck upon a rock on the 
 coast of Africa, it was thought from the moment 
 of the first rasp and shock that it could not keep 
 together many minutes, and orders were given 
 to fit the emergency. The roll of the drum 
 called the soldiers to arms on the upper deck. 
 It was promptly obeyed by all, though each one 
 knew that it was his death summons. There 
 they stood, drawn up as in battle-array, looking 
 on while boats were got out, first for the women 
 and children, next for the other passengers — no 
 boats left for them. There they stood firmly 
 and calmly, waiting a watery grave. The ship 
 was every moment going down and down, but 
 there each man stood in his place ; the women 
 and children were all got into the boats, and 
 pulled off in safety, but on that solemn deck the 
 
T48 THE THIRD PETITION. 
 
 soldiers still kept their ranks motionless and 
 silent. Then down went the ship, and down 
 with it went the heroes, shoulder to shoulder, 
 firing a parting volley, and then sinking beneath 
 the remorseless waters; type of spiritual soldiers 
 doing their king's commands, and being " faith- 
 ful unto death." So may we look to this Book, 
 take our orders from the infinite perfection, and 
 say, living and dying, " Thy will be done ! " 
 That it may be so, we would say to the Father 
 what once Augustine did, " Give what thou com- 
 mandest, and then command what thou wilt."* 
 2. " Thy will be done " m submission tinder 
 trials. The sorrows that are in the world through 
 sins are used by our Father with sovereign mas- 
 tery for corrective, or preventive, or educational 
 purposes in his family. Look round in it. 
 There is a father the pride of whose life has 
 been blighted ; there is a mother, whose children, 
 for whose life she has offered her own over and 
 over again, are now all buried — buried in the 
 grave, or buried body and soul in business, or 
 buried in the love of some stranger. There 
 is a delicately nurtured being w^ho once lived in 
 a heaven of love and tender praise and beautiful 
 refinement, but who now, in his forlorn old age, 
 had survived all who ever loved him ; life has 
 lost its sunny prospects and its cheery stir, and 
 for him in this world there seems to be no future. 
 * " Da quod jubes, et jube quod vis," 
 
THE THIRD PETITION. 1 49 
 
 There is another who has been wealthy, but who 
 now, in his decHne of strength, has to fight hard 
 for bare bread, or to strain his weary faculties in 
 an attempt to find some way out of a deadlock 
 of difficulties. There is a watcher bending over 
 some dear face with fear, lest in a moment the 
 flame of life should fade, and the white shadow 
 of the grave come over it. There is a thin con- 
 sumptive coughing his span of life away. It is 
 hard at times for any one of these to say, " Thy 
 will be done ; " hard to say it when the body is 
 a suffering thing, peril to touch, and pain to see ; 
 it is harder still to say it, when the soul itself, 
 still brimful of life, quick as lightning, and im- 
 patient of any arrest of its activity in the service 
 of God, is forced to feel that it is the useless and 
 helpless prisoner of the sick body. " His use- 
 lessness," as he called it, was the special trial of 
 Archbishop Whately. When, with keen, cool, 
 hard intellect and impetuous energy of will, yet 
 with total exhaustion of body, he lay in his last 
 sickness — " Have you ever preached from the 
 words, ' Thy will be done .<• ' said he to his 
 chaplain one day, " How do you explain it ? " 
 When the chaplain replied, "Just so,'' said he, 
 with choking voice, " but it is hard, very hard, 
 sometimes, to say it ! " Every son of God has 
 his Gethsemane ; his place for the cup of bitter- 
 ness and the prayer of agony. Although there 
 can be no atoning element in what we go 
 
150 THE THIRD PETITION, 
 
 through, and our cross never can be that of 
 sacrifice, we may have a cross in the very pros- 
 pect of which our soul is "exceeding sorrowful." 
 Then it is right for us to pray as he did, " Father, 
 if it be possible, let this cup pass from me." We 
 may in this case kneel where he knelt, and say 
 what he said, but we may not divide his words ; 
 we must add that hard word ^'nevertheless,'' and 
 say in prospect of the unknown trouble, " Thy 
 will be done." After that prayer we are ready 
 for the cross, if one is waiting for us, or able to 
 live through the affliction that may be our cross 
 just now. By the help of the Comforter, the 
 promises that shine out in our sorrows, as stars 
 shine out in the night, encourage us to offer 
 this prayer ; we are encouraged to offer it by 
 the memory of what God has done for us. 
 " Do you know this, Master Cameron } " said 
 an executioner, startling the old Christian in 
 his cell, and showing something in a basket. 
 It was a fair-haired youthful head, just stricken 
 off. " I know it, I know it. My son's — my 
 own dear son's. It is the Lord ; good is the 
 will of the Lord, who cannot wrong me nor 
 mine, but has made goodness and mercy follow 
 us all our days." The same goodness and 
 mercy have followed ours, warranting the same 
 trust in the same blessed will. It is the will of 
 One who cannot wrong us, the will of our 
 " Father in Heaven." " ' God is Love,' is the 
 
THE THIRD PETITION. 15I 
 
 motto on the weather-cock of a country friend. 
 We have seen many curious vanes, but never 
 one that struck our attention so much as this, 
 * God is Love.' Our friend was asked if he 
 meant to imply that the love of God was as 
 fickle as the wind .'' ' No,' he answered, * I 
 mean that which ever way the wind blows, God 
 is Love ; if cold from the north, or biting from 
 the east, still God is Love, as much as when 
 the warm south, or genial west wind refreshes 
 our fields and flocks.' Yes, so it is ! our God 
 is always Love. We saw our friend the other 
 day, when he had lost his dearly loved wife, but 
 amidst his heartache and crushing loss, he still 
 said, ' My vane teaches me the truth ; I put 
 over it in my prosperity when the desire of my 
 eyes was at my side — God is Love! " * Can 
 we not yet trust Him enough to say in our 
 cares and pains, " Thy will be done ! " 
 
 3. "Thy will be done" by sur7^ender to Thy 
 guidance. Those mysterious travellers, our 
 souls, have paths before them of which they 
 know nothing. The map of their future is a 
 secret hid away amidst the glories of God. 
 What we shall want, what and where our 
 dangers will be, how long we shall be on the 
 road, and at what part of it we shall find 
 heaven, no prophet has been commissioned to 
 disclose. We need that the Father's will should 
 * Rev. C. H. vSpurgeon. 
 
152 THE THIRD PETITION. 
 
 steer and guide our life, and that for all the 
 future we should trust Him totally ; yet some- 
 times we hardly let ourselves go, or let those 
 dear as ourselves go, out from our seeing or 
 keeping. We try to make out some glimmer- 
 ing outline of things to come ; we try to reserve 
 some power of choice as to the course, or as to 
 the stations of our pilgrimage. We are like 
 Joseph, when he took his two children to re- 
 ceive a blessing from his father. " And Joseph 
 took them both, Ephraim in his right hand 
 toward Israel's left hand, and Manasseh in his 
 left hand toward Israel's right hand, and brought 
 them near to him. And Israel stretched out 
 his right hand and laid it on Ephraim's head, 
 who was the younger, and his left hand upon 
 Manasseh's head, guiding his hands wittingly, 
 for Manasseh was the first-born." * God was 
 the arbiter of the hands. His will moved in 
 the movement of the blind old man. It was of 
 no use then, it is of no use now, trying to guide 
 the Guide. Let Him lead ; let us follow. We 
 find, for the most part, that when we have been 
 suffered to have our way, rather than His way 
 in scheming for the future, we have worked out 
 some disaster, and that when our burning 
 prayers to be led in some particular direction 
 pointed out by ourselves, have been refused, 
 that refusal has proved itself to be in the long 
 * Genesis xlviii. 13, 14. 
 
THE THIRD PETITION. I 5 3 
 
 run, an act of wisest mercy calling for loudest 
 praise. 
 
 Monica prayed that the Lord would bring 
 her dear son Augustine to the knowledge of 
 himself ; she also prayed that He would keep 
 him from voyaging, as he had purposed 
 to do, from Africa to Italy. After all he 
 went to Italy, and the loving suppliant 
 was in trouble because her prayers were not 
 heard. Yet, being at Milan, going to hear 
 Ambrose preach, and thinking only to be 
 charmed by the magic of his eloquence, he 
 found " the pearl of great price," and began 
 his great life of Christian service, — with re- 
 ference to which fact he has said, " Thou O 
 good God, deep in counsel, and hearing the 
 substance of my mother's desires, didst not 
 regard what she tJien asked, that in me Thou 
 mightest do that which she ever asked." * This 
 clause of the Lord's prayer, as applied to guid- 
 ance in all our future, amounts to saying, as 
 to time or place, health or sickness, life or 
 death, and all possibilities. "Lord, what Thou 
 wilt, where Thou wilt, when Thou wilt."t 
 
 4. ** Thy will be done," in tJie use of vieans for 
 thy reign to come. 
 
 Amidst the solemn glories of a famous French 
 Cathedral, stands a statue that represents a man 
 speaking. One hand grasps a crucifix, the 
 * Confess. Lib. v. 8. t Baxter's last words. 
 
154 THE TPIIRD PETITION. 
 
 other is lifted as if with the life and sway of 
 passionate oratory; and below his feet, sculptured 
 on the massive pedestal, are the words, " Thy 
 will be done." That stands for Peter the Her- 
 mit, the fire of whose appeals kindled the first 
 crusade. " Never, perhaps," says Dean Milman, 
 " did single speech of man work such extra- 
 ordinary results. He made the people feel 
 that to get the Holy Sepulchre from the 
 Saracens, was the will of God, and before the 
 council closed, the ©ne loud cry from it broke 
 forth, 'it is the will of God, it is the will of God !'" 
 We want the crusader's enthusiasm, without the 
 crusader's mistakes. We want deep conviction 
 alive with Pentecostal flame, when will men 
 rush with equal ardour to fight the true battles 
 of the true cross ! 
 
 Sometimes it is His will that to help on this 
 cause, you should part with what you would nat- 
 urally like to keep. Sometimes that your own 
 selves should go into the battlefield of Christian 
 missions, when you would naturally like to 
 stay at home*; sometimes that you should part 
 with son or daughter ordained by Him for such 
 high service. Perhaps at this very moment, and 
 in reference to one of these very intimations 
 of the divine will, you are saying, " Thy will be 
 done,'' but in what sense ? Is it true for instance 
 that your child is going, and that you are say- 
 ing this in the mere spirit of resignation. It 
 
THE THIRD PETITION. I 5 5 
 
 should rather be in the spirit of obedience. It 
 should mean on your part, not a suffering, but 
 a doing. The beautiful " living sacrifice," is 
 about to be made ; honestly, heartily, take your 
 part in it. You have held back your consent 
 till now, but now you give up and say, " Thy 
 will be done !" Do it, do it, brother, sister, will 
 you not .'' Do it yourself, not content to have it 
 done for you ! 
 
VII. 
 
 THE FOURTH PETITION. 
 
 " Give us this day our daily bread." — Matt. vi. il. " Give 
 us day by day our daily bread." — Luke xi. 3. Authorised and 
 Revised Fei'sions. 
 
 When our minds are saturated with the spirit 
 of the foregoing words — when our hearts are full 
 of the life that says, " Our Father which art in 
 heaven, Hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom 
 come, Thy will be done on earth, as it is in 
 heaven," — when we have the thorough under- 
 standing that our desires are to be fenced within 
 these holy limits, — and that what we ask on our 
 own account is to be ruled by the law of sub- 
 ordination thus declared, then we begin to pray 
 for ourselves, and this is our first petition — 
 " Give us this day our daily bread." 
 
 In making out its true meaning, we propose 
 to pause at each leading word or phrase in it, 
 giving emphasis to each, successively. 
 
 I, Weputemphasisonthephrase "Daily Bread." 
 
 "Daily." The original word, it is well-known, 
 
 is nowhere else found, either in sacred or classical 
 
 literature. It is conjectured that Matthew and 
 
 Luke coined it, as a translation of the Aramaic 
 
THE FOURTH PETITION. I 57 
 
 phrase used by our Lord. More than thirty 
 different explanations of it have been suggested, 
 and the revisers make no attempt to settle its 
 derivation or meaning. As, however, gram- 
 marians have found much to say for the render- 
 ing, '' our bread for the coming day," they 
 have, in both evangelists, inserted this in the 
 margin, but have retained in the text, the word 
 " daily," — the translation to which we have been 
 accustomed. The word in the Greek Testament, 
 whatever may have been its history, appears to 
 be a compound of a noun meaning "substance," 
 with the preposition.* As applied to bread, it 
 seems to mean, that which is proper or sufficient 
 for supporting life by being changed into the 
 substance of our bodies. It seems to stand for 
 good and nourishing food. Though it may be 
 impossible to give it a literal translation, our 
 conclusion is, that the general spirit and mean- 
 ing of the term daily bread must be accepted 
 as correct. 
 
 "Bread." The word is most simple, yet 
 most comprehensive. It includes, we think, 
 several things. In the statement of its mean- 
 
 * According to this, iirioiicnov is compounded of iin and 
 ovala, substance, or subsistence. An instance of this word 
 occurs in Luke xv. 12, rb e-m^dWou fxepos T-qs ovaias. Tho- 
 luck has given a long, full and very fair account of the 
 reasons offered for the rendering in the margin and 
 that adopted in our English text, but sums up in favour 
 of the latter, 
 
158 THE FOURTH PETITION. 
 
 ing, we must begin at the lowest point, and 
 ascend. 
 
 I. "Bread" means that which is needful to 
 support the life of the body. This, surely, is not 
 restrictively the food that comes from corn, but 
 the food that our bodies live upon, whatever 
 that may be. The Arab who may live upon 
 dates gathered from the tree ; the Indian, who 
 may live upon food got by gun or net, or 
 spear ; the man whose food grows in the field ; 
 the man who earns it by toiling brain or by 
 skilful fingers — every man, however he gets his 
 living, is invited to offer this prayer, and in 
 praying for " bread " prays for the usual sup- 
 ports of material existence. 
 
 Some interpreters understand the petition as 
 having reference only to the bread of the soul. 
 Their theory is, that the wants of the body are 
 beneath the notice of God, and unworthy of a 
 place in the train of supplications taught by 
 Christ. They are afraid or ashamed to "trouble 
 the Master " about such a trifle ! The earlier 
 divines generally clung to a spiritual interpreta- 
 tion, and even Luther tells us that this is a re- 
 quest to be fed by the Bread of Heaven. But 
 this cannot be the only idea. We have no proof 
 that the half of man's nature, though it be the 
 lower half, is disowned by Him who made it. 
 It is no "counsel of perfection," whatever as- 
 cetics teach, that our souls are to starve or 
 
THE FOURTH PETITION. I 59 
 
 trample out the instincts of our bodies. There 
 was no neglect of the body in Paradise. No 
 such neglect is taught by the theology of Nature 
 or by the standing lessons of " seed time and 
 harvest." He who made the body, will not 
 scorn to feed it. He, who, though Lord of all, 
 stooped under the lowly lintel of this, our 
 " cottage of clay," and dwelt in a body like our 
 own for more than thirty years ; He who gave 
 bread to the multitudes by the hand of miracle ; 
 He who pronounced a blessing on bread before 
 taking it with His disciples ; He who in many 
 ways in His human teachings, sanctified the 
 mystery of food ; He who has taught each be- 
 liever that His body is a temple of the Holy 
 Ghost ; He who guards it in the darkling decay 
 of the grave, so that no mystic atom, essential to 
 its continuous identity shall be lost and missing 
 on the resurrection day — stoops to no degrada- 
 tion, and speaks in no way unlike Himself, by 
 teaching us to pray for it, and we, the children 
 of God, feel that any interpretation is quite 
 unnatural as well as unscriptural that would 
 deprive us of the great privilege of casting our 
 bodily wants in this simple prayer, upon our 
 Heavenly Father. 
 
 2. The bread we pray for includes that which 
 is needful to support all our life in this world. 
 This is manifold more than the life of the body. 
 Our life is compound, made of earth and heaven, 
 
l6o THE FOURTH PETITION. 
 
 dust from the ground, and breath from Deity. It 
 is even more than this, for it must mean the life 
 suitable to the particular station we have to fill. 
 Daily bread in the sense of needful support to 
 the life which fills a large sphere, daily bread for 
 the life on which many other lives depends, daily 
 bread for the life that needs property and social 
 influence to fulfil the functions of its place, is 
 totally different from that which is wanted to feed 
 the life of a mere human unit, just alive. Prince 
 and peasant, parent and child, persons of every 
 estate, with all varieties of claims upon them, 
 little or great, few or many, are all alike to ask 
 the Father in heaven for daily bread, but bread 
 for the Queen does not mean merely a loaf a 
 day. Bread for the poor old mother by the 
 cottage fire does not mean supplies enough to 
 meet the demands of empire. The bread we 
 are to ask for, is support for our differing lives 
 of body, of mind, of work, of trial, of office, of 
 station and responsibility. 
 
 3. Prayer for " daily bread " is prayer that 
 we may have enough. The word " bread " points 
 to what is simple and moderate. We have no 
 encouragement to say give us this day a banquet. 
 There is nothing to make us think that the means 
 of faring sumptuously every day are to be had for 
 asking. We are only to ask for supplies that 
 shall meet the average, inevitable demands of 
 life and station ; the spirit of this is that of 
 Agur's prayer, " feed me with food convenient 
 
Till-: FOURTH PETITION. l6r 
 
 for me ; " but while the words forbid extravag- 
 ance they imply a request for sufficiency, and in 
 making them our own we ask for enough to keep 
 life in healthy, happy, growing power. 
 
 If we rebel against God's plan of our life ; if 
 our hearts clamour for more than enough of 
 life's good things ; if we insist on having what- 
 ever hits our fancy, feeds our pride or delights 
 our senses, we are on dangerous ground. The 
 sovereign may indeed hear the prayer of discon- 
 tent, but in that case the answer to a prayer may 
 be but the infliction of a curse. When his 
 typical people were passing through the desert, 
 though he gave them daily bread, they passion- 
 ately longed for something more. " He had 
 rained down manna upon them to eat, and had 
 given them of the corn of heaven. Man did eat 
 angels' food : he sent them meat to the full.''* 
 But they pined for variety ; wept, and said, 
 "who shall give us flesh to eat?" Then the 
 Royal message to their leader was — " Say thou 
 unto the people, sanctify yourselves against to- 
 morrow, and ye shall eat flesh : for ye have 
 wept in the ears of the Lord, saying who shall 
 give us flesh to eat .-• for it was well with us in 
 Egypt : therefore the Lord will give you flesh, 
 and ye shall eat. Ye shall not eat one day, nor 
 two days, nor five days, neither ten days, nor 
 twenty days," but even for a whole month ? 
 * Psalm Ixviii. 24, 25. 
 L 
 
l62 THE FOURTH PETITION. 
 
 Our thoughts flash back into that ancient 
 scene, and in a moment, we seem to be hving 
 in it. It is a still day in the burning depth of 
 the wilderness ; no shadow flits across the glare ; 
 no sound, near or far, strikes upon the velvet 
 carpet of the sand. All at once, man after man 
 starts up and listens. A noise like a loud 
 whispering hangs in the air ; it comes nearer, 
 like wind in trees, nearer and nearer till it 
 sounds like the roar and hiss of a storm in the 
 sails of a ship at sea. The sunshine changes 
 into sudden darkness ; you look up ; and see 
 birds, and more birds, gathering overhead, till 
 they are wedged into a black, dense quivering 
 cloud ; they drop down on low, weary wing, 
 and fall in stacks all round the camp ; the 
 people run in a rage of delight to snatch and 
 rend them ; but not being prepared for so 
 sudden a change of regimen, and not being 
 temperate, the new food turns into poison, and 
 they take into the system, not life but death. 
 " So the Lord smote the people with a very great 
 plague, and he called the name of that place the 
 graves of lust, because there they buried the 
 people that lusted." * " Now," says our inspired 
 expositor of this episode, " these things happened 
 unto them by way of example ; and they were 
 written for our admonition, upon whom the ends 
 of the ages are come."f 
 
 * Numbers xi. 33, 34. t i Cor. x. 11. 
 
THE FOURTH PETITION. I 6 
 
 O 
 
 11. We would now separate the phrase " Give 
 us," that we may think over its special meaning. 
 
 I. This phrase implies acknozuledginent of 
 dependence. It amounts to this, Father, give ns 
 our daily bread, or we shall never have it. Our 
 personal and unceasing dependence on Him for 
 the supports of mere existence is a fact that few 
 would formally question, but which, perhaps, 
 few adequately feel. We seem to need the 
 rack of material circumstance to work a present, 
 pending, urgent sense of it. When our lips 
 confess it, sometimes our souls are silent ; it is 
 more like a dead word in a book, than a word 
 alive within us. " Give us this day our daily 
 bread," is a prayer we are ready to say, fit for 
 the helpless sufferer who has just broken into 
 his last shilling, but is it natural to the man 
 whose "barns are filled with plenty," to the 
 prosperous merchant who has just contracted to 
 furnish a fleet with stores, or to the lord of large 
 estates } It might have fitted the lips of David 
 in the day when, starving, he asked the priest 
 for a fragment of the shew-bread ; but would it 
 have been suitable to Solomon in all his glory >. 
 Would it have been the natural language of 
 Job, in the days of health, wealth, and happy 
 family festival .-' Would it have been proper for 
 Joseph when opening the granaries in which 
 he had stored the produce of seven plenteous 
 years } Yes, verily, for all alike live on gifts. 
 
164 THE FOURTH PETITION. 
 
 and in " the fulness of sufficiency " one fire, one 
 blight, one hurricane, one shipwreck, one rash 
 venture, one turn in the tide of affairs, the work of 
 one idiotic head, or of one random hand, may in 
 a week bring the highest to the level of the low- 
 est. In our grand impatience of common places, 
 we are tempted to slight these simple truths, 
 and to forget them because we think they are 
 too obvious to be forgotten. Let us not be too 
 proud to take them in with new and keen realiza- 
 tion, remembering not only our equal depen- 
 dence, but who it is on whom we depend. He 
 who of old sent the manna down : He who sent 
 the ravens with food for Elijah, He who guided 
 the quivering shoal of fishes like living, leaping, 
 lighted gold and silver, straight into Peter's net ; 
 is still the sovereign Lord of mine and moun- 
 tain, of field /and forest, of sea and sand. So 
 thought the Puritan Fathers of America, who 
 while eking out their scanty supplies of food 
 in their first years with the shell-fish of the shore, 
 thanked the Lord, with beautiful reverence, for 
 showing them "the treasures hid in the sand." 
 So think we, while we offer this prayer in spirit 
 and truth. 
 
 2. We say to our Father, " give us " this bless- 
 ing, because we know that it is His nature to 
 give, and that ^ivin^'- is His delight. If we think 
 of Him as of one who gives, but who would 
 rather not give ; who gives with grudging, and 
 
THE FOURTH PETITION. 165 
 
 who counts out with cold, slow, reluctant fingers 
 what he gives ; who gives only when we pas- 
 sionately beg and pray, and who likes to say 
 No to us, — no words can measure the wrong we 
 do to Him or to ourselves. The joy of possess- 
 ing is in the power of giving, and this is the joy 
 of the Lord. Unless in some work of judgment 
 — " His strange work," we never see God, but 
 as we see Him giving. For ever working to 
 propel the sleepless forces that beat and throb 
 through nature — the soft drops, the quickening 
 airs, the searching rays, that make the swelling 
 leaf, the filling ear, the reddening fruit, we see 
 Him for ever giving exquisitely, variously and 
 with magnificent munificence, "seed to the 
 sower and bread to the eater." 
 
 In connection with gifts for the support of 
 existence, think of His gifts for its enjoyment. 
 James Hamilton said, if this world had been 
 meant as a place for the bare physical life of man 
 during his allotted time, " a world less beautiful 
 would have served the purpose. ... A big, round 
 island, half of it arable, and half of it pasture, 
 with a clump of trees in one corner, and a 
 magazine of fuel in another, might have held 
 and fed ten millions of people ; and a hundred 
 islands, all made on the same pattern, big and 
 round, might have held and fed all the popula- 
 tions of the globe. There was no need for the 
 carpet of verdure or the ceiling of blue ; no 
 
I 66 THE FOURTH TETITION. 
 
 need for the mountains, and cataracts and for- 
 ests ; no need for the rainbow, no need for the 
 flower." 
 
 Look at the gift of flowers only. There are 
 in this world, wildernesses of beauty, where you 
 see rich mists of flowers, vast sweeps and 
 stretches of flowers, flowers billowing round the 
 tree stems, rippling rivers of flowers, tossing 
 cataracts of flowers, prairies, where you may 
 travel to-day, to-morrow and the day after, 
 still through nothing but flowers. Wherever 
 nature can get air and space enough, even in 
 our duller landscapes, we may see something 
 like it. Graces of shape and glorious fires of 
 colour are wherever they can be, and even a 
 wreath of snow is a bank of flowers, with tiny 
 stars of loveliness full of wonders. What a 
 noble, generous, resplendent King our Father is! 
 Everywhere, in illuminated letters, we read the 
 motto of His house, "Enough and to spare." 
 Never let us make our requests to Him, as if 
 taking a liberty or expecting a denial, for He 
 delights to give. 
 
 3. We mean give us this for Thou art our 
 Father. We see Him delighting to give to 
 countless creatures that have not His Spirit in 
 them, and of whom He is not Father. Give us 
 our bread. Why, He gives the birds tJieirs ! He 
 puts His living law and His subtle skill within 
 them ; He infuses into them the life that, while 
 
THE FOURTH PETITION. I 67 
 
 in happy movement, singing happy songs, is in 
 perpetual happy quest for the food which He 
 gives them through stream and tree and air, and 
 what He gives, they gather. It seems that 
 sparrows, above all the other birds, are the 
 selected types to teach lessons of His providence 
 — the little, saucy, dingy London sparrows, chirp- 
 ing close about us, not scared by our stirs nor 
 stifled by our smoke, arc our Saviour's messengers 
 reminding us of His words, that not even one of 
 them is forgotten before God, and that we " are 
 of more value than many sparrows." Shall He 
 clothe His lilies and forget His saints, feed His 
 sparrows and starve His children .-' You know 
 a father's feelings. Even you "who are evil" do 
 not think that what is needful for the earthly life 
 of your child is too small a thing for you to care 
 about, and can you dream that God in heaven 
 does not care if His children are cold and hungry.^ 
 Doubt of that, is doubt that He is your Father. 
 4. We mean "Give us" our daily bread through 
 a blessing on our own use of rigJit means. One 
 evening, we are told, Mahomet was conversing 
 with his followers, and overheard one of them 
 say, " I will loose my camel, and trust ; " on 
 which he said, " Friend, tie thy camel, and trust." 
 Do whatever is yours to do, then trust. Work 
 and trust, watch and pray. " If a man will not 
 work, neither shall he eat," is a law of the king- 
 dom. Work done, all is done that man need 
 
I 68 THE FOURTH PETITION. 
 
 care about, God will care for the rest. In refer- 
 ence to daily bread, the faith that is without 
 care is expressed in unwearied activity, as a 
 dutiful fulfilment of the little as well as the great 
 obligations of life and time. " The man who 
 thinks Providence exists simply to make up his 
 lack of service, despises Providence."* In ordi- 
 nary circumstances, God gives in ordinary ways, 
 and this prayer, translated into the language 
 of practical life, mainly means — " Father, give 
 us work to do, and strength to do it." The zvork 
 must be His gift, as well as the bread which it 
 brings. That work v/hich God does not give, 
 and which is therefore without the sanction of 
 His holiness or the blessing of His love ; Avork 
 not in harmony with the three first petitions of 
 this model, work done in the spirit of the gambler, 
 work that implies any form of social injustice, 
 work of those who " make haste to be rich ; " 
 work that makes capital out of social sin of 
 others, or that panders to destructive passions — 
 for instance, the opium traffic and the like — 
 work of men who " fish foul bread out of the 
 standing pools and the slimiest ooze of human 
 depravity," who dip their daily morsel in that 
 which is the poison of human hearts, who make 
 a profit out of lost souls, and who bequeath to 
 their children the gains of unrighteousness, — 
 work of that kind, whatever its connection and 
 * Fairbairn. 
 
THE FOURTH PETITION. I 69 
 
 whatever its degree, has no prosperity from 
 heaven, and the bread that comes of it is not 
 God's gift. In the spirit of this prayer we ask 
 Him to give us the means of supporting life 
 lawfully and honourably, and to give us working 
 faculties. If we live by the skill of our fingers, 
 we ask Him to give us this skill ; if by the sight 
 of our eyes, to let no curtain of darkness fall 
 over them ; if by strength of limbs, to let no evil 
 strike that strength; if our minds have to work, 
 that our minds may be kept from weakness or 
 eclipse, that so, giving us these, He may give us 
 our daily bread. 
 
 5. Another thought under this language is, 
 " Our Father, when common means are not 
 within our power. * Give us ' our daily bread, by 
 means of tJiine ownr When every door is shut, 
 every road blocked up, and we are at a loss, 
 come to our help by the ordinations of thy mys- 
 terious providence. We see with God, no waste 
 of power, no needless profusion of contrivance ; 
 miracles are not sights for every day, but when 
 all the dutiful and necessary things that we know 
 of have been done on our own part, we may say^ 
 " it is time for thee, O Lord, to work." Power- 
 less to stir another step, although in the way of 
 his appointment, a Voice will say " stand still, 
 and see the Salvation of the Lord." ** He 
 reserves His hand," says a Puritan sage, " for a 
 dead-lift " The stones of our fathers' lives are 
 
I JO THE FOURTH TETITION. 
 
 rich with proofs of this. Nathaniel Lawrence, 
 ejected from the living of Baschurch in 1662, sat 
 one day under a hedgerow, thinking of his hun- 
 gry family. What suddenly made his eye flash 
 and his foot spring .'' The sight of a shilling in 
 the ditch, seeming to him, so he said, to have 
 dropped straight out of heaven. 
 
 Oliver Hey wood, ejected from Coley Vicar- 
 age by the act of uniformity, lived on a little 
 stock of savings, until one day, he and his 
 children were at starvation point, and with no 
 earthly prospect of another meal. They sang 
 at family prayer — 
 
 " When cruse and barrel both are dry 
 We still will trust the Lord most High." 
 
 With empty purse and empty basket, their 
 faithful old servant then set out from the house, 
 and wandered through the streets of Halifax, 
 thinking of the famishing children whom she 
 loved like her own life, and wondering how 
 God would give them this day their daily 
 bread. Returning home, one of the tradespeople 
 of the place, standing at his door, knew her, 
 called her in, and told her that he was just 
 casting about for a messenger to take a re- 
 mittance of five guineas just sent him from 
 Manchester from the master. On her arrival 
 home with money and food, it looked like a 
 miracle, and the father said, when they met at 
 evening prayer — " The Lord hath not forgotten 
 
THE FOURTH PETITION. 171 
 
 to be gracious. His word is true from the be- 
 ginning. " The young Hon may lack and suffer 
 hunger, but they that trust the Lord shall not 
 lack any good thing." * 
 
 III. We would next place emphasis on the 
 word " Our," in this connection. We only ask 
 for 07ir bread, not for the bread belonging to 
 others. One man is not to have more than his 
 share, or to live on that which ought to support 
 another man's life. A workman, high or low, 
 lives on bread not his own, when he takes a fair 
 day's wages without a fair day's work. A master 
 takes bread not his own, when he takes a fair 
 day's work without a fair day's wages. It is, 
 then, sin of any man who, while below the 
 horizon of solvency, carries on trade by false 
 shows and fictitious values ; who wears another 
 man's coat, drives another man's carriage, lives 
 in another man's house, calling what he thus 
 appropriates his own. " We are to ask for our 
 oiun bread, and we are not allowed to ask 
 the bread of others — we must not covet our 
 neighbour's goods, but must be content with 
 what God gives us in the way of honest industry, 
 or by the kindness of our friends." f 
 
 IV. We would next dwell on the power of the 
 phrase "This day." 
 
 * Dr Fawcett's " Life of Heywood." 
 t Dr John Brown's " Discourses and Sayings of our 
 Lord," Vol. I., p. 246. 
 
172 THE FOURTH PETITION. 
 
 Matthew Henry, talking in his own quaint, 
 racy, simple style, like an old father to the 
 children round his chair, says, " The Lord's 
 prayer is a letter sent from earth to heaven. 
 Here, in the inscription of the letter, is the 
 name of the Person to whom it is directed^ 
 'Our Father;' the place ivhere, "which art in 
 heaven." The contents of it in several errands 
 of request. The seal 'Amen,' and if you will, 
 the date, ' this day.' " 
 
 The distinct instruction of our Lord in the 
 first announcement of this prayer, that we are 
 to use the words " this day," goes far to prove 
 that the marginal rendering of another term in 
 the same verse, is wrong.* The original word 
 in question, and which is represented in our 
 English New Testament by the word " daily,'' 
 may, indeed, be possibly traced to a root which 
 would admit of being represented under the 
 phrase " bread of to-morrow," as in the margin. 
 This is uncertain, for critics are divided in 
 opinion. The rule in the words " this day " 
 is a certainty, and we never allow a certainty 
 to be ruled by an ^//certainty. The request, 
 " Give us this day the bread of to-morrow,'' 
 would be scarcely intelligible, and to adopt it 
 without necessity, would be, without necessity 
 to turn a plain thing into a puzzle. We cannot 
 admit a rendering that would contradict or 
 " Our bread for the comintr day." 
 
THE FOURTH PETITION. I 73 
 
 nullify the power of the phrase " this day," as 
 reported by Matthew, or the extension of the 
 same petition in the report by Luke, in which 
 we are taught to ask for supplies one day at a 
 time — that is, " day by day." 
 
 The Lord of Life would not indeed have us 
 live only in the present, and have no readiness 
 for the future. The whole tendency of His grace 
 is to secure that readiness. But while under the 
 law of the prayer, " thy will be done," we lay 
 our plans for to-morrow, we are not to be dis- 
 tracted by the fear of to-morrow. This is the 
 dread spectre which the Master's language is to 
 lay, the wearing care which He seeks to tran- 
 quillize. In the discourse following the first 
 publication of the sacred prayer, He says, " Take 
 no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, 
 neither for your body, what ye shall put on, is 
 not the life more than meat, and the body than 
 raiment .'''' In this tender strain He goes on to 
 the close, when He says, " Take therefore no 
 thought for the morrow ; for the morrow shall 
 take thought for the things of itself Sufficient 
 unto the day is the evil thereof."'* 
 
 * Matthew vi. 26, adfittem. In Luke's report of a similar 
 discourse of our Lord (Luke xii. 29), we find after the 
 charge " Seek not ye what ye shall eat or what ye shall 
 drink," the words " neither be ye of doubtful mind. 
 yJi] iJL€T€upli^€(r9€. " Be not poised in suspense, unable to 
 settle to anything." 
 
I 74 THE FOURTH PETITION. 
 
 All this chapter on Providence is in the spirit of 
 the words "give us this day our daily bread." 
 This day, Christians, is the only day you are 
 living in. Perhaps it requires all the faith you 
 can exercise, and all the strength you can 
 strain, to live it well. You have no overplus 
 of ability. If you bring into this day, the care 
 that belongs to to-morrow ; if you try to look 
 to-day at the scenery of to-morrow ; if you try 
 this day to cross the bridge of to-morrow ; if, 
 this day, being at the foot of the hill, you try to 
 see over the crest of it, which you propose to 
 reach to-morrow ; if you try to load to-day with 
 the pack of to-morrow, you weaken to-day. You 
 not only attempt an impossibility, but you live 
 over your troubles twice, before they come, and 
 when they come. Even the Arabs rebuke you 
 by their proverb, " The bread of to-morrow, to- 
 morrow." Your days are already provided for ; 
 each day, as each day comes. The standing 
 promise, "as thy days, so thy strength shall be," 
 gives perpetual inspiration to the prayer that we 
 may have this day what the day's necessities 
 require. This day, whatever the day may be ; 
 tJiis day, whether day of peace or day of storm, 
 this day, living day, or dying day, for we depend 
 on Him one day as much as on another. 
 
 From the nature of this prayer, the date must 
 be " this day." " Prayer is the Christian's vital 
 breath." We do not live to-day by virtue of 
 
THE FOURTH PETITION. 175 
 
 our breathing yesterday ; we must not put off 
 our breathing until to-morrow. We must breathe 
 to-day or die. As bread is the support of Hfe, 
 we want bread to-day that we may live to-day.* 
 
 V. This petition suggests a higher petition. 
 
 The grace of Christ is, in the symbohcal 
 language of Scripture, so frequently compared 
 by food, that we are not surprised to find nearly 
 all the primitive expositors adopting some 
 modification or other of the view that it in- 
 volves a prayer for the nourishment of the 
 higher life of the spirit, over and above the 
 material substance.t This is not our view ; but 
 while we regard it as a petition only for the 
 supplies needful for our life in this world, and 
 while we are comforted by the thought that 
 our Heavenly Father cares for our bodies as 
 well as our souls, the cry to Him for those 
 earthly supports which we sum up under the 
 term " bread," irresistibly suggests a prayer for 
 heavenly bread. It is one thing to say it pre- 
 scribes, another that it suggests this. The 
 
 * " Our bread, though in itself stale and mouldy as 
 that of the Gibeonites, is every day new, because a new 
 and hot blessing, as I may say, is daily begged and be- 
 stowed of God upon it." Thomas Fuller, " Meditations 
 on all kinds of prayer." —Sect. xv. "He who has what he 
 needs for to-day, and says what shall I eat to-morrow 1 
 has not faith. He who creates the day, creates the food 
 for it." — Talmud, quoted by Dr Gill. 
 
 t " Panis superstantialis." 
 
I 76 THE FOURTH PETITION. 
 
 spiritual mind will from " the meat that 
 perisheth," naturally rise in thought to " the 
 meat that endureth to everlasting life.* 
 
 We say with Sir Matthew Hale, "O Lord 
 Thou didst at first freely give me my being. 
 I could not deserve it when I was not ; the 
 same title that I have to my being I have to 
 my preservation and support of my being ; it is 
 still free gift, and therefore I come to Thee for 
 my bread upon no other terms than as a poor 
 beggar to a bountiful Lord, . . . Give me, I 
 pray, bread for this day, and when to-morrow 
 comes, I will beg bread of Thee for to-morrow. 
 . . . But above all, ever give me the Bread of 
 Life, that whilst my body is fed, my soul may 
 not be starved, either for the want of that ever- 
 lasting Bread, or for want of an appetite for it." 
 
 This Bread can only be ours as a gift. Our 
 life must be one perpetual prayer for it. God 
 is always giving, we are always receiving, so 
 both the gift and the life supported by it, we 
 have " renewed day by day." The clause of the 
 Lord's Prayer which we are now upon, was read 
 by the Anglo Saxons, thus — " Our daily loaf 
 sell us to day." f The word sell has, in the 
 course of its history passed through a change of 
 meaning, but not a few are ready to take the 
 
 * " He who uses this petition would do well to keep 
 both in view." — Adam Clarke. 
 
 t " Urne da^gwamtican hlaf sylc us to-daeg." 
 
THE FOURTH I'ETITIUX. I 77 
 
 old word in its modern meaning, and so to use 
 it when they ask God for earthly or heavenly 
 bread. 
 
 One sharp winter day, so runs a nursery 
 tale, a poor woman stood at the window of a 
 king's conservatory, looking at a cluster of 
 grapes, which she longed to have for her sick 
 child. She went home to her spinning wheel, 
 earned half-a-crown, and offered it to the 
 gardener for the grapes. He waved his hand, 
 and ordered her away. She returned to her 
 cottage, snatched the blanket from her bed, 
 pawned it, and once more asked the gardener to 
 sell her the grapes, offering him five shillings. 
 He spoke furiously to her and was turning her 
 out, when the princess came in, heard the man's 
 passion, saw the woman's tears, and asked what 
 was wrong. When the story was told she said 
 " my dear woman, you have made a mistake. 
 My father is not a merchant, but a king ; his 
 business is not to sell but to give ; " so saying, she 
 plucked the cluster from the vine and dropped 
 it into the woman's apron. 
 
 All good things from God are gifts. " Gratis " 
 is written on every one, but most vividly of all 
 on this. Do you ask "how much?" Do you 
 dream that salvation is for sale .'' Can God sell 
 pardon ? sell a new heart .'' sell love ? sell right- 
 eousness .'' sell strength ^ sell any or all of the 
 things included in what we call grace .'' It is a 
 M 
 
iy?> THE FOURTH PETITION. 
 
 gift, and you can give nothing for a gift. You 
 may, however, ask for it, indeed you must. To 
 say "you have the promise, but you must pray 
 for its fulfihnent," is only as if a man should say 
 to a man, "you shall have the cheque cashed, 
 but you must first present it." Every day offer 
 with this application, the petition, " Give us this 
 day our daily bread," then every day you will 
 have it, and have it in sufficiency. God in 
 Christ is saying to each suppliant, "My grace 
 is sufficient," that is, enough " for thee," and each 
 suppliant may have in his heart the spirit of the 
 answering words — 
 
 " Thou art enough, O Lord, for all my sin, 
 Enough to cleanse me and to keep me clean ; 
 All down life's pathway, lone, or dark, or rough, 
 Thou art enough, O Lord, Thou art enough. 
 
 Thou art enough in days of light and gladness. 
 Enough in days of sickness and of sadness ; 
 Enough, when standing on death's solemn shore, 
 Alwavs enouijh — enough for ever more." 
 
VIII. 
 
 THE FIFTH TETITION. 
 
 "And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors." 
 — Matt. vi. 12. Authorized Version. 
 
 " And forgive us our sins ; for we also forgive every one that 
 is indebted to us." — Luke xi. 4. Authorized Version. 
 
 "And forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our 
 debtors." — Matt. vi. 12. Revised Version. 
 
 " And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves also forgive every 
 one that is indebted to us." — Luke xi. 4. Revised Version. 
 
 I. Observe how this petition begins. "-And 
 forgive us our debts." This is not the only- 
 instance in the Record of an important passage 
 which has "and" for the significant opening 
 word. The ninth chapter of Matthew's gospel 
 begins in the middle of a sentence. The 
 first word in it is " and." Like a coupling chain 
 that links together two carriages, it links the 
 two chapters together into one consecutive train 
 of history. The last verse of one chapter is — 
 " The whole city came out to meet Jesus ; and 
 when they saw Him, they besought Him that 
 He would depart out of their coasts." The 
 
I 80 THE FIFTH PF/flTION. 
 
 first verse of the next, is, "And He entered into 
 a ship, and passed over, and came into His own 
 city." The word " and " is the sign of connection 
 between the two statements. The people 
 wished Christ to go away, " and " He went away. 
 We might name other instances from the same 
 " Book of the Lord " in which the word " and " 
 is introductory, in which also, though scarcely a 
 word at all, it is used to carry a momentous 
 meaning. 
 
 This clause of the divinely given prayer begins 
 with the same conjunction. Christ uses no 
 waste words, and be sure this is not one. It 
 marks the connection and fixes the order be- 
 tween this and the preceding request. "Forgive 
 us our sins," fitly follows, "give us this day 
 our daily bread." Even life would not be a 
 boon if not connected with pardon. When 
 the great Inspirer gives continuous life through 
 the continuous gift of that which feeds it, we 
 find to our sorrow, that in this world, the life 
 thus given goes wrong — it is always sinning, and 
 therefore, always needing forgiveness. 
 
 II. A second peculiarity of this prayer is, that 
 it is a prayer for the forgiving of our sins as tJie 
 children of God. Not as outcasts, not as prisoners 
 of war, not as lost sinners, or as sentenced con- 
 victs, but as Christians do we thus pray. It is 
 in fact a prayer for the forgiveness of those who 
 have already been forgiven. The statement may 
 
THE FIFTH PETITION. 15 1 
 
 seem to involve a contradiction. How shall 
 we declare this parable .-* 
 
 Our sins as rebels have already been forgiven. 
 From the happy moment when we became " the 
 children of God by faith in Jesus Christ," we 
 were forgiven the sins committed through all 
 the days of our unregeneracy, and on account 
 of which we had been condemned to die. Of this 
 forgiveness the Spirit of the Most High speaks 
 to us in metaphors intended to suggest a great- 
 ness that is beyond mortal comprehension. " As 
 far as the east is from the west, so far hath He 
 removed our transgressions from us."* What 
 calculus can help us to find out how far that is .'' 
 " Thou hast cast all my sins behind Thy back."t 
 Though this was said in the rapture of poetry, 
 the poetry of Scripture can only speak the 
 soul of truth, and how far out of sight is that 
 which is behind the Infinite ? " Thou wilt cast 
 all their sins into the depths of the sea." X How 
 far down are the depths of that mystic sea .-' All 
 these are terms of infinity, and created faculties 
 will never grasp the greatness of the reality 
 they indicate. In the day of our surrender, our 
 sins as rebels, were forgiven with such total and 
 absolute completeness, that all the forgiving 
 power of infinite love could not make them 
 more forgiven than they are. The fact stuns 
 us with its wonderfulness, it seems too glorious 
 
 * Psalm ciii. 12. t Isaiah xxxviii. 17. 
 
 J Micahv. 19. 
 
I 82 THE FIFTH PETITION. 
 
 to be true ; long after our Father has clasped 
 us to His heart, and welcomed us to His home, 
 there are times when, as if He had not spoken 
 one word of hope, we find ourselves still asking 
 Him to forgive us the sins of the life we wasted 
 in "the far country," as well as the sins com- 
 mitted since our welcome home, when it was 
 said over each of us, " this my son was dead and 
 is alive again, was lost and is found!" For 
 years after Dr Donne had been "accepted in the 
 Beloved," he implored pardon for his old sins of 
 rebellion, pouring out his anguish in this piteous 
 cry : — 
 
 " Wilt Thou forgive that sin where I begun, 
 
 Which was my sin, though it were done before ? 
 Wilt Thou forgive that sin through which I run 
 
 And do run still, though still I do deplore ? 
 When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done, 
 For I have more. 
 
 " Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have wonne 
 Others to sin, and made my sins their own, 
 Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun 
 
 A year or two, but wallowed in a score ? 
 When Thou hast done. Thou hast not done, 
 For I have more. 
 
 ' I have a sinne of fear, that when I've spun 
 My last thread, I shall perish on the shore ; 
 But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son 
 Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore ? 
 And having done that, Thou hast done ; 
 I fear no more." * 
 
 * Dr. John Donne, 1635. Donne's Poems, vol. ii. p. 
 341. Grosart's Fuller Worthies. 
 
THE FIFTH pe:tition. 183 
 
 Like this old poet, many Christi^ins are still 
 asking the forgiveness of sins from the charge 
 of wliich they were cleared for ever, when, being 
 justified by faith, they crossed the line from the 
 lost to the saved state, they use up in needless 
 lamentations the life that is wanted for urgent 
 service, and their hearts melt with the misery of 
 doubt while they have a right to all the joy that 
 rings in our triumphant challenge. It is God 
 that justifieth ; who is he that condemneth ?" 
 
 In full gladness of assent to this, and as we 
 think, in perfect consistency with it, our creed is, 
 that even after the grand, initial forgiveness 
 which is included in our "justification," and 
 which is coincident with the birth within us of 
 everlasting life — that is, even after we have been 
 " born again," although we are children of God, 
 we are for the present, sinful children. "There 
 is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good 
 and sinneth not." "It is a shame that it should 
 be so," remarks Andrew Fuller, "but so it is. 
 To disown it, makes the matter, not better, but 
 worse. This direction of Christ contains an 
 insuperable objection to the notion of those 
 deluded people who imagine themselves to have 
 attained to a state of sinless perfection. No 
 man that is not blinded to the spirituality of 
 that law which requires supreme, perfect and 
 unabated love, can be insensible to his vast 
 defects. The highest degree of love that we at 
 
184 THE FIFTH PETITION. 
 
 any time attain, comes immensely short of what 
 we ought to feel, and of what we shall feel when 
 presented faultless before the presence of the 
 divine glory. The only reply that can be made 
 is, that the petition may refer to past sins, and 
 not to present ones. But is it not prescribed 
 along with a prayer for our daily bread, and in 
 a prayer which is daily offered V * 
 t We would meekly join in this confession. To 
 say that we do not sin, is itself a sin. Sure as 
 1 that we sin daily, do we need forgiveness daily. 
 ( What we may think to be our sanctities need it, 
 as well as what we call our sins. Our tears 
 need it, our prayers need it, our holiness, our 
 humility, our love. Brothers, there will be times, 
 when, I will not say altJioiigh you are children, 
 but because you are — that is, because you have 
 the new perceptive sense that belongs to the new 
 life, yvOi|iwill see in yourselves motives or actions 
 that are tinctured if not stricken through with 
 that which needs forgiveness, there may be 
 moments of fearful revelation when the sudden 
 sight of your sins may have upon you the force 
 of a blow, moments when mercy will be to you 
 the sweetest word in all the Bible, and forgive- 
 ness the greatest miracle of mercy.-f- There 
 
 * Andrew Fuller's works, vol. vii. p. 306-7. 
 
 t Life of John Duncan, LL.D., by Professor David 
 Brown, p. 408. Speaking four days before his death, " of 
 the carnal mind, enmity to God, which the best of men 
 
THE FIFTH PETITION. [85 
 
 may also be moments, when, along with an 
 agonized sense of some sin into which, though 
 Christians, you have been surprised, you have a 
 fear that your cry for pardon has not been 
 heard. 
 
 A Puritan says, " Howsoever the child of God 
 hath his sinnes fully pardoned at once in God's 
 part on his true repentance ; yet he is not able 
 to receive pardon at once, but must receive it by 
 little and little, and as it were droppe by 
 droppe ; this we may see in David, who had the 
 pardon of his sinne pronounced by Nathan the 
 prophet, ' The Lord also hath put away thy 
 sinne, thou shalt not die' (2 Sam. xii. 13). Yet 
 after that, he penned the fifty-first Psalme 
 wherein he begged mercie and forgiveness most 
 earnestly for that sinne which God had already 
 pardoned, aiming no doubt, at a more comfort- 
 able assurance of pardon in his own heart.''* 
 
 In the ranks of those who profess and call 
 themselves Christians, we find persons who, from 
 two different reasons, are unprepared to join in 
 this petition. 
 
 Some, it appears, understand the forgiveness 
 of our rebellion to include, not only the grant of 
 
 has at times to fight against," the doctor said, " I never 
 get a sight of it but it produces horror, even bodily sick- 
 ness," p. 487. 
 
 * " The Workes of that Famous and Woithie Minister of 
 Christ in the Vniversity of Cambridge, M. W. Perkins," 
 1609. Vol. III. p. 100. 
 
I 86 THE FIFTH PETITION. 
 
 pardon, but the gift of holiness, and that by one 
 act only of faith, the receiver reaches the per- 
 fection of a sinless life — a life which therefore 
 has no further need of forgiveness, A youth 
 lately stood up in a mission room, and ad- 
 dressed a company of four hundred persons to 
 this effect : — 
 
 " My friends, I thank God that I can say to- 
 night that I am saved." There was a shout of 
 " Hallelujah ! " Then he went on to say, " I go 
 about the town like other folks . . . and 
 they cannot see my heart, but God can see it, 
 and when He looks at my heart He sees that it 
 is whiter than snow. For six months or more, 
 I have not had to ask Him at night to forgive 
 the sins of the day ; but I have had every night 
 to thank Him for keeping me from sin. If He 
 can keep me from sin for six months. He can 
 keep me all my life ; and if He can keep me. 
 He can keep you — every one of you." 
 
 We set down these words of random ignorance, 
 only because they serve to show in bold, blunt 
 plainness, one of those misconceptions and 
 burlesques of the glorious gospel, which seem to 
 be getting common, and which are sometimes 
 reckoned as belonging to the statistics of the 
 Saviour's victories. In giving this prayer, 
 though for the use of all the divine family with- 
 out an individual exception, he made no pro- 
 vision for a case like this, and was clearly not 
 
THE FIFTH PETITION. uSy 
 
 aware that any single member of it would, while 
 in this world, ever become so free from sin as 
 not to need a daily share in the petition — 
 " Forgive us our trespasses " ! 
 
 Others being of a different school, contend 
 that we have no need to use a prayer like this, 
 because, although it is quite true that we sin 
 every day, our sins, on to the end of life, are 
 already forgiven. As the ban of the empire is 
 lifted, and our justification in the court of heaven 
 proclaimed, it is impossible that we should have 
 any further forgiveness, and now, instead of 
 prayer for pardon wanted, we have only to offer 
 praise for pardon granted. 
 
 " How can a sin be forgiven before it exists ? 
 Where do we find a warrant for the idea of 
 pardon for sins before they are lamented or for- 
 saken ? Forgiveness invariably presupposes 
 repentance. It is not bestowed on tJiat account 
 yet it is inseparably connected with it. As 
 justification includes forgiveness, we may be said 
 to be fully forgiven from the first moment we 
 believe in Christ, but it is in some such way I 
 conceive as we are said to be glorified* The 
 thing is rendered sure by the purpose and pro- 
 mise of God ; but as in that case a perseverance 
 to the end is promised and provided for, so is 
 repentance and continual application for mercy 
 through Jesus Christ in this. If it were true 
 * Rom. viii. 30. 
 
l88 THE FIFTH PETITION. 
 
 that a believer might not persevere to the end, 
 it would be equally true that he might never be 
 glorified : and if it were possible for him to live 
 in sin and never repent of it, it would be equally 
 possible that he would never be forgiven — but 
 He who has promised that which is ultimate, 
 has provided for everything immediate."* 
 
 The act of oblivion which makes our freedom 
 certain is already a fact ; but while we are mor- 
 tal, the pardon itself must be granted perpetually. 
 The treasury of forgiving love is already ours ; 
 the payment out of it is only when we ask for it ; 
 and this we shall continue to ask, and so con- 
 tinue to have until we have done with sin- 
 ning. Our salvation is a settled thing ; but we 
 shall always be " receiving the end of our faith, 
 even the salvation of our souls " until we lift our 
 voices in the shout of eternity — " Salvation to 
 Him that sitteth on the throne and to the 
 Lamb! " All the forgiveness is even now secured, 
 but we have not yet appropriated it all, and the 
 daily prayer " Our Father . . . forgive us our 
 debts," is the daily application for what is 
 already ours, by successive expressions of that 
 faith which grace has made the habit of our 
 existence. 
 
 n. It is a prayer for forgiveness in which sin 
 is described as debt. That which in the first 
 delivery of the prayer is called debt, in the 
 * Andrew Fuller. 
 
THE FIFTH PETITION. I 89 
 
 second is called sin ; much as if the Teacher 
 had said, "it is sin that I mean by debt." In- 
 deed, the same doctrine is taught in both pas- 
 sages. What in the first case is asserted, is in 
 the second quite as distinctly implied, for the 
 plea recorded in Luke is, " forgive us ... as 
 we also forgive every one that is indebted to us." 
 
 It strikes us that in all the variety and wealth 
 of words used to show the evil qualities and 
 energies of sin, not one is more graphic than 
 this, and not one more mournful. 
 
 Even in this earthly life, and with reference 
 to earthly creditors, while still the conscience is 
 sensitive, and the soul alive, scarcely a word in 
 the English language drops on to us with such a 
 deadening blow. It is the horror that holy 
 poverty shrinks from. " I will go into the work- 
 house rather than go into debt ! " Yes, poor old 
 toiler, it would be less shame to be honourably 
 indebted to the laws of your country than to be 
 meanly indebted under false pretences, to any 
 individual. 
 
 Debt is the "thing of mystery and fear " that 
 for ever haunts the life even of many a man 
 who keeps up the appearances of wealth. The 
 spectre walks by his side with soundless footfall, 
 sometimes seems to put a freezing hand upon 
 his shoulder, sometimes quickens his steps, some- 
 times comes round and looks him in the face, 
 suddenly turning it white and wet, sometimes. 
 
190 THE FIFTH PETITION. 
 
 when he is at home, makes each knock at his 
 door like a sting in his heart, sometimes, as he 
 sits at table, shoots out shadowy fingers to 
 write " on the wall over against him " letters 
 that make him tremble. Debt is agony. Debt 
 stuns the intellect. Debt suffocates. Debt, 
 like a nightmare, benumbs that which it clutches, 
 makes the " right hand forget its cunning, and 
 the tongue cleave to the roof of the mouth ! " 
 Debt creates many an evil habit — the habit of 
 staving off by temporary expedients a coming 
 crash ; the habit of trusting to chance ; the habit 
 of keeping up a desperate composure when on 
 the edge of the worst ; habits that gradually 
 harden a man, kill his heart, and blunt the 
 fine chastity of conscience, so that he is still able 
 to run up debts with frightful facility, and to let 
 them grow with soft, noiseless, unsuspected 
 accumulation — debts leading to debts, troubles 
 to troubles, and lies to lies. 
 
 Here, speaking of man's relation to God, and 
 his transactions with Him, the Saviour calls our 
 sins our debts. The principle taught is, that sin 
 is not as some would have us think, a weakness, 
 a sickness, an evil in ourselves, and which is only 
 our own affair, but an evil in its aspect towards 
 God. The antecedent sentences suggest, as per- 
 haps they were intended to suggest, what our 
 debts are. Is God our Father.-' We owe Him 
 lovine reverence. Is He in heaven .-' We owe 
 
THE FIFTH PETITION. JQI 
 
 Him a life of heavenly affections and aims. 
 Should we say " Hallowed be Thy name .'' We 
 owe devotion to His glory. Is it right to say, 
 Thy Kingdom come } We owe Him the 
 tribute of subjects. Is it right to say, Thy 
 will be done .'' We owe Him, not only the 
 service of the active, but the surrender of the 
 choosing faculties. Is it right to say give us 
 this day our daily bread } We owe Him the 
 worshipping sense of dependence. These things 
 we owe. The word " owed " is related to the 
 word "ought," and here is a sad illustration. 
 Payment is not that which t's, but that which 
 ouo^/it to be — is still only that which is ozved. 
 Duty, the thing due, has not been paid, and out 
 of our own resources we have no means of pay- 
 ment. In the world of commerce, the secret 
 consciousness of being bankrupt is often mastered 
 by reckless levity or forced composure. Some- 
 times debtors, in despair of paying their debts, 
 afraid to look into their books, or to face the 
 facts of their position, put the whole question 
 away, launch into extravagance, run up tre- 
 mendous bills, and get into a rate of expenditure 
 beyond their calculations. So does the sinner 
 sometimes act with reference to sin, until God in 
 tender mercy, by His sovereign Spirit, brings him 
 out of his delirium, and makes him cry, " God be 
 merciful to me a sinner ! " Sin after conversion 
 is the same thing as sin before it. Sins are 
 alwaj's debts. 
 
192 THE FIFTH PETITION. 
 
 IV. This is a prayer for grace. Forgiveness 
 is an act of grace. It might have been said in 
 the first hour of spiritual awakening : Debtor 
 to God, what do you propose } Compromise t 
 Composition "i Plea for patience .-' Request for 
 time } Engagement to pay by extra service .'* 
 Atoning for a sinful past by a sinless future .'' 
 Doing what is over and above your duty ? 
 
 What, that becomes a man is more than your 
 duty } How can the future cancel the past } 
 Who has told us that keeping clear of debts 
 from this moment would liquidate obligation 
 already contracted .'' What merchant writes 
 " paid " on a bill simply because his debtor 
 undertakes hereafter to buy only with ready 
 money } Common sense feels insulted. 
 
 Our thoughts on the subject all tend to the 
 conclusion with reference to our sins after, as 
 well as before our adoption into the family of 
 God, that there is nothing left for us but to cast 
 ourselves on pure, unmingled clemency; that 
 we have no plea but the plea founded on grace. 
 
 V. We advance to the remark that in this 
 prayer for forgiveness, we of conrst fall in luit/i 
 the divine plan for its bcstoivnient. The words 
 here put into the mouth of the suppliant name 
 no plea, show no plan ; they suggest nothing, 
 stipulate nothing, but simply ask for the grace, 
 leaving it for the Sovereign to determine the pro- 
 cess by which that grace is to come. The first 
 utterers of the prayer knew not, what we all 
 
THE FIFTH PETITION. I 93 
 
 know now, that it comes through him who 
 taught it, and that "we have redemption through 
 his blood, even the forgiveness of sins, according 
 to the riches of his grace." The time had not 
 struck for the outflash of the secret; we know it 
 now, and never separate in our minds the thought 
 of prayer for forgiveness from the thought of the 
 mediating Christ. 
 
 " In processes of commerce you see a double 
 page ; there is a column on the left hand and a 
 column on the right. The one is called Charge, 
 the other Z^zVcharge. You observe in settled 
 accounts that although on the side of charge a 
 vast page may be crowded with entries, on the 
 side of discharge there is but a single line ; yet 
 accounts at the bottom are equal and balancing. 
 There is a name written underneath the second 
 column ; that stands for all the money, and that 
 alone secures the discharge. In the day when 
 God's books are opened, revealing in long lines 
 our heavy debts, Christ's name marked to our 
 account is our discharge."* 
 
 In these simple and terse terms was the 
 doctrine once presented. All great ideas of 
 God's ways suffer and dwindle through being 
 distilled through our poor human thoughts and 
 Avords. Yet such in substance we believe to 
 be a true statement of the way in which grace 
 
 * Words of the late Rev. William Arnot, now remem 
 bered very impcrftctly. 
 
 N 
 
194 THE FIFTH PETITION. 
 
 forgives sin, Christ is the representative man. 
 He has so taken upon himself the responsibihties 
 of our debt to God, and so discharged them, that 
 we who live in him and in whom he lives are 
 free! 
 
 The humanitarian contends that the doctrine 
 of forgiveness through the suretyship of Christ, 
 really controverts the principle of grace, " Grace 
 gives for nothing ; but according to this, God 
 gives for Christ's sake ; grace forgives without 
 any payment ; God forgives the debtor, because 
 a friend pays for him." So he argues. 
 
 Ah ! there would be something in this argu- 
 ment if the debtor himself found the friend. 
 But, not only does God himself find the friend, 
 but God is the friend — God, in the Son of God, 
 The Supreme Governor of the Universe alone, 
 furnishes the expedient which makes it con- 
 sistent with the laws of the Universe for Him 
 to forgive the violator of those laws. Inter- 
 preting this phrase of the prayer by the facts of 
 the completed gospel, we may fairly take the 
 words, " Our Father, forgive us our debts " — 
 as if they had been written — Our Father, forgive 
 us, for we come to Thee in the name of the 
 Surety whom thou hast appointed, aud who has 
 put our debts away ! 
 
 VI. The declaratio)i connected with the prayer. 
 " Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our 
 debtors." This declarative sentence impresses 
 
The fifth petition. 195 
 
 us with the certainty that unless we do in the 
 spirit and habit of our hves, forgive those who 
 sin against us, there is no hope for us of divine 
 forgiveness. "Unforgiving, unforgiven." Both 
 versions are faithful to the expression of this 
 meaning, but the new puts it even more 
 emphatically than does the old. 
 
 Of course, from what has been already said, 
 it is clear that our forgiveness of sin committed 
 against ourselves, is not the ground and reason 
 of God's forgiveness of our sins against Him. 
 It is not as if we said, " seeing that we forgive 
 those who are indebted to us, therefore, O Father! 
 forgive what we owe Thee!" A supposition 
 that would not only attribute to man the meri- 
 torious initiative in obtaining his own pardon, 
 but would imply an estimate that brings down 
 to the low level of an insignificant human injury 
 our sins against the Majesty of Heaven. 
 
 No ! the connection between our forgiveness 
 of each other and God's forgiveness of ourselves, 
 is not one of merit, not one of cause ; but one 
 of effect, one of evidence, and so one of unalter- 
 able necessity. The law of forgiveness taught 
 by Christ as binding between man and man, 
 like some other laws of his kingdom, is treated 
 as belonging to the class of things called 
 abstractions. Men are ready to say — " Very 
 beautiful, doubtless, and very exalted — of course 
 quite right, but impossible to be carried out in 
 
u 
 
 196 THE FIFTH PETITION. 
 
 actual life." The thought of many an acute 
 practical man about it, would, if cast into 
 ]anguage,be something like that lately expressed 
 by a great legislator in the House of Commons, 
 on a proposition that was not deemed to be 
 workable. " I am not friendly, as a general rule, 
 to the assertion in this place of propositions not 
 susceptible of immediate application to practice." 
 *' This is a hard saying, who can bear it .-"' cries 
 the heart. " It is hard indeed, and therefore, 
 likely to be evaded. Why else did Christ make 
 a comment on that petition, passing by the 
 others, when he taught His disciples to pray.? 
 And hence it is that injuries are registered in 
 sheets of marble when committed against us, 
 while benefits are written in the sand, ready to 
 be dashed out by the foot of the next that 
 passeth by." * Not only is this the one clause of 
 the prayer to which Christ comes back in the 
 preceptive sentences close following, — but He 
 gives it enforcement by an impressive parable. 
 
 " Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened 
 to a certain king which would make a reckoning 
 with his servants, and when he had begun to 
 reckon, one was brought unto him which owed 
 him ten thousand talents. But forasmuch as 
 he had not wherewith to pay, his lord com- 
 manded him to be sold, and his wife and children, 
 and all that he had, and payment to be made. 
 * Thomas Fuller, Sermons, 1648. 
 
THE FIFTH PETITION. 197 
 
 The servant therefore fell down, and worshipped 
 him, saying, lord have mercy on me, and I will 
 pay all. And the lord of that servant being 
 moved with compassion, released him, and 
 forgave him his debt. But that servant went 
 out, and found one of his fellow-servants, which 
 owed him a hundred pence, and he laid hold on 
 him and took him by the throat, saying. Pay 
 me that thou owest. So his fellow-servant fell 
 down and besought him, saying have patience 
 with me, and I will pay thee. And he would 
 not, but went and cast him into prison, till he 
 should pay that which was due. So, when his 
 fellow-servants saw what was done, they were 
 exceedingly sorry, and come and told unto 
 their lord what was done. Then his lord called 
 him unto him, and saith unto him, thou wicked 
 servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou 
 besoughtest me ; shouldest not thou also have 
 had mercy on thy fellow-servant, even as I had 
 mercy on thee .-* and his lord was wroth, and 
 delivered him to the tormentors, till he should 
 pay all that was due. So shall also my Heavenly 
 Father do unto you, if ye forgive not everyone 
 his brother from your hearts." * 
 
 Perhaps the form of this parable is suggested 
 
 by the system of blind and oppressive misrule 
 
 common in eastern countries in olden time. A 
 
 king of kings would make one of his servants 
 
 * Matt, xviii. 23-25. — Reinsed Version. 
 
198 THE FIFTH PETITION. 
 
 king under himself of some province in his 
 empire, with the understanding that he might 
 get what taxes he could out of the people, and 
 pay to him, the imperial master, a certain vast 
 amount annually, as a kind of rent. Such a 
 master, here calls such a servant to account 
 for arrears, and the story is used as a vehicle 
 for conveying a lesson on forgiveness. The 
 " certain king," represents God ; the " day of 
 reckoning," the day of judgment within us when 
 we stand at the court of conscience, and the 
 Spirit questions us about our sins ; the sum of 
 ten thousand talents — the sum owing by the 
 steward — hints at the immensity of what we 
 owe to God. It suggests something not 
 countable, not speakable, not thinkable. " Ten 
 thousand, or a myriad, being the highest number 
 in Greek arithmetical notation ; an enormous 
 sum, which, even if the silver talent be designed, 
 amounts to ;£"4,500,000 sterling, but which, if the 
 gold talent be meant, which is far the most 
 likely, then the amount is nearly equal to the 
 annual revenue of the British Empire, that 
 is, equivalent to more than ;^70,ooo,ooo ster- 
 ling." * 
 
 * Substance of a note made by Dr Adam Clarke in 
 1804. The revenue for the year 1881-2 was reported to 
 be ^85,822,000. 
 
 How great a sum it was, we may see by comparing 
 it with other sums of which mention is made in Scripture. 
 
THE FIFTH PETITION. 1 99 
 
 I say — you man there ! looking so satisfied, 
 feeling so strong — so safe in your standing, so 
 calm in your sense of respectability, — you owe 
 more than seventy millions sterling ! unless 
 you pay it, you are lost ! This is a figure, 
 but it truthfully expresses a fact. "A duty 
 unfulfilled, is a debt unpaid:" admit this, and 
 you will also admit that your debts to God are 
 more than can be represented by this or any 
 other known symbol. The load is enough to 
 sink a soul, and you are lost ! 
 
 "Oh no!" cries one, "thank God, no, no! 
 have you not heard .-' Christ has paid all that 
 debt for me ; Christ is my ransom ; Christ is 
 my surety ; for His sake I have been forgiven 
 all the old life of sin, have been freed from the 
 old sentence of condemnation; the "handwriting 
 that was against me " is crossed out ; my place 
 now is not the prison of justice but the palace 
 of the Great King. I am one of His children ; 
 I sit at His table ; it is true that, child as I am. 
 
 In the construction of the Tabernacle 29 talents of gold 
 were used (Exod. xxxviii. 24) ; David prepared for the 
 Temple 3000 talents of gold, and the princes 5000 
 (1 Chron. xxix. 1-7) ; the Queen of Sheba presented to 
 Solomon 120 talents (i Kings x. 10) ; the King of 
 Assyria laid upon Hezekiah 30 talents of gold (2 Kings 
 xviii. 14) ; and in the extreme impoverishment to which 
 the land was brought at last, one talent of gold was laid 
 upon it after the death of Josiah, by the King of Egypt 
 (2 Chron. xxxvi. 3).— Archbishop Trench. 
 
200 THE FIFTH PETITION. 
 
 I sin every day, and I grieve for this, but I go 
 every day to Him with all His other children, 
 with the petition ' Forgive us our debts,' and so 
 I have forgiveness." 
 
 Well, but have you forgiven those who tres- 
 pass against you ? "Yes." Quite sure ? "Yes." 
 Have you forgiven and forgotten .? Ah no ! 
 There is still in some instance a secret reserve, 
 a sleeping grudge. You say " I can forgive, but 
 not forget." Shall God say the same of you .-* 
 His word is, " I will blot out their transgressions, 
 and remember their iniquities no more."* This 
 is His way of forgiving. If He had said " I will 
 forgive your debts, but I will remember them"; 
 this would have sounded ominously ; the forgive- 
 ness would not have been thorough, and you 
 would have been ready to cry out in your fear, 
 "Not to forget, is not to forgive." 
 
 Chrysostom intimates that many persons in 
 his congregation, when praying, suppressed this 
 clause — " as we forgive our debtors." Do you ? 
 Say this after me — " Forgive us, as we forgive 
 our debtors." As the meaning grows upon you, 
 you tremble beneath its weight. Some of you 
 are not able to lift your hand before the Al 
 mighty God of truth, and make this declaration, 
 you see also, that prayer for God's pardon so 
 worded, amounts to a prayer that His forgive- 
 ness of you may be like your forgiveness of 
 * Jer. xxxi. 34 ; Heb. viii. 12. 
 
THE FIFTH PETITION. 20I 
 
 others — forgiveness, but with reserve, forgive- 
 ness of the offence, but with retention of thought 
 about it, therefore conscience keeps you speech- 
 less. 
 
 Yet if you are not forgiving, there is no 
 warrant for offering prayer that you may be 
 forgiven. It is the Master Himself who has 
 wrought this lesson into the pattern of praying 
 language into which we now look, and in the 
 parable just used as an illustration, he shows 
 the monstrosity of a spirit which a servant who 
 had been forgiven by his king a debt almost too 
 great to be calculated, refuses to forgive his 
 fellow servant one that in comparison with it 
 was almost too small to be named. 
 
 Once, when our Lord had been teaching this 
 law of brotherly forgiveness the difficulty of 
 obedience seemed so great to His disciples, and 
 the thought of it so filled them with dismay, 
 that their one instant cry was, " Lord increase 
 our faith " ! Let this be our cry, and when in 
 answer to it, faith gets stronger, and we cleave 
 closer to the Crucified One who ever lives to be 
 the medium of our renewed life, we shall have 
 more of His forgiving power. We shall not at 
 once have it to perfection, but we shall go on to 
 perfection in having it. We shall have it in our 
 measure, and as grace grows, that will grow. 
 The Spirit of Him who "creates all things 
 
202 THE FIFTH PETITION, 
 
 anew," must be within us, to master our vexed 
 and excitable lives, and whenever that Spirit, 
 brooding over the troubled waters of a soul, 
 says, "Let there be forgiveness,'' there is for- 
 giveness. 
 
IX. 
 
 THE SIXTH PETITION. 
 
 "And lead us not into temptation." — Matt. vi. 12; 
 Luke xi. 4. Authorized Version. 
 
 "And bring us not into temptation." — Matt. vi. 13; 
 Luke xi. 4. Revised Version. 
 
 The Lord's Prayer is for the use of the family 
 while travelling home. This is no easy travell- 
 ing. A poet, speaking of the modern * "Pilgrim's 
 Progress," reminds us that there can be no 
 railway to the Celestial City — that the journey 
 must still be made in the ancient fashion — 
 made so to speak, on foot — made not for us, but 
 by us. The onward movement is not like that of 
 a carriage, while we are asleep inside it, but must 
 be the result of our own individual volition and 
 exertion. " We zvalk ; " and we walk " by faith 
 not by sight." Some of us notice that the 
 shadows begin to lengthen. The day will soon 
 be over. Jesus, our Sun is gone before us, 
 is out of sight, and is already creating the glory 
 
 See Hawthorne's Allegory of the modern " Pilgrim's ^ 
 Progress " b)' rail. '^^ 
 
204 THE SIXTH PETITION. 
 
 of the land that we call Heaven. So, we are 
 "stepping westward." Questioned as to this, 
 each one of us might answer — 
 
 " Stepping westward did you say ? 
 " Stepping westward ? Yes alway ; 
 " With staff and scrip, 
 " Wayfaring songs upon our lip, 
 " Stepping, stepping to the end."* 
 
 " Wayfaring " prayers as well as songs are upon 
 our lip, and this is one — " lead us not into 
 temptation." 
 
 I. This is an appeal to our Leader. 
 
 I. It implies that our Father is our Leader. 
 No other leader knows the way. It must be so, 
 for ours is a pilgrimage, not through space, but 
 through time. Whatever else we have seen, we 
 have not seen to-morrow. Whatever maps we 
 have consulted, we have never found a map of 
 the future. No Atlas can help us. The road 
 beyond the moment in which I now plant my 
 foot, is all mist. We know that at some time 
 or other, we may have to wade heavily through 
 black suffocating thoughts that make the 
 "Slough of Despond ;" or to toil wearily up 
 the " Hill Difficulty;" or, our spirits quivering 
 with awful touches, to go down into the " Valley 
 of the Shadow of Death," or to be locked in the 
 cell of " Doubting Castle ;" or to drink the air 
 and see the beauty of the " Delectable Moun- 
 
 * From " Poet's Harvest Home,"— WilHam Bell Scott. 
 
THE SIXTH PETITION. 205 
 
 tains." There are lions in the way ; and giants 
 for each red cross knight to fight with, but when 
 or where these sceneries may break upon us, or 
 these adventures open, no horoscope can tell. 
 Our Father knows, for "He inhabiteth Eternity," 
 and sees the " end from the beginning." In 
 Him therefore do we place our trust, and to Him 
 do we lift this cry. It does but continue the 
 train of appeal that began in the opening words 
 — " Our Father which art in heaven !" We are 
 not tired by repetition of our familiar hymn — 
 
 Lead Thou me on, 
 Keep Thou my feet, I do not ask to see 
 The distant scene ; one step enough for me. 
 I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou 
 
 Should'st lead me on ; 
 I loved to choose and see my path, but now, 
 
 Lead Thou me on. 
 I loved the garish day, and spite of fears. 
 
 Pride ruled my will. 
 Remember not past years. 
 So long Thy power hath blessed me, sure it still 
 
 Will lead me on. 
 O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till 
 
 The night is gone, 
 And with the morn, those angel faces smile 
 Which I have loved long since, 
 
 And lost awhile. * 
 
 We should make this appeal with a correct 
 understanding of what is here meant by being 
 led. In both instances of its occurrence, the 
 J. H. Newman, 
 
206 THE SIXTH PETITION. 
 
 latest translators have changed it for the word 
 bring. The authorised version in every other 
 instance where the Greek word in question is 
 used, renders it brmg, and there seems to be no 
 good reason why we should not so translate it 
 here. * 
 
 Every one sees the meaning of the word 
 lead ; we put the same meaning into the word 
 bring, only giving it greater strength. " Lead- 
 ing" may mean the gentlest of directive help 
 along the road, but " bringing " is something 
 more energetic. In order to bring, a leader 
 may have sometimes to carry, sometimes to 
 fight, sometimes to clear away obstructions. 
 The pilgrim is his charge, therefore by all 
 needful processes, and in the most effectual 
 way, he fulfils what he undertakes. 
 
 This view of our Father's leading is fraught 
 
 * fiT] eiaeveyijs. In the authorised version it is trans- 
 lated as follows, in the six other instances of its 
 occurrence in the New Testament. 
 
 Luke V. 1 8, 19. The men who carried the paralytic 
 sought means to " bring him on " to Jesus. The phrase 
 is twice used. 
 
 Luke xii. 1 1. "When they bring you into the syna- 
 gogues ." 
 
 Acts xvii. 20. " Thou bringest strange things to our 
 ears." 
 
 1 Tim. vi. 7. " We brought nothing into the world." 
 
 Hebrews xiii. 11. " The bodies of those beasts whose 
 blood is brought into the sanctuary." 
 
 In classical Greek this verb means to bring or carry. 
 
THE SIXTH PETITION. 207 
 
 with inspiriting strength. It conveys the idea 
 which holy men by the rivers of Babylon ex- 
 pressed under their favourite phrase, the 
 " Hand of our God is on us." To bring me, 
 He holds me. A family of tourists climbed 
 up certain perilous rocks on the coast of 
 Cornwall ; as the father went on first, with his 
 little son, the mother from below, called out to 
 her boy, " have you fast hold of your father " ? 
 Then was heard the shrill ring of a voice, 
 answering with perfect sense of safety in its 
 tone — " No, mother, but he has fast hold of 
 me.'' So is our Father in Heaven leading us 
 by bringing us up through danger, and out of 
 it. Catching sight of certain dangers called 
 temptations, we utter this cry. 
 
 2. We make this appeal to our Father with 
 a sense of His nearness. We are not saying 
 this to a God who is afar off. Such a God 
 could not at any moment be within hearing, nor 
 could He be leading us. To many God is an 
 almost unimaginable Being, dwelling in the 
 light of infinite splendour, and the reserves of 
 awful solitude, countless millions of miles away, 
 no man having at any time seen His face, or 
 heard his voice, but it is not so with us. We 
 have already learned that just because He is 
 our Father in Heaven, He is everywhere : for 
 He is Lord in Heaven only because He is 
 infinite. The Father leads us through the Son 
 
2o8 THE SIXTH PETITION. 
 
 by the Holy Spirit ; and by His Spirit, He is 
 with our spirits. From the necessity of His 
 perfection He is near — near as the hand is to 
 that which it brings, as the air is to that which 
 it fans, as the stream is to that which it laves, 
 as the sun is to the body, diffusing heat through 
 every atom of its frame, and every pulsation of 
 its life. Nay, unspeakably nearer is the inti- 
 macy of the Saviour to the saved, for their love 
 to Him is but the indwelling of His own love. 
 Sin is near, sorrow is near, danger is near, Satan 
 is near, death is near, but the soul's Leader 
 is always nearer. This cry is, therefore, not a 
 shout sent up to One who is at a distance ; it 
 may be but a thought that scarcely emerges 
 from silence, a mere movement of the soul to 
 Him who is nearer than near ; and, when from 
 the agony of my panic, I can find no voice, He 
 who is leading me is so close to me, that He 
 hears the trembling of the unspoken prayer, 
 " Bring us not into temptation." 
 
 n. This petition comes from the fear that 
 when in answer to our last petition, our sins are 
 forgiven, we shall be tempted to sm again. We 
 have just asked for forgiveness, because, 
 although heaven born and heaven bound, we 
 are always failing to pay what our spirits owe ; 
 are always like Christ's first disciples, even 
 while going with Him up to Jerusalem, hurting 
 His love by a spirit contrary to His own ; are 
 
THE SIXTH PETITION. 20^ 
 
 always needing to renew our entreaty for par- 
 don. 
 
 You therefore see the connection between 
 what we now are saying, and what has just 
 been said. This connection is suggested by the 
 introductory use of the word " and." Now, as in 
 the last instance in which the particle has this 
 peculiar place — it links two petitions together, 
 so that the spirit of the first still runs on into 
 the second. If the hurry of our joys at the 
 answer to our prayer " forgive us our debts," 
 should make us forget to add, "lead us not 
 into temptation," the weight of debt may be 
 scarcely lifted, before we are in debt again. 
 That sentence is therefore followed up by 
 this. Having pardon for the past, we want 
 grace for the future, and so have within us the 
 longing which made an ancient suppliant say — 
 " Thou hast delivered my soul from death ; 
 will not Thou deliver my feet from falling, that 
 I may walk before God in the light of the 
 living .-* "* 
 
 We find that in the Bible, the word tempta- 
 tion is used with two different meanings. 
 Sometimes it simply means to try; some- 
 times to entice; the purpose in the one case 
 being good, in the other — evil. 
 
 When, on the one hand, we read that " God 
 did tempt Abraham," we understand the term 
 * Psalm Ivi. 13. 
 O 
 
210 THE SIXTH PETITION. 
 
 as meaning that He tried him as the pruner 
 tries the tree, the refiner the silver, as the strong 
 strain or dead weight tests the efficiency of that 
 which has hard work to do. 
 
 When, on the other hand, we read that 
 "Satan did tempt David," we understand that 
 he enticed him to sin. Granted, that all 
 temptation includes trial — that even a tempta- 
 tion plied by Satan is often used by Satan's 
 Master, and over-ruled to be a Divine instru- 
 ment for the invigoration of our faith — that 
 what was meant for evil is transmuted into 
 good, and that the ultimate issue defeats the 
 primary design ; still, temptation is meant by 
 the evil one to work nothing but evil, and it is 
 against this kind of temptation that we now 
 pray. We tremble at the thought of sin : and 
 pray to our Leader that we may not be led 
 into it. 
 
 III. We thus pray, because we know that 
 our path abounds with instruments and occa- 
 sions of temptation. 
 
 These would not be so certainly dangerous, 
 if they all had open advertisement — if danger- 
 signals hung out near all danger — if everything 
 that had in it the nature of hell made itself 
 visible by the light of its own hell-fire — if every 
 snare had the word " Temptation " written on 
 it, by the hand of mystery that wrote on the 
 palace wall of Babylon, you would keep out of its 
 
THE SIXTH PETITION. 2 I I 
 
 way ; "for in vain is the snare spread in the sight 
 of any bird." You would not bathe in brightest 
 waters while seeing sharks play there ; you 
 would catch up no basket of flowers like Cleo- 
 patra's if you saw the asp lifting its head from 
 below, for only the lunatic will " dally with the 
 crested worm." Life is not in love with death ; 
 and the instincts of holiness would make the 
 Christian shun a sin when known to be a sin, 
 even without the warning, " avoid it, pass not 
 by it, turn from it and pass away," But it is not 
 so. The sin that is near us constantly hides 
 itself under a false colour and a wrong name. 
 
 We may be led into temptation, when in 
 business. Business is not in itself a sin. It is 
 not a sin to make the most of the earth, to get 
 the most out of it, to make it answer, to turn it 
 into value, and to do that with it which creates 
 wealth. The commandment to " dress and 
 keep " the garden in Avhich God has set man, 
 so as to " replenish and subdue the earth," was 
 given before the fall, and is still binding on us ; 
 but in the world as it now is, who does not 
 know that while in pursuance of this lawful end, 
 we may be led into something that is unlawful } 
 When a thing that is in itself only subsidiary, is 
 interesting, there is a tendency to take too keen 
 an interest in it. Dealing with earthly things, 
 we may be too eager to gain them, too grasping 
 to keep them, and too sorrowful to let them go. 
 
212 THE SIXTH PETITION. 
 
 We may be mastered by the law of assimilation, 
 and so become like the elements that we work 
 in. "Bury a man in earth," says the shrewd Owen 
 Feltham, " and he himself will soon be earth." 
 
 We may be led into temptation by the habits 
 of society. Let me try to make my meaning 
 plain by a parable.* 
 
 Sometime after the last of the Apostles died, 
 there lived at Ephesus a thriving man of business 
 named Marcus, who was an elder of the Church. 
 His wife, though, like himself, an accredited 
 member of the church, was scarcely reclaimed 
 from the prevailing heathenism, and still 
 cherished with sentimental interest, though not 
 with belief, the old poetic stories of Apollo and 
 Venus, Jove and Diana. 
 
 Their children, as the children of persons 
 rising in life, were sent to schools suited to the rich 
 or the risen class, and where it was thought a sign 
 of respectability to honour " the fair humanities 
 of old religion." Naturally, the associates of 
 these children, as they grew older, were the 
 fashionable heathen. They entreated and coaxed 
 their parents in one thing after another to con- 
 form to heathen usages. " Why should we be 
 singular.?" it was said, " Why should we not be 
 at feasts where, just for mere form's sake, libations 
 
 * This is suggested by a story read long ago, though I 
 fail to remember the thread of it, nor can I say where it 
 is given. 
 
THE SIXTH PETITION. 213 
 
 are made to Apollo, so long as we do not believe 
 in Apollo ? Why should we refuse meats con- 
 secrated to the heathen gods, when every one 
 knows that this consecration means nothing ? 
 How are we to reclaim the heathen, if we never 
 mingle with them ? and besides, did not our 
 Master sit with publicans and sinners ?" 
 
 Marcus was a man courteously inclined, easily 
 entreated, happy to see others happy, especially 
 sympathetic with the happiness of youth ; and 
 just now, on the principle "that extremes beget 
 extremes," was tempted to the extreme of 
 laxity because some Christians had gone to the 
 extreme of stringency — making as he justly 
 thought, religion appear to the young, less like a 
 divine principle than a hardy, narrow, censorious 
 prejudice. So, afraid to create a prejudice in 
 young minds against religion, gradually, but 
 uneasily, the good Marcus gave way. 
 
 Gradually, you saw his children at heathen 
 festive meetings held at their friends' houses. 
 " Why not ! The heathen should never have 
 ground for saying that Christians are morose." 
 Gradually, toiler though he was, his own house 
 would become the scene of a sumptuous enter- 
 tainment, where, between the toil of yesterday 
 and the toil of to-morrow, hot, exhausted crowds, 
 in hot exhausted air, would be in mazy motion 
 most of the night. " Why not ? Entertain- 
 ments of this kind," it would be said, " are ab- 
 solutely necessary to maintain our position, and 
 
2 1 4 THE SIXTH PETITION. 
 
 if we accept them, we must return them." Grad- 
 ually you saw about his walls, silver or marble 
 statuettes of Jupiter or Venus. "Why not? 
 They are not for worship, of course ; they are 
 placed there simply in compliance with the 
 general usage of good society." Gradually in 
 the course of these evening entertainments, ex- 
 quisite perfumes from censers richly wrought, 
 would be waved before these images. " Why 
 not .'' It is always done ; nobody means any- 
 thing by it ; and as for the statuette, we know 
 that an idol is nothing in the world." 
 
 At last, fellow Christians would venture on 
 remonstrance. Then the young people in the 
 family of Marcus would fire up, and answer 
 grandly — " You tell us that we are in danger. 
 We tell you that we know when to stop. You 
 tell us that we distress the consciences of persons 
 in the church, who keep to the simplicity of the 
 old faith, and check the decision of converts. 
 We beg to reply, that we glory in everything 
 broad, and scornfully repudiate everything 
 narrow. The meanest of all influences over con- 
 duct, is that which comes from the thought of 
 what others may think. Others may think it 
 religion to shut themselves up and read the old 
 gospel manuscripts ; we stand up for our own 
 rights ; and, whatever others do, as for us, and 
 our house, we will please ourselves." So by 
 degrees, they were led into temptation, and at 
 
THE SIXTH PETITION. 2 I 5 
 
 length it became impossible to tell from any 
 social signs, whether these advanced Christians 
 were servants of Jesus or of Jupiter. Let us, as 
 far as it is needful, apply the principle thus 
 suggested, to the circumstances of our own 
 day. 
 
 We may be led into temptation by retiring 
 from the world. It must be plain to every one 
 who forms a fair estimate of men as they are, 
 that the great majority of them regard Christian 
 principles as expounded in the New Testament, 
 with dead indifference or sarcastic hostility. 
 The many are of the world ; Xh^fezv are not of 
 it. So patent is this fact, and so patent has it 
 ever been, that according to the supreme book, 
 the term " world," marking the ungodly, is the 
 term that also represents the idea of society in 
 general ; obviously importing, that, in the judg- 
 ment of inspiration, the ungodly form the mass 
 of mankind. This is an alarming consideration, 
 for it implies that if we are thorough-going 
 Christians, we have to hold our ground or make 
 our way against an opposing mass. Surely that 
 which has at once mass and momentum, weight 
 and velocity, must carry all before it ! It has 
 often been thought therefore, that there is no 
 safety for those who are " not of the world " but 
 by getting out of its way. 
 
 If we attempt this by retirement into some 
 scene of quiet happiness, we may there meet with 
 
2l6 THE SIXTH PETITION. 
 
 new temptations. In the middle ages, when 
 it was a common article of belief that the garden 
 of Eden, though a holy secret, guarded by- 
 angels, still flowered in all its glory in some 
 Eastern land, many a terrified soul in wicked 
 city or monastic cell, would doubtless dream of 
 the blessedness there would be in finding the 
 spot, and dwelling there guarded from Satanic 
 spells. 
 
 Yet, Paradise was the scene of the fall, and 
 there it was that man was first led into tempta- 
 tion. Be sure that if we could find or make 
 some earthly Paradise of our own, where we 
 might hear " the voice of the Lord God walking 
 in the trees of the garden," where " the world 
 forgetting and the world forgot," holy love 
 would tremble into tenderness, thought into 
 flame, and where there would be no outward 
 interruptions to prayers, even there, a tempting 
 spirit would find us. 
 
 If, on the other hand, we fled into a wilder- 
 ness, we should still be followed. In the same 
 old times at which we have just glanced, devo- 
 tion has often sped in alarm from the world 
 into the wilderness. The devotee has many a 
 day made his escape to some stern solitude, 
 where, a cave his house, a litter of leaves his 
 bed, roots his food, his drink the crystal spring — 
 he has tried to crucify every natural inclination, 
 to strain all humanity out of his body, and to 
 
THE SIXTH PETITION. 21/ 
 
 steep his soul in ghastly meditations, that thus 
 he might keep out Satan. But old legends 
 testify that on such lives Hell has often spent 
 its utmost fury, and that in such conditions, 
 poor souls have suffered most from the poison 
 of idle thought or polluting fancy. 
 
 Though the first Adam was tempted in a 
 garden, the second was tempted in a wilderness. 
 There it was, that through forty days, with no 
 rich fruits to stay the sting of hunger, no clear 
 stream rippling over golden sands to slake his 
 thirst, no shelter from the fiery day or the freez- 
 ing night, and where — beauty banished, grim 
 desolation sat enthroned. He who afterwards 
 died for us, was tempted, and the wilderness 
 was the memorable field in which man's great 
 representative fought with man's great foe. 
 After this, let no follower of His hope to escape 
 " the fiery darts of the wicked one," by living in 
 any wilderness of self-inflicted poverty or pain. 
 The principle of seeking retirement from the 
 world of temptation, either in some kind of 
 Eden or in some kind of wilderness is always 
 being tried in some form or other, and always 
 fails. 
 
 We may be led into temptation even when we 
 feel most secure from it by communion with God. 
 When was Christ himself tempted } Bishop 
 Hall says, " No sooner has Christ come out of 
 the waters of baptism, than he comes into the 
 
2 I 8 THE SIXTH PETITION. 
 
 fire of temptation. No sooner does the Spirit 
 come in the form of a dove, than he is ' led by 
 the Spirit into the wilderness.' No sooner doth 
 God say 'this is my beloved Son in whom I 
 am well pleased,' than Satan darts the sug- 
 gestion of doubt, ' zyThou be the Son of God.' " 
 We have in Christ's experience a rehearsal of 
 what is likely to be our own. It is a specimen 
 of what is common in the tempter's strategy. 
 
 After a season of profit and privilege, you may 
 expect to be caught in some artifice or chal- 
 lenged to some deadly fight. The robber of 
 the soul waits for the moment when the soul, 
 being most happy, is least cautious, and has 
 most to lose. " It is the man bringing his 
 dividend from the banker's door who has most 
 cause to dread the pilferer's hand."* 
 
 IV. It implies a sense of our oivn teviptable- 
 ness. When angels have been sent to this 
 world on errands of wrath or love they have 
 moved sinless through an atmosphere of sin, 
 and amidst its worst infections, they could no 
 more be infected than snow flakes could catch 
 fire, or sunbeams take pollution. But even 
 before it was vitiated, mere humanity was in 
 itself temptable. The perfect Son of Man was 
 in " all points tempted as we are." It was a 
 real temptation that He suffered. His victory 
 
 mplies this, for there could have been no victory 
 * Cardiphonia. 
 
THE SIXTH PETITION. 2 I 9 
 
 in an imaginary conflict with an imaginary foe. 
 At least, there is always in our nature a certain 
 weakness to which the tempter can make his 
 appeal. Of this weakness a thoughtful writer 
 remarks, " There lies deep down in every man's 
 nature an unsuspected weakness to which temp- 
 tation may make a sudden appeal with success, 
 and he may do some wicked thing in conse- 
 quence unlike his general character altogether. 
 The tempter may come, and the tempter does 
 come in — to storm and command the very cita- 
 del of his soul. In that instant the man is 
 not himself, but another. He is himself in so 
 far as that he himself is responsible. He is 
 not himself, but another, and that other the 
 evil one, in so far as that the evil one is for the 
 moment master in that house of clay, and the 
 man himself seems to be living, breathing, 
 thinking, doing by substitution. It is then that 
 he acts as he never acted before, and never will 
 God helping him, again. It is then the great con- 
 tradiction takes place. He will do that to which 
 his nature has most instinctive repulsion, and 
 which will rob his after life of all tranquillity."* 
 Besides natural weakness, we have severally 
 and constitutionally, a bias in the direction of 
 some particular sin. " Every man is tempted 
 when he is drawn by his own lust and enticed. ""f* 
 There are moments when he will feel drawn, 
 
 * The Rev. Page Roberts in " Law and God." 
 t James i. 14. 
 
220 THE SIXTH PETITION. 
 
 as a vehicle is drawn — when perhaps some 
 propensity will pull him, as a horse pulls 
 towards its own stable, where it gets what it 
 likes. This peril is in his own being. He 
 may go away out of the circle of most urgent 
 instruments and occasions of temptation, but 
 he can never go away from himself. Every 
 one has a soul, and every one has a body. 
 Once a disciple might have said, " I at least, 
 am safe ; I have seen the Lord ; I am a 
 spiritual man ; I am inspired." Let it, 
 however, be remembered that it was to 
 disciples who could each say this that 
 the alarming charge was given, "Take heed 
 to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts 
 be overcharged with surfeiting and drunken- 
 ness, and cares of this life."* What Christ 
 said to his own immediate followers, He 
 says with seven-fold emphasis to us — "Take 
 heed to yoiirselvts T 
 
 Preaching to Wiltshire ploughmen, Augustus 
 Hare says that each man must shun things that 
 tempt him to the sin he himself most likes, and 
 must remember that these things, though 
 perhaps no snare to another man, when that 
 other man most likes some other kind of sin — 
 may be to himself full of deadly danger. 
 
 " What may be no temptation to another man, 
 may, from some weakness of character or dis- 
 * Luke xxi., 34. 
 
THE SIXTH PETITION. 221 
 
 position, be a crafty snare to me. Therefore it 
 becomes me to avoid it. If you had a ditch to 
 cross on your way to work, and it was so broad 
 that you could not leap over it, after trying and 
 tumbling once or twice perhaps, you would go 
 round by the bridge. It would be no reason to 
 you that neighbour such a one could leap it. 
 You would say, He is welcome to leap it then ; 
 but I can only leap into it : I have tried twice 
 already : twice have I only wetted myself and 
 dirtied my clothes : so I will not run the risk 
 again ! The safe way over the bridge is good 
 enough for me. 
 
 In like manner, if by frequenting such a place, 
 or such a company, you have fallen once or 
 twice into sin, listen not to the tempter when 
 he bids you try again. Say within yourself: I 
 have tried too often . I will run no further risk 
 of hurting and dirtying my soul. Christ has 
 cleansed it with His blood ; it is too precious a 
 thing to be polluted." * 
 
 Let us apply the principle thus given out 
 with such homely force to certain things which 
 in our day are increasingly connected with the 
 question of temptation. To theatricals, or to any 
 other mode of popular amusements. Is it true 
 that all these things are in their essence wrong } 
 Who says they are .-' Is it true that certain 
 
 * The Alton Sermons, by Augustus W. Hare. 1874, 
 pp. 479, 480. 
 
222 THE SIXTH PETITION. 
 
 institutions for amusement, look to their support 
 from the majority, must therefore please the 
 taste of the majority, that majority having no 
 taste for holiness ? Is it true that their pro- 
 prietors must meet the market or lose their 
 money ? Is it true in consequence, that they are 
 likely to hinder rather than help the highest 
 life ? Such questions claim thoughtful and 
 prayerful consideration, but set them aside at 
 present, for a question that practically comes 
 first — and that is, what will be the probable 
 effect of such recreations on yourself as a 
 Christian ? Whatever dissipates the force or 
 chills down the fervour of your devotional life ; 
 whatever weakens your working life, your teach- 
 ing life, or your missionary life ; whatever 
 indisposes you to read your Bible, whatever 
 prevents you from joyfully inhaling the spirit of 
 the Scriptures as a hot and weary man drinks 
 the air of the spring morning ; whatever makes 
 infrequent the moments of Divine visitation and 
 exalted spirituality, the thoughts of clear criteria 
 and the flashes of revealing light by which you 
 better understand yourself, and better under- 
 stand your Saviour; whatever makes the thought 
 of Christ fall like a cold shadow on the sunshine 
 of your joy ; whatever you would rather not 
 try to thank God for, or to ask a blessing on ; 
 whatever brings a chilling change from bright 
 and blissful faith to dull despondency, or froni 
 
THE SIXTH PETITION, 223 
 
 spiritual manhood to second infancy ; whatever 
 is the cause of failing trust, or freezing love, or 
 slackened service — however lawful it may be to 
 another man, is not lawful for you. Recreation 
 is lawful. Yes, it is lawful as the sparkling dew, 
 lawful as the spring, lawful as the flowers — but 
 says Richard Baxter, " there is no mirth like the 
 mirth of believers," and any particular mode of 
 recreation that in my own experience, still to 
 borrow his words, " impairs the mirth which faith 
 doth bring from the precious blood of Christ, 
 and from the promises of the Word, and from 
 experiences of mercy, and from fore-apprehen- 
 sions of everlasting blessedness," is no recreation 
 for me. 
 
 It would be simply rational for any man 
 to say, When I know, and I ought to know, 
 what are my own sinful propensities, I would 
 not of my own will be led within the range of 
 what might stir them into activity. There is 
 in old Arabic fable, the story of a great rock 
 that was a great magnet, drawing ships, so that 
 they were dashed into splinters on it. If I 
 have been magnetized by a certain sin, I would 
 not be led near the loadstone that might 
 draw me into destruction by its malignant 
 potency. If I carry in me, the gunpowder of 
 some slumbering badness, I would not be led 
 where sparks are flying. If I am " Little Faith" 
 bearing precious jewels, I would not be led 
 
224 THE SIXTH PETITION. 
 
 through " Dead Man's Lane,'' where robbers 
 lurk. If I am short-sighted, I would not be 
 led into " the land of pits." If I am timid, and 
 fear " the power of the dog," * I would not be 
 led near his chain, but far as may be beyond 
 the reach of his spring. If I am constitutionally 
 passionate, I would not be led into the company 
 of those who are likely to put me into a passion ; 
 if sceptical, I would not give myself to the 
 study of sceptical books ; if I am vain, I would 
 not be led through " Vanity Fair ; " if I am in 
 danger from sympathy with any one particular 
 sin, I would avoid the familiar thoughts that 
 slope the way to it, as I would keep away from 
 the top of the smooth granite slope that borders 
 the black, deep well. I would not tempt the 
 tempter, by bringing what is so temptable 
 directly under his power, and would never cease 
 to cry to our Father, "Lead us not into tempta- 
 tion." 
 
 V. By this petition, we mean that zee Jiave no 
 will to go into temptation unless it be the will oj 
 God to lead ns into it. 
 
 * Psalm xxii. 20. " I remember to have read a story 
 of one Gunno, king of the Danes, that having overcome 
 a people, he set a dog over them to be their governour : 
 that is, he would have his commands to go out 
 under the name of the dog, and they should be under 
 the government of the dog ; this he did in disdain and 
 indignation against those people he overcame. Much 
 more debasement is it for a soul to be under command 
 of the devil." — Jeremiah Burroughs. 
 
THE SIXTH PETITION. 225 
 
 We have heard of a man who had unlawful 
 possession of another man's estate, through 
 concealing the knowledge of the former owner's 
 last will, which had unexpectedly to him left 
 it away to some one else. He was tempted to 
 destroy it, but had not quite made up his mind 
 to do so. One night he fought his conscience 
 down, kept his qualms under, and tried to sleep. 
 He even repeated the Lord's Prayer to himself 
 when under the sheets ; struggling, however, 
 as he did so, not to think about the petition, 
 " Lead us not into temptation." Do we know 
 that state of mind } 
 
 If in uttering these words, we dare not weigh 
 their meaning, if we are in the mood of yielding 
 to some evil besetment, and have some dormant 
 intention which we would rather not wake up 
 to look at — then, while in the very act of speak- 
 ing to the Almighty God of truth, we say one 
 thing and mean another, and, however uncon- 
 sciously, utter words of worship in the spirit of 
 profanity. 
 
 It is essential to the reality of this, as of the 
 connectional petitions, that before coming to 
 it, we should pray, " Thy will be done." The 
 larger petition governs the smaller. It may 
 seem like inconsistency first to say, " Lead us 
 into temptation if it be Thy will;" then to say, 
 " Lead us 7iot into it " — but there is no incon- 
 sistency. It is only akin to the Saviour's prayer, 
 p 
 
2 26 THE SIXTH PETITION. 
 
 when He went into Gethsemane, saying with 
 shrinking and tremulous dread, " Father, if it 
 be possible, let this cup pass from me, neverthe- 
 less, not my will, but Thine be done." The 
 innocent instincts of His appropriated nature 
 shuddered at the cup, but were not allowed to 
 keep Him from drinking it, when the Father put 
 it into His hand. The spirit that offers this 
 petition in the model prayer, is still a spirit that 
 will, if commanded, make us " count it all joy 
 when we fall into manifold temptations," while 
 the Lord is there. Jesus was led up into 
 "the wilderness to be tempted of the devil." 
 Led like Him, we will venture to go like 
 Him, into that which would be in itself pain 
 the most exquisite, and peril the most extreme. 
 That which is the leading power, will be the 
 sustaining power. He who guides, will hold. 
 While you say, my soul abhors this place, you 
 will be able to add, but my God brought me 
 into it, it is therefore the pathway of promise, 
 the thoroughfare to the land of triumph. The 
 trial of your faith Vvill be turned into a proof 
 of your sonship, for " as many as are led by the 
 spirit of God, they are the sons of God." 
 
 It is said of Jesus whose steps we are to tread 
 in, that " He being full of the Holy Ghost, re- 
 turned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit 
 into the wilderness." * 
 
 * It is said (Matt. iv. i), that "He was led up," {av-nxO-n) 
 and (Luke iv. i) that " He was led C^jTei-o) by the Spirit 
 
THE SIXTH PETITION. 22 7 
 
 This strikes us as a strong contrast to the 
 reckless rush and flippant levity with which 
 men often plunge into dangers so great that it 
 would need a miracle to bring them out un- 
 scathed. " Be ye filled with the Spirit," is the 
 Divine law for us. Can we, when thus filled, go 
 from our own preferences into the haunts of sin? 
 Our Father never sends His children into them 
 on any needful errand, or for any wise discipline, 
 without this preparation. " He never," says an 
 old writer, " suffers His castles to be besieged 
 till they be provisioned." With this equipment, 
 it may be His will that we should enter fields 
 where we have to face the full array of evil, and 
 brave the full blast of storms. But however 
 charged with the Spirit's influence, we shall not 
 step into a post of great moral hazard without 
 clear orders. Once, while William of Orange 
 was laying siege to a town on the Continent, 
 an officer with a message ventured to go to the 
 spot where he was in the act of directing the 
 operation of his gunners. When the message 
 was delivered, and the answer to it received, he 
 
 into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil." The 
 word means that going into the wilderness was His own 
 act, though not of his own desire, but with a will that 
 consented to the will of the Father. The word " bring " 
 (ei(T€viyT]s) in our prayer points to the act of God in taking 
 us into temptation, and in this case, our consent of will 
 takes the form of resignation rather than of active 
 obedience. 
 
2 28 THE SIXTH PETITION. 
 
 still lingered. " Sir," said the prince, " do you 
 know that every moment you stand here is at 
 the risk of your life ? " " I run no more risk," 
 replied the gentleman, " than your highness." 
 " Yes," said the prince, " but my duty brings 
 me here, and yours does not." In a few minutes 
 a cannon-ball struck the officer dead. While 
 only led by our own inclination into a risk, we 
 have no divine guarantee of protection. Led 
 and filled by God Himself, our souls are safe 
 anywhere. Not only so, but temptations will 
 be made subservient to the highest purposes of 
 profit to man and glory to God. Overcome, 
 they will keep us closer to Him who is leading 
 us, make us lowlier God-ward, and more sym- 
 pathetic man -ward. Victors who have been 
 tempted are the wisest teachers, and the strong- 
 est helpers of those who are tempted now. 
 Still, though the result may be so gracious, 
 the process is so trying that it is right to say, 
 " Father, if it be possible, spare me. It is not 
 my own choice to go, if it be Thy will lead me 
 into some other path, but if it be Thy will to 
 lead me in this I will go. I will go in the 
 strength of the Lord God, making mention of 
 Thy righteousness and that only." 
 
X. 
 
 THE SEVENTH PETITION. 
 
 " But deliver us from evil." Matt. vi. 13 ; Luke xi. 4. — 
 Authorized Version. 
 
 "But deliver us from the evil one." Matt. vi. 13. — 
 Revised Version. 
 
 Omitted from the Gospel by Luke. 
 
 We glory in our old English Bible. The know- 
 ledge of eternal life first reached us through its 
 pages ; it is our counsellor ; it has been our 
 solace in many a trouble ; and apart from its 
 intrinsic preciousness as a divine revelation, its 
 mere style is matchless. The longer we live, 
 the more do we feel its serene grace, its moving 
 music, and its grand, antique simplicity. 
 
 We have, however, no share in the sentiment 
 of those who seem to think that any attempt to 
 revise this translation, is to take a liberty with 
 things sacred. The element of sacredness 
 belongs to the Word, not to this or that trans- 
 lation of it. The first is the gift of God, and as 
 such, is perfect ; the second is the work of man, 
 and partakes of man's imperfection. When 
 God's flour is ground in man's mill, " it is apt 
 
230 THE SEVENTH PETITION. 
 
 to get mingled with grit from the mill-stone," * 
 and we are always glad when this can be cleared 
 out again. Perfection admits of no improve- 
 ment, but scholarship is in its nature a pro- 
 gressive thing ; and in no department has it 
 been more remarkably progressive than in this. 
 When Erasmus published his Greek Testament 
 in 1516,1 he had access to only six MSS. t 
 Instead of six, we have now more than sixteen 
 hundred. Very ancient versions in other 
 languages have also been found out within this 
 period of 365 years; still further helping to 
 settle the true text. During the same time 
 there has been much research into the folios of 
 the Fathers, where are Biblical quotations so 
 numerous that if the sacred MSS. had perished, 
 most of the Greek Testament might have been 
 recovered from these authorities alone. There 
 has been a growing knowledge of materials, and 
 a growing education of power to estimate their 
 
 * Bengel. 
 
 t The New Testament in the Complutensian Polyglot 
 though printed in 15 14, was not pubhshed till 1522. 
 
 J Five of these are now in the public library of Basle, 
 and one is in that of the Prince of Oettingen-Wallerstein. 
 
 It is said that two of these MSS. he only used for 
 occasional reference. For the gospels, he only had what 
 Dr Scrivener calls "an inferior manuscript," of the 
 fifteenth century ; for the Apocalypse, a mutilated manu- 
 script of the twelfth century. For the Acts and Epistles 
 he had a manuscript of the thirteenth century. 
 
THE SEVENTH PETITION. 23 I 
 
 value. The result is, that " the critical appar- 
 atus of the New Testament has increased a 
 hundred-fold." We who are honestly concerned, 
 first to know what God really says, next to know 
 what He really means, eagerly avail ourselves of 
 these helps ; and feel in particular immeasurably 
 indebted to the twenty-eight scholars, who, after 
 ten years of patient labour, have given us the 
 last Revised Version of the New Testament. 
 
 Still, some of us would have been glad if a 
 few of the alterations given in the text, had only 
 been placed in the margin ; and glad especially 
 if this had been done here. The evil person, 
 and the evil tJiing are both expressed in the 
 Greek Testament by the adjective with the 
 article. In the nominative and accusative cases, 
 the difference in the ending leaves no doubt as to 
 which is meant ; but the masculine and neuter 
 of genitive and dative are alike. In this instance, 
 the original words are only these two — "the 
 evil," and we are unable at present to see just 
 cause for adding a third, so as to read "the 
 evil oner The change from the abstract to the 
 personal is not imperative from the termination 
 of the Greek word which in this petition we 
 have been accustomed to render "evil;" nor 
 does the word for " deliver " require it, nor the 
 preposition for " from." In the Revised Version 
 of 2 Tim. iv. 18. we read, " the Lord will deliver 
 me from everyevil work, and will save me untoHis 
 
232 THE SEVENTH PETITION. 
 
 heavenly kingdom;'' yet the verb, the preposition, 
 and the adjective for " evil," are all the same as 
 in the Lord's Prayer. In the Septuagint, the 
 phrase is constantly employed in the abstract, 
 never in the personal sense. It is said, indeed, 
 that the Greek Fathers use it in the latter sense, 
 but on the other hand, it might be contended 
 that the only expositors thus quoted, lived two 
 hundred years after the Apostles ; and the 
 meaning of the word should, we think, be settled 
 not by the usage of their day, but by that of 
 the day when Christ uttered it, if that could be 
 ascertained.* Upon the whole, the change 
 made by the revisers expresses but a supposed 
 probability, and not an ascertained or ascer- 
 tainable fact. It is no presumption to say this, 
 for the most competent scholars are divided in 
 opinion about the matter.^ Feeling must not 
 
 * Origen tells us in his treatise De Oratiojic^ that the 
 words dXXa pvaai. tj/jlols awb rod irovripov are not a part of the 
 prayer as found in the gospel of Luke. We believe that 
 no reference is to be found to this in the writings of any 
 Greek Father before his time. He died about a.d. 254. 
 
 t Among the critical and textual expositors who are in 
 favour of adopting as the reading, " The evil one," are 
 Doddridge, Adam Clarke, Olshausen, Mayer, Godet, Keim, 
 Ebrard, Samuel Davidson, Plumptre, Wordsworth, Elli- 
 cott. Among those who decide for " the evil," Tyndale, the 
 Geneva Version, Isaac Barrow, Weiss, Keil, Ewald, Tho- 
 luck,Bleek, Lange, Stier,Mansel, Canon Cook, and Alford. 
 
 Alford thinks that the general meaning of the two 
 closing petitions is this : " Bring us not into conflict with 
 
THE SEVENTH PETITION. 2 7,3 
 
 colour judgment. Only the laws of language 
 can settle what is only a question of language. 
 But this is a question which these laws alone are 
 not competent to settle. Mere grammar would 
 allow of either translation. The connection, 
 together with appearances of probability must 
 help us to decide as to which of the two is most 
 likely to be right, and thus ruled, we are in- 
 clined still to vote for the common reading. 
 We are convinced of its natural force and 
 reasonableness. It is exactly what might have 
 been expected ; it accords with the ideal of a 
 prayer with this comprehensive scope, and this 
 view to universal use. The prayer has in it no 
 personal term excepting the invocation, and it 
 would indeed have been surprising to find it 
 end with this appeal against a personal enemy; 
 it would have been stranger still to find that 
 all through we had been travelling up to this 
 climax, that we should end in a cry for deliver- 
 
 evil, but rather deliver (rid) us from it altogether." He 
 regards the last petition "as expressing the deep desire of 
 all Christian hearts to be delivered from a/l evil (for toO 
 irov-qpoh is here certainly neuter ; the introduction of the 
 mention of 'the evil one' would here be quite incon- 
 gruous and even absurd), these words form a seventh and 
 most affecting petition, reaching far beyond the last. 
 They are the expression of the yearning for redemption 
 of the sons of God (Rom. viii., 23), and so are fitly 
 placed at the end of the prayer, and as the sum and 
 substance of the personal petitions." 
 
234 THE SEVENTH PETITION. 
 
 ance from one solitary wicked spirit, and that 
 the very last word of the Lord's Prayer should be 
 the one that stands for the devil. Jesus, we think, 
 was unlikely to make His last word one of terror 
 on account of his conquered and humiliated foe. 
 I. We shall try to identify " the evil " here 
 named. The words here descriptive of what we 
 seek to be delivered from, are only these — " the 
 evil." Our Authorised Version reads ^' evil'' 
 simply ; but in the original there is the article, 
 Take notice also that this word "evil" is, as 
 grammarians say, in the singular case. Christ 
 names " the evil." He seems to score the word, 
 and to speak it in capitals: "The evil!" 
 He who sees all things, past, present and to 
 come, in all their deep meanings, vast connec- 
 tions and mystic mighty spells ; and Who 
 knows the nature and history of all evils in the 
 darkness and under the sun, here separates and 
 singles out one thing from all the rest, and calls 
 it the evil. As if amidst the millions, this is the 
 only one worth a notice or a name, amidst all the 
 present perils of our being, this one stands out in 
 such dread, lurid, lone pre-eminence, that all 
 the rest are nothing to it. It is the one to fear, 
 the one to fight with, the one to be held in 
 perpetual abhorrence, and against which we are 
 to make perpetual prayer. It is the one arch 
 mischief and master sorrow of humanity, for 
 deliverance from whose vassalage we should be 
 
THE SEVENTH PETITION. 235 
 
 ready to part with all else that we most care 
 for. " If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it 
 out, and cast it from thee ; for it is profitable for 
 thee that one of thy members should perish, and 
 not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. 
 And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and 
 cast it from thee ; for it is profitable for thee 
 that one of thy members should perish, and not 
 that thy whole body should be cast into hell."* 
 "The evil." It is a terrific phrase ! Like an alarm 
 sounded over a congregation of sleeping spirits, 
 it should ring them up, make them all broad 
 awake in a moment, and listen as if they had 
 never listened before ! We say that the evil is 
 Sin. What else can it be } 
 
 Not the world. Language, sometimes in 
 books, sometimes " floating on the lips of the 
 wise," gives the impression that some disciples 
 think that by "the evil" Christ means the world. 
 What world } The world which at the call of 
 God, sprang beautiful and perfect from the 
 maze of primitive confusion .'' The world which 
 at the beginning, He six times over pronounced 
 to be very good .-* The world out of whose 
 seeds, roots and hidden forces, grow into 
 lovely and wonderful expression, the thoughts 
 of God Almighty .-• The world out of whose 
 forms prophets drew their imageries, and the 
 gospel its types } Do they mean the world 
 * Matthew v. 29, y:). 
 
236 THE SEVENTH PETITION. 
 
 of social existence ? Many think so. They 
 would indeed disclaim the old ascetic doctrine 
 that we have lately hinted at. They love the 
 landscapes and the seasons, because they are 
 God's handiwork, and study natural life, archi- 
 tecture, and history with delight, because these 
 aid them in marking the evolutions of the all per- 
 vading Mind ; but they turn away from the foci 
 of human life, and exclaim with Cowper, " God 
 made the country, but man made the town." 
 
 No ! God made the town as well as the 
 country. " He who gave to the bee or the bird 
 or the beaver instincts for their own wonderful 
 works and ways, has also furnished the human 
 mind with those faculties and tendencies which, 
 under favouring circumstances, develope in rail- 
 ways and palaces as surely as the beaver-mind 
 developes in moles and embankments, or as the 
 bee-mind developes in combs and hexagons. 
 The skill is Jehovah's ; in eveiy fair work of 
 skill, every fine result of calculation, and more 
 especially in everything that helps happy 
 development of human life, you ought to recog- 
 nise the divine perfections as their ultimate 
 origin no less than if you read on every object 
 ' Holiness to the Lord.' In art, science, 
 machinery, intellectual achievement, an enlight- 
 ened disciple may discern the manifestations 
 of that mind which is ' wonderful in counsel, ex- 
 cellent in working,' and so far as skill, adaptation 
 
THE SEVENTH PETITION. 237 
 
 and elegance are involved, will hail the Eternal 
 Builder Himself as the Maker of the town." 
 
 In the prayer which sums up His intercession 
 for all disciples, our High Priest draws a dis- 
 tinction between the world and the evil in it. 
 " I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out 
 of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them 
 from the evil." 
 
 If you want to know what this evil* is, ask 
 one who, more than any other of those immortals, 
 known as inspired men, was most at home in 
 divine thoughts, and he will say, " Ye have over- 
 come the evil one. Love not the world, neither 
 the things that are in the world. If any man 
 love the world, the love of the Father is not in 
 him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the 
 flesh, and the lust of the eye, and the vain glory 
 of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.". 
 
 Affliction is not " tJie evil." It would be 
 another thing to say it is not an evil. We call 
 that ancient, not a stoic merely, but a mono- 
 
 * John xvii. 15. Here, according to the Revised Ver- 
 sion, we are to read " the evil one," but as in the Lord's 
 Prayer the meaning of 6 Trof T^pis has to be determined solely 
 by the requirements of the context, and these appear to 
 me to decide for the old reading rather than for the new. 
 We are quite unable to think that our Lord, in words 
 spoken when leaving the world, prayed so emphatically 
 that His disciples might be kept from him whom He had 
 already conquered, and whom He had seen "fall like light- 
 ning from Heaven." By the evil He must have meant sin. 
 
23b THE SEVENTH PETITION. 
 
 maniac, who cried when in mortal agony — " Oh 
 pain, pain, 'tis to no purpose this, thou shalt 
 never make me confess that thou art an evil." 
 We own pain to be an evil, poverty an evil, 
 slander an evil, every kind of sorrow an evil. 
 And when all these seem to burst upon a man 
 in one driving storm, he may naturally 
 cry " Innumerable evils have compassed me 
 about." " From lightning and tempest ; from 
 plague, pestilence, and famine ; from battle and 
 murder, and from sudden death, good Lord 
 deliver us." This language of the Litany is 
 the dictate of nature, and has the sanction of 
 grace ; but we must only use it in continuance 
 of the secret prayer, " Thy will be done." For 
 lightning and tempest, plague, pestilence and 
 famine, and all other evils, belong to the system 
 in which "we know that all things work together 
 for good to them that love God, to them who 
 are the called according to His purpose." The 
 plan of the divine Disciplinarian is not to take 
 us out of troubles, but to make troubles our 
 teachers. Even worldly wisdom can see that it 
 is often a grander thing to strengthen the back 
 than to lighten the burden on it ; to bring out 
 the steel of the arm than to lessen the work it 
 has to do ; to make a ship fit for a hurricane 
 than to keep it for ever in a dead sea. Under 
 the rule of the spirit, such ends do many of 
 these evils work, and we must have a care how 
 
THE SEVENTH PETITION. 239 
 
 we pray to be delivered from^ them, lest, such 
 prayers being answered, deliverance should itself 
 be an evil. 
 
 A "tribulum" is a flail;* "tribulation" is 
 only the process ot using it, but the corn is 
 brought under that process for good and not 
 for evil. Hear the song of a Puritan poet : — 
 
 " Till from the straw the flail the corn doth beat 
 Until the chaff be purged from the wheat, 
 Yea, till the mill the grains in pieces tear, 
 The richness of the flour will scarce appear ; 
 So, till 'men's persons great afflictions touch, 
 If worth hefoiend their worth is not so much, 
 Because like wheat in straw they have not yet 
 That value which in threshing they may get. 
 Until the bruising flail of God's corrections 
 Have threshed out of us our vain affections ; 
 Till these corruptions which do misbecome us 
 Are by Thy sacred spirit winnowed from us ; 
 Until from us the straw of worldly treasures — 
 Till all the dusty chaff of empty pleasures — 
 Yea, till his flail upon us He doth lay 
 To thresh the husk of this our flesh away. 
 And leave the soul uncovered ; nay, yet more. 
 Till God shall make our very spirit poor, 
 We shall not up to highest wealth aspire ; 
 But then we shall ; and that is my desire." t 
 
 Only as you call a flail evil, that separates 
 the grain from the chaff; a wheel evil that 
 grinds jewels to burn in a crown; a knife evil 
 
 * Virg. Geor. I., 164. 
 t George Wither. 
 
240 THE SEVENTH PETITION. 
 
 that prunes a tree ; a tree evil that bears good 
 fruit ; a plough evil whose colter crashes through 
 the hard soil, opens it to the chemistry of nature, 
 and makes it a soft, porous, receptive seed-plot 
 for the harvest ; the medicine evil that brings 
 back the colour of health to the white face, and 
 the flash of gladness to the dim eye ; the hand 
 evil that snatches back a heedless child from 
 the nest of the serpent, or the lip of the river, 
 just in time to save its life — only in this qualified 
 sense can you call an affliction an evil. Out 
 of our greatest sorrows grow our greatest joys. 
 The worst of all these is not evil itself ; not all 
 these together could make what is here set down 
 as " the evil." 
 
 It is not death. With soft step and by 
 mysterious ways, the last enemy may approach 
 us. We may come slowly into his power 
 without knowing it. Indeed, the captive may 
 not for a long time be aware that it is he who 
 is holding him. He may say, "What is this 
 freezing, malignant presence } This pain, how 
 is it to end } Tell me, can this be death .'' 
 Into what unknown land is this fearful thing 
 carrying me .'' " 
 
 A little blind child, close clasped up against 
 her father, was carried by him into a room in 
 a strange house. One who was in the room, 
 stepped quietly up, unclasped his arms, and 
 without saying a word, or making a sign, lifted 
 
THE SEVENTH PETITION. 24 T 
 
 the child away. " You seem not to be much 
 frightened," said the father ; " do you know 
 who has you ? " " No," she said, " but I am 
 not afraid, for I know you know who has me,"* 
 Like that little child, though in the grasp of 
 mystery, while I am near my Father, " I will 
 trust, and not be afraid." 
 
 To those, indeed, who are not ready, it is a 
 horror. They only know death as life's great 
 foe, and have no antidote to its natural re- 
 pellency. Fixing our thoughts on certain 
 refusers of Christ, we say, " O God, spare them ! 
 Let them not see the face of Death yet ! Spare 
 them, ' that they may gather strength, before 
 they go hence, and are no more seen ! ' Spare 
 them awhile, though to suffer ; spare them that 
 if even brought by the discipline of sorrow they 
 may come to Thee, that they may have life ! " 
 
 Once, in the days of the Scottish Covenanters, 
 when a congregation met in a great green cup 
 of wild heather, while watchers were posted on 
 peaks of the round rim above ; suddenly an 
 alarm was given ; bibles were shut, swords 
 were snatched out of their sheaths, the 
 dropping shots told that soldiers were close 
 upon the spot, and that in a minute or two 
 there would be a battle. Then, the pastor 
 threw up his hands, and cried, " Lord, spare the 
 green, and take the ripe ! " So now, when 
 ^Mentioned by Dr Ciilross. 
 
 Q 
 
242 THE SEVENTH PETITION. 
 
 Death's troops are on us, and the alarm has been 
 rung, we would pray, " Lord, spare the green, 
 and take the ripe ! Take us, for whom to 
 die would be gain ; spare those for whom it 
 would only be loss, and this once, deliver them 
 from this evil ! " 
 
 On the other hand, to a man whose heart is 
 ready and whose time has come, going out of 
 this world, is only going out of evil, and becom- 
 ing in the flash of a moment sinless, sorrowless 
 and deathless. Death means perfection for ever 
 and progress for ever. The thing that to others 
 would be the worst, is to Him the best. Arch- 
 bishop Leighton, when once raised from a bed 
 of sickness, which everyone thought would have 
 been his bed of death, looked sorry, and when 
 asked why .-' said, " I thought my voyage was 
 over, that I had done with sin, and that I was 
 about to cast anchor ; but now, though I had 
 reached the harbour's mouth, I find myself once 
 more driven out to sea." If, unlike that holy 
 man, we still feel some natural fear of the enemy, 
 let us seek through Christ the power that will 
 make us face our fears, that will make us do the 
 holy right," come what may, breathing the spirit 
 of Luther, who, as he set out at the risk of his 
 life, to make a great confession of faith, said, " I 
 really am afraid of Death, but there are things 
 worse than Death, and if I die, I die." 
 
 Sin is " the evil," — we can accept no other 
 
THE SEVENTH PETITION. 243 
 
 conclusion. This is not because we have sym- 
 pathy with many, who, while calling the Bible 
 the standard of faith, are still apt to say, " Mind 
 yourself ; never mind Satan : the only Satan you 
 have to fear is Sin." When we mark the grow- 
 ing tendency of men to connect the idea of 
 Satan with comic associations, to use the name 
 for enhancing the sparkle of festive speech, or 
 to toss it about like a mere plaything of poetic 
 fancy ; we are marking one of the alarming 
 signs of the times. Such triflers trifle with one 
 of their most terrible perils. Such mutations 
 of sacred and tremendous words we look upon 
 with wonder, and mourn over as the sin of 
 trifling with God's great revelations. You 
 smile perhaps ; but depend upon it, the " evil 
 one " is a real enemy, from whom you are in 
 real danger. He may laugh at you, but it may 
 be death for you to laugh at him. 
 
 With all this, we hold that the present passage 
 brings before us an evil even more terrible. 
 " Brethren, what made the devil a devil } Noth- 
 ing but sin." So said a famous leader in the 
 "Assembly of Divines;" and we are of his 
 opinion. Sin is the evil that makes the " evil 
 one " what he is. We find no evil in the world 
 of souls of which it is not the spring. It may 
 may sometimes look like a little thing, but it is 
 a seed, and all the future forests of hell are in it. 
 Sin is "damnation in its causes." It is evil in 
 
2 44 THE SEVENTH PETITION. 
 
 itself, and nothing but evil can come of it. If 
 we read our instructions correctly, we are here 
 taught to pray that we may be delivered from 
 " the evil," not simply from one who tempts us 
 to it. One glance at it inspires the cry, " O God, 
 give what Thou wilt, take what Thou wilt away, 
 but deliver us from the evil !" * 
 
 11. We shall proceed to some notes on the 
 Petition for deliverance. 
 
 I. In offering this petition we have still to 
 keep in mind the ivJioIe connection. Here are 
 three prayers, all different, all in vital con- 
 tinuity, each having reference to sin, and one 
 should not be offered without connecting it with 
 the others. 
 
 * "There is no good at all in sin. First, there is no 
 good of Entity or Being : God hath a Being, and every- 
 thing that hath a being, hath some good in it, because it 
 is of God : but sin is a Non-Etitity ; a no being : it is 
 rather the deprivation of a Being than any being at all ; 
 and here is a great mystery of iniquity, that what is a 
 Non-Entity, should have such a mighty efficacy to trouble 
 heaven and earth. Secondly, it hath no good of Causality: 
 that is, sin is so evil that it can bring forth no good. 
 Afflictions do bring forth good. Sin is such an evil that 
 it cannot be made good nor an instrument for good. 
 When God brings good out of sin, he does so occasionally, 
 not instritnientally. An instrument gives some efficacy 
 towards the effect, but sin has in itself not even an instru- 
 mental efficacy towards a good effect, as afflictions have ; 
 though God may take occasion to bring good out of sin 
 committed, he never makes sin itself an instrument of 
 good." Jeremiah Burroughs on ''The Evil of Evils." 1654. 
 
THE SEVENTH PETITION. 245 
 
 Connect this for instance, with tJie prayer 
 for forgiveness. The "sins," also called the 
 "debts," for which we ask forgiveness, are the 
 formations and activities of that which is here 
 called " to the evil." Some suppliants seem to 
 be concerned only that they may have for- 
 giveness, but sin itself seems to give them 
 but little concern. Although they take deep 
 interest in their own spiritual symptoms ; they 
 are nervous rather than penitent, and what they 
 want is simple impunity. They will tell you 
 that they glory in the cross, because the right- 
 eousness of Jesus there " finished," is the only 
 righteousness that will satisfy the justice of God, 
 and save the soul of man. They watch the 
 Lamb of God, not as bearing away sin, but 
 simply the consequejices of sin. Like the priest 
 of old, who in the name of the people, laid his 
 hand over the head of the scape-goat, and cere- 
 monially transferred their sins to it ; they in 
 fancy, put a hand on the mystic burden-bearer, 
 and think with a selfishness that passes for 
 Christian joy, that their sins are now clean for- 
 given and taken for ever out of sight. This is 
 the one thing they seem to think of, or to care 
 for. But just as might have been expected, in 
 this standard prayer for the use of sinners, we 
 are solemnly taught not only to pray for the 
 forgiveness of sins, but for deliverance from 
 " the evil " out of which our sins have sprung. 
 
246 THE SEVENTH PETITION. 
 
 Connect this particularly with the prayer 
 against temptation. In being taught to say, 
 " Lead us not into temptation, but deliver 
 us from evil," we are taught to seek that we 
 may be led out of the way of what might 
 tempt to sin, only that we may be delivered 
 from sin itself As we speak, we shudder at 
 that thing of awful malignity, to save us from 
 which the Redeemer died ; and remember that 
 the salvation consists not merely in remission 
 of its penalty, but also in rescue from its 
 power. 
 
 2. We offer this prayer that Jesus is the 
 meditim of deliverance. This thought must 
 run through each successive petition from the 
 very first. We say " Our Father " in accord- 
 ance with the rule, " I am the Way, the 
 Truth, and the Life ; no man cometh unto the 
 Father but by me." We say, " Hallowed be 
 Thy name" through Him who says "I have 
 declared Thy name, and will declare it." We 
 say, " Thy kingdom come '' through Him who 
 has said, " All power is given unto Me in heaven 
 and in earth." We say, " Thy will be done," 
 trusting inthe "Second Adam" who "quickeneth 
 whom He will " ; and who works within us to 
 " will and to do." We say, " Give us this day 
 our daily bread " through Him who is the 
 " Bread of Life," and in whom we have all the 
 promises. We say, " Forgive us our sins," 
 
THE SEVENTH PETITION. 24/ 
 
 looking for this forgiveness through His blood, 
 according to the riches of His grace." We say, 
 "Lead us not into temptation," trusting the 
 high priest who was " in all points tempted 
 like as we are, yet without sin," We say, 
 "Deliver us from evil" through Him who once 
 cried, " Deliver them from going down to the 
 pit." All through the phrases of the prayer 
 we remember Christ as the channel of its 
 acceptance. At the time this prayer was de- 
 livered there was a necessary reticence as to 
 the distinctive doctrines of the Gospel. These 
 doctrines could not be fully shown until the 
 facts on which they were founded were finished 
 on the Cross, and lighted up by the glory of 
 the Pentecostal day ; but, revealed or un- 
 revealed, he was, from the time when the evil 
 came into the world, the one Deliverer. 
 
 3. This prayer specially fits the lips of 
 christians in a time when old sins seem to recover 
 new pozver. Long after words of Divine for- 
 giveness have filled our souls with sovereign 
 tranquillity unspeakable ; and after Christ has 
 given us the right to say, " Now are we the 
 sons of God," we may find a sad need for this 
 petition. The mystery of grace descends into 
 us, not to change the nature of " the evil that 
 dwellcth in us," but to fight it down, to keep it 
 under, and at length to destroy it utterly. 
 Whatever essence is evil once, is evil for ever. 
 
248 THE SEVENTH PETITION. 
 
 The old nature is still the old, unconverted and 
 inconvertible. It fights holiness to the last, so 
 that the dying bed is often part of the battle- 
 field, and the dying frame a castle to be 
 stormed. Between the first day of grace and the 
 first day of glory there may be many an alarm. 
 Even now, we may be recalling the memory of 
 a crisis, when the battle seemed to waver, the 
 tide to turn, and hope to be almost lost. The 
 most resolute soldier and most exalted saint, 
 has had most to feel the truth of this. While 
 perhaps one of " the saints at Rome " was 
 mourning over the evil that still dwelt in his 
 own heart, and saying of Paul — " Blessed man ; 
 his spirit seems to be always in heaven ; what 
 can chill his burning love, or ruffle his serene 
 repose .-* Would that I could be just like 
 him ! " he Avho was so envied was at this 
 very time inditing the confession, " I delight 
 in the law of God after the inward man ; but 
 I see another law in my members, warring 
 against the law of my mind, and bringing me 
 into captivity to the law which is in my mem- 
 bers. O wretched man that I am ! Who shall 
 deliver me from the body of this death ? " * 
 
 The battle takes dift"erent forms and phrases. 
 
 Sometimes " the evil " is practically a great 
 
 spiritual dulness. We " cleave to the dust " ; 
 
 try as we may, we cannot rouse ourselves. We 
 
 * Rom. vii. 22, 23, 24. 
 
THE SEVENTH PETITION. 249 
 
 kneel, and all on a sudden, as if our kneeling 
 had been the signal, the mind is crowded with 
 frivolities or crushed with cares. We speak, 
 but we seem to speak into vacancy, prayer is 
 mechanical as the movement of a mill, and 
 though all our heaven depended on our prayer, 
 we feel as though we could not pray. We try 
 to read, but the book is a blank. We try to 
 work, but the spirit is gone out of us. We try 
 to realise the Unseen, we try and fail. We seem 
 to see and hear and speak only with the body, 
 not with the soul. The soul is in a dead calm. 
 " No stir ill the air, no stir in the sea, 
 The ship is as still as a ship can be." 
 This is our story, and our thought is, better 
 the wild hurricane than the pestilential quiet. 
 What ails us .'' Are we growing torpid under a 
 spell .'' " Deliver us from the evil." At other 
 times the evil within us suddenly breaks into 
 action. Every man has some weak point on 
 which evil is always at work, in which he is 
 always in danger of giving way, and at. which it 
 is always possible for some evil habit to begin. 
 One is naturally apt to be frivolous, another to 
 be exaggerative, another to be morose, another 
 to brag of what he has done, another to do 
 nothing, another to be too fond of money, an- 
 other of scandal, one was formerly possessed 
 by the demon of a bad temper, " mean, con- 
 temptible, and unjust, as any of the peerage of 
 
250 THE SEVENTH TETITION. 
 
 hell." The cast out sin that was once master 
 will be always trying to recover lost ascendancy ; 
 and though the new life loathes that besetting 
 sin to very sickness, there is still left a nature 
 in sympathy with it, through the treachery of 
 which the heart may yield to it a little. With 
 every new indulgence its demands will be more 
 imperious, its spells more seductive; still yield- 
 ing by little and little, a day may come when 
 the man finds that his power is gone. He is 
 surprised into a snare, and is all at once a be- 
 numbed and helpless captive, soon to wake up 
 in the consciousness of a sorrow that drowns all 
 the world in darkness. Though he may fall 
 into sin, no saved man can live in it, yet he 
 may feel as if he never could escape from it, 
 and as if " the evil " that has now fastened on 
 him will not be shaken off. In the oldest of 
 all known languages, the word " throttler" — the 
 old word for serpent, is the word also used for 
 sin. Like the serpent in that antique marble 
 so familiar to us — turning, twining, and clasping 
 round Laocoon and his sons — so " the evil " 
 twines round the soul, fastens with deadly 
 clench, strikes to sting, and makes him cry, 
 " Who shall deliver me ? " * 
 
 * The serpent was called aid in Sanskrit. The root is 
 all, or anil, which means to press together, to choke, to 
 throttle. Here the distinguishing mark from which the 
 serpent was named, was his throttling, and alii meant 
 
THE SEVENTH PETITION. 25 I 
 
 4. Our thoughts rush forward to the day 
 when this prayer for deliverance from " the 
 evil " ivill Jiave its finisJied and perfect anszver. 
 
 Earthly things are but poor types of heavenly 
 things, yet they are the best we have. When 
 we try to rise above them, and our impatient 
 thoughts break through the shells of words, they 
 are lost in the infinite, and we feel all about us 
 in blank darkness ; but by what comparison 
 taken from the things of earth — the only things 
 we now know, can we set forth the joy of this 
 deliverance } 
 
 In the old wars between king and Parliament, 
 
 serpent, as expressing the general idea of throttler. " In 
 Sanskrit the word meaning throttler was chosen with great 
 truth as the proper name of sin. Evil no doubt presented 
 itself under various aspects to the human mind, and its 
 names are many ; but none so expressive as those derived 
 from our root ajth, to throttle. Anhas in Sanskrit means 
 sin, but it does so only because it meant originally throttling 
 — the consciousness of sin being like the grasp of the 
 assassin on the throat of his victim. All who have seen 
 and contemplated the statue of Laokoon and his sons, 
 with the serpent coiled round them from head to foot, 
 may realize what those ancients felt and saw when they 
 called sin anhas, or the throttler. This anhas is the 
 same word as the Greek agos, sin. In Gothic the same 
 root has produced agis^ in the sense oi fear, and from 
 the same source we have awe, in awful, i.e., fearful, and 
 ug, in ugly. The English anguish is from the French 
 angoisse, the Italian angoscia, a corruption of the Latin 
 angnsticE, a straight." — Max Miiller's Lectures on the 
 cience of Language, 1862, p. 388. 
 
252 THE SEVENTH PETITION. 
 
 the town of Taunton, attacked by Lord Goring, 
 and defended by Robert Blake, sustained a long 
 siege. Food rose to twenty times its market 
 value. Half of the houses were blown down by 
 a storm of fire, many of the people perished of 
 hunger. Through all this, the townsfolk had 
 been accustomed to meet in St Mary's Church 
 to pray, and be sure that the burden of their 
 daily prayers to the Father was, " Deliver us ! " 
 One day when assembled for this purpose, 
 hoping to hear that the enemy had at last re- 
 treated, a trusty messenger came to the church 
 door, and spoke but this one word, " Deliver- 
 ance ! " In a moment the magic word flew 
 through the vast assembly, and all shouted with 
 one voice, " Deliverance ! " 
 
 We can understand the feeling that rang in 
 that note. We ourselves have had many a 
 great earthly salvation. Often and often have 
 we had reason to sing, "our soul is escaped as 
 a bird out of the snare of the fowler, the snare 
 is broken, and we are escaped." We have been 
 delivered from the grasp of death, we have been 
 delivered from many a terrible temptation, we 
 have been " delivered from the power of dark- 
 ness, and translated into the kingdom of God's 
 dear Son ; " but we have not yet been fully 
 delivered from " the evil." " The evil ! " why it 
 sometimes seems as if we should never be 
 delivered from it ! 
 
THE SEVENTH PETITION. 253 
 
 When, in the course of our fight with sin, we 
 are in the very act of exulting over some great 
 victory, it shoots us down again, and we are 
 gnashing our teeth in the dust. When it seems 
 to sink in one part of our nature, it seems to rise 
 in another. As we felt the first bliss of forgive- 
 ness, we almost thought that we had done with it 
 for ever, and that Christ would make it as easy to 
 be holy as it is to breathe. We felt ready to 
 borrow the exclamation, " O my soul thou hast 
 trodden down strength." But sin seems to be 
 strongest when it has had its death blow. The 
 eagle when down, strikes at you with a beak 
 like a bolt of iron, and may flap you dead with 
 its wing. The red deer when down, may 
 fell you with its antlers. The dying horse may, 
 in the plunge of its agony, break a man's limb. 
 A harpooned whale may dash a boat over. Sin 
 is like that. Speared through by its conqueror, 
 it may grasp us in its last convulsions, and seem 
 to be stronger dying than living ; but we shall 
 soon spring out from it, and cry, " Deliverance! " 
 
 All the gladness that ever lived in that word 
 as spoken by mortal lips, will be forgotten in 
 the glory of the joy that shall swell in the word 
 " Salvation ! " when spoken as the spirit of the 
 prophet heard it in vision, " Lo, a great multi- 
 tude whom no man could number, of all nations, 
 and kindreds, and peoples, and tongues, stood 
 before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed 
 
2 54 THE SEVENTH PETITION. 
 
 with white robes and palms in their hands, and 
 cried with a loud voice, saying. Salvation to our 
 God which sitteth on the throne and to the 
 Lamb." * 
 
 " When did I die ? Am I in the body or out 
 of the body .-* Is it all over .'' Is this real, can 
 it be ? Am I in heaven at last ? Is this no 
 bubble to snap at a touch, no dream to vanish 
 at the cold light of day ? " 
 
 After the first questions of the wakening 
 spirit, and the cry of its first rapturous " Rab- 
 boni ! " in the first flash of eternity, and the sur- 
 prise of the first moment in heaven, each 
 delivered one will deem no path to have been 
 too steep, no trial too long, by which the spirit 
 of God led to such an issue. The memory of 
 the night will only brighten the miracle of the 
 morning, and all the pains that have been fought 
 through will enhance the blessedness of the 
 final rest. 
 
 * Rev. vii. g, lo. 
 
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