6 ./. 2 . 3 , 
 
 LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 PRINCETON. N. J. 
 
 Presented by 
 
 *IVn e. C\u-vW>r 
 
 Division. 
 
 Section. 
 
 QJL.t . 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2019 with funding from 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 https://archive.org/details/prayerthatjesustOOstra 
 
THE PRAYER THAT JESUS TAUGHT 
 

 
 
 
 ✓ 
 
 
THE PRAYER THAT 
 JESUS TAUGHT 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS STRAUS 
 
 1923 
 
 THE STRATFORD COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 
 
 BOSTON, MASS. 
 
Copyright, 1923 
 
 The STRATFORD CO., Publishers 
 Boston, Mass. 
 
 The Alpine Press, Boston, Mass., U. S. A. 
 
Contents 
 
 Chapter Pape 
 
 i God Our Father.1 
 
 ii The Spirit of Reverence.14 
 
 in The Coming of the Father’s Kingdom . . . 26 
 
 iv ITow the Father’s Will is To Be Done ... 39 
 
 v The Daily Bread.50 
 
 vi Forgiveness Human and Divine.64 
 
 vii Temptation and Deliverance.78 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 ! 
 
 God Our Father 
 
 After this manner, pray ye: ‘ ‘ Our Father who art 
 
 in heaven.” 
 
 T WO questions have held a prominent 
 place in the religious thought of our 
 time. The first is, What is Christianity? 
 The second is: What is the distinct contribution 
 of Christianity to the religious heritage of man¬ 
 kind? 
 
 To the first of these, the answer must be es¬ 
 sentially this: Christianity is the religious 
 message which has been brought to man in and 
 through Jesus Christ. That which has origi¬ 
 nated from Jesus; what Jesus taught and lived 
 and manifested; what Jesus did and experi¬ 
 enced and attested; what was in Jesus and 
 shone forth and spoke out from him—this is 
 Christianity in its inmost being. In proportion 
 as we interpret Jesus aright to ourselves, we 
 grasp the Christian message. In proportion as 
 
 [l] 
 
The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 we interpret Jesus aright to the world, we give 
 the Christian message. 
 
 It is freely conceded that historical develop¬ 
 ments are not to be ignored or belittled. Our 
 own ideas of Christianity have come to us large¬ 
 ly along the lines of these developments. The 
 movement back to Christ must not lead us to 
 reject all the fruitage of Christian thought 
 which the centuries have stored. But all this 
 fruitage must undergo revaluation. The test of 
 vital agreement with Christ must be constantly 
 and unsparingly applied. Accretions that are 
 out of accord with Christ must be resolutely cut 
 away. Presentations which fail to embody 
 Christ’s vital teaching must be resolutely dis¬ 
 carded as inadequate. The testing of historical 
 developments is indispensable if Christianity is 
 to minister, in the full measure of its potency, 
 to the world of today. 
 
 If now we ask further, what is the definite 
 contribution of Christianity, thus conceived, to 
 the religious heritage of the world, we shall 
 hear a manifold answer, as different groups or 
 individual minds give us their impressions of 
 Jesus and emphasize one or another phase of 
 
 [2] 
 
God Our Father 
 
 his teaching. But amidst all the diversity, which 
 in itself witnesses to the unsearchable riches of 
 Christ, there will be one reply upon which agree¬ 
 ment will be general. That reply will be: The 
 Fatherhood of God. Whatever other contribu¬ 
 tions Christianity has made to our religious 
 possessions, this one stands out with especial 
 clearness. 
 
 The Fatherhood of God stands in the fore¬ 
 front of the Christian message. Its distinctness 
 and prominence in Christianity make it pre¬ 
 eminently a Christian teaching rather than a 
 general truth common to all religions. This 
 teaching is sometimes found outside of Christi¬ 
 anity, it is true. But where it exists outside of 
 Christianity, it appears only in dim and obscure 
 form. Glimpses of it were caught, by men of 
 specially gifted insight, even before Christi¬ 
 anity arose. But it was never a part of the 
 popular belief. The few superior minds that 
 had some idea of it never developed and ap¬ 
 plied it. It never was held or taught as a living 
 faith. One classic instance of a mind outside of 
 Christianity that had some glimpse of the teach¬ 
 ing is brought to our notice in the New Testa- 
 
 13 ] 
 
The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 ment. This is the Greek poet, Cleanthes, 
 the Stoic, from whom Paul quoted in his speech 
 on the Areopagus in Athens. Paul was seeking 
 some common standing ground on which to meet 
 the curious audience that gathered about him 
 on that occasion, and he found it in the line from 
 the Hymn of Cleanthes: “For we also are his 
 offspring.” Paul quoted this as against idolatry 
 and as leading to his doctrine of the spirituality 
 of God. But while the Greek poet had said this, 
 its meaning and implications were not worked 
 out. The teaching had no influence on the relig¬ 
 ious thought of the people. It was not wrought 
 into their faith. So, in general, while it is true 
 that the idea of the divine Fatherhood is not 
 wholly absent from religious utterances outside 
 of Christianity, the fact remains that it is 
 through Christianity that this conception has 
 become a living factor in religious faith. 
 
 It is Jesus Christ who has given this teaching 
 its distinctness and prominence. It is he who 
 has set it in the forefront. In his teaching, 
 “The Father” is the characteristic title for 
 God. Sixteen times in that body of teaching 
 which we call the sermon on the mount—sixteen 
 
 [ 4 ] 
 
God Our Father 
 
 times within the three chapters which Matthew 
 gives us—Jesus applies this title to God. Con¬ 
 sistently with this characteristic use of the title, 
 in his own teaching, when the Master seeks to 
 teach us how to pray, he bids us approach God 
 with the same address: “Our Father, who art 
 in heaven.” 
 
 This teaching was given in the presence of the 
 multitudes. It was no secret, privileged teaching 
 for the initiate, the little band of intimate dis¬ 
 ciples. The little group of intimates had drawn 
 near to him, but all about him, within easy hear¬ 
 ing, were the people who had come together 
 from all the countryside of Galilee and from 
 regions beyond. Any one, man or woman, boy 
 or girl, of whatever condition in life, might hear 
 that word and take it home and act upon it. 
 “After this manner, pray ye, Our Father, who 
 art in heaven/ ’ was for all. There was no re¬ 
 striction or limitation or exclusion. To every 
 one Jesus said: Base your approach to God 
 upon this assurance, He is our Father. Take 
 this thought of God into your mind and heart as 
 the ruling thought in your approach to him. 
 
 Moreover, when Jesus puts the Fatherhood 
 
 [ 5 ] 
 
The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 of God in the forefront of his teaching, as the 
 ruling principle of right approach to God, he 
 deals with it as established fact. We never find 
 him arguing for it as one might argue for a 
 proposition that needs to be proved. Not even 
 does he lay it down as a doctrine to be affirmed 
 in a creed. He simply takes it as reality, which 
 is to govern the whole religious life. As God 
 himself is to Jesus an unquestioned reality, so is 
 the Fatherhood of God. Seeing and knowing the 
 Fatherhood of God as a reality, Jesus seeks to 
 show us what this contains for the human spirit 
 —what it means for the religious life of man¬ 
 kind. 
 
 First of all, he shows us what the divine 
 Fatherhod means for himself. A father implies 
 a child. The counterpart and correlative of 
 fatherhood is sonship. To Jesus Fatherhood in 
 God means Sonship in himself. Jesus knew him¬ 
 self as the Son of God. The consciousness of 
 Sonship was his abiding possession. It was the 
 ruling consciousness of his life. By this con¬ 
 sciousness his whole course was governed. He 
 had it at his Baptism. He had it in the wilder¬ 
 ness, where the tempter endeavored to becloud 
 
 [ 6 ] 
 
God Our Father 
 
 it and weaken it and to move him to subject it to 
 unworthy tests. He had it throughout his days 
 of teaching and preaching and his ministry of 
 healing. He had it in Gethsemane, and in 
 Pilate’s judgment hall, and on Calvary, and in 
 his risen glory. Always, everywhere, this con¬ 
 sciousness was with him. I make no attempt to 
 separate his divine from his human conscious¬ 
 ness in this regard. That may be possible in 
 theology, but not in experience. It goes beyond 
 anything that we know. Let it suffice to recog¬ 
 nize that the whole attitude of mind and heart 
 which Jesus reveals—the whole self knowledge 
 to which his words and spirit bear witness, is 
 that of perfect Sonship toward God. In per¬ 
 fect Sonship, Jesus knew what it meant to call 
 God, Father. In that consciousness of Sonship 
 —in that knowledge of what it meant to call 
 God, Father, Jesus took his way through the 
 world, lived and taught and wrought and suf¬ 
 fered, and died and rose again. 
 
 Second, Jesus presents this thought of God 
 as a necessity of the human spirit. We too 
 must grasp the truth of the divine Fatherhood. 
 We too must come into the consciousness of 
 
 [ 7 ] 
 
The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 sonship. We too must know ourselves as 
 children of God. 
 
 This is a necessity of personal religion. To 
 each one of us there falls the work of cultivating 
 the spiritual life within himself. Nothing can 
 take the place of this personal spiritual cultiva¬ 
 tion. And in order that we may make the spirit¬ 
 ual life what it should be, we need to lay firm 
 hold upon this truth of the divine Fatherhood 
 and work it into our inmost consciousness. For 
 the life in us needs to be in harmony with the 
 life in Christ. And if we really follow Christ in 
 the realm of the spirit, we shall follow him in 
 his attitude towards God, in his thought of God, 
 in his consciousness of himself in relation to 
 God. It is a great thing to say; it may seem too 
 great for people such as we know ourselves to 
 be; but it is true, graciously true; Jesus wishes 
 to give us a share in his own consciousness. He 
 wants us to feel towards God as he feels. He 
 wants us to have the same assurance of the 
 Father’s love and care and abiding presence. 
 He wants us to know the same heavenly rela¬ 
 tionship. 
 
 It is just this sense of heavenly relationship 
 
 [ 8 ] 
 
God Our Father 
 
 that will lift us out of the toils and the common¬ 
 places and the monotonies of life and gild every 
 common day with a glory from on high. To know 
 God for our Father and to know ourselves as his 
 children makes each of us of priceless worth. 
 This is the glory of the Christian message. It 
 lifts us up as no other teaching does. According 
 to the Bible, our origin is lowly. We are made 
 from the dust of the earth. A clod of earth is 
 the starting point of our race. No lowlier origin 
 than this is assigned us by evolutionary theory. 
 Evolution starts us higher than the clod. The 
 Bible begins with the clod. Science goes no 
 farther back and our dignity has nothing to fear 
 from its findings. Out of the clod there comes, 
 by God’s own processes, one who can call God, 
 Father. Never mind the intervening steps. Be 
 they many or few, they are past. Today, we 
 stand with Jesus and gain from him the right to 
 say to the Eternal Power and Love, “Our 
 Father, who art in heaven. ’ ’ 
 
 But this heavenly relationship gives added 
 sharpness to another consciousness—the con¬ 
 sciousness of sin. To sin is to sin against a 
 heavenly Father; not just to break the law of 
 
 [ 9 ] 
 
The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 a stern ruler; not just to break over the bounds 
 of an arbitrary restriction; not just to assert 
 our independence of authority; but to grieve a 
 love that has never failed; to wound a heart that 
 has never had a feeling but the warmest and 
 truest kindness towards us; to fall from a fel¬ 
 lowship with the Holiest; to degrade ourselves. 
 And because this is the meaning of sin, the sense 
 of sin must be all the sharper as we realize that 
 God is still our Father, with a yearning love 
 that waits and longs to save us from our sin and 
 to hold us close to himself as his obedient and 
 loving children. This is why the thought of the 
 Fatherhood of God is so necessary to personal 
 religion. It is essential to a right attitude 
 towards sin and obedience. Once realized in its 
 fulness of meaning, sin will be abhorrent to us, 
 and every impulse of our souls will be towards 
 obedience to the Father’s will. 
 
 But in addition to personal religion,—our 
 personal relation to God and the cultivation of 
 the inner life—we have our relations with our 
 fellow men. True religion is social as well as 
 individual. Here too we need to be governed 
 by the significance of the divine Fatherhood. 
 
 [ 10 ] 
 
God Our Father 
 
 Our great moral problems today are social. We 
 have made greater progress towards right per¬ 
 sonal morals than we have towards right social 
 morals. This is an age of great social experi¬ 
 ments, great social struggles, great social fail¬ 
 ures. Our social atmosphere is charged with 
 selfishness, conflict, mutual distrust. Our in¬ 
 ternational relationships, which are an exten¬ 
 sion of our national social relationships into the 
 world field, are suffering from the same blight¬ 
 ing condition. But one principle needs to be 
 applied through all the length and breadth of 
 these relations. Whether it be between one man 
 and his neighbor, one social group and another 
 social group, or one people and another people, 
 all need to be brought under the sway of the 
 Christian message of the Fatherhood of God. 
 
 Applied socially, this mesage means that the 
 world is one great family We all belong to the 
 one Father. We owe it to God and to ourselves 
 and to our fellowmen to develop a family life 
 throughout this world that will be well pleasing 
 to our Father in heaven. We owe it to God and 
 ourselves and our fellow men to develop rela¬ 
 tionships that will be in accord with the thought 
 
 [ 11 ] 
 
The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 of a great human family under the divine 
 Fatherhood. Whatever relations between man 
 and man, or group and group, or people and 
 people is not in harmony with this thought, we 
 must eliminate. We must develop the social 
 relations that correspond to the divine Father¬ 
 hood of us all. We must develop these relations 
 not only within one people, but between one 
 people and another people, and among all the 
 peoples of the earth. We must have the social 
 spirit that corresponds to the divine Father¬ 
 hood. This means that the conflicts and selfish¬ 
 ness and mutual distrust, which today blight 
 the relations of men throughout the world, must 
 be put away, and that a spirit of kindness and 
 peace and mutual confidence shall pervade and 
 control our race. Our Father in heaven looks 
 down and sees our discords, our social wrongs 
 and all the suffering and pain they cause. He 
 can not be well pleased. He would see love 
 where now he sees hatred. He would see for¬ 
 giveness where now he sees the spirit of re¬ 
 venge. He would see reconciliation where now 
 he sees enmity. He would see healing where 
 now he sees rankling wounds. He would see 
 
 [ 12 ] 
 
God Our Father 
 
 hands clasped in friendship which now are 
 clenched to strike. 
 
 True Christianity — the message of Jesus 
 Christ — has this to contribute to the world 
 thought today. It is no new message. It has 
 been in the world for nineteen centuries. But it 
 needs a new application—a larger, world wide 
 application. Only this can save the world. And 
 it is for you and me and every believer in Jesus 
 to repeat this message, to urge it with all 
 earnestness, and to live it out with resolute love. 
 
 [ 13 ] 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 The Spirit of Reverence 
 
 “Hallowed be tliy Name.” 
 
 W HOEVER would truly minister to the 
 human soul must recognize the in¬ 
 stinct of prayer and provide for it. 
 The instinct of prayer is innate. It is as wide 
 spread as humanity in its prevalence. It is as 
 varied as humanity in its expression. Wherever 
 man is found, he prays. Varied as men are in 
 their intelligence, their ways of thinking and 
 their attainment of truth, so varied are they in 
 their praying. 
 
 In past and present we find men praying to 
 gods many and lords many. We find them pray¬ 
 ing to nature powers, to sun, moon, star, stream, 
 fire and tree. We find them praying to things of 
 their own making, wrought by art and man’s de¬ 
 vice, of wood, stone, silver and gold. We find 
 them praying to heroes of myth and legend, to 
 ancestors, and to creatures of their own fancies. 
 We find them praying to gods fantastic, gro- 
 
 [ 14 ] 
 
The Spirit of Reverence 
 
 tesque, repulsive, unrighteous, vicious, cruel. 
 Through all the varied movement of human 
 thought and life, this instinct of prayer has per¬ 
 sisted. It is in our humanity, and it must be 
 reckoned with by any one who would meet the 
 felt wants of the human soul. 
 
 With this instinct everywhere witnessed 
 among men, it was of necessity a part of the 
 work of Jesus to recognize it and provide for 
 it. Jesus came to lead us out of error into truth, 
 out of sin into holiness. He came to give light 
 for darkness, freedom for bondage, purity for 
 uncleanness. In the fulfillment of this mission, 
 he must lead away from superstition and de¬ 
 grading belief to healthy mindedness and en¬ 
 nobling faith. He must give reality for fancies, 
 assurance for doubt, peace with God for guilty 
 terror. 
 
 In dealing with the instinct of prayer, there¬ 
 fore, Jesus must guide and satisfy it. He must 
 bring it to right expression and make it a power 
 for holiness in the life of man. He must bring 
 his light to bear upon this instinct of the soul 
 as upon all else that dwells in our humanity. He 
 must so teach and lead as to rid us of all that 
 
 [15] 
 
The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 is unworthy and false or useless and to develop 
 in us all that is valuable and genuine and effi¬ 
 cient. Nothing that fails to contribute to the 
 power and significance and worth of life is to be 
 kept. Everything that makes for spiritual en¬ 
 richment and effectiveness is to be encouraged 
 and employed. Jesus therefore must purify 
 and invigorate the prayer life as he purifies and 
 invigorates life in all other phases. 
 
 Herein lies the significance of the fact that he 
 taught his disciples how to pray. Luke says 
 that they asked him to do this, and it was natu¬ 
 ral that they should do so. But he must have 
 taught them, even if they had not asked. He 
 must have shown those men and all to whom his 
 word should come, what prayer is in the light 
 of the truth which he reveals. He must bring 
 prayer into relation with the rest of his message 
 —the message of his life and works as well as 
 the message uttered in his words. 
 
 As we saw in the previous chapter, Jesus be¬ 
 gins this teaching by putting at the forefront 
 his characteristic title for God. God is our 
 Father. This title gives the ruling thought for 
 the whole prayer which Jesus taught. The con- 
 
 116] 
 
The Spirit of Reverence 
 
 ception of the divine Fatherhood dominates 
 throughout. Whatever is said is said to the 
 Father. Whatever is asked is asked of the 
 Father. Whatever is expected is expected of 
 the Father. Every petition or aspiration or 
 ascription is to be viewed in the light of the 
 divine Fatherhood. 
 
 And now, with this title for God and the con¬ 
 ception of God which it carries, with the Name, 
 Father, for God, Jesus gives us this sentiment: 
 “Hallowed Be Thy Name.” 
 
 I call this a sentiment, rather than a petition, 
 because, while it is indeed a petition, in which a 
 real desire of the heart comes to utterance, there 
 is in it more than a petition. I call it a sentiment 
 because it expresses that fineness of feeling out 
 of which the best in human action springs. For 
 just this is what sentiment is, when rightly un¬ 
 derstood. Sentiment is to be distinguished from 
 sentimentality or sentimentalism. Sentimental¬ 
 ity and sentimentalism are frayed out senti¬ 
 ment—the heart worn upon the sleeve—the ex¬ 
 ploiting of a shallow feeling which is impotent 
 for good. But sentiment is a real heart pos¬ 
 session. In every crisis of life it can be relied 
 
 [17] 
 
The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 upon to align us upon the side of the best we 
 know. It is direct in its vision and strong in its 
 motive power. It is the feeling which gives im¬ 
 petus to action. Without sentiment life would 
 be shorn of its beauty and sweetness. No doubt, 
 there may be wrong sentiment, unenlightened 
 sentiment, misguided sentiment. These have 
 power for evil. But right sentiment, enlight¬ 
 ened and wisely guided sentiment, is to be reck¬ 
 oned among the most potent of our moral re¬ 
 sources. 
 
 It is sentiment of this high, pure and effective 
 character that is expressed in these words 
 which our Lord has taught us: 1 6 Hallowed be 
 Thy Name.” Hallowed be the Name of Our 
 Father when we use it of God. Hallowed be the 
 Name of God, who is Our Father. And here, 
 remembering that Jesus is always seeking 
 reality and bringing reality to us, we need to 
 note that it is the reality of the sentiment, 
 rather than the form of words, that Jesus would 
 inculcate and emphasize. He is teaching us not 
 merely to say the words, but to feel what they 
 import. Words are easily said, lightly said, 
 and even the words of Jesus, expressly given to 
 
 [18] 
 
The Spirit of Reverence 
 
 ns to say, if said lightly and without inner sym¬ 
 pathy and meaning, have no more spiritual 
 value than the vain repetitions of the heathen, 
 against which the Master warns us. But to 
 have in our hearts the sentiment which the 
 words express is to make this teaching a part 
 of ourselves, so that it shall be a potent factor 
 in our religious life. 
 
 This sentiment of reverence for God Our 
 Father, which Jesus inculcates, belongs to the 
 recognition of God’s Fatherhood. The thought 
 of God’s Fatherhood is calculated to correct all 
 harsher or sterner conceptions of God. As the 
 ruling thought of God in Christian belief, it 
 must control and color our thinking about God 
 in the other relations and characters in which 
 the Bible represents him—in the relations and 
 characters of Lawgiver and Moral Governor 
 and Judge of all the earth. He is all these, and 
 Jesus so represents him, but in all these rela¬ 
 tions, he is still Father. It is as Father that he 
 gives us laws and governs and judges. He who 
 says“Thou shalt” and “Thou shalt not”; He 
 who holds the reins of power and authority over 
 this world of mankind; He who will judge each 
 
 [19] 
 
The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 of ns according to his life, is Our Father. We 
 are subject to a Father’s laws, a Father’s rule, 
 a Father’s judgment. Fatherhood is a closer, 
 dearer, tenderer relation than that of lawgiver 
 or governor or judge. It admits us to greater 
 intimacy of approach. It assures us of love and 
 sympathy and kindness and care and provision. 
 It assures us that behind all authority and com¬ 
 mand there is the heart of the Eternal, which is 
 most wonderfully kind. 
 
 As Jesus would have us bring these true con¬ 
 ceptions of God into relation with the ruling 
 conception of Fatherhood; as he would have us 
 see the Father behind all divine law, govern¬ 
 ment and judgment; assuredly he would have us 
 banish from our thought all crude and harsh 
 conceptions of God, which come from the days 
 of men’s ignorance and blindness, and are un¬ 
 worthy to be associated with the Name of Our 
 Father. 
 
 Such crude conceptions survive in the Old 
 Testament. People thought that a divine mes¬ 
 senger must bring tidings or presage of dis¬ 
 aster. Israel marvelled that Moses could speak 
 face to face with Jehovah and live. The glow 
 
 [20] 
 
The Spirit of Reverence 
 
 that lingered upon his countenance, when he 
 came down from the mount of communion with 
 the Lord, was more than they could endure. 
 Aye, even when the heavenly messenger came to 
 the shepherds of Judea to tell of the birth of the 
 Saviour, they were sore afraid and needed to 
 he calmed by the reassuring words: “Fear 
 not, for behold I bring you glad tidings of 
 great joy, which shall be to all people.’’ Why 
 was this! Uneasy consciences, you say. Yes, 
 doubtless conscience doth make cowards of us 
 all. But more than that. There was still the 
 crude conception of God as a Being to inspire 
 terror by his very presence—not alone by his 
 judgments, which indeed are terrible to the evil 
 doer who persists in his sin—but by his very 
 presence. The simple thought of the nearness 
 of God made men afraid. 
 
 Jesus would banish all such thought from our 
 minds. He would have the thought of God 
 bring sweetness and gladness and peace to our 
 hearts. He would have the thought of God the 
 most soothing and joy inspiring and strength 
 giving of all thoughts that can come to us. Just 
 the thought of God himself, without definition 
 
 [21] 
 
The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 or affirmation, lie would have us hold as a source 
 of joy and peace. So he would have us enshrine 
 within us the thought of the divine Fatherhood. 
 He would have each of us make of his own soul 
 a holy place in which the divine Fatherhood is 
 cherished and held sacred. 
 
 If we do this, there will be no place in us for 
 thoughts of God which are not in harmony with 
 his Fatherhood. All discordant sentiments and 
 conceptions must flee before this one ruling 
 truth. Only the thoughts and sentiments which 
 are in accord with God as Christ reveals him 
 will have a home in us. This is the real hallow¬ 
 ing of Our Father’s Name. You see, it is essen¬ 
 tially a matter of the inner life. It is more than 
 outward reverence. Outward reverence will 
 certainly be born of it. It will make us reverent 
 in speech and demeanor. But it will be deeper 
 than these. 
 
 If we have this sentiment of reverence for 
 the Heavenly Father, we shall have reverence 
 for all that is akin to him. We shall have rever¬ 
 ence for our own relation of sonship towards 
 him. We shall have reverence for humanity, 
 made in the image of God. And we shall rever- 
 
 [22] 
 
The Spirit of Reverence 
 
 ence truth. We shall put truth before tradi¬ 
 tion. We shall feel that we are always free to 
 find and believe and affirm truth, whatever the 
 result may be. We shall feel that our minds 
 must ever be open to the truth, that to close 
 our minds against truth is to dishonor the 
 Father, and we will not dishonor him. Jesus 
 honored his Father and bore witness to the 
 truth. The children of God are entitled to the 
 truth. If we really have the reverence for God 
 that begets reverence for the truth, we shall 
 never be willing to compromise the truth. We 
 shall ever be seeking the truth, and as we find 
 we shall follow. 
 
 This sentiment of reverence for God and 
 truth and all good, which is akin to God, is an 
 essential quality of character. Whoever is with¬ 
 out it has a fatal lack. Pitiful indeed is the 
 plight of the man or woman is whose heart there 
 is no holy place where some one or some thing is 
 revered. Truth, goodness, God,—if none of 
 these is enshrined within the soul, that soul is 
 miserably poor, however large its other posses¬ 
 sions may be. Edward Gibbon, the historian, 
 holds a secure place among men of letters. He 
 
 [23] 
 
The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 was a man of large mental gifts and much learn¬ 
 ing, as learning was in his day. • But Thomas 
 Carlyle could say of Gibbon: “The man has 
 no shrine.” There are writers today of whom 
 the same seems true. Gifted as they are in 
 literary art, there is nothing that they deem 
 holy. There are others, too, who are not writers, 
 who seem the same. To them nothing is sacred, 
 nothing is worthy of reverence. All spiritual 
 values are in the melting pot. Duty, obligation, 
 responsibility, truth, honor, loyalty, principle, 
 conviction, faith—these are obsolete—words 
 without meaning. In their place come impulse, 
 fancy, mood, the chatter of the hour, or at best, 
 self expression, or self realization. 
 
 Something is indeed to be said for self reali¬ 
 zation and self expression, if these are taken in 
 their deeper sense, but as men and women are 
 using them today and conjuring with them, they 
 mean little more than self indulgence. Under 
 the flippancy which dismisses all the finer things 
 of the soul as outgrown vagaries no longer 
 wanted in the objective life of the day, the soul 
 itself is well nigh extinguished. If it could be, 
 it would be. And character loses all sturdiness, 
 
 [24] 
 
The Spirit of Reverence 
 
 all fineness, all nobility. Banish reverence, dis¬ 
 mantle the inner temple, and yon undermine 
 character. 
 
 Let ns come back to the Master of Life. Let 
 us learn anew of Him who spoke from the 
 depths of communion with the Highest. Who¬ 
 ever will sit at his feet and learn of him will 
 gain what men are so much needing today, a 
 deeper sense of the reality of divine things and 
 an inner hallowing of the divine that will bring 
 peace and strength to the soul. 
 
 [25] 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 The Coming of the Father's Kingdom 
 “T ky Kingdom Come. " 
 
 I N THE teaching of Jesus, prayer has two 
 characteristics which are directly opposite. 
 It is at once strictly individual and broadly 
 social. 
 
 The individuality of prayer is distinctly 
 brought out in such teaching as this: ‘ 4 Thou, 
 when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and 
 when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy 
 Father who is in secret, and thy Father, who 
 seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.'' This 
 makes prayer a secret exercise of the soul, alone 
 with God. Isolation from the rest of mankind; 
 exclusion of the world; this is Christ's explicit 
 condition of true prayer. This is positive teach¬ 
 ing, and its principle must stand as clearly the 
 principle of Jesus. In the secret place, pray to 
 thy Father, who is in secret. Primarily and 
 vitally, then, prayer must be the individual en¬ 
 terprise of the individual soul. It will gain 
 
 [26] 
 
The Coming of the Father's Kingdom 
 
 its character from the direct approach of each 
 soul to God. Under this conception, every one 
 who would pray aright needs to cultivate the 
 power of direct approach to the Most High; to 
 realize that the Father is in secret and seeth in 
 secret; to come into actual, personal touch with 
 God. 
 
 On the other hand, Jesus makes prayer to be 
 distinctly social. In the aloneness with God, 
 where all is in the Father’s sight, where all is 
 said to the Father, where all is asked of the 
 Father, where all is expected of the Father, 
 prayer is to be as widely social as it is rigidly 
 individual. There, in the secret presence of the 
 Father, is the place for the broadest human 
 sympathy, for the keenest realization of the 
 needs of our fellow men, for the strongest sense 
 of kinship with the whole of humanity. Pray to 
 thy Father, but call him Our Father. And in 
 that title realize the share which every one of 
 our mankind possesses in the divine Father¬ 
 hood. Carry with you every human relation¬ 
 ship. Eealize yourself as one of the great 
 family of God. Shut out nothing that belongs 
 to human life. Make your prayer inclusive. In 
 
 [27] 
 
The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 the presence of God, gain a quickened sense of 
 the wants of man. Largeness of heart, breadth 
 of sympathy, a sense of others, are a necessity 
 of Christian prayer. 
 
 “He prayeth best who loveth best 
 All things both great and small; 
 
 For the dear God who loveth us, 
 
 He made and loveth all.’ 7 
 
 Distinctly this social quality in prayer is in¬ 
 tended in the familiar petition, so often used 
 and so often spoken upon: “Thy kingdom 
 come.” 
 
 Just what people ask for when they offer this 
 petition sincerely and thoughtfully will depend 
 upon the conception each has of the meaning of 
 the kingdom of God. For people have held vari¬ 
 ant views as to the meaning of the familiar 
 phrase. Some have identified the kingdom of 
 God with the Christian Church, as a visible, or¬ 
 ganic body. Some have thought of the kingdom 
 chiefly as the glorified life of the world to come. 
 Some have pictured it as a Christian State on 
 the earth. The Jews of Christ’s time and ear¬ 
 lier, thought of it as the restored Jewish mon- 
 
 [28] 
 
The Coming op the Father's Kingdom 
 
 archy under the government of the Messiah. 
 Today many Christian thinkers conceive of it as 
 human society thoroughly Christianized, that is, 
 the ideal society from a Christian standpoint. 
 And with the general thought of the ideal 
 society, people differ widely as to the form it 
 will take. 
 
 Yet, amidst all this diversity of view as to 
 the fashion of the kingdom of God, there is one 
 dominant, creative idea. It is this: The fulfill¬ 
 ment of the divine ideal for man. When God 
 works out his purpose; when he has his way with 
 the world; when humanity becomes what God in¬ 
 tends, then the kingdom of God appears. Essen¬ 
 tially then, the kingdom of God is God’s ideal 
 for us, rather than our ideal for ourselves. Our 
 ideals differ; our conceptions of the kingdom of 
 God differ, therefore, because we differ in our 
 insight into the divine meanings. We strive to 
 fashion our ideals after the divine ideal, and all 
 our ideals are imperfectly fashioned, because 
 we see only in part. The Jew conceived of the 
 kingdom of God as the restored Jewish mon¬ 
 archy, because he felt so keenly the loss of inde¬ 
 pendence, and was so wrapped up in the fortunes 
 
 [29] 
 
The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 of his own people throughout their tragic 
 history that he seldom saw beyond. Enthusias¬ 
 tic churchmen have identified the kingdom of 
 God with the visible church, because to them, 
 the grace and power of God have been exerted 
 on behalf of man solely through the organic 
 body. Other men, noting the power and pos¬ 
 sibility that reside in human governments, have 
 thought that these, if once linked with Christi¬ 
 anity and made to serve its ends, would consti¬ 
 tute the kingdom of God. Still others, seeing 
 that governments represent only a fraction of 
 social power and possibility, have conceived of 
 society in a more comprehensive way and have 
 built up ideals of social organization on Chris¬ 
 tian lines. Thus the conception has grown and 
 broadened, and men have sought earnestly to 
 discern and portray the divine ideal of life on 
 earth, while other minds, despairing of this 
 present world, have seen hope only in the rap¬ 
 ture of heaven. 
 
 But always, and in all the variously fashioned 
 conceptions, the thought has been present, that 
 the kingdom of God is good for man. The king¬ 
 dom always embodies the greatest human 
 
 [30] 
 
The Coming of the Father’s Kingdom 
 
 benefit. It always secures human happiness. 
 And so men have ever longed for it. God’s 
 kingdom should right the wrongs under which 
 men have groaned. It should compensate for 
 the sufferings men have borne. It should rid 
 life of its evils. It is God coming to the relief 
 of men. It is God intervening with his power 
 and authority to put away the things that hurt, 
 and to bring in the things that bless. There is 
 great pathos in this persistent human longing 
 for the kingdom of God. In this longing are 
 brought to expression all the aspirations and 
 soul strivings of men after better things, after 
 fuller and freer life, after deeper satisfaction, 
 after the consummation of their being. 
 
 And now Jesus sanctions this longing of men 
 and bids us pray for the coming of God’s king¬ 
 dom. Consistently with the dominant thought 
 of the prayer, he would have us think of the 
 kingdom of God as the kingdom of Our Father. 
 And so the kingdom comes to mean Our 
 Father’s ideal for us—for the world of man¬ 
 kind—what Our Father would have us be—what 
 mankind would be, if Our Father had his way 
 with us unhindered—what mankind will be 
 
 [31] 
 
The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 when Our Father’s intent is fulfilled. This is 
 the kingdom of God for whose coming Jesus 
 bids us pray. 
 
 In this kingdom, love reigns. So much we 
 can say with certainty, without undertaking to 
 fashion the ideal more precisely. The essential 
 matter is always that the thought of Our Father 
 for us shall have unhindered sway; that Our 
 Father’s ideal for our human family shall come 
 to realization. And I take it to be the intent of 
 the prayer that we shall not insist upon the 
 particular conception of the divine ideal which 
 we have reached in our own thought, but that we 
 shall hold our minds open to God’s disclosures; 
 that we shall have such implicit trust in the 
 wisdom and love of Our Heavenly Father that 
 we shall seek rather the fulfillment of his pur¬ 
 pose than the fulfillment of our own vision of 
 what should be. And ever there will be this all 
 pervasive conviction that the whole hope of our 
 world rests upon the establishment of the reign 
 of God. 
 
 It is clear then, that when Jesus bids us pray 
 for the coming of Our Father’s kingdom, he 
 means to enlist our broadest sympathies on the 
 
 [32] 
 
The Coming of the Father's Kingdom 
 
 side of the aspirations and longings of men. 
 He wants ns to feel keenly the needs of the 
 world. He wants to free ns from the bondage to 
 onr own immediate desires. He wants to get ns 
 out of the narrowness of mere personal wishes 
 and ambitions and needs and to link ns with the 
 upward movement of humanity. Because the 
 kingdom of God is the symbol of all that is 
 deepest and most persistent in human longing; 
 because only in the kingdom of God are men to 
 realize the purpose of their being; therefore 
 Jesus would enlist our sympathy, our longing, 
 our prayer, for its coming. Prayer for the com¬ 
 ing of the kingdom of Our Father is prayer in 
 its broadest social significance. 
 
 Furthermore, Jesus desires to enlist us on 
 the side of his own work. A Christian must be 
 in sympathy with Jesus. So far as we are Chris¬ 
 tian, our sympathies are with the Master in all 
 that he is doing. Our sympathies are with him 
 in the fulfillment of his life purpose and mis¬ 
 sion. We want what he wants. We aim at the 
 object he aimed to accomplish. We align our¬ 
 selves with him in all the effort and undertaking 
 of his life. Now, Jesus is definitely committed 
 
 [33] 
 
The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 to the kingdom of God. His life purpose is to 
 promote and reveal that kingdom; to reveal the 
 kingdom in its principles and powers; to pro¬ 
 mote the kingdom by bringing its principles into 
 practice and by releasing its powers in action. 
 The work of Jesus Christ is an unfinished work. 
 It is still in process. Only part of his work is 
 finished. His earthly mission, delivering the 
 message received from the Father for men; his 
 life of humiliation; his example of perfect 
 obedience to God, on earth; his sacrifice for sin 
 upon the Cross; his victory over death, in resur¬ 
 rection; all these are finished. But in addition 
 to these, or in co-operation with them, there is 
 the continuous work to which he is committed— 
 the work of bringing in the kingdom of God— 
 of realizing the divine ideal for man. 
 
 All that he has done for us bears upon this 
 end. All the truth he has taught; the spirit he 
 has shown; the powers he has released; all are 
 for this. And because this is the work that he 
 has begun and is carrying forward, he would 
 have our fellowship in it. He would have us as 
 clearly and heartily committed to it as he is. 
 He wants us with him in it. Jesus takes small 
 
 [34] 
 
The Coming of the Father’s Kingdom 
 
 interest in our ecclesiastical details, our secta¬ 
 rian rivalries, our petty schemes, our religious 
 trivialities, which so often obscure our vision of 
 larger things. He would have us put these 
 things in the small and subordinate place to 
 which they belong. And then he would have us 
 come with our deepest interest, our richest 
 energies, our warmest sympathies and our most 
 vital enthusiasm to the one great work of age¬ 
 long and world-wide import—the bringing in of 
 the kingdom of God. Whatever makes for that 
 work he would have us foster and encourage; 
 whatever does not count for that work he would 
 have us put aside. And so he bids us pray: Thy 
 Kingdom come. 
 
 Once more, Jesus would have us take a candid 
 view of world conditions. This prayer implies, 
 what the continuous work of Christ clearly pro¬ 
 ceeds upon—that the Kingdom of Our Father 
 has not come. It is coming, continually coming, 
 but it has not come in its fulness. It had not 
 come when Jesus was upon the earth; it has 
 not come yet. Jesus never permitted his fol¬ 
 lowers to be blind to the facts of human life. In 
 Ms devotion to truth, he taught them to see 
 
 [35] 
 
The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 things as they are. Everywhere his light shows 
 things in their actual character. He teaches us 
 to call good, good, and to call evil, evil; to call 
 right, right, and to call wrong, wrong. He 
 teaches us to see the kingdom of God wherever 
 God is honored and obeyed and to see that the 
 kingdom of God has not yet come wherever God 
 is dishonored and disobeyed. 
 
 Jesus would not be content to have us sing 
 with Browning’s Pippa on her holiday: “God’s 
 in his heaven; All’s well with the world. ’ ’ That 
 is the mood of the Spring and the care free 
 gayety of youth, which none of us would check 
 or reprove. Let us be thankful for all innocent 
 gayety and blitheness in a world of so much sad¬ 
 ness. But as a clear eyed and thoughtful view 
 of the world, we can not make Pippa’s song our 
 philosophy. Jesus did not. We have to see 
 that all is not well with the world. We have to 
 see that much is wrong, and that it is the sin 
 and bitter selfishness of men that make this so. 
 In Browning’s poem, you remember, Pippa’s 
 song fell upon the ears of two people whose 
 hands and souls were stained with deadly sin. 
 
 [36] 
 
The Coming of the Father’ s Kingdom 
 
 And ever when we look frankly upon the world 
 as it is, we must see that with all that is good— 
 and there is much—men are still far from realiz¬ 
 ing the Father’s kingdom. So Jesus would have 
 us pray, with intelligent grasp of the facts, with 
 warmest sympathy with human need, with con¬ 
 fession of our own shortcoming, and with pas¬ 
 sionate longing for the day: “Thy Kingdom 
 Come.” 
 
 One more thought. When Jesus bids us pray 
 for the coming of the Father’s kingdom, he con¬ 
 veys an assurance. The Kingdom of the Father 
 will come. It is coming. It has been coming 
 throughout the ages. We follow no forlorn 
 hope when we pray and look and labor for the 
 coming of the kingdom. We align ourselves with 
 the divine movement which sweeps on to vic¬ 
 tory. World conditions look dark at times. 
 Perhaps if we knew more facts, they would look 
 still darker. Reactionary forces, whose strength 
 we have not calculated, may triumph for a time. 
 But the mightiest powers, the powers of truth, 
 righteousness, love and peace, will come to their 
 own. 
 
 [37] 
 
The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 Not however by our sitting still and waiting. 
 Rather by our entire consecration, our steadfast 
 faith, our unwearying labors, and our most 
 earnest prayer. 
 
 [38] 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 How the Father's Will is To Be Done 
 
 “Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.” 
 
 I N CONSIDERING the teachings of Jesus, 
 we are always to remember that they are 
 for all mankind. Jesus gives them and says: 
 4 4 He that hath ears to hear, let him hear . 91 He 
 shuts out fro one who is willing to enter the 
 circle of his disciples. He says: 4 ‘Him that 
 cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out . 9 7 He 
 makes no distinction of class or caste or meas¬ 
 ure of attainment. He has no secret teaching for 
 a favored, select few. His message is for the 
 public. If he gives it to chosen men whom he has 
 trained and trusted, it is that these may give it 
 to the world. All he asks is that the message 
 be believed and obeyed. Any one who will may 
 believe and obey it. 
 
 People felt this in Jesus from the first. They 
 were drawn to him by it. His ignoring of all 
 distinctions and his meeting people upon the 
 common human plane drew about him people 
 
 [39] 
 
The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 who were outside the influence of official teach¬ 
 ers of religion. They felt that they could come 
 to him freely, as they could not come to the offi¬ 
 cial teachers. They felt that he spoke to them 
 simply as men and women, with common human 
 needs, frailties, sins, struggles and capacities. 
 
 This all inclusive breadth of intent in the 
 teaching of Jesus is significant in connection 
 with the prayer that he taught. The prayer is 
 for everybody. It is not meant to he the prayer 
 of a sect or a party or a class, or a people. It is 
 the prayer of humanity. Wherever men are 
 found, there Jesus would have them pray after 
 this manner to the Father of all. 
 
 Now observe the significance of this fact for 
 this one petition, which is in the very heart of 
 the prayer: “ Thy will be done in earth, as it is 
 in heaven.’’ As in heaven, so in earth, is the 
 Father’s will to be done. Thus are we to pray. 
 Jesus would make this the prayer of the world. 
 It must be so, sooner or later, if it is to become 
 a reality. For it is world wide in its scope. If 
 the Father’s will is to be done in earth as it is 
 done in heaven, it must be done in all the earth 
 and not only in a limited portion. And every¬ 
 
 th] 
 
How the Father's Will is To Be Done 
 
 where on earth people must be praying that 
 this may be. 
 
 Whoever will ponder this petition so as to 
 realize its meaning will see that it pictures the 
 possibilities of human life in the most glowing 
 colors. We have been taught to regard our 
 humanity as sinful, as fallen. All along the 
 pathway of history, there is sin. The men of the 
 Bible are sinners. We know ourselves as sin¬ 
 ners. And Jesus came to call sinners. Sin is a 
 fact. 
 
 But sin is not the final fact. Within this hu¬ 
 manity of ours, with its taint and stain of sin, 
 there is something deeper than sin. There is 
 the potency, the latent possibility, of the man¬ 
 hood that was in God's intent. There is the 
 potency of the humanity which God saw when 
 he made us after his own image and likeness; 
 when he looked upon his creation and saw that 
 it was all very good. Within every one of us 
 there is latent a better self than has ever come 
 to light. Within this humanity of ours there is 
 a better humanity than has ever written its 
 deeds upon the pages of the world's record. In 
 the course of human life through the years and 
 
 [41] 
 
The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 centuries, the baser possibilities have often 
 come to fulfillment. The nobler ones have often 
 been thrust into the background or have 
 gleamed forth only occasionally, instead of 
 shining ever with strong and steady ray and 
 giving color to the whole of life. 
 
 It is the aim and the work of Jesus to release 
 the nobler powers, to bring to realization the 
 nobler possibilities, to fulfill in us the divine 
 intent. And so while he never belittles or denies 
 the facts of sin, while he frankly comes to call 
 sinners to himself, he ever seeks to turn our 
 thought away from sin to the higher possibil¬ 
 ities. It is as though he said to every one of 
 us: “Forget the sinner you are and contem¬ 
 plate the saint you may be. I am here to re¬ 
 lease the child of God that is captive within you 
 and to bring him out to his divine inheritance. ’’ 
 
 Jesus would have us emphasize the good that 
 awaits development within us. He would have 
 us bring to the fore the better self that is truly 
 in each of us—the self that God made. And be¬ 
 cause of the latent humanity that is after the 
 image and likeness of God—the nobler self that 
 longs for freedom—the self that is God’s true 
 
 [42] 
 
How the Father’s Will is To Be Dohe 
 
 child—Jesus puts before us in the prayer he 
 bids us offer the life in which that latent human¬ 
 ity shall come to expression. This is the life 
 in which the will of Our Father is done in earth 
 as it is done in heaven. In that life the child of 
 God in us comes to his own. 
 
 Now, let me say, you and I ought to become 
 better acquainted with that better self, the child 
 of God in us. We are well acquainted with the 
 frail, faulty, fitful, failing, fearful self. We are 
 so w T ell acquainted with this self that we are 
 often well nigh strangers to the other, nobler 
 self. But it is the other, nobler self that we need 
 to know best. And the more we know this nobler 
 self, the less will the baser self thrust its pres¬ 
 ence upon us. The strong, pure, courageous 
 self, which mirrors forth the will of God, will 
 come into conscious control and the baser self 
 will become powerless and shrink back. This is 
 what Jesus is aiming to bring to pass when he 
 sets before us this picture of life on earth in 
 which God’s will is done as it is done in heaven. 
 
 It will perhaps be said that this is an ideal 
 picture and shows not a real humanity, but an 
 ideal humanity. Granted that, compared with 
 
 [43] 
 
The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 human life as we know it, the picture is ideal. 
 But the ideal is creative, as are all the ideals of 
 Jesus. This ideal is not only to he seen, but is 
 to be made a part of ourselves and to be steadily 
 realized through its power over our inner life. 
 I take it that the winsome quality in the message 
 of Jesus has ever been its ideal quality. He has 
 held up before men and women not what they 
 are, but what they may be. 
 
 The mere realizing of sin makes no one bet¬ 
 ter ; helps no one to a new life. Useful as it may 
 be to awaken, it has no power to impel to holi¬ 
 ness. A mere sense of sin will leave a man in 
 his sins. The prodigal in his rags and hunger 
 remains in his rags and hunger so long as he 
 sees only his rags and feels only his hunger. 
 When he thinks of the Father and the Father’s 
 house and the place he has forfeited in that 
 house; when he thinks of what he might have 
 been and had; when he thinks of himself as he 
 should be, then he resolves to return. It is al¬ 
 ways the thought of the good that might be ours, 
 of the good that we might be and do, that moves 
 us to a higher life. So in giving us this thought 
 of doing Our Father’s will in earth as it is done 
 
 [44] 
 
Iiow the Father’s Will is To Be Done 
 
 in heaven, and in bidding us keep this thought 
 before us in our prayers, Jesus has given us an 
 ideal of true creative power. He has sought to 
 enlist our imaginations as active powers on be¬ 
 half of the transformation of life. 
 
 Now let us look at the picture more closely, 
 as Jesus presents it to us. Just what is this 
 creative ideal which he would have us cherish? 
 As in heaven, so in earth. Jesus would extend 
 the frontier of heaven so as to include the earth. 
 He would expand the area of heavenly life so 
 as to encompass life here. He would have us 
 pattern our life after the life of heaven. Put it 
 in any of these ways, the idea is practically the 
 same —that our human life here is to undergo a 
 transformation which shall give it heavenly 
 character. But what do we know about heaven? 
 Is it not outside our experiences as we walk the 
 ways of earth? These questions naturally arise. 
 Some definite replies may be made. 
 
 First, it may be said that Jesus himself 
 speaks of heaven as a reality. He is entirely at 
 home in the thought of heaven. He tells of the 
 angels in heaven who joy over the repentance 
 of a sinner. He bids us call God our Father in 
 
 [45] 
 
The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 Heaven. And he says that he came down from 
 heaven, not to do his own will, but the will of 
 the Father who sent him. 
 
 Jesns speaks as one who knows. He speaks 
 of heaven as one might speak of his home. He 
 does this without describing or locating, as 
 though description or location were unneces¬ 
 sary. Now when we follow him so far, and re¬ 
 cognize that there is a realm of reality in which 
 God dwells and God’s will is done, and in which 
 Jesus is at home, we may picture the life in that 
 realm in some of its leading features: 
 
 To begin with, we may say that the heavenly 
 life is filled with the radiant presence of God. 
 There God is clearly manifested, without ques¬ 
 tion or doubt. All clouds and darkness are dis¬ 
 pelled. His presence is realized, vividly, posi¬ 
 tively, powerfully. His radiant presence is the 
 supreme reality. 
 
 We may say, too, that the life of heaven is the 
 life in which love reigns. The whole atmos¬ 
 phere of the heavenly realm is the atmosphere 
 of love. Any thing that is unloving is unknown 
 there. It has no place in the heavenly life. All 
 the unloving, and therefore, unlovely, things 
 
 [46] 
 
How the Father’s Will is To Be Done 
 
 that mar the life on earth as we know it, simply 
 do not appear in the life of heaven. Love is so 
 strong, so pervasive, so controlling, that the un¬ 
 lovely things can not come to being. God is love, 
 according to his word given to us here, and we 
 seek to grasp the truth by faith; but in the life 
 in which God’s radiant presence is ever felt, this 
 truth is known as a present reality vividly and 
 constantly experienced. God’s love permeates 
 the atmosphere of heaven as the June sunshine 
 permeates our air. In the glow of that radiant 
 love all life is tilled with love. 
 
 We may say, further, that the life of heaven 
 is tilled with joy. “In thy presence is fulness of 
 joy,” says the Psalmist. Even in Old Testa¬ 
 ment times, some minds had seen this truth. 
 The presence of God, radiant with love, is a joy 
 giving presence. And where that presence is 
 vividly manifest, warming all life with its glow, 
 flooding all life with its light, gilding all life 
 with its glory, all life is made joyous. 
 
 If we thus conceive the heavenly life, we can 
 gain some idea of the doing of God’s will in 
 heaven. We can see that all these features of the 
 heavenly life will be reflected in the obedience 
 
 [47] 
 
The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 that is given to the Heavenly Father. God’s 
 will will be done as in his very presence. Not 
 as the will of one who issues distant commands, 
 but as the will of one who is close at hand, touch¬ 
 ing life with his life, radiating power, energy, 
 vigor, vitality, giving every one to feel the in¬ 
 flow from his own exhaustless being. Doing 
 God’s will with a strength unfailing, with a 
 strength constantly renewed from the very 
 fountain of life—this is the heavenly obedience. 
 
 Then, also, in the heavenly life, God’s will is 
 done ever lovingly. As love is the atmosphere 
 of heaven, so is it the moving power of all 
 obedience. God’s will is never truly done if it is 
 not done lovingly. For love is the inner prin¬ 
 ciple of the will of God. Unloving obedience is 
 unknown in heaven. Doing things as hard, un¬ 
 welcome duty is unknown there. Doing things 
 from fear of the consequences of not doing them 
 is unknown there. Perfect love casteth out fear. 
 Love obeys promptly, fully, and without calcula¬ 
 tion or stint. Such is the obedience of heaven. 
 
 Once more, as the life of heaven is filled with 
 joy, God’s will is done there in the same spirit. 
 The joyous life ensures joyous obedience. 
 
 [48] 
 
How the Father’s Will is To Be Done 
 
 Somewhat like this may we conceive the life 
 that Jesus would have us seek and gain here on 
 earth. The ideal for the world of mankind, as 
 it is, he would have all his followers seek to 
 realize it in themselves, while they pray for its 
 realization everywhere upon earth. He would 
 have us do the Heavenly Father’s will with a 
 vivid sense of the Father’s presence, as the 
 never failing source of life and power; with a 
 love that is born of God’s own love and that 
 counts nothing too much to do for him; with a 
 joyousness that abounds and is ever renewed. 
 
 So Jesus would have us live and obey. So he 
 did the will of God. He has shown us the wav. 
 He has taught us in himself how the will of God 
 is done in heaven. He has brought the heaven 
 spirit down to earth. He has shown us the con¬ 
 stant realization of the Father’s presence, the 
 love that refuses nothing the Father wills, and 
 the joy which the world can not take away. 
 
 He has shown us the way. Shall we not take 
 it? 
 
 [49] 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 The Daily Bread 
 “G ive us this clay our daily bread .” 
 
 F ROM the divine to the human. From the 
 heaven high vision of God and the world 
 wide vision of the purpose of God to the 
 sense of the common man and his daily hunger. 
 This is the order of prayer in the teaching of 
 Jesus. First our view is lifted to the hallowing 
 of the heavenly Father’s name, the coming of 
 the heavenly Father’s kingdom, and the doing 
 of the heavenly Father’s will; then our minds 
 are turned to the commonest of men’s daily 
 needs. First, the Heavenly Father in his holi¬ 
 ness and sovereignty and righteous love—then 
 the human family in their want and sin and ex¬ 
 posure to evil. 
 
 This order is significant. It witnesses to the 
 effect in experience of realizing the presence of 
 God. Prayer brings us with conscious purpose 
 into the realized presence of God. I say, the 
 realized presence, because we always have the 
 
 [50] 
 
The Daily Bread 
 
 presence of God as an objective fact. We have 
 it whether we think of God or not. We have it 
 wherever we are and whatever we are doing. 
 
 “Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? 
 
 Or whither shall I flee from thy presence ? 
 
 If I ascend up into heaven, thon are there; 
 
 If I make my bed in Sheol, 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. ’ ’ 
 
 True as this is, it may be true without our 
 realizing it or wishing to realize it. But in 
 prayer that is a genuine exercise of the soul we 
 seize upon the fact of God’s presence. We 
 speak to him and he hears. There is close per¬ 
 sonal contact—contact desired and sought— be¬ 
 tween the human spirit and the Divine Spirit. 
 When we pray aright we wish God to be near. 
 We wish him to hear. We have no desire to flee 
 from his presence. Our desire is to be in his 
 presence. 
 
 [51] 
 
The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 And when God’s presence is realized, and so 
 far as it is realized, the first normal effect of the 
 realization is that God’s presence overshadows, 
 or better, outshines, every other presence. God 
 fills the horizon of the sonl. Then, with his 
 mighty personality outshining all else, his 
 Name, his Kingdom, his Will must take the fore¬ 
 most place. This must be, not by virtue of any 
 law or command, but by the native, instinctive 
 response of the soul to the Presence of the 
 Highest. In that supreme Presence, and with 
 the great divine interests looming before us in 
 their majesty, our own personal interests seem 
 small and unworthy of mention. Our desires 
 and ambitions for ourselves take on a littleness 
 far below the importance they have assumed be¬ 
 fore we viewed them in the light of the vision of 
 God. Can we, dare we, speak of them in the 
 holy presence of the Eternal? 
 
 Jesus says Yes. It is right. It is His Will— 
 the Father’s Will, that every smallest need and 
 interest of ours shall be brought before his 
 throne. Here is the breadth and the compre¬ 
 hensiveness of prayer. Its range is as wide as 
 human vision and faith and feeling. Nothing 
 
 [52] 
 
The Daily Bread 
 
 human is excluded from it. Life in all its variety 
 of experience can be bound about the throne of 
 God by the strong cords of prayer. So Jesus 
 brings us by an easy and normal passage from 
 the contemplation of the Name and Kingdom 
 and Will of the Heavenly Father to the sense 
 and consideration of the commonest need of the 
 human family—the need of daily bread. 
 
 The transition from the contemplation of the 
 divine to the consideration of the human is easy 
 and normal for just this reason: human inter¬ 
 ests are divine interests. God’s kingdom and 
 God’s will as we may know them are vitally con¬ 
 cerned with human needs. In proportion as 
 God’s kingdom comes and God’s will is done in 
 earth as it is in heaven, human needs will be 
 met, the deepest wants of the human soul will 
 be satisfied and the commonest wants of the 
 human body will be supplied; men will be 
 blessed in soul and body. Holiness and health 
 will be the common lot. It is entirely in keeping 
 with the thought of God as Jesus reveals him, 
 therefore, to follow the petition, “Thy will be 
 done, ’ ’ with the request: i 1 Give us this day our 
 daily bread. ’ ’ There is an intimate connection 
 
 [53] 
 
The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 between the two. It is in the Father’s will and 
 it belongs to the Father’s kingdom that we 
 should be given our daily bread. 
 
 The daily bread represents all material 
 wants. It is the first, fundamental and univer¬ 
 sal need of the bodily life, and so is represen¬ 
 tative of all. Material need has been the urgent 
 force that has moved men to advance in civiliza¬ 
 tion. Progress from barbarism has ever been 
 marked by the emergence of new material needs 
 and by the acquisition of new means or new 
 methods of supplying them. To some minds 
 material need has been the only force that has 
 made for progress. Progress meant a better 
 food supply, better shelter, better clothing, more 
 comfort, more convenience, more control of 
 natural forces and resources This gives us 
 what is called the economic interpretation of 
 history, that is, the explanation of the whole life 
 story of man by his efforts to secure material 
 goods. 
 
 But this is one sided. Other influences than 
 the pressure of material need have been active 
 in human progress from the earliest known 
 
 [54] 
 
The Daily Beead 
 
 times. Two, in particular, there have been: 
 Religion and Art. 
 
 No life story of a people is complete without 
 an account of its religion. Go back as far as 
 you will in the records that are left to us, the 
 memorials of religion are there. The memorials 
 of religion are everywhere present and they are 
 in the foreground. Religion was a shaping in¬ 
 fluence. Crude and savage it might be, but it 
 was never absent. 
 
 So with art. Men gave expression to the 
 creative impulses of art before they began to 
 build houses. On the walls of the caves in which 
 they made their homes, they made pictures, 
 often with close accuracy and fine spirit. The 
 creative spirit was astir within them along with 
 the reaching forth after communion with higher 
 powers. 
 
 Religion and art minister to needs that are 
 not material. They minister to needs of the 
 spirit that cannot rest in mere material satis¬ 
 faction. As long as religion and art remain to 
 bear witness to needs other than material, by 
 which human progress has been motived and 
 
 [55] 
 
The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 shaped, no merely economic interpretation of 
 the human life story will suffice. 
 
 But while the higher, spiritual elements have 
 always been present and are a vital part of 
 human progress, the material have their place. 
 While economic pressure will not wholly explain 
 civilization, economic conditions have always 
 been a matter of urgent concern to humanity. 
 They are the conditions of every day life. They 
 are the conditions in which our very upreacli 
 after God and beauty comes to expression in 
 religion and art. And the clear indication of the 
 teaching of Jesus is that God’s kingdom and 
 God’s will are intimately concerned with just 
 these conditions. God takes note of the sur¬ 
 roundings in which we pass our daily life. He 
 takes note of the common needs by which our 
 life is affected. God’s kingdom has to do with 
 our entire personality. 
 
 Jesus himself submitted to the economic con¬ 
 ditions of his time. Before he began his public 
 ministry he was a part of the industrial life of 
 Galilee. He won his daily bread by his toil in 
 Joseph’s shop. We can think of him as making 
 tables and benches, and fashioning timbers for 
 
 [56] 
 
The Daily Bread 
 
 houses. And we may be sure that he did his 
 work well. We may be sure that if he made a 
 table or a bench, every part was made right and 
 fitted right, and that the finished product was 
 thoroughly good. His work was honest work. 
 
 Moreover, when he left the shop and went out 
 into the broad fields of public work, giving men 
 the glad tidings of the kingdom of God, he still 
 subjected himself to the economic conditions of 
 the land and the time. When he was tempted 
 to seek to demonstrate his divine sonship by 
 commanding the desert stones to be made 
 bread, he refused. He would have his Father 
 provide for him in his own way. Always for 
 himself and his immediate disciples he made 
 this simple and direct connection. The Father 
 in heaven knew their needs and would supply 
 them, and their hearts could be at rest. 
 
 This simple connection is for us all to make. 
 Its assurance belongs to all of God’s children. 
 Ultimately it should underlie all our thought of 
 daily needs. But when we come to consider ways 
 and means by which the good will of our Father 
 is to be fulfilled in our actual experience, we find 
 ourselves confronted by an economic process 
 
 [57] 
 
The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 which is far from simple. The daily bread comes 
 to us by way of a complex system of production, 
 transportation, distribution and exchange. The 
 land, the rain, the sunshine, and the life pro¬ 
 cesses in Nature are God’s gifts; then human 
 labor and human contrivance enter and take 
 hold, and complexity results. 
 
 At every step in the process we depend upon 
 our fellow men. Each must do his part. If there 
 is failure at any point, the machinery of produc¬ 
 tion and distribution is halted or breaks down 
 and we fail to receive our supply. We forget or 
 ignore this when all runs smoothly, but when 
 the break in the process comes, we are forced to 
 realize it. If the farmer is obliged to reduce 
 acreage of production because labor is scarce; 
 if the miner refuses to dig the coal to feed the 
 fires in the mill; if the mill hands walk out; if 
 the railway men tie up the roads by a wide 
 spread strike; if anywhere along the line be¬ 
 tween the soil and the store the process is 
 halted, you and I feel it. That is our economic 
 system. 
 
 Moreover, even if the process be not halted 
 and the product is ready to be delivered to us 
 
 [58] 
 
The Daily Beead 
 
 in return for an equivalent, what if we have no 
 equivalent to offer? Then, with all its smooth¬ 
 ness of working down to us, the system still fails 
 to supply us. So we are concerned not only to 
 have the system of production and distribution 
 work smoothly, but also to have our part in it, 
 so that in some way we shall be able to offer the 
 equivalent of the product which we need to 
 satisfy our own wants. All this, I am sure, must 
 be so evident as to need only to be said to be 
 recognized as true. 
 
 Now what is the connection of all this with 
 the kingdom and will of God? The prayer for 
 the daily bread must mean that the product 
 which in this complex way is brought to us shall 
 become ours for use; that it shall be within 
 reach and we shall be able to secure it. Yet it 
 can not be confined to your individual need or 
 mine. It is our daily bread that we ask God to 
 give, and this means others as well as ourselves. 
 In its complete application it means the whole 
 human family. It means right economic condi¬ 
 tions for all mankind. It brings the whole 
 economic situation of the world to God’s throne 
 in prayer. It seeks for the world an economic 
 
 [59] 
 
The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 life in which the will of God is done—in which 
 men live and labor as God would have them. 
 
 This must be a life in which no one is 
 wronged, no one suffers and the divine Father¬ 
 hood is ever recognized. It means an economic 
 order in which all of God’s children are supplied 
 with the things that are needful; in which the 
 human spirit is free from bondage to material 
 necessities. It does not mean emancipation 
 from work indeed, but it means emancipation 
 from worry. It means work in the spirit of cre¬ 
 ative fellowship and happy trust in God. 
 
 It is a fact of common observation that there 
 exists today a widespread dissatisfaction with 
 our economic order. This dissatisfaction per¬ 
 vades the world. Many would change the order 
 by giving it a new form, by radical modification 
 of property rights and industrial management. 
 Russia has undertaken this on a nationwide 
 scale and the world is watching the experiment. 
 Now, we must admit that no particular economic 
 form possesses eternal sacredness. Changes of 
 form are not necessarily immoral. Economic 
 forms are expedients for the attainment of an 
 end. But when we come to look at the matter 
 
 [GO] 
 
The Daily Bread 
 
 from the standpoint of the kingdom of God, we 
 must see that no mere form will meet the need. 
 A new order introduced and maintained by 
 force would leave us ultimately no better off 
 than we are now. 
 
 What is needed is primarily a new spirit in 
 our economic life. This may or may not bring 
 in new forms or new relations. If the old forms 
 and relations prove flexible enough to give full 
 expression to the new spirit, they may be kept; 
 if not, they may be cast off and new forms cre¬ 
 ated. If the capitalistic control of industry and 
 the wage system are capable of giving full play 
 to the new spirit and the general welfare shall 
 be best promoted by them, new forms will not be 
 needed; but if these prove incapable of express¬ 
 ing fully the new spirit, more serviceable forms 
 must be found. 
 
 The important matter is that the economic 
 life shall embody God’s will for the whole hu¬ 
 man family. This means that our economic life 
 shall be so fashioned and conducted that we can 
 take our part in it without protest, without 
 grievance, with clear consciences, with a sense 
 of human fellowship, with a sense of real partic- 
 
 [61] 
 
The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 ipation in the kingdom of God, and with a sense 
 of truly doing God’s will in earth as it is done in 
 heaven. This new life is to come in, in place of 
 the friction, the jarring, the bitterness, the self¬ 
 ishness, the morbid class consciousness, which 
 some men foster and most men feel. Broad 
 human consciousness is to take the place of class 
 consciousness, and instead of narrow national¬ 
 ism, there must be a broad internationalism that 
 makes for human good. 
 
 So the prayer for daily bread needs to be not 
 only a prayer that each of us may have for him¬ 
 self the satisfaction of his wants, but far more 
 than this—a prayer for guidance that we may 
 see the way out of present conditions; for 
 strength of soul to take the way God shows us; 
 for the Spirit of Christ to fill our hearts and the 
 hearts of others, that we may take the Master’s 
 way with one another in economic enterprises. 
 Such a prayer will have a great breadth of sym¬ 
 pathy, a large sense of responsibility, and an 
 appreciation of the greatness of the task in 
 which, as Christ’s followers, we share. It will 
 be a prayer of world wide import, worthy to 
 
 [62] 
 
The Daily Bread 
 
 take its place along with onr prayers for the 
 coming of the Heavenly Father’s kingdom and 
 the doing of his will in earth as it is done in 
 heaven. 
 
 [63] 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 Forgiveness Human and Divine 
 
 “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” 
 
 W E ARE familiar with the truth that the 
 prayer which Jesus taught his dis¬ 
 ciples is meant for the whole human 
 family. In a prayer of such broad intent, we 
 may expect that only the common human needs 
 will come to expression. And this is the case. 
 Needs which arise from local or temporary con¬ 
 ditions or from individual or group experi¬ 
 ences are left to find individual or group 
 expression, as occasion may arise. It is note¬ 
 worthy, for example, that this prayer bears no 
 trace of sympathy with one social class rather 
 than another, or of the influence of the Jewish 
 nationalistic hopes upon the religious conscious¬ 
 ness. 
 
 The expression of individual or group needs 
 is indeed not forbidden or discouraged. It is 
 simply left out of the common human prayer. 
 
 [64] 
 
Forgiveness Human and Divine 
 
 As long as there is freedom, there will be indi¬ 
 viduality in religion, and nowhere will freedom 
 and individuality find greater scope than before 
 God’s throne of grace. Jesus guarantees this 
 when he urges us to ask, seek and knock, 
 without specifying what we shall ask or what 
 we shall seek or into what experience we shall 
 endeavor to gain admittance. Anywhere within 
 the range of God’s providence and grace we 
 may ask, seek and knock. 
 
 But while Jesus guarantees freedom to our 
 individuality, in this way, when he comes to deal 
 with the common human needs, he specifies. 
 First he names the daily bread, and then he 
 names forgiveness, as a need as common to men 
 as is the daily bread. In so many words, he bids 
 us come before the Father in heaven with the 
 petition: ‘ ‘ Forgive us. ’ ’ 
 
 In thus teaching us, Jesus not only recognizes 
 a common human need, but sanctions a common 
 human impulse. For it is a common human im¬ 
 pulse to seek forgiveness. The whole religious 
 history of man shows this. It is a pathetic 
 story that records the age long efforts of men to 
 avert the anger of their gods and to secure their 
 
 [65] 
 
The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 pardon. From time immemorial men have made 
 such efforts and they are doing so yet. Accord¬ 
 ing to their light or their darkness they have 
 chosen their methods. By ritual, sacrifice, self 
 denial, self humiliation, self torture, gifts, 
 labors, fastings, the mediation of priests, peni¬ 
 tential discipline, or giving up life itself, they 
 have tried to gain forgiveness. Jesus found all 
 this when he came. The need of forgiveness 
 and the impulse to seek it in varied ways was 
 no new revelation of his day. It was a common 
 possession of human consciousness. 
 
 Jesus sanctions the impulse as he recognizes 
 the need. He sanctions the impulse, but not all 
 the vagaries of religious conduct which have 
 sprung from it. He sheds his light upon this as 
 he does upon all the life of man. He shows the 
 way which men have sought by such devious 
 paths. He tells us to pray: “Forgive us.” 
 
 Forgive us—what! Jesus says, Forgive us 
 our debts. Debts is the characteristic word. It 
 is Christ’s term for sins, just here. It is not 
 indeed his only term for sins, but it is the one 
 he has distinctly chosen to put into this prayer 
 he has taught us; it is the term he has chosen 
 
 [66] 
 
Forgiveness Human and Divine 
 
 wherewith to point out the common need of for¬ 
 giveness. There is a clear note of originality 
 in this. So we shall do well to get the full import 
 of the term as applied to sins. 
 
 Sin is not a pleasant subject to contemplate, 
 and in some circles it is bad form to introduce it 
 —that is it is bad form to introduce it as a sub¬ 
 ject of discourse, albeit it may be well estab¬ 
 lished in those same circles as a fact of experi¬ 
 ence. The fact is, a self respecting person dis¬ 
 likes to think of himself as really and actually a 
 sinner. One may accept the proposition as a 
 Bible teaching—as a theological postulate— 
 without vigorous opposition; hut when it comes 
 to applying the proposition to oneself as a fact 
 to he faced—as a concrete, dismal fact, one re¬ 
 coils from it. How hard we labor to excuse our¬ 
 selves in any concrete case of transgression! 
 How we labor to convince ourselves, and if oc¬ 
 casion arise, how we labor to convince others, 
 that we were not in the wrong—that the thing 
 we said or did was not wrong—that our motive 
 was good, that we meant no harm, that we were 
 misunderstood, that we could not help doing as 
 we did, that we took the best course in the 
 
 [67] 
 
The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 circumstances—that somehow or other we were 
 not to blame! 
 
 There is something within us which makes us 
 want to assert and maintain our integrity. We 
 recoil from the thought of ourselves as sinners. 
 However much our theology may require us to 
 avow our depravity, we are violently averse to 
 acknowledging any evidence of it in definite mis¬ 
 doing. It is one of the contradictions of our 
 human nature that along with the persistent 
 seeking of forgiveness which has marked the 
 whole course of religion there has been this 
 marked repugnance to regarding ourselves as 
 sinners in any concrete and explicit way. But 
 Jesus brings us face to face with the facts when 
 he bids us pray: 1 6 Forgive us our debts . 19 For 
 Jesus always deals with realities. 
 
 Now let us look at the Master’s word, debts, 
 as applied to sins. Debt is a commercial term. 
 It has a definite meaning in common business 
 speech. And Jesus uses business speech—the 
 speech of the market place—in much of his 
 teaching. He uses this, in place of technical 
 religious language, to bring his truth close to 
 the minds of the people. Debt as a business 
 
 [68] 
 
Forgiveness Human and Divine 
 
 term means something owed. Onr English word, 
 debt, comes directly from a Latin word meaning 
 owe. And onr word, ought, comes from onr 
 word, oive. What I ought is what I owed or 
 what I owe. Ought is owe. And debt is owed. 
 In other words, debt is unfulfilled obligation. 
 
 Now lift the word into the moral sphere. Or, 
 if you choose, expand its realm so that it coin¬ 
 cides with the moral sphere. The commercial 
 will be included, for certainly we can not afford 
 to put morality in a department of life which 
 business may not enter, and certainly we can not 
 afford to put business in a department of life 
 which morals may not enter. The moral sphere 
 includes, or ought to include, the commercial; 
 but it is larger. There are matters of morals 
 which are not matters of business, albeit there 
 should be no matters of business which are not 
 also matters of morals. 
 
 Now expand your conception of debt to coin¬ 
 cide with all of moral obligation. Then you get 
 our Lord’s meaning. Debt is the unfulfilled 
 moral obligation. It is unfulfilled moral obliga¬ 
 tion of every kind. Now, is not this a large 
 enough conception to include all that we mean 
 
 [69] 
 
The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 when we speak of sin? Jesns certainly makes it 
 so. And when we reflect, we shall see that every¬ 
 thing that can truly he called sin is a failure to 
 fulfill some moral obligation. Every wrong is a 
 denied right. Every wrong is a failure or a re¬ 
 fusal or a neglect, to respect or give or maintain 
 a right. 
 
 So Jesus regards sin not simply as the break¬ 
 ing of a law, or the disobeying of a command, 
 but as something deeper. He regards sin as the 
 withholding of a right; as the failure to render 
 the thing that is owed. Transgression of God’s 
 law is sin because we owe God our obedience. 
 Injury to a fellow man is sin because we owe 
 him the recognition of his rights. That is, 
 Jesus looks at sin from the standpoint of obliga¬ 
 tion rather than that of simple command. It 
 has to do with our relation to our Father in 
 heaven and our relation to our brother men on 
 the earth, and not merely to government and 
 law, human or divine. 
 
 Now, with this conception of sin, what shall 
 we say of ourselves ? Shall we need to find dis¬ 
 tinct flaws in our integrity, distinct stains upon 
 our purity of purpose and deed, distinct acts of 
 
 [70] 
 
Forgiveness Human and Divine 
 
 wrong, in order to see ourselves in need of for¬ 
 giveness ? What if the day has gone by with no 
 outburst of passion, with no swerving from 
 truth, with no dishonest or unrighteous act; is 
 there no unfulfilled obligation to God or man? 
 Can we say that we owe nothing to him who 
 loves us with everlasting love, who gives us all 
 things, who holds us in life and calls us his chil¬ 
 dren? Have we paid him? Have we earned 
 what we get from him? Even though we have 
 been thankful and have sought to be obedient, 
 aye, consecrated to his service, do we owe him 
 nothing now? Nay, still there is debt, debt un¬ 
 measured. 
 
 What shall we say about this indebtedness? 
 In business we expect debts to be paid. If they 
 are not paid, business suffers. Debits are per¬ 
 mitted because of the expectation that in time 
 they will be balanced by credits. What about 
 debits and credits in our relations with God? 
 From our Lord’s teaching I gather that our re¬ 
 lations with God are not to be put on the com¬ 
 mercial plane. Jesus uses the commercial term 
 to bring the obligation into sharp outline, but he 
 couples it with a word which represents a 
 
 [71] 
 
The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 different procedure from the one usually taken 
 in business. 
 
 In business debts are to be paid. If they are 
 not paid voluntarily, measures are taken to col¬ 
 lect them. But with God, debts are to be forgiven. 
 Our relations with God are on another plane 
 than that of business, in which you give so much 
 for so much, quid pro quo, so much commodity, 
 so much service, for so much money, to be given 
 again for so much commodity or so much ser¬ 
 vice. Our relation to God is that of children to 
 the Heavenly Father; and the Heavenly Father 
 gives and forgives. 
 
 Now what is forgiveness? This too must be 
 seen in the light of God’s Fatherhood. And if 
 we view it in this light, we must see that it is not 
 just the same thing as the pardoning of a crimi¬ 
 nal by executive clemency, which is one of the 
 ways in which it has frequently been repre¬ 
 sented. It is noteworthy that with all our Lord’s 
 freedom and boldness of illustration, he never 
 uses the illustration of the pardoned criminal to 
 teach the forgiveness of sin. The pardon of a 
 criminal means simply release from the penalty 
 affixed to the violation of law. But God’s for- 
 
 [72] 
 
Forgiveness Human and Divine 
 
 giveness is something higher than freeing us 
 from the penalty of sin. 
 
 God’s forgiveness is keeping us in fellowship 
 with him as his children, notwithstanding our 
 sins—our unfulfilled obligations. When we ask 
 for forgiveness, as Jesus teaches us to do, what 
 we seek and what God is willing to give is just 
 this:—that despite our failures to render the 
 Heavenly Father what we owe him, we shall not 
 be treated as debtors, under an ever growing 
 burden which we shall never be able to cast off; 
 but we shall be and shall continue to be God’s 
 loved children, close to his heart, happy in his 
 fellowship and secure in his care; and that G od 
 will ever continue to deal with us, not on the 
 principle of debt and payment, but on the prin¬ 
 ciple of grace and freedom. 
 
 So far we have dealt with divine forgiveness, 
 which we need and seek. Now we come to the 
 human correlate. “As we forgive our debtors.” 
 Jesus says, Ask God to forgive you as you for¬ 
 give others. Continue to understand debtors in 
 the moral sense rather than the business sense. 
 Collect from your business debtors and forgive 
 your moral debtors, but forgive them as you 
 
 [73] 
 
The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 ask God to forgive you. If any one has failed 
 in his moral obligation to you; if he has failed 
 in any way to do what was right by you; forgive 
 him and make that forgiveness the plea that you 
 present to God when you ask him to forgive you. 
 
 Sounds hard, does it not? But clearly this is 
 the Master’s teaching. He does not say that we 
 are to use any plea of weakness, or of regret, or 
 of attitude of any kind towards our own sins. 
 He does not bid us say, “ Forgive us because we 
 are sorry; forgive us because we promise not to 
 do it again; forgive us because we are weak and 
 sinful and yield so readily; forgive us because 
 we were led astray; forgive us because we re¬ 
 pent.” He bids us present just this one plea: 
 “Forgive us, as we forgive.” This looks as 
 though human forgiveness were the measure 
 and the condition of divine forgiveness. 
 
 Clearly Jesus has a reason for putting the 
 matter of forgiveness before us in this way. 
 There must be a vital principle in his method. 
 Here is the truth: Jesus wishes to release a 
 power which dwells in us, which is able to trans¬ 
 form relations between men. There resides in 
 us a power of forgiveness which if it is allowed 
 
 [74] 
 
Forgiveness Human and Divine 
 
 to come to expression will obliterate the discord 
 of the world and bind the human family to¬ 
 gether in happy fellowship. This power is the 
 gift of God. It is kept down by fear and dis¬ 
 trust. Instead of its manifestations there con¬ 
 stantly appears the spirit of revenge and hatred 
 and continued strife. Every one asserts his 
 rights, and cherishes his grievances and 
 grudges, and magnifies his wrongs. 
 
 Because the power of forgiveness is suppress¬ 
 ed, the individual consciousness and the group 
 consciousness and the national consciousness 
 and the world consciousness are poisoned, prog¬ 
 ress is stayed, and the tale of human suffering 
 grows each day. But though suppressed, the 
 power of forgiveness persists. Below all the 
 unhappy human relations, it still is latent and 
 needs only to be released to bring peace where 
 now there is strife, to awaken love where now 
 there is hatred, to bring men to clasp hands as 
 friends where now they stand apart as foes. 
 
 The power is in us by the gift of God and 
 Jesus seeks to call it into exercise. The power 
 of human forgiveness is a reflection and a 
 
 [75] 
 
The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 witness of the power of divine forgiveness. Be¬ 
 cause it is in us we know that it is in God. Be¬ 
 cause God has given it to us, we know that he 
 has it in himself. We know that when we listen 
 to the voice of God within us we are prompted 
 to forgiveness rather than revenge. And the 
 more we yield to that divine voice and forgive 
 fully and freely, the more we can believe in the 
 full and free forgiveness of God. And the less 
 we yield to the divine voice and so withhold our 
 forgiveness from others, the less do we really 
 believe and claim the forgiveness of God. 
 
 Jesus would have us overcome our fear of for¬ 
 giving others. He would have us forego all re¬ 
 venges. He would have us cleanse our hearts 
 of all desire of revenge and all ill will. He would 
 have us give full play to the divine impulse of 
 forgiveness. He would have us practice this 
 and teach it to the world in matters small and 
 great. He would have us practice and teach it 
 in all human relations. He would assure us that 
 the practice of forgiveness is safe; that it makes 
 everywhere for human well being; that it is an 
 essential part of the kingdom of God on earth. 
 
 [76] 
 
Forgiveness Human and Divine 
 
 And he would assure us that by this practice we 
 shall come into true and ever growing fellow¬ 
 ship with our Father who is in Heaven. 
 
 [77] 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 Temptation and Deliverance 
 “Lead Us not Into Temptation; but Deliver Us from Evil” 
 
 W E HAVE reached the last petition of 
 the Lord’s Prayer. As we have con¬ 
 sidered the earlier petitions, we have 
 found that each has its own contribution to make 
 to our understanding of prayer, as Jesus pre¬ 
 sents it. Each petition illumines our common 
 relationship to God, the Heavenly Father, or 
 brings to expression a need which we all share. 
 Each petition, therefore, is calculated to 
 strengthen our sense of common relationship 
 and common need, and so to bind us in fellow¬ 
 ship before our Father’s throne. 
 
 This sense of relationship and fellowship of 
 need with one another are to abide with us. 
 They are possessions of the soul to be held con¬ 
 stantly. But the expression of this relationship 
 and these common needs in the form of prayer 
 is a matter of occasions. While we may have 
 and should have the spirit of prayer as a con- 
 
 [78] 
 
Temptation and Deliverance 
 
 tinuous experience, the actual practice of pray¬ 
 er belongs to certain times. Frequent times 
 these should be, but still they are definite hours 
 or days. However rapt we may be in our devo¬ 
 tions, they cannot always occupy us. The time 
 comes when we must leave the throne of grace 
 and go forth to engage in the common pursuits 
 of life. We must mingle with our fellows and 
 join in their activities, and face the world as it 
 is. In view of this fact, we can see the signifi¬ 
 cance of making this the concluding petition of 
 the Prayer: 1 ‘ And lead us not into temptation; 
 but deliver us from evil.” 
 
 Temptation is a common fact of everyday life. 
 It comes from many sources and has many chan¬ 
 nels of approach. No one is exempt from it. 
 Jesus himself was in all points tempted like as 
 we are, yet without sin. 
 
 Temptation is not sin. It is a testing of us to 
 see whether we will sin. It is an attempt upon 
 our moral firmness to make us sin, if this may 
 be. It is an attack, but not necessarily conquest. 
 It is an assault, but not necessarily a capture. 
 It is the presentation of opportunity, but not 
 necessarily our availing of the opportunity. In- 
 
 [79] 
 
The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 deed it is our opportunity for victory or defeat. 
 It is our opportunity to stand or fall. 
 
 Temptation has no limits of time or place. It 
 may come in the crowd, but it is not confined to 
 the crowd. It may come in the group, but it is 
 not confined to the group. It may come in the 
 thick of life’s activities, where human contacts 
 multiply and the influence of other personalities 
 bears hard upon us; but it may come as well in 
 the solitude, when we are left without any com¬ 
 panionship other than our own thoughts. It 
 may come to us in our homes, at our daily tasks, 
 aye, in the very house of God. There is no such 
 thing as immunity from temptation through the 
 circumstances of time, place, or outward con¬ 
 dition. Certain forms of temptation may be 
 precluded by circumstances of time and place, 
 but others will come. 
 
 Temptation is as varied as sin. As there are 
 many forms of sin, so are there many forms of 
 temptation. The fact that we are not tempted 
 in some directions does not mean that we are 
 not tempted at all. The form of our tempta¬ 
 tions will vary according to our spiritual de¬ 
 velopment or our physical constitution or con- 
 
 180 ] 
 
Temptation and Deliverance 
 
 dition or our stage of maturity. It will vary 
 according to our ambitions and affections; ac¬ 
 cording to our sensitiveness to one appeal or 
 another; according to our training or tempera¬ 
 ment ; according to all the experiences that have 
 left their imprint upon us; according to the 
 whole content of the life within us. 
 
 Temptation came to Jesus through his high¬ 
 est and holiest consciousness—his consciousness 
 of divine Sonship. In all the glow and gladness 
 and glory of that wondrous consciousness, 
 awakened or reinforced and confirmed at his 
 Baptism, the suggestion came to him to give 
 that consciousness unworthy expression. He 
 was tempted to show himself the Son of God in 
 ways not ordered by the Father. He had con¬ 
 quered all baser forms of temptation. He had 
 passed through the days of childhood and boy¬ 
 hood and adolescence and dawning manhood 
 with unsullied soul. He was master of himself— 
 master of his body and his mind. He had come 
 unscathed through the fires which we all must 
 pass through on the way to maturity. Then 
 temptation met him in a form so subtle that it 
 seems to us almost imaginary, yet to him it was 
 
 [81] 
 
The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 so real as to bring upon him a veritable conflict 
 of soul—a deadly combat with the powers of 
 evil. 
 
 So, to many a one who has conquered tempta¬ 
 tion to the baser and more repulsive sins, so that 
 they no longer have any appeal to him, tempta¬ 
 tion comes in more subtle and insidious forms 
 and has all the reality of an attack upon his in¬ 
 tegrity of soul. 
 
 We can be tempted through anything. The 
 channel of temptation is our desire. In what¬ 
 ever direction our desires go out, in that direc¬ 
 tion are we open to temptation. If one desires 
 money, he can be tempted through money. If he 
 desires popularity, he can be tempted through 
 popularity. If he desires prominence, he can be 
 tempted through prominence. If he desires 
 position, he can be tempted through position. 
 If he desires power, he can be tempted through 
 power. If he desires pleasure, he can be tempt¬ 
 ed through pleasure. And so on throughout the 
 long catalogue of human desires. Whatever one 
 desires constitutes an avenue of approach for 
 temptation. Shrewd and unscrupulous men 
 
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Temptation and Deliverance 
 
 know this and act upon it in their efforts to use 
 other men for their purposes. 
 
 Let us understand, however, that desire may 
 be either right or wrong in itself. Yet even a 
 desire that is right in itself, a desire for a thing 
 that is innocent, may become the occasion of 
 temptation. There may be a temptation to 
 gratify in a wrong way the desire for the thing 
 that is innocent in itself. Some of the strongest 
 and most subtle temptations are of this charac¬ 
 ter. The thing we want is right. In itself it is 
 not forbidden. It is not harmful. It is one of 
 the goods of life. But the means proposed to 
 secure the good thing is a forbidden means. To 
 gratify desire in the way suggested would be 
 wrong, though the thing desired is not wrong. 
 The temptation to such gratification comes all 
 along the ways of life. All normal desires may 
 be made the channels of temptation. 
 
 As to a wrong desire, that is, the desire of a 
 thing that is wrong in itself, it is obvious that 
 the appeal to such a desire is a distinct tempta¬ 
 tion to wrong doing. Right desires gratified in 
 a way that is contrary to God ’s will, and wrong 
 
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The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 desires gratified instead of suppressed, are both 
 to be regarded as yieldings to temptation. 
 
 But Jesus teaches us to say to God: “Lead us 
 not into temptation.” This awakens the ques¬ 
 tion, What part has God in our temptations? 
 Why ask him not to lead us into them? This is 
 a question over which many minds have puzzled, 
 when they have come to this petition of the 
 Lord’s Prayer. 
 
 Certainly it must be said that God tempts no 
 man. So the New Testament clearly teaches. 
 While God may subject us to testing by the cir¬ 
 cumstances of life, he never tempts any one, in 
 the sense of endeavoring to induce him to sin. 
 Such a thought is utterly abhorrent to the 
 character of God. It is utterly incompatible 
 with his holiness. 
 
 What part then has God in our temptation? 
 Temptation arises from circumstances. God 
 orders life. Under his Providence we are where 
 we are. Granted that we are in some degree 
 responsible for being where we are. We have 
 chosen, as the opportunity of choosing has come 
 to us. Perhaps by our wisdom, perhaps by our 
 unwisdom, we have made the choice. Perhaps 
 
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Temptation and Deliverance 
 
 by our energy and enterprise, perhaps by our 
 lack of these; perhaps by our grasping, perhaps 
 by our neglecting or refusing to grasp the op¬ 
 portunity that has knocked at our door; perhaps 
 because we have been clear sighted, perhaps be¬ 
 cause we have been blind, we have taken or 
 missed the tide that leads on to fortune. In 
 either case, whatever our measure of credit or 
 discredit, God has kept his hold on our life. 
 
 All the varied circumstances which are ours 
 under God’s sovereignity may be avenues of 
 temptation. Prosperity has its temptation. 
 Success may tempt. To be selfish in prosperity; 
 to be proud; to be contemptuous of those who 
 have not prospered; to be unsympathetic; to 
 consider that we are superior because we have 
 prospered—how easy all this is and how readily 
 men are tempted to it! To worship success; to 
 confound success with merit; to condone wrong 
 doing in the successful; to look down on those 
 whom we judge to have failed; all this too is 
 easy and in this direction temptation enters 
 again and again. 
 
 On the other hand, adversity has its own 
 temptations, equally frequent and powerful 
 
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The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 with those of prosperity. To be rebellious; to 
 be embittered; to be envious; to belittle those 
 who prosper; to be over-sensitive; to imagine 
 ourselves injured—all these are the possibilities 
 of adversity, and along all these lines tempta¬ 
 tion comes. So it is that every position and 
 relation and condition in life has its own tempta¬ 
 tions. 
 
 And now, because temptation comes through 
 all these channels, Jesus teaches us to make 
 appeal to God that the things he orders for us 
 may not prove the occasion of our moral down¬ 
 fall. “Lead us not into temptation’’ means 
 then: “Let not the gifts Thou hast bestowed 
 upon us or the circumstances of life as Thou 
 hast permitted them, be to us occasions of sin.” 
 
 As a personal prayer, this implies a certain 
 humility and self distrust. It is the opposite of 
 presumption, of boasting, of carelessness, of 
 moral self sufficiency. It is the opposite of the 
 attitude which says, “Life has no snares for me. 
 I can go forth and be sure that I shall not fall. 
 I have no fear of sin. I will take the risk. My 
 character is secure.” It is rather the attitude 
 which says: “I know that everywhere tempta- 
 
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Temptation and Deliverance 
 
 tion may assail me. I pray God that nothing he 
 sends to me and no place he assigns me may be 
 used by the tempter to draw me into sin.’’ This 
 is a recognition of the fact of moral attack and 
 the summoning of divine aid to sustain us under 
 it. 
 
 But this prayer is more than personal. Like 
 the other petitions the Master taught, it is 
 social, and so is sympathetic. It includes in its 
 intent all who may be subject to temptation. 
 Temptation is the common lot. We see the 
 faults of others; let us also realize that they are 
 tempted. With this realization, the prayer 
 against temptation includes our fellows as well 
 as ourselves. We ask for others, as well as for 
 ourselves, that God’s gifts, the bodies and the 
 minds, the affections and the desires, the cir¬ 
 cumstances and the possessions he has given to 
 our humanity, may not be made the occasion of 
 sin. Here too we have a great human prayer 
 that draws us into sympathy with all our kind. 
 
 Now, to the petition that God’s gifts and 
 orderings may not become to us the occasion of 
 sin, Jesus bids us add the words: “Deliver us 
 from evil.” Here is the recognition of God as 
 
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The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 the supreme moral deliverer. This is the gospel 
 for the tempted. God has the power to deliver 
 us from evil so that we shall not be overborne 
 by temptation. He can deliver us by all the 
 ways of his grace. He can keep us alert and 
 sensitive to the suggestions of sin. He can 
 strengthen in us the purpose of right, so that we 
 shall not be overcome. He can fill us with good 
 so that evil can not enter. He can give us an 
 inflow of power which shall well up within us in 
 the hour of crisis. He can make us keen to per¬ 
 ceive the right course and swift to follow it. 
 Deliverance from evil must come from within 
 ourselves rather than from outward conditions, 
 but within us, the power is of God. 
 
 The deliverance from evil which Jesus bids us 
 ask of God, then, is a gift of inner strength. It 
 is such a fortifying of holy purpose within us 
 as shall enable us to repel every suggestion of 
 evil. Positive, rock firm purpose of righteous¬ 
 ness is the condition of moral safety. To the 
 forming and sustaining of such a purpose we 
 summon all our moral energies, all our self dis¬ 
 cipline, all our strength of will; and more than 
 this, we invoke the inflow of the strength of God, 
 
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Temptation and Deliverance 
 
 a very stream of divine life within ns that shall 
 constantly renew and invigorate our energies, 
 so that our purpose shall not fail. 
 
 Deliverance from evil is thus an inner experi¬ 
 ence that comes through personal union with 
 God in the depths of the soul. In the realm 
 which lies deeper than our conscious life, this 
 deliverance comes; hut it records itself in ex¬ 
 perience as we find our purpose of righteous¬ 
 ness kept firm and controlling amidst all the 
 assaults of temptation. This experience is open 
 to us all. It is meant for us. We shall be 
 tempted, but we need not yield. Life may be 
 for us a succession of moral victories. Jesus 
 means this when he bids us pray thus to the 
 Father in heaven. 
 
 In concluding this study of the Prayer that 
 Jesus taught, let me emphasize one truth. It 
 is this: Every petition in this prayer is to be 
 offered in firm and confident faith that it will be 
 fulfilled. All are in God’s power and in God’s 
 will for us. It is in the power and will of God 
 to do these things for us or to release energies 
 within us by which we shall do them for our¬ 
 selves, so that the fulfillment of these petitions 
 
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The Prayer That Jesus Taught 
 
 shall be the fashion of our life. It is in the 
 power and will of God that we shall know him 
 as our Father and ourselves as his children; 
 that we shall hallow his Name in reverent re¬ 
 cognition of all that is divine; that we shall 
 realize his kingdom in ourselves and shall be 
 co-workers with him in extending it in the 
 world; that we shall do his will in earth as it is 
 done in heaven; that we shall have our daily 
 bread as his gift of love; that we shall be forgiv¬ 
 ing and forgiven; that under his leading and by 
 his grace we shall be kept strong in spirit and 
 shall find the very occasions of temptation the 
 scenes of glorious deliverance. 
 
 His is the kingdom. His is the power. To 
 his Name be the glory. 
 
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