Cf )t ILorb’s draper as a j^tssionarp document Sp Rev. Joseph Henry Odell The Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Chuch in the U. S. A. 156 Fifth Avenue, New York Our Father which art in heaven; Hallowed be Thy Name; Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven; Give us this day our daily bread; And forgive us our debts, as we forgave our debtors; And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil; For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen. — Matthew vi: 9-13. W ITH a smug self-satisfaction which is surely the most incomprehensible mood of modern Christendom, the Lord’s Prayer is offered daily by millions who are oblivious of its real meaning. It has been assumed, by tacit agreement, that this prayer may be used by people who can¬ not frame any other petition, as though it were the neutral ground of religion upon which all kinds and conditions of men may stand without danger of spiritual commit¬ ment. By common consent we treat it as the irreducible minimum of worship; it has even become the official counter which passes current for prayer in political and commercial conventions; it does social ser¬ vice upon occasions when anything sup¬ posed to be definite or dogmatic would be in bad form. Thus our Lord’s Prayer may be said to have become thoroughly steril¬ ized and devitalized. There is a sense in which it is a pity to take away from the public such an article of general convenience, but it is a duty that we should restore this one authorized form of worship to its original purpose. For, in¬ stead of being the minimum, it is the very maximum of prayer; rather than a pale sub¬ stitute for a pronounced spiritual attitude, it is the most positive, virile and dynamical utterance that can possibly fall from human lips. Therefore, if we can pour back into its depleted veins what Christ had in His mind and heart when He gave it to the dis¬ ciples, we shall be doing nothing more than starting again at the beginning, tracing the head-waters of the river of life to their source. Nothing seems more certain to me than that the Lord’s Prayer contains Christ’s complete purpose for the redemption of the entire world—the motive, program, method and goal of what we call either Home or Foreign Missions can be found in its vari¬ ous clauses and stamped upon its entire structure. Everything aggressive and pro¬ gressive in Christianity is involved when it is properly recited. If this thrilling and ro¬ mantic spirit fails to touch us the reason will be found in the fact that we have un¬ consciously acceded to the conventional use of the prayer, we have become the unwil¬ ling victims of a familiarity which needs to be broken in upon by an interpretation taken from the mind and character and sac¬ rifice of the Master Himself. Our Father which art in heaven! That little pronoun “our” is more than compre¬ hensive, it is all-inclusive. I do not see where you can drive a single stake to mark a boundary. Truly it implies possession, has an intimate accent, affiliates the indi¬ vidual beyond a doubt; but it does these things universally. If there linger in your mind anything like racial prejudice, it may startle you to be reminded that the Semitic people by whom the word was first heard are farther removed from our Anglo-Saxon type than are the Aryans of Northern India. There are many races with whose blood ours will mingle more freely than with the Hebrew. Science ought to have made this finessing on features utterly impossible, but science makes slight headway against preju¬ dice. However, if I am in need of a Com¬ mentary upon this initial word, I prefer to trust myself to that vision of the consum¬ mation of Christ’s kingdom found in the Apocalypse, rather than to the conclusions of anthropology or comparative anatomy: “After this I beheld, and lo, a great multi¬ tude which no man could number, of all na¬ tions, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands; and cried with a loud Voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.” No one can truly say, “Our Father” who con¬ sciously isolates himself from the rest of the race. We are bound to all humanity the moment we bend our knees in prayer. Our Father which art in Heaven! The God with the geographical habitat is gone. Bethel, Jerusalem, Benares, Mt. Olympus, Mecca, hold the eye and draw the feet no more. The Maori in New Zealand is as 4 close to God as the minister in New York. Heaven is equi-near to every soul that feels an aspiration or cherishes a sacred hope. The heresy of special privilege has surrepti¬ tiously fastened upon the consciousness of Western Christians, blinding their vision and blighting their faith. And it will re¬ main with its curse until we rediscover the universal significance of these memory- dulled phrases. Even a millennium before Christ some men realized this truth better than many of us: “Whither shall I go from Th} r Spirit? or whither shall I flee from Thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, behold Thou art there; if I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me.” Our Father which art in heaven; Hallowed be Thy Name! What name? Father! Just to hedge the Almighty against verbal irreverence is a very narrow and shallow interpretation. Hallowed be the name of “Father,” for it means everything our poor disinherited and disendowed humanity can need or crave. Read into it all the best that natural pater¬ nity illustrates and you have a large content to the word—-the giving of life, protection, guidance and an instinctive affection. But read it through the life of Christ and you have a wealth of loving solicitude and wise governance quite inexhaustible. And yet, strange as it may seem, I think the wonder and glory of the name must be found in its correlative — in the sonship of man. As the sons of God, made in His image, we can safely leave the accidentals and incidentals out of account. Man’s height in feet and inches, the cranial contour, the hue of the skin, the cast of the features, have nothing to do with personality, and personality is the distinguishing characteristic of mankind. Personality is made up of three interacting things; — thoughts, emotions and volitions. Wherever these three — the power to think, to feel, to will—-co-exist and co-operate, there is kinship. They are the essential qualities that knit the whole human family into a brotherhood with a common ancestry. A Dyak or a Patagonian is our brother by right of birth; there is one God and Father of all; Hallowed be Thy name. No deeper degradation can be put upon the Divine Fatherhood than to disallow the right of some of His children to participate in the shelter, food and joy of the Father’s home. We cannot disinherit one of His sons with¬ out cutting away our own kindred rights and privileges. Thy Kingdom Come! Christ’s teaching may be grouped under two main divisions: the Fatherhood of God and the Kingdom of Heaven established on earth. Christ’s conception of the Kingdom was infinitely greater and grander than our thought of the Church. I believe it com¬ prehended not simply redeemed lives, but a human society controlled and guided by the will of God. The Church is an organi¬ zation of Christian men and women gov- 6 erned by certain definite rules; the Kingdom of Heaven is composed of all people, socie¬ ties, institutions and influences that inter¬ pret the will of God on earth. So in this prayer the Master looks for more than the salvation of individuals; He craves the per¬ meation and subjugation of every human relationship and enterprise by the spirit of God. It is not enough to build up little churches in India, Africa, China, Europe; the law of the heavenly life is to conquer and control the legislation, social customs, art, commerce, politics of these various lands. The Kingdom of God will have fully come only when every thought and activity of mankind is in harmony with the Divine mind. I know of no better illustration of how the Kingdom is coming than the words of Count Okuma, one of the founders of New Japan and at one time Prime Minister: “Although Christianity has enrolled less than 200,000 believers, yet the indirect influ¬ ence of Christianity has poured into every realm of Japanese life. It has been borne to us on all the currents of European civili¬ zation; most of all, the English language and literature, so surcharged with Christian ideas, has exerted a wide and deep influence over Japanese thought. Christianity has affected us not only in such superficial ways as the legal observ¬ ance of Sunday, but also in our ideals con¬ cerning political institutions, the family, and woman’s station. '. . . Not a few ideals in Japan which are supposed to have been derived from Chinese literature are in real¬ ity due to European literature. The Chinese influence may still supply the forms, but the soul has come from Christianity.”* Thy Will be done in earth as it is in heaven. This is the way in which the Kingdom comes. But the clause has an unfortunate grammatical cast which has given rise to the impression that man’s relation to the will of God is an attitude of passivity. God’s will is not alone something to be borne, an unappealable and unrepeatable decision to be accepted with resignation. God’s will is not simply a divine judgment passed upon us, but a divine program to be worked out by us. We discover it, adopt it, embody it. in thought and word and deed; we translate it into ideals, and customs, and laws, and institutions; we transmute it into tempera¬ ment and character; we make its articula¬ tion the ruling passion of our lives. And we do all these things not only as indi¬ viduals, but as citizens, as societies, as municipalities, as nations. Give us this day our daily bread. At first blush this is a descent. We seem to have dropped from the universal to the particular, from the spiritual to the tem¬ poral. But such is only a superficial verdict. An easy interpretation is to the effect that we need physical strength for physical * “A Japanese Stateman’s view of Christianity in Japan. A statement by Count Okurna” — The International Review of Missions, October, 1912. S tasks. That is true. The doing of the will of God on earth is such a tremendous task that we must always be in the best of con¬ dition to accomplish it. But I think we can get onto a higher plane even than that. God’s purpose in the establishment of His Kingdom comprehends the whole life of man. It is to be a kingdom on earth, amid ideal conditions becoming actual, in which all His children are to share to the utmost of their capacity. Christ healed the sick and fed the hungry; that is, He removed temporary disabilities and liberated men for a realization of the full meaning of life. The program of modern missions is strictly consonant with His example; industrial, medical, educational missions are the logical application of His spirit. Men must have the means of livelihood as a prerequisite to living. And notice the pronouns again: Give us this day our daily bread! The prayer is as far removed from individualistic selfishness as can be imagined. To offer it and then pro¬ ceed to grasp a superfluous amount of earth’s resources to the exclusion of our brother men is the hollowest mockery. No one can utter such words sincere^ without including the Indian and Chinese famine victims in his budget. It is socialism sub¬ limated, sanctified, glorified. And forgive us our debts as zoe forgive our debtors. This seems to imply that the Kingdom is at least partially established; that the peti- 9 tioners have already reached the level on which they have conquered their animosi¬ ties; that they have established a happy re¬ lationship of anlity and love toward all men. But very few of us will dare to claim so much. Does it not rather mean that we seek pardon for our sms of omission? Doubtless our lives would be much richer and stronger than they are if others had done their duty to us. Let us forgive and forget what might have been. But can we forgive ourselves? Have not we eaten our morsel alone, have not we allowed truth to lie dormant in our minds which should have been distributed, have not we accepted and appropriated for our use alone the love which we should have transformed into the energy of service? St. Paul said he was “debtor both to the Greeks and to the Bar¬ barians; both to the wise and to the unwise” —not because he was their beneficiary, but because God had made him a trustee of truth on their behalf. And almost the en¬ tire teaching of Jesus Christ concerning the Judgment is to the effect that culpability lies in neglected duty and unseized oppor¬ tunity. To be forgiven for such omissions we must pray; but our prayer must hold a resolution and a consecration for the future. The Hindus, the Japanese, the denizens of South America, with a hundred other races, have been and still are our spiritual wards. If we have defaulted and defrauded them in days gone by because we have not appre¬ ciated our stewardship, we must seek par¬ don along the lowly path of penitence, and 10 in the future we are pledged to be true to our trust. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil! Remember, Christ is speaking to such as are already children of the Kingdom, or at least candidates for the Kingdom. We may assume that He had in mind not the gross sins of the flesh—drunkenness, sensuality, theft and murder—but the subtler sins of the spirit—the temptations of temperament calling, the perils that lie hidden within the very dispositions that shine brightest in the Christian life. The highest places in the Kingdom might be sought for unworthy reasons. The consciousness of virtue at¬ tained might create the vice of censorious¬ ness—the temper of the elder brother. Zeal for the Master might use a devilish means to attain a godly end—calling down fire from heaven upon' the thoughtless Samari¬ tans. Pride of nationality and the privilege of exceptional spiritual heritage might lead to bigotry—as in the case of the Jewish disciples who would not eat with the Chris¬ tianized Gentiles. These are a few of the temptations, some of the wiles of the evil one, set to ambush and overthrow even the best of men. Have not we reason to pray for deliverance from similar perils? Far too many who sincerely love and reverence the Master to-day are victims of just such moods and deductions. The supercilious air we assume toward the people of the back¬ ward nations, the inference that God in His Mercy will take care of the unsought and ll untaught even if we neglect them, the con¬ centration of interest upon our own affairs as if we alone were of value in the eyes of the Heavenly Father, the cynical conclu¬ sion that the half-lights and distorted truths of other religions are best adapted to the multitudes who hold them because they have known none other—-these and many similar attitudes of mind and spirit are al¬ ways endangering our faith. No state of Christian experience, however elevated and triumphant, can grant us immunity from temptation. And the richer that experience grows the more subtle and sinister become the enticements to evil. For Thine is the Kingdom, the Power, and the glory, for ever. Amen. These closing words of the great prayer are not given in St. Luke’s Gospel, and many biblical scholars believe that they crept into the text some time in the second century, or even later. Be that as it may, they form a consistent and splendid con¬ clusion to this noblest of supplications. If they are an addition from some Eastern liturgy, they show how completely the early Church caught the largest and fullest pur¬ pose of the prayer, felt the universal heart- throb. What could be a more fitting close that this Doxology in which “the Kingdom, the power and the glory” are offered to God as the triple crown by those whom “the first-born among many brethren” taught to pray? Form number 21S5.