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 Logical se<*\5J^ 
 
 BV 230 .M3 
 
 1872 
 
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 Maurice , Frederick 
 
 Denison, 
 
 1805-1872 
 
 
 
 The Lord's 
 
 prayer 
 
 
The LORD'S Prayer 
 
 NINE SERMONS PREACHED IN THE 
 CHAPEL OF LINCOLN'S INN 
 
 BY 
 
 FREDERICK DENISON ilAURICE 
 
 LATE PE0FE880E OP CASUISTRY AND MORAL PHILOSOPHT IN THE 
 UNIYEaSIZT or CAMBBISOE 
 
 NEW YORK 
 PUBLISHED BY HURD AND HOUGHTON 
 
 1872 
 
RIVERSIDE, cambripob: 
 
 ST tl KEOT YPSD AND P R I N T K D BT 
 H. 0. HOUGerON AND COMPANY. 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 Mr. Maurice, whose discourses on the 
 Lord's Prayer are given in this volume, died 
 in London, April 1, 1872. His life and his 
 writings hav^ been sources of strength to » 
 generation of EngUshmen, and his death has 
 called forth the affectionate utterance of sin- 
 cere mourners. His writings have been read 
 each year with increasing interest in Amer- 
 ica ; and while some of them are local in 
 their application and temporary in their in- 
 terest, many more are of general service and 
 valuable not only to professional students 
 here, but to those belonging to that large 
 class of men and women outside of the min- 
 isterial profession, who are profoundly con- 
 cerned in the study of the Bible and in the- 
 ological discussion. Mr. Maurice's writings, 
 however, are rather helps to the student in 
 theology, than direct contributions to that 
 
iv AD VER TISEMENT. 
 
 science. The leading characteristic of them 
 is the use of spiritual truths in the solution 
 of problems of life, whether those problems 
 are stated in terms of politics, religious and 
 social observance, or morals. Indeed nothing 
 impresses one more in reading the writings 
 of this man, than the absence of customary 
 boundary lines in thought. He has one not 
 method for the investigation of scientific 
 questions and another for casuistry ; he does 
 not regard politics and religion as independ- 
 ent and separate provinces of thought and 
 action ; and therefore it is that in preach- 
 ing to Englishmen he speaks to English- 
 men, and not distinctively to members of 
 the Church of England, any more than he 
 would, if addressing a political gathering, 
 speak to voters. Therefore it is also that 
 his labors amongst working men always had 
 a power springing from his recognition of 
 them as a constituent part of the State, and 
 not as members of a social class. 
 
 To speak briefly, Mr. Maurice shows in 
 his writing a constant desire to get at the 
 broad, fundamental experience of humanity, 
 lie recognizes social and religious differ- 
 
A D VKR T I SEMEN T. V 
 
 ences in men only to point out more clearly 
 the real likeness. What he has to say is 
 said to his brethren ; and exclusiveness, 
 whether in religion or society seems to him 
 the gravest peril of Church or State. The 
 practical temper of his mind led him to put 
 his work into action rather than into litera- 
 ture. His books are tracts generally, rather 
 than treatises, suggested by immediate 
 needs, yet always bottomed on large, com- 
 prehensive principles. He is careless of mere 
 scholastic distinctions ; he ^vrites to get at 
 the heart of things. He uses literature for an 
 end, and does not make an end of literature 
 itseK. One begins to read his ^vritings with 
 the expectation of finding eventually some 
 definite system of thought to which they 
 may be referred, but discovers at last that 
 Mr. Maurice is not a systematic theologian ; 
 that he has positive coni-iction, a determi- 
 nate faith, but has never formally abstracted 
 it from its place as a motive power and given 
 it a dogmatic shape. The personality of 
 the man, hopeful and solemn, large and can- 
 did, yet sometimes sarcastic and slightly 
 contemptuous, is impressed upon his writing, 
 
vi AD VER TISEMENT. 
 
 and must have been a strong influence in 
 the society which surrounded him. He has 
 been the cause of much thought in others, 
 and it may fairly be expected that his in- 
 fluence through his writings will continue 
 to be felt both in America and in England. 
 
 The incidents of his life are easily summed 
 up. John Frederick Denison Maurice was 
 born in 1805. His father was a Unitarian 
 minister, whose character seems to have been 
 cast somewhat in the mould in which the 
 son's was formed. Maurice was a student 
 at Trinity College, Cambridge, where his 
 tutor was Julius Hare, and his bosom friend 
 was John Sterling. He did not take his 
 degree, from conscientious scruples against 
 signing the Thirty-nine Articles, and went 
 up to London, where he engaged in literary 
 pursuits in company with Sterling. The 
 " Athenaeum " was mainly conducted by 
 them for a year and a half. Of Maurice's 
 influence on Sterling, Sterling himself writes : 
 " Of what good you have found in the ' Ath- 
 enaeum,' by far the larger part is attributable 
 to Maurice. When I have done any good, I 
 have seldom been more than a patch of sand 
 
ADV£R TISEMEN T. vii 
 
 to receive and retain the impression of his 
 footsteps." It has been remarked by an 
 American scholar that there were two Eng- 
 lishmen who might have written history to 
 some purpose, De Quincey and Maurice ; 
 and the London " Athenaeum," in noticing 
 this period of Maurice's activity, writes: 
 *' Had Mr. Maurice finally resolved to abide 
 in Uterature as his calling, he would have been 
 the author of many rich suggestions and dis- 
 coveries in the fields of criticism and history, 
 and the world might have found in him a sec- 
 ond Erasmus, but with a courage and faith 
 and passionate devotion to truth, which are 
 conspicuous by their absence in the first one." 
 But Mr. Maurice had the genius of a pro- 
 found worker in him more emphatically 
 than of a writer, and it was in the minis- 
 try that he saw his most efficient working- 
 place. He entered the Church, taking his 
 degree at Oxford, and thenceforward his 
 work was within its pale, though he refused 
 to accept the interpretation of the Church 
 and its belief which were held by many of 
 the Doctors of the Church. The school of 
 thinking in which he would be placed re- 
 
viii AD VER TISEMEN T. 
 
 ceived its special foundation from Dr. Ar- 
 nold ; and of those with whom he may be 
 classed, Robertson, the brothers Hare, Ten- 
 nyson, and Charles Kingsley are the most 
 notable. He was successively chaplain of 
 Guy's Hospital, chaplain of Lincohi's Inn, 
 Incumbent of St. Peter's, Vere Street, and 
 at the time of his death held the chair of 
 Casuistry and Moral Philosophy of the Uni- 
 versity of Cambridge. He was also at one 
 time Professor of Divinity in King's Col- 
 lege, London, but was driven from his place 
 by the theological opposition of the authori- 
 ties. Much of his work was in connection 
 with the Working-men's College of London ; 
 and an interesting painting by Ford Madox 
 Brown, entitled " Work," has for its repre- 
 sentative figures Carlyle and Maurice. 
 
 His writings illustrate the leading inter- 
 ests of his life, for they may all be said to 
 be instruments which he handled for direct 
 and specific purposes, not containing the end 
 in themselves. Amongst his Biblical works 
 are " The Patriarchs and Lawgivers of the 
 Old Testament," " The Prophets and Kings 
 of the Old Testament," " The Unity of the 
 
AD VER TISMEEN T. { X 
 
 New Testament," '' The Gospel of the King- 
 dom of Heaven," "Lectures on St. Luke''" 
 '^ The Gospel of St. John," - The Epistles 
 of St. John," and " Lectures on the Apoca- 
 lypse." Amongst his philosophical works 
 are "Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy," 
 '^The Conscience," "Social Morality." 
 Such works also as his discourses " On the 
 Lord's Prayer," " The Commandments con- 
 sidered as Instruments of National Refor- 
 mation," - The Claims of the Bible and of 
 Science," - Dialogue on Family Worship," 
 '' On the Sabbath Day," and - Learninc. 
 and Working," mark, iis indeed do also the 
 others mentioned, his constant endeavor to 
 bring the widest and most lasting principles 
 mto immediate connection with practical 
 living. 
 
 The London "Spectator," which ha^ of 
 late been the usual medium for the presen- 
 tation of views by Mr. Maurice and those 
 of like tliinking gives in its issue following 
 his death an affectionate and interesting 
 panegyric, too refined perhaps in judgment 
 for so prompt an account of the writer's 
 master and friend, but to be taken as evi- 
 
AD VER TJSEMENT, 
 
 (lencing the depth of personal feeling which 
 Mr. Maurice's death has stirred in English 
 circles. It is here given complete. 
 
 In Frederick Denison Maurice, England 
 has lost one of her most striking and char- 
 acteristic figures, and a not inconsiderable 
 number of Englishmen one of those unique 
 friends in whose sight men are apt to Kve 
 as in the sight of a visibly higher nature 
 not so remote from their own circumstances 
 but that it is possible for them to conceive 
 distinctly his judgments, and to forecast 
 the tendency of his sympathies even when 
 direct intercourse is impossible. George 
 Eliot, in the last published part of her new 
 tale, quotes some old author who said when 
 his chief friend died, ''The theatre of all 
 my actions is fallen;" and the novelist adds, 
 that a great many strong men "hold half 
 their rectitude in the mind of the being 
 they love best." It would, perhaps, be 
 truer to say that they hold half their recti- 
 tude in the mind of the being they revere 
 most, for there is plenty of love which has 
 little relation to reverence, and which does 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. XI 
 
 not equally affect the secret standard of hu- 
 man action. At all events, though it might 
 have pained Mr. Maurice to think so, there 
 was perhaps no other man in England who 
 was, in this sense, '' the theatre " of so 
 many men's actions as himself ; for since 
 Dr. Newman's conversion, his certainly was 
 the most real of the higher and purer relig- 
 ious influences of our own day to Englisli 
 Protestants ; he was the man recognized by 
 almost all who knew him, as combining 
 most clearly spiritual principles which dis- 
 o^vned all compromise -svith skepticism, and 
 intellectual principles which disowned all 
 compromise Avith bigotry or superstition, — 
 as combining in their highest forms trust 
 and love. Nor was his influence the less, 
 but perhaps the more, that his meaning was 
 not always veiy well apprehended ; for the 
 want of apprehension was often felt to be, 
 and sometimes known to be, a mere evi- 
 dence that the thought of the speaker had 
 its spring in a region quite above the mind 
 of the hearer. There was such a mingled 
 simplicity and depth of feeling in all he 
 said, such a union of sweetness and severity. 
 
xii AD VER Tl SEMEN T. 
 
 SO deep a humility and so lofty a conviction, 
 so passionate an irony and so pathetic a 
 faith, that his voice, once heard, continued 
 to sound in the ears of those who had not 
 for long stretches of time been within its 
 reach, and seemed more like the instrument 
 of a message from the invisible world than 
 any other voice of our generation. It was 
 impossible to hear Mr. Maurice read the 
 prayers, even in a Lincoln's Inn early 
 morning chapel, without feehng that to liim 
 they bore a far more real and living mea 
 ing than to the ordinary user of them. 
 There was intensity — almost too thrilling 
 — and something, too, of sad exultation in 
 every tone, as if the reader were rehearsing 
 a story in which he had no part except his 
 personal certainty of its truth, his gratitude 
 that it should be true, and his humiliation 
 that it had fallen to such lips as his to de- 
 clare it. This was what made his charac- 
 ter present itself so strongly to the mind as 
 almost embodied in a voice. He seemed to 
 be the channel for a communication, not 
 the source of it. There was a gentle hurry, 
 and yet a peremptoriness, in those at once 
 
AD VER Tl SEMEN T. xili 
 
 sad and sonorous tones, which spoke of 
 haste to tell their tale, and of actual fear of 
 * not tellmg it with sufficient emphasis and 
 force. " They hurried on as if impatient 
 to fulfill their mission." They seemed put 
 into his mouth, while he, "wdth his whole 
 soul bent on their wonderful drift, uttered 
 them as an awe-struck but thankful envoy 
 tells the tale of danger and dehverance. 
 Yet though Mr. Maurice's voice seemed to 
 be the essential part of him as a religious 
 teacher, his face, if you ever looked at it, 
 was quite in keeping witli his voice. His 
 eye was full of sweetness, but fixed, and, 
 as it were, fascinated on some ideal point. 
 His countenance expressed nervous, high- 
 strung tension, as though all the various 
 play of feelings in ordinary human nature 
 converged, in him, towards a single focus, 
 the declaration of the divine purpose. Yet 
 this tension, this peremptoriness, this con- 
 vergence of his whole nature on a single 
 point, never gave the effect of a dictatorial 
 air for a moment. There was a quiver in 
 his voice, a tremulousness in the strong 
 deep lines of his face, a tenderness in his 
 
iiv AD VER T I SEMEN T. 
 
 eye, which assured you at once that noth- 
 ing of the hard, crystallizing character of a 
 dogmatic belief in the Absolute had con- 
 quered his heart ; and most men recognized 
 this, for the hardest and most business-like 
 voices took a tender and abnost caressing 
 tone in addressing him. The more he be- 
 lieved in Christ, the less he confounded him- 
 self with the object of his belief, and the 
 more pathetic was his self-distrust of his 
 orwYL power to see aright, or say aright what 
 he saw. The only fault, as most of his 
 hearers would think, of his manner, was the 
 perfect monotony of its sweet and solemn 
 intonation. His voice was the most mu- 
 sical of voices, with the least variety and 
 play. His mind was one of the simplest, 
 deepest, humblest, and most intense, with 
 the least range of illustration. He had hu- 
 mor and irony, — usually faculties of broad 
 range, — but with him they moved on a 
 single line. His humor and irony were 
 ever of one kind, the humor and irony 
 which dwell perpetually on the inconsisten- 
 cies and paradoxes involved in the contrast 
 between human dreams and divine pur- 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. XV 
 
 poses, and which derive only a kindlier feel- 
 ing for the former, from the knowledge 
 that they are apparently so eager to come 
 into hard collision with the latter. As an 
 intimate friend very truly remarked, his 
 irony was rather the irony of Isaiah than 
 the irony of Sophocles ; but it was gentler 
 and less indignant. The most bitter flight 
 of irony the present writer recollects is a 
 very fine passage in one of the Lincoln's 
 Inn sermons, on wliicli he cannot at this 
 moment lay his luind, wherein Mr. Maurice, 
 speaking of the travesty whicli the popular 
 theology makes of Revelation, in that it 
 starts from the fundamental assumption of 
 original sin rather than from God, sug- 
 gested the clauses of an imaginary Te Dia- 
 bolum Laudamus, in honor and propitiation 
 of the powers of darkness, as the psalm, 
 which, if it only rightly knew itself, it 
 ought to substitute for the great song of 
 Christian thankfulness. It could not but 
 have suggested to many who heard it 
 Isaiah's grim irony against the idolators 
 who, after using some of their timber to 
 cook their dinner, "with the residue thereof 
 
xvi AD VER TISEMEN T. 
 
 made them a god." But Mr. ' Maurice's 
 irony was not often so keen. Generally it 
 was mixed with sweetness, and almost 
 always double-edged, — with one edge for 
 himself and only one for his opponent. 
 Sometimes, perhaps, he a little overdid the 
 irony intended to be at his own expense. 
 He was not insensible to the pleasure which 
 some men find in underrating their own in- 
 fluence and power. When he assures the 
 imaginary undergraduate of the prefatory 
 dialogue to the new edition — which has 
 only appeared since his death — of his 
 " Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy," 
 that even if he had rewritten it as he had 
 been tempted to do, and had done once 
 already, he should probably not have added 
 a single reader " to the two or three who 
 have been rash enough to spend their eyes 
 upon it ; " and, moreover, that if he had 
 rewritten it, he should not have introduced 
 " one question which would be likely to be 
 put by a judicious examiner, or one answer 
 which a pupil could turn to any account," 
 he is not merely having a sharp thrust at 
 the technical character of the University- 
 
AD VER T/SEMEA T. xvii 
 
 examination system, but indulging a So- 
 cratic taste for making sport of his own ut- 
 ter want of relation to the existing fashions 
 and demands of the day, — a taste which 
 he sometimes carried to excess. His humil- 
 ity was as sincere as it was profound ; but 
 he seems to us to have derived something 
 of fresh assurance for the great truths of 
 which he was most sure, through unduly 
 exaggerating the extent of his o^^^l personal 
 short-comings in setting them forth. It 
 need hardly be said that no work on such 
 a theme as the history of moral and meta- 
 physical philosophy, — or indeed on any of 
 Mr. Maurice's favorite subjects, of which a 
 second edition was called for, and almost 
 all his best books reached a second edi- 
 tion, — c^n have been very unsuccessful. 
 Hardly any other theologian of the day 
 who did such profound and solid work in 
 mastering the details of an unpopular sub- 
 ject, would have had to meet the demand 
 for a second edition at all. 
 
 It is not difficult, even in the short space 
 at our command, to give some notion of the 
 principles of Mr, Maurice's theology ; for 
 
X viii AD VER TISEMEN T. 
 
 though he had a deep, almost a morbid 
 dread of " system," in connection both with 
 theology and philosophy, his was essentially 
 a theology of principles, and of principles 
 not difficult to describe. The " Guardian," 
 in a thoughtful note upon the death .of Mr. 
 Maurice, has said of him very truly that he 
 was " incapable from first to last of accept- 
 ing words as an exact measure of thought;" 
 and if the writer had added that he was 
 quite as incapable of accepting thoughts as 
 an exact measure of either things or per- 
 sons, he would have touched on the very 
 secret of Mr. Maurice's dread of system. 
 The truth is, that while he regarded words 
 — especially old words with a history — 
 with the greatest reverence, as fixed buoys 
 indicating, as it were, the site of eddies or 
 the set of currents of thought, without a 
 knowledge of which the mind would be 
 helpless, he regarded the currents of thought 
 themselves as mere indications, more or less 
 adequate, of the presence of living influ- 
 ences and powers, of any exhaustive compre- 
 hension of which there was little chance, 
 though there was the greatest possible dan- 
 
AB VER T J SEMEN T. xii 
 
 ger of our persuading ourselves that we had 
 achieved it. Hence, while no thinker of 
 our day was more conservative in his re- 
 spect for the old landmarks of philosophic 
 investigation, none was so severe on those 
 who imagined that by clearly defining these 
 landmarks, theology and philosophy could 
 be adequately mapped out. He held all 
 names which had got deep root in any hu- 
 man language to be indications of some 
 centnd thoughts which it was of the first 
 importance to enter into, and all such 
 thoughts to be indications of some living, 
 permanent, and divine influence, which it 
 was also of the first importance to recognize 
 as wholly independent of our thinking 
 power : so that philosophy to him was 
 rather like a star-map with many bright 
 points distributed amidst great tracts of 
 darkness, and distributed in a manner for 
 which we can hardly find a law, and must 
 be very careful not to invent one ; while 
 theology was to him God's partial answer 
 to the search for truth, — not complete or 
 systematic, which would be impossible con- 
 sidering the capacities of the minds which 
 
XX AD VERTISEMENT. 
 
 require it, — but confirming and confirmed 
 by our intellectual constitution. He be- 
 lieved that God had revealed Himself as 
 the central good and the central power; 
 that He had created all things with refer- 
 ence to that central good, and with hfe 
 deriving from it ; that freedom had brought 
 evil into both the world of spirits and the 
 world of matter ; and yet that through evil, 
 freedom, taught by God, would find its way 
 to greater good than any it could have 
 known without conflict ; — (Mr. Maurice, 
 in his profound devotion to the strictly the- 
 ological mode of thought, though he fought 
 hard for spiritual freedom and believed in 
 it, and had far too great a horror of system 
 to admit that sin must either be independ- 
 ent of God or an accepted instrument of 
 God's, always seemed to lean perceptibly 
 towards the faith which at all events sub- 
 ordinates both freedom and evil to the 
 divine purpose;) further he held that all 
 which is good in man has been revealed to 
 be a mere pale shadow of something infi- 
 nitely better in the life of God ; that love, 
 which is of the divine essence, had a divine 
 
AD VER TISEMENT. jol 
 
 object " before all worlds ; " that revelation 
 has shown what that object was in display- 
 ing a divine Father and Son united in one 
 Spirit ; and that it illuminated the whole 
 universe in bringing down to earth the 
 divine spirit of victorious sacrifice in Christ's 
 incarnation, Hfe, death, and resurrection. 
 Mr. Maurice believed that there was hardly 
 a corner of man's nature or history on which 
 these revealed facts did not shed a bright, 
 though often unequal light. He held Eter- 
 nity itself to be apprehended in the appre- 
 hension of them ; for to him Eternity and 
 Time were not distinguished as disembodied 
 Hfe is distinguished from embodied, but 
 were distinguished as spiritual life — here 
 or there — is distinguished from carnal life 
 here or there ; and he who knew God lived 
 in eternity even while dwelling here. He 
 was fond even of regarding the successes of 
 modern science as the triumph of the spir- 
 itual principle of humility, which, instead 
 of imposing our thoughts and notions on the 
 divine order, studied that order as a revela- 
 tion running in a lower plane indeed, but 
 still in perfect parallelism with the divine 
 
jj-ii ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 revelation of moral and spiritual truth. 
 The natural philosopher's horror of precon- 
 ceived exhaustive systems, Mr. Maurice 
 carried into moral and spiritual philosophy, 
 never admitting that any portion of our na- 
 ture was exhaustively known, though harp- 
 ing perpetually on the certainty that it is 
 the subject of a redeeming power that 
 streams into it from above. 
 
 The most difficult matter to understand 
 in Mr. Maurice's theology was his concep- 
 tion of the evidence of revelation. As to 
 the higher truths, he held apparently, and 
 no doubt truly, that they were and must be 
 their own evidence, when once fairly pre- 
 sented to the conscience. Theoretically he 
 held that all inspiration was subject to hu- 
 man conditions, and therefore that its rec- 
 ords are liable to error ; but he was so apt 
 to find deep truth in paradox and inconsist- 
 ency of the deeper kind, that he found it 
 very difficult to admit error in the most 
 obvious discrepancies and inconsistencies of 
 the minor kind. Usually he was thankful 
 for these, as pointing to something deeper, 
 though perhaps almost only a guess, be- 
 
AD VER T IS EM EN T. xxiii 
 
 yond. He was always so much on his 
 guard against even desiring perfect consist- 
 ency in human thought, that he was un- 
 naturally thankful for difficulties of all 
 kinds, — sometimes almost seeming to go 
 tlie length of finding in difficulties a fresh 
 evidence of truth. The present writer can 
 remember but one instance in which he 
 could ever bring Mr. Maurice to admit that 
 there was a difficulty in Scripture which did 
 not point to some deeper secret of harmony, 
 and that was the curious interpretation at- 
 tributed by St. ^latthew alone to our Lord, 
 of the saying, that as Jonah was a sign to 
 the Ninevites, so was the Son of Man a sign 
 to tliat generation. But even then, though 
 Mr. Maurice admitted that he could not 
 " understand " the analogy between Jonah's 
 three days' burial in the fish and our Lord's 
 three days' burial in the heart of the earth, 
 he would not admit that he believed the 
 evangelist to have made a mistake, and to 
 have attributed a fanciful analogy of his 
 own to his master. Indeed, he found so 
 much that was in the highest degree in- 
 structive in the very aspects of Scripture 
 
xxiv ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 that rationalistic critics had fixed upon as 
 embodying conspicuous error, that he shrank 
 painfully from admitting an error, even 
 where he was quite unable to find a truth. 
 Of most of the difficulties of the Bible he 
 would say, that even though he could not 
 understand them, they had greatly helped 
 him to understand himself. 
 
 And this great passion of humility was in 
 him not only a moral habit, and a principle 
 of exegetical interpretation, and a doctrine 
 conservative of most historical institutions 
 (he often seemed to his friends to find some- 
 thing divinely vital in what they thought 
 the mere lingering shadows of the past, and 
 often, no doubt, he was right and they were 
 wrong), but also a wonderful spring of prac- 
 tical fascination. In one of the preliminary 
 meetings held before the commencement 
 of the Christian Socialist movement to dis- 
 cuss Avith London operatives the scandals 
 of the existing Trade system and its reme- 
 dies, one of the great unwashed delivered 
 his mind so freely and coarsely on the im- 
 postures of the clergy and the hopelessness 
 of getting any good from their interference, 
 
AD VER TISEMEN T. xxv 
 
 that some of the hot Oxonians who started 
 the movement were concerting the forcible 
 ejection of the speaker from the meeting. 
 But Mr. Maurice, who was in the chair, met 
 the speaker by confessing at once that his 
 observations were only too well deserved by 
 himself and the order he attacked ; that no 
 one could be more conscious of the practical 
 inconsistencies of which they were but too 
 frequently guilty, — only that, he said, was 
 no reason for not trying, with the help of 
 those for whom they worked, to sweep away 
 some of those inconsistencies, and restore a 
 truer relation. The effect of tliis practical 
 appHcation of Christ's exhortation to sur- 
 render the cloak to one who had already 
 stripped him of his coat, was remarkable ; 
 and the speaker who had attacked him so 
 coarsely frequently afterwards attended even 
 the purely religious meetings which Mr. 
 Maurice held, and though never a complete 
 convert, became one of the most wistful of 
 the outer circle of his well-wishers. The 
 personal sacrifices which Mr. Maurice made 
 for the Working-men's College in Great Or- 
 mpnd Street were great, but there was none 
 
XX vi ^ ^ VEE T I SEMEN T. 
 
 of his great qualities which did so much for 
 the movement as the unfathomable depth of 
 his personal humility. 
 
 And his tastes were in singularly close 
 keeping with his faith. No one can read his 
 works without noticing his intense enjoy- 
 ment of the style which makes the plainest 
 and simplest matters of life grand by tracing 
 them direct to God. Of course the great- 
 est illustration of that style is the Bible, but 
 Cowper and Wordsworth were both great 
 masters of it, and with Cowper and Words- 
 worth Mr. Maurice's memory was richly 
 stored. He was cathoHc enough in his po- 
 etic tastes, and would illustrate what he held 
 to be the true meaning of the word " eter- 
 nal " as freely from Byron as from St. John. 
 But it was plways to the poets who saw 
 divinp meaning in the simplest domestic re- 
 lations, — who were "true to the kindred 
 points of heaven and home," — that his im- 
 agination most affectionately clung. This 
 was not indeed a taste in him, but a faith, — 
 at least a taste moulded by a deeper faith. 
 This it was that made him insensible to the 
 admiration of religious coteries, and kept 
 
AD VER TISKMEN T. xxvii 
 
 him perfectly simple amidst those flattering 
 confidences which are given under the plea 
 of the need of council, and which yet so 
 much oftener change the counselor than the 
 counseled. And his whole life showed this 
 strong unromantic preference for common 
 duties as the true embodiment of high faiths. 
 There is no more characteristic sermon 
 amongst the scores he has published than 
 one on the apparent bathos of that Collect 
 for Easter Sunday which entreats God, 
 " who through Christ has overcome death, 
 and opened to us the gate of everlasting 
 life," that, " as by his special grace prevent- 
 ing us. He has put into our minds good de- 
 sires, so by his continual help we may bring 
 the same to good effect." Mr. Maurice ad- 
 mitted that this collect had often grated 
 harshly on him, as if it contained but a poor 
 logic, and drew a weak conclusion from a 
 great recital ; but he thought so no longer, 
 for he saw in it the assertion that it is only 
 " the stooping of the Creator to the creat- 
 ure " which can save from death our best 
 desires before they reach their only true end 
 in action. The very homeliness of the prayer 
 
xxviii ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 gave it to him a greater reality. And that 
 was the lesson of liis own life and death. No 
 one who knew him doubted that it was the 
 very homeliness of his life and teaching 
 which was his best guarantee that he had 
 not been merely dreaming grand dreams of 
 things divine, and which extinguished the 
 last doubt that that Easter season — in which 
 he finally brought his noble, simple, and la- 
 borious hfe " to good effect," — was indeed 
 the commemoration of an event by which 
 the secret of eternity had been unveiled. 
 
SERMON I. 
 
 SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY. 
 
 After this manner therefore pray ye: " Our Father 
 WHICH art in Heaven." — ^fntth(w vi. 9. 
 
 " A FTER this manner," and therefore 
 -^^ any manner but tliis is a wrong man- 
 ner ; a prayer which has any other princi- 
 ple or method than this, is not the Lord's 
 Prayer. 
 
 The remark may seem superfluous, but it 
 is not so. The Paternoster is not, as some 
 fancy, the easiest, most natural, of all de- 
 vout utterances. It may be committed to 
 memory quickly, but it is slowly learnt by 
 heart. Men may repeat it over ten times in 
 an hour, but to use it when it is most needed, 
 to know what it means, to believe it, yea, 
 not to contradict it in the very act of pray- 
 ing it, not to construct our prayers upon a 
 model the most imlike it possible, this is 
 hard ; this is one of the highest gifts which 
 1 
 
2 OUR FATHER [Serm. 
 
 God can bestow upon us ; nor can we look 
 to receive it without others that we may 
 wish for less ; sharp suffering, a sense of 
 wanting a home, a despair of ourselves. 
 
 At certain periods in the history of the 
 Church, especially when some reformation 
 was at hand, men have exhibited a weari- 
 ness of their ordinary theological teaching. 
 It seemed to them that they needed some- 
 thing less common, more refined than that 
 which they possessed. As the light broke 
 in upon them, they perceived that they 
 needed what was less refined, more common. 
 The Creed, the Ten Commandments, the 
 Lord's Prayer, were found to contain the 
 treasures for which they were seeking. The 
 signs of such a period are surely to be seen 
 in our day. We can scarcely think that we 
 require reformation less than our fathers. I 
 beheve, if we are to obtain it, we too must 
 turn to these simple documents ; we must 
 inquire whether there is not a wisdom hid- 
 den in them which we do not meet with 
 elsewhere ; whether they cannot interpret 
 the dream of our lives better than all the 
 soothsayers whom we have consulted about 
 it hitherto. 
 
 I. Much of the practical difficulty of the 
 
I.] WHICn ART IN HEAVEN. 3 
 
 prayer lies assuredly in the first word of it. 
 How can we look round upon the people 
 whom we habitually feel to be separated 
 from us by almost impassable barriers : who 
 are above us, so that we cannot reach them ; 
 or so far beneath us, that the slightest rec- 
 ognition of them is an act of gracious con- 
 descension ; upon the people of an opposite 
 faction to our o^vn, whom we denounce as 
 utterly evil ; upon men whom we have 
 reason to despise ; upon the actual -wrong- 
 doers of society, those who have made them- 
 selves vile, and are helping to make it vile : 
 and then t^ach ourselves to think that in the 
 very highest exercise of our lives, these are 
 associated ^vith us ; that when we pray, we 
 are praying for them and with them ; that 
 we cannot speak for ourselves without speak- 
 ing for them ; that if we do not carry their 
 sins to the throne of God's grace, we do not 
 carry our own ; that all the good we hope 
 to obtain there, belongs to them just as 
 much as to us, and that our claim to it is 
 sure of being rejected, if it is not one which 
 is valid for them also ? Yet all this is in- 
 cluded in the word '^ Our " ; till we have 
 learnt so much, we are but spelling at it ; 
 we have not learnt to pronounce it. And 
 
4 OUR FATHER [Serm. 
 
 what man of us — the aptest scholar of all 
 — will venture to say that he has yet truly 
 pronounced it ; that his clearest utterance of 
 it has not been broken and stammering ? 
 Think how many causes are at work every 
 hour of our lives to make this opening word 
 of the prayer a nullity and a falsehood. 
 How many petty disagreements are there 
 between friends and kinsfolk, people dwell- 
 ing in the same house — so petty that there is 
 no fear of giving way to them, and yet great 
 enough to cause bitterness and estrange- 
 ment, great enough to make this "Our 
 Father" a contradiction. How often does 
 my vanity come into collision with another 
 man's vanity, and then, though there be no 
 palpable opposition of interests between us, 
 though we do not stand in the way of each 
 other's advancement, what a sense of separa- 
 tion, of inward hostility, follows ! As the 
 mere legal, formal, distinctions of caste 
 become less marked, how apt are men to in- 
 demnify themselves for that loss by drawing 
 lines of their own as deep, and more arbi- 
 trary ! As persecution in its ruder shapes 
 becomes impossible, what revenge does the 
 disputatious heart take under this depriva- 
 tion, by bitter manifestations of contempt 
 
I.] WHICH ART IN HEAVEN. 5 
 
 for an adversary, by identifying him more 
 completely ^vith his opinions, by condemning 
 him, if not for them, then for the vehemence 
 and bigotry mth which he supports them ! 
 How many pretexts have the most tolerant 
 amongst us for intolerance ! How skillful 
 are the most reHgious in finding ways for 
 explaining away the awful command, ''Judge 
 not, that ye be not judged ! " 
 
 II. But when we say " Father," are we 
 more in earnest? Do we mean that He 
 whom we call upon is a Father actually, 
 not in some imaginar^^ metaphorical sense ? 
 Alas ! in stumbling at the first word, " Our," 
 we do, I fear, destroy the next also. For 
 though all countries and nations had a dim 
 vision of this name ; though men, in whom 
 the reverence for fathers had any strength, 
 were taught by a higher wisdom than their 
 o^vn to connect that reverence with their 
 thoughts of the unseen world, and of One 
 who ruled it ; though the sense of this con- 
 nection was a balance to the tendency which 
 they felt to idolize the powers of Nature, 
 and yet kept them from a mere abstract 
 formal notion of the Divinity ; though by it 
 they learnt to reahze, in a measure, their 
 own spiritual existence ; yet the revelation 
 
6 OUR FATHER [Seem. 
 
 which fulfills the heathen expectation, which 
 turns the dream of a Father into substance, 
 is that which is expressed in the words, 
 '' He hath sent forth his Son, made of a 
 woman, made mider the law, that we might 
 receive the adoption of sons," and in those 
 which are inseparable from them, '' Because 
 ye are sons. He hath sent the Spirit of his 
 Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father." 
 Now this revelation is grounded upon an act 
 done on behalf of Humanity — an act in 
 which all men have a like interest ; for if 
 Christ did not take the nature of every rebel 
 and outcast, he did not take the nature of 
 Paul and John. Therefore the first sign 
 that the Church was estabhshed upon earth 
 in the name of the Father, and the Son, 
 and the Spirit, was one which showed that 
 it was to consist of men of every tongue and 
 nation ; the baptized community was liter- 
 ally to represent mankind. If it be so, the 
 name Father loses its significance for us in- 
 dividually when we will not use it as the 
 members of a family. No doubt it is a true 
 name ; it expresses an actual relation ; and 
 therefore, if we attain by ever so unfair a 
 process, through ever so narrow a chink, to 
 the perception of it, we may be thankful. 
 
I.] WHICH ART IN HEAVEN. 7 
 
 But the possession is an insecure one : if 
 some feelings or apprehensions give us a title 
 to it, the title will become uncertain with 
 every variety of our feelings and apprehen- 
 sions. We shall regard the Unchangeable 
 as a Father to-day, and not to-morrow. 
 And then what becomes of the Lord's 
 Prayer as a fixed manner or model for all 
 prayer ? What becomes of it as a resource 
 in times of tribulation, when our feelings 
 and apprehensions are in the lowest, most 
 miserable, state ? What is its worth when 
 we are tempted by suggestions addressed to 
 these very feelings and apprehensions — sug- 
 gestions wliich overmaster tliem, and get 
 possession of them ? Does any one answer, 
 that God is calle(l the Father of our spirits, 
 that He is said to beget us to a new life, 
 that as natural men we are not his chil- 
 dren^ though we are his creatures ? All 
 this is true and most important ; and it is 
 precisely what we assert, when we say that 
 God has redeemed mankind in Christ. We 
 mean that He has not left us to be fleshly 
 creatures, to be animals, as we are naturally 
 inclined to be, and would be altogether, if 
 He were not upholding us ; we mean that 
 He has owned us as spiritual creatures, has 
 
8 OUR FATHER [Serm. 
 
 claimed us in that character to be his ser- 
 vants and cliildren, has given us his Spirit. 
 We say that when a man arises and goes 
 to his Father, he renounces his vile, selfish, 
 exclusive life, and takes up that human 
 privilege which God has given him in 
 Christ ; he enters upon his state as a man 
 when he confesses God as his Father. If, 
 instead of doing this, he will stand upon 
 certain feelings and apprehensions of his, 
 which separate him from his kind, he is not 
 a penitent ; he is still a self -exalting, seK- 
 glorifying man ; he has not been brought to 
 feel that he is nothing ; he has not been forced 
 to cast himself wholly and absolutely upon 
 the love and mercy of God in Christ. And, 
 surely, such dependence, such self-renuncia- 
 tion, such willingness to take up a common 
 position as portions of a family, is very dif- 
 ficult for creatures proud as we are, eager 
 to have something of our own, always hop- 
 ing to make out for ourselves special pleas 
 of exemption from the laws of the universe. 
 Only by discoveries often forgotten, often 
 repeated, that we cannot establish any such 
 pleas, that they must prove trumpery and 
 preposterous, when they are urged before 
 the Judge of the whole earth, only through 
 
r.] WHICH ART IN HEAVEN. 9 
 
 the dreary conviction that oui* faith and 
 hope and love, as well as our deeds, are shal- 
 low and insincere, are we drawn to real trust 
 in Him who is faithful and loving, who is 
 the God of all hope ; who can impart to us 
 the power of believing, of hoping, of loving, 
 of doing what is right; who is willing to 
 impart it because He is our Father, and has 
 promised all good things to them that ask 
 Him. 
 
 III. It might seem, till we know a little 
 of ourselves, that the next words, " which 
 art," had nothing in them to cause us offense 
 or perplexity. But they too are hard words. 
 The greatest temptation, perhaps, of this 
 age is, to tliink of the ^lo'st High rather as 
 one about whom we read in a book than as 
 the Living God, the name by which the book 
 always speaks of Him. It is a fearful tend- 
 ency ; but if you search your hearts, you will 
 find it there. Nay, there is not need of much 
 searching ; the habit is so natural. In all 
 ages, a disposition has been apparent, not in 
 irreligious minds, but in those which are 
 specially serious and reverential, to turn in 
 their devotion towards that which has been, 
 rather than to that which is, towards images 
 and relics, towards whatever carries with it 
 
10 OUR FATHER [Serm. 
 
 the sign and reminiscence of personality, but 
 is not personal. The modern English form 
 of it, which makes words rather than visible 
 objects the substitutes for the unseen reali- 
 ties, is externally so unlike the other, that 
 we are not easily persuaded of their essential 
 identity. It is the effort of prayer which 
 brings the evil fully before us. What a dim 
 shadow, thrown it would seem from our own 
 minds, has often been before us when we 
 were kneeling to the Majesty of Heaven. 
 What a strange seK-congratulation, that we 
 were performing an act of worship, good and 
 desirable, to some Being ; but to ivhat Being 
 we hardly dared to ask ourselves ! O I 
 surely even in such hours there have been 
 flashes upon the conscience, wonderful assm^- 
 ances that the place was a dreadful one ; 
 that God was there, though we had not 
 known it. These are admonitions that the 
 Father of all lives, though our spirits be ever 
 so dead. But they are also admonitions that 
 we should stir ourselves to the recollection of 
 Him, who is always near our spirits ; who 
 can both restore life to them, and keep them 
 alive. And if, at any time. He has taught 
 us to feel that the universe would be a hor- 
 rible blank without Him ; that his absence 
 
I.] WHipn ART IN HEAVEN. 11 
 
 would be infinitely more to us than to all 
 creatures beside; that if He is not, or we 
 cannot find Him, consciousness, memory, ex- 
 pectation, existence, must be curses unbear- 
 able : but that when the burden of the world 
 and of self is most crushing, we may take 
 refuge from both in Him, — if at any time 
 such convictions have dawned upon us, let 
 us not' hope to keep the blessing of them by 
 our own skill and watchfulness. Let us say, 
 " Our Father which art, when we least re- 
 member thee, fix the thought of thy Being 
 deeper than all other thoughts within us ; 
 and may we, thy children, dwell in it, and 
 find our home and rest in it, now and for- 
 ever." 
 
 IV. Once more : the words " In Eeaven,'" 
 as they are closely united with those which 
 went before in meaning, so too, like them, 
 come into collision with some of our strong- 
 est evil tendencies. The impulse of ordi- 
 nary polytheists was to -bring God down 
 to earth ; to make Him like themselves. 
 Against this impulse the philosopher pro- 
 tested, representing the Divine Nature as 
 wholly inactive, self-concentrated, removed 
 from mundane interests. The Gospel jus- 
 tifies the truth which was implied in the 
 
12 OUR FATHER [Serm. 
 
 error of the first ; Christ, taking flesh, and 
 dwelling among men, declares that Heaven 
 has stooped to earth. But here a great 
 many would stop: they would bring back 
 Paganism through Christianity. The Son 
 of God, they say, has become incarnate ; 
 now fleshly things are again divine ; earth is 
 overshadowed by Heaven ; it is no longer 
 sin to worship that which He has glorified. 
 In the manger of Bethlehem they sink the 
 Resurrection and Ascension : they will only 
 look at one part of the great Redemption, 
 not at the whole of it ; at the condescension 
 to our vileness, not at the deliverance from 
 that vileness, wliich the Son accomplished 
 when he sat down at the right hand of the 
 Father. But He does not sanction this par- 
 tial and groveling view. " After this man- 
 ner," He taught his disciples, even while He 
 was upon the earth, " pray ye. Our Father 
 which art in Heaven." As if He had said, 
 Do not think that I am come to make your 
 thoughts of God less awful than those of 
 Moses were, when he put his shoes off his 
 feet and durst not behold ; than Solomon's 
 were, when he said, '' He is in Heaven and 
 thou upon earth, therefore let thy words be 
 few." The revelation of the divine mystery 
 
I.] WHICH ART IN HEAVEN. 13 
 
 in me is not given that you may entertain 
 it better in your low carnal hearts, that you 
 may mingle it more with the things which 
 you see and handle ; that each of you may 
 have a warrant for the form of idolatry 
 which is dear to him. This revelation is 
 given that the mj-stery may be no longer 
 one of darkness, but of perfect light : light 
 which you will enter into more and more as 
 your eyes are purged ; but which, if it color 
 the mists of earth for a moment, will at last 
 scatter them altogether. 
 
 " Owr Father : " there lies the expression 
 of that fixed eternal relation which Christ's 
 birth and death have established between 
 the littleness of the creature and the Maj- 
 esty of the Creator ; the one great practical 
 answer to the philosopher who would make 
 heaven clear by making it cold ; would as- 
 sert the dignity of the Divine Essence by 
 emptying it of its love, and reducing it 
 into nothingness. Our Father which art in 
 Heaven: there lies the answer to all the 
 miserable substitutes for faith by which the 
 invisible has been lowered to the visible ; 
 which have insulted the understanding and 
 cheated the heart ; which have made united 
 woi-ship impossible, because that can only 
 
14 OUR FATHER [Serm. 
 
 be when there is One Being, eternal, immor- 
 tal, invisible, to whom all may look np 
 together, into whose presence a way is 
 opened for all, whose presence is a refuge 
 from the confusions, perplexities, and divis- 
 ions of this world ; that home which the 
 spirits of men were ever seeking, and could 
 not find, till He, who had borne their sor- 
 roAvs and died their death, entered within 
 the veil, having obtained eternal redemption, 
 for them, till He bade them sit with Him 
 in heavenly places. 
 
 What I have said may have seemed to 
 prove that this simple prayer is too high 
 and too deep for creatures such as we are. 
 Would you have it otherwise ? Would you 
 have a prayer which you can comprehend 
 and fathom ? I am sure the conscience and 
 reason would reject such a prayer as a de- 
 lusion, an evident self-contradiction. I have 
 said nothing to show that this prayer is im- 
 suitable to the wants and ignorance of any 
 beggar in our streets. I have shown only 
 that the wisest man, who will not use it as 
 that beggar does, who will try it by his 
 own narrow methods and measures, will 
 find that he has never entered into the sense 
 of it, that he is condemninoj himself in the 
 
I.] WHICH ART IN HEAVEN. 15 
 
 repetition of it. And if, brethren, we all 
 know that we have been guilty of this 
 mockery again and again, how clearly do 
 oui' consciences mtness, that it is after this 
 manner, and no other, we must make our 
 confession. What despair we should be in, 
 if oui- unbelief were indeed truth, and not a 
 lie ! If the word " Our " did not express 
 the truth that we participate in the bless- 
 ings as well as the curses of the wliole 
 race ; if the word " Father " were a word 
 merely, and not the expression of an eternal 
 truth ; if we might think of Ilim as not 
 nigh, but afar off ; in a book, not as one in 
 whom we are living and having our being ; if 
 He were subject to the changes of earth, 
 not forever fixed in Heaven, whither could 
 we turn under the overpowering sense of 
 our own sinfulness and heartlessness ? It is 
 the full conviction that our misery has pro- 
 ceeded from ourselves, from our maintaining 
 a resolute war with facts and reality, which 
 can alone give us encouragement. For we 
 know there is One who is \villing to teach 
 us how to pray this prayer in spirit and in 
 truth ; we know that there is One who is 
 praying it. He who died for us and for all 
 mankind. He who is ascended into Heaven, 
 
16 OUR FATHER WHICH ART, ETC. [Serm. I. 
 
 He who is true and in whom is no lie, did 
 when He was here clothed with our mortal- 
 ity, does now in his glorified humanity say, 
 in the full meaning of the words, for us and 
 for his whole family above and below, '* Our 
 Father which art in Heaven." 
 
SERMON 11. 
 
 SEPTUAGESIMA SUNDAY. 
 
 Hallowed be thy Name. — Matthew vi. 9. 
 
 r SAID last Sunday that in this Prayer 
 -*- our Lord taught us the method, as well 
 as the principle, of all prayer. It is, in- 
 deed, impossible to separate one from the 
 other. The principle of a prayer which asks 
 first for bread or forgiveness, must be wholly 
 different from the principle of one which 
 begins with '^ Hallowed be thy Name." The 
 conceptions of Prayer which you would de- 
 rive from them are unlike, nay, they are 
 opposed. 
 
 I think there can be little doubt which 
 form men would most readily adopt. " Let 
 us have bread enough, bread to satisfy all 
 bodily appetites : bread, if you will, that 
 shall meet our intellectual, our spiritual 
 desires — what other petition can possibly 
 take precedence of this ? If an earthly ruler 
 
18 HALLOWED BE THY NAME. [Serm. 
 
 could send us this blessing, should we not 
 implore him for it before all things ? If we 
 are hearty in beheving that the Heavenly- 
 Ruler is willing to send it, shall we not take 
 the same course when we call upon Him ? 
 Shall we strain ourselves to introduce need- 
 less, artificial preliminaries, when this is 
 what He knows we are craving for ? " So 
 men are likely to reason till they painfully 
 discover that there is something they need 
 more than bread ; till a certain inward gnaw- 
 ing in lonely hours, on a sick-bed, suggests 
 that sin has need to be pardoned as well as 
 hunger to be appeased. Is it not still more 
 monstrous to interpose any check to the ut- 
 terance of this cry ? What can be so desir- 
 able as that it should be poured forth with 
 all the agony and intensity of a spirit which 
 has learnt that such a boon would be cheaply 
 purchased by the sacrifice of all thmgs else ? 
 Language of this kind would seem to be 
 religious as well as natural, proceeding from 
 sympathy with human needs,, and a belief 
 that there is a divine provision for them. 
 And yet our Lord says, " After this man- 
 ner pray ye : Our Father which art in 
 Heaven, Hallowed be thy Name." He rec- 
 ognizes the desires of which I have spoken 
 
II.] HALLOWED BE THY NAME. 19 
 
 as reasonable and true, but He postpones 
 them ; and this, too, when he is warning us 
 against babbling in prayer, against all vain, 
 idle formulas ; when He is directing us espe- 
 cially to ask for the things we have need of. 
 Brethren, in this difference lies, I believe, 
 the great contrast between those systems 
 of theological doctrine and practice which 
 have been shaped out by the subtlety of 
 divines, in accordance with the cravings of 
 disciples, and that teaching which begins 
 from God, which never lowers itself to the 
 base and selfish thoughts of men, and which, 
 therefore, is able to satisfy all that is real in 
 man as nothing else can. Ask the system- 
 atizer what that revelation is which the 
 Bible records : he will tell you that it is the 
 announcement of the duty which man owes 
 to his Maker for the good things he enjoys 
 upon earth, and of a scheme of redemption 
 by which he may obtain pardon for his sins, 
 and higher blessings hereafter. Ask the 
 Apostles, or our Lord Himself, what that 
 revelation is, and they say it is the revelation 
 of a Father whom men were feeling after 
 and could not find, and who at length de- 
 clared Himself to them in his well-beloved 
 Son. If the first statement be accepted as 
 
20 HALLOWED BE THY NAME. [Serm. 
 
 the truest and simplest, the prayers, " Give 
 us bread," " Forgive us our sins," are all 
 that we have any concern with ; we should 
 rush into them at once ; by them we grasp 
 all the good which creation and redemption 
 have in store for us. If we are led by any 
 process to feel that the news concerning a 
 father is really the good news, apart from 
 which the promise of food or pardon would 
 signify nothing, we shall feel that " Hal- 
 lowed be thy Name " is the first and most 
 necessary and most blessed prayer for the 
 whole human race and for every one of its 
 members. 
 
 For every gross and cruel superstition has 
 this origin and definition : it springs from 
 ignorance of the name of God ; it consists 
 in and by that ignorance. It mixes Him 
 with his creatures ; first with what is 
 highest in them, next with what is mean, 
 then with what is basest ; finally it identifies 
 Him with the Evil Spirit. What is darkest 
 and most hateful ; what a man flies from 
 most and would desire should not exist ; this 
 becomes the object of his worship. He has 
 within him a Avitness that there is a Being 
 whom he ought to love with his heart and 
 soul and strength. That which he conceives 
 
n.] HALLOWED BE THY NAME. 21 
 
 of as this Being, that which his fancy and 
 his conscience represent to him is one whom 
 he inwardly hates, and from whom he would 
 be delivered. 
 
 But these horrors belong, it will be said, 
 to the ages of priestcraft ; civilization puts 
 an end to them. Let us understand our- 
 selves clearly on this point, that we may not 
 deny what is right in the assertion, nor be 
 deluded by mere phi-ases. The classes which 
 have been brought within the reach and 
 sway of civilization have, no doubt, learnt 
 that the inventions of superstition are false 
 and mischievous ; they have seen that a dark 
 notion of the divinity is at the root of them ; 
 they have made strenuous efforts to rid 
 themselves of wliat they believe to be a 
 phantom. In place of it they have substi- 
 tuted a being answering to their own habits 
 of mind, good-natured, indifferent, tolerant 
 of evil. To such a being they have paid 
 a homage which they have almost felt to be 
 fictitious, — a homage justifpng itself chief- 
 ly on the plea that the dependence of infe- 
 riors — the general order of society — could 
 hardly be maintained without it. The 
 humbler men, partly perceiving why this 
 decent devotion was thought desirable. 
 
22 HALLOWED BE THY NAME. [Serm. 
 
 partly observing that it only lasted during 
 summer-days, and was often changed for 
 another and more vulgar sort in calamity ; 
 but, above all, conscious that it was of a 
 nature altogether unsuited to them, either 
 cherish amid the glare and glitter of civil- 
 ized life the dark thoughts of another age, 
 or change them for a more resolute and 
 courageous Atheism, or, lastly, learn that 
 God is a refuge in time of trouble, a dehv- 
 erer from the horrors of conscience, not an 
 enemy who must be persuaded to forego his 
 hatred of them, or a mere phantom of 
 benevolence, who leaves his creatures un- 
 disturbed in their wickedness and misery. 
 Upon our thoughts of God it will depend, 
 in one time or another, whether we rise 
 higher or sink lower as societies and as in- 
 dividuals. 
 
 The civility or intelligence of a people 
 may seem to have grown up, and to be grow- 
 ing, under the influence of a multitude of ad- 
 ventitious circumstances. But if you search 
 well, you will find that whatever there is in 
 it not false, whatever has not the sentence 
 of speedy death written upon it, has had a 
 deeper and more mysterious origin. It has 
 been the fruit of struororles, carried on in sol- 
 
II.] HALLOWED BE THY NAME. 23 
 
 itary chambers by men whom the world has 
 not known, or has despised ; struggles which 
 were to decide what power they were meant 
 to obey, and to what power they would yield 
 themselves ; struggles to know the name of 
 Him w^ho was ^vrestling with them ; to know 
 whether He was one who cared for them, or 
 who hated them or despised them ; whether 
 they liad a real or an imaginary Master ; 
 whether God is a presence floating in the air, 
 or a Person who can be loved, feared, trusted ; 
 whether they and the universe were sep- 
 arated by a thin plank of opinion and senti- 
 ment from a bottomless pit of Atheism, into 
 which both must sink at last; or whether 
 they were resting upon a rock whicli could 
 not pass away, though not earth only should 
 be shaken, but also heaven. But for these 
 questions, which those who were exercised 
 by them knew were not propounded by any 
 human doctor, do not fancy that there could 
 have been any thought or energy or hope in 
 the world. Luxury and comfort do not con- 
 fer these ; there is no exorcism in them to 
 cast out the demons of indolence and despair. 
 No ! men have learnt to say this prayer, 
 " Hallowed be thy Name ; " and to say it 
 before all others. They have found that the 
 
24 HALLOWED BE THY NAME. [Serm. 
 
 prayer for bread might mean anything, from 
 an Eleusinian mystery to the cry of a Ge- 
 noveva in the desert for milk to nourish her 
 babe ; that a prayer for forgiveness might 
 mean anything, from the words, " Thou de- 
 sirest truth in the inward parts ; thou canst 
 wash me with hyssop, and I shall be clean ; 
 thou canst wash me, and I shall be whiter 
 than snow ; " to the sacrifice of a virgin, 
 that the wrath of the gods might be averted, 
 and a favorable breeze granted to a fleet. 
 One petition as much as the other, these suf- 
 ferers perceived, must derive its worth from 
 that which went before. What is the name 
 of Him to whom we pray ? all the meaning 
 of prayer, of human existence, turns upon 
 the answer which we make to this demand. 
 II. But is it not quite certain what answer 
 we shall make to it ? How can we hallow 
 the name of God, if by halloiving is meant 
 keeping it separate from all other names ; 
 preserving it as the special treasure of our 
 spirits ; not suffering the idea of absolute 
 holiness, purity, goodness, to be soiled by 
 any defilements from without or from within ? 
 Suppose I could shut myself out from the 
 world, drawing round me some charmed cir- 
 cle which should exclude not only its direct 
 
II.] BALL OWED BE TBY NAME. 25 
 
 assaults but its secret plague influences, 
 should I not still have to ask myself whether 
 I was a safe steward of the divine treasure ; 
 whether my pride in the trust might not 
 destroy it ; whether the name might not pass 
 into a shadow, while I was thinking of it as 
 most substantial ; whether it might not be 
 acquiring from the imaginations of my heart 
 all the same mixtures which it had con- 
 tracted among the tribes of men ? 
 
 Experience authorizes these inquiries ; it 
 scarcely authorizes us in giving more than 
 one answer to them. Sohtude is no security 
 for the hallowing of God's name ; recluses 
 have dealt as irreverently with it as men in 
 the world's bustle. For us, however, this 
 point is of no great practical inportance, ex- 
 cept to preserve us from desiring a state 
 which is evidently not intended for us. We 
 know that our thoughts of God, as well as 
 our other thoughts, are, and will be contin- 
 ually, affected by speech, by books, by the 
 movement and attrition of society. We 
 know how various these thoughts have been : 
 earnest yesterday, indifferent to-day ; the 
 name now so Uttle heeded, that we could 
 trifle with it in the most ordinary conversa- 
 tion, in the most vulgar adjurations ; now so 
 
26 HALLOWED BE THT NAME. [Serm. 
 
 terrible, that we dared not entertain the 
 thought of it ; now looking so beautiful at 
 a distance, that we were content it should 
 always remain at a distance ; now approach- 
 ing into awful nearness ; now making us 
 fear that it would ever be a shadow to us, 
 and nothing more ; now inviting us to take 
 refuge in it from a hopeless Atheism. To 
 hallow God's name, habitually to hallow it, 
 amidst such countless variations of the ex- 
 ternal atmosphere, such colds and heats in 
 ourselves — how is it possible ? Must not 
 we give up the attempt ? 
 
 III. Certainly it is better that we should'; 
 then we shall begin to pray, " Hallowed be 
 thy Name." We cannot hallow it ; we can- 
 not keep it from contact with our folly, 
 baseness, corruption ; the world cannot keep 
 it ; the Church cannot. But Thou canst. 
 Thou canst make the darkness of the world 
 a foil to thy clear untroubled light, a means 
 to its manifestation. Thou canst make " the 
 intricacies, falsehoods, contradictions of our 
 hearts into reasons for our seeking and ap- 
 prehending thy simplicity and truth. That 
 which would be in us, left to ourselves, ter- 
 ror of thy power, thou canst make awe of 
 thy holiness ; what would be presumption 
 
II.] HALLOWED BE THY NAME. 27 
 
 of thy indifference, thou canst make into 
 hope of thy mercy ; what would be defiance 
 of thy judgment, thou canst make trust in 
 thy righteousness. Thus will thy image be 
 restored in man, because he will be able to 
 behold Thee the Archetype. 
 
 Such a prayer is not one which men could 
 have dreamed of themselves, but it is one 
 which God himself has taught them. He 
 led his saints in the old time to pray that 
 He would declare his great name ; to thank 
 Him for all his past revelations of it ; to flee 
 to it as a strong tower, in which they were 
 safe from their enemies. Every new act of 
 his judgment and his mercy was an answer 
 to the cry ; in every such act the prophet 
 saw the witness and pledge of a fuller mani- 
 festation. The petition then was no new 
 one. The disciples had often heard it before 
 that day when our Lord was alone praying, 
 and when they said, " Teach us as John 
 taught his disciples." But they knew that 
 He had stampt it with a new impression ; 
 for though they understood but imperfectly 
 why He had come, and who He was, their 
 hearts testified that He had certainly come 
 to do that which He bade them ask for. If 
 He brought gifts to men, if He proclaimed 
 
28 HALLOWED BE THY NAME. [Serm. 
 
 forgiveness to men, this was his first gift, 
 this was the ground of his forgiveness, He 
 hallowed the name of God. He showed 
 forth the Father who dwelt in Him full of 
 grace and truth. Men could see Him after 
 whose likeness they had been created, in a 
 pure untroubled mirror. They were not 
 obhged to measure the Eternal Mind by the 
 partial distorted forms of truth and goodness 
 which they found each in himself. Here 
 was goodness and truth in its primitive 
 form, in its entire fullness. They needed 
 not to reduce goodness and truth into ab- 
 stractions ; here they were exhibited in 
 actual human life ; the perfect man reflect- 
 ing the perfect God. They need not dream 
 of qualities which the shock of the Fall 
 had separated in their minds — mercy and 
 justice, freedom and obedience — as having 
 a corresponding conflict in the Eternal 
 Mind ; here they were seen working harmo- 
 niously in every word and deed. 
 
 Thus God's name was hallowed for them, 
 thus it has been hallowed for us. This reve- 
 lation is for all ages : if one has more need 
 of it than another, ours is the one. 
 
 We are in danger alike from the invasion 
 of all old superstitions, and of a fanatical 
 
n.] HALLOWED BE THY NAME. 29 
 
 Atheism ; for they have a common ground. 
 All superstition, all idolatry, has its root in 
 the belief that God is made in our image, and 
 not we in his ; the most prevalent assump- 
 tion of the modern as of the ancient soph- 
 ist is, that man is the measure of all things ; 
 that there is nothing great or holy which is 
 not his creation. Do not wonder, then, at 
 any combinations you may see in our day 
 between parties seemingly the most hostile, 
 — at any apparently sudden transitions from 
 one camp to the other. There is no real in- 
 consistency, no abandonment of principle. 
 Do not let us be hasty in urging that charge 
 or any charge. But let us be very careful 
 in understanding the temptation of the age, 
 because it is certainly our own. Let us not 
 think we escape it by doing just the opposite 
 of those who seem to us to have fallen into 
 it, by cultivating all opinions and notions 
 which they reject, by fearing a truth when 
 they speak it. We may find that their 
 practical conclusions meet us at the point 
 which we thought the furthest from them, 
 and that we have turned away from the very 
 principle with which we might have strength- 
 ened ourselves, if not have done some good 
 to them. Still less let us refuse to have our 
 
30 HALLOWED BE THY NAME. [Serm. 
 
 own loose and incoherent notions brought to 
 trial, lest in losing them we should lose the 
 eternal truths of God's Word. Depend upon 
 it, they are in the greatest peril from every 
 insincere habit of mind we tolerate in our- 
 selves ; they will come out with a brightness 
 we have never dreamed of when we are made 
 simple and honest. Therefore let us pray 
 this prayer, " Hallowed be thy Name," be- 
 lieving that it has been answered, and being 
 confident that it will be answered. It was 
 answered in the old time by God's covenant ; 
 by the calling of every holy man ; by the 
 Divine law ; by all the ordinances of family 
 and national life ; by every prophet and 
 teacher whom God sent ; by every witness 
 which He bore to one people or another, in 
 their consciences, in the discipline of their 
 lives, through nature, through death, of his 
 own character. It was answered by the 
 whole life and death of the only-begotten 
 Son, the firstborn of many brethren, the 
 Prince of all the kings of the earth. It was 
 answered by the gift of the Holy Spirit to 
 abide with the Church forever, for this end, 
 that He might teach men of the Father and 
 the Son. It is answered by our baptism 
 into the holy and blessed Name, the Father, 
 
II.] HALLOWED BE THY NAME. 31 
 
 the Son, and the Holy Ghost. It is answered 
 by confirmation and prayers, and holy com- 
 munions, by individual trials, by visitations 
 to nations, by the gift of new life to churches, 
 by the conversion of sinners, by dying beds. 
 It will be answered when we all yield our- 
 selves up in deed and truth to the Spirit of 
 God, that we like our Lord may glorify his 
 name upon the earth, and may accompli sli 
 the work which He has given us to do. 
 
SERMON III. 
 
 SEXAGESIMA SUNDAY. 
 TiiT Kingdom come. — Matthew vi. 10. 
 
 T^E have reached this petition of the 
 * * Lord's Prayer at a time which would 
 seem to give it special emphasis and signif- 
 icancy. I suppose few have repeated it this 
 week without a kind of impression, however 
 vague, that it bore upon events which were 
 occupying themselves and the world. The 
 words, '' Thy Kingdom," must have sug- 
 gested to most a contrast between a King- 
 dom which cannot be moved, and kingdoms 
 which appeared firm one day, and have been 
 shaken to the ground the next. 
 
 But this general reflection will have taken 
 different forms according to the previous 
 habits, convictions, associations, of those Avho 
 entertained it. The first and most natural 
 form is surely an expectation that there will 
 be some time or other a better order in all 
 
Sebm. in.] THY KINGDOM COME. 33 
 
 our relations to each other, and in all the 
 circumstances which affect us here on this 
 planet. Upon what ground soever this ex- 
 pectation rests, it lasts with wonderful vital- 
 ity through fair and foul weather, through 
 killing heats and frosts. No one who has 
 once cherished it entirely loses it ; or if he 
 loses it, he loses himself with it. Disappoint- 
 ments, desertions, mockeries, may change its 
 shape, or drive it further within, but they do 
 not destroy it. If it fades away for a while, 
 it bursts out more vigorously when you 
 least look for it. Many who have expected 
 from one civil movement after another that 
 which they have not found, believe that a 
 better ecclesiastical organization, or a freer 
 working of that which exists, would remedy 
 all confusions ; others find refuge in the 
 promise of a universal education ; not a few, 
 who have convinced themselves that no 
 human rulers of one kind or another, in 
 Church or State, no systems of government 
 or instruction, will avail for the removal of 
 evil and the establishment of good, cling 
 more strongly to the belief that One who is 
 above all human rulers and systems will soon 
 claim the earth as his rightful possession ; 
 that all convulsions in the existing order of 
 
34 THY KINGDOM COME. [SerM. 
 
 things are the trumpets by which He an- 
 nounces that the city He has accursed is 
 about to fall down. All these convictions, 
 different as they are, belong to the same 
 habit of mind. Those who entertain them 
 mean when they pray, " Thy Kingdom 
 come," " Let the earth be governed wisely 
 and truly, not as it has been, by the help of 
 folly, insincerity, crime." 
 
 Such a prayer will call up some echo in 
 the hearts of all. But in many good men 
 only a feeble echo ; for the wish which it 
 expresses is, in them, swallowed up by a 
 stronger one. They never knew where to 
 find or how to make for themselves a posi- 
 tion upon earth ; it never cheered them or 
 soothed them. Now and then they have had 
 sudden revelations of beauty in hill or valley, 
 at sunrise or sunset, but these spoke, as they 
 appeared and vanished, of some region to 
 which the eye could not reach. Now and 
 then they have met faces which smiled on 
 them, but they seemed to have descended 
 from a distant home to which they soon re- 
 turned. Even the narrow circle in which 
 these pilgrims dwell confuses them by the 
 various interests and opposing sentiments of 
 those who belong to it ; the larger circles of 
 
III.] THY KINGDOM COME. 35 
 
 society, with their manifold complications, 
 altogether bewilder them. It seems to them 
 a weary maze, without a plan ; men are run- 
 ning a race with each other, of which a few 
 withered leaves are the prize ; they are be- 
 ginning a tale which must be broken off in 
 the middle ; death makes all plots imperfect ; 
 only that state to which he introduces us can 
 unravel them. There in that state must lie 
 all that we dream of and hope for. Their 
 vision of the land that is very far off may 
 be not as clear as they wish, but it is more 
 clear than their vision of anything which lies 
 about them ; Avithout it all would be shadow 
 and darkness. When such persons think 
 of tumults and revolutions, they feel more 
 keenly what it is they would escape from. 
 When they pray, "Thy Kingdom come," 
 they ask that the Great Shepherd Avill lead 
 them and their brethren out of a land of 
 pits, a thirsty wilderness, a valley of the 
 shadow of death, to a peaceable habitation 
 and a sure dwelling place. 
 
 But there are also men who feel strongly 
 that the kingdoms of this world are of a 
 weak and perishable material, and yet who 
 cannot be satisfied with the mere antici- 
 pation of a better inheritance after death. 
 
36 THY KINGDOM COME. [Serm. 
 
 They require what is different in kind from 
 anything which their eyes see, not merely 
 that in an improved and perfected form. 
 They desire a blessing which by its very 
 nature cannot be more for one time than 
 another, cannot be less needful for men here 
 than hereafter. They have spirits which are 
 haunted with the sense of a beauty and right- 
 eousness and truth which may be imaged in 
 the world around them, but of which the 
 source must lie much nearer to themselves. 
 Some of them would say that it is in them- 
 selves: if men were but great and noble, 
 and disengaged from the impressions of sense 
 and the notions of society, they would per- 
 ceive it. Others affirm that when they ex- 
 alt themselves this secret is hidden from 
 them ; that they enter into it only when 
 they are humbled. 
 
 The first would say, not indeed in a prayer, 
 but in their professions, their daily acts, 
 their processes of self-dicipHne, *' My King- 
 dom come ; " let my spirit be lightened of 
 the outward impediments which prevent it 
 from being right, wise, free ; let it be Hfted 
 to its proper throne, from which it may look 
 upon all beneath and around it, and if there 
 be aught above it, as its own possession. 
 
III.] THY KINGDOM COME. 37 
 
 The other says, "Thy Kingdom come;" 
 let the eyes of my understanding be cleared 
 of their native mists, that they may see thy 
 wisdom ; let me be purged of my inward 
 pride and self-seeking, that I may know 
 thy truth ; let me be set free from my ex- 
 ceeding sinfulness, that I may confess thy 
 righteousness, and be clothed with it. And 
 that this may come to pass, do thou take 
 the government of all that is within me, of 
 conscience, affection, reason, ^vill, that they 
 may do thy work and not their own, and be 
 directed to the great ends for which thou 
 hast designed them, not to those meaner 
 ends which they would invent for them- 
 selves. 
 
 We have found then, at least, three dis- 
 tinct interpretations of tliis prayer, leading 
 to practical conclusions, apparently very 
 remote from each other. It is surely im- 
 portant to know whether they are incompat- 
 ible ; if they are, which is the right one ; 
 if they are not, how they are reconciled. I 
 think you will agree with me that there is 
 but one authority which can decide these 
 questions. He who taught his disciples the 
 prayer, can alone tell them what the nature 
 of that Kingdom is, which He bids them 
 desire. 
 
38 THY KINGDOM COME. [Seem. 
 
 I. Yovi will remember, that when our 
 Lord began to preach, saying. Repent, for 
 the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, the ex- 
 pectation of a coming kingdom was strong 
 in the minds of at least a large body of the 
 Jewish people. Those who felt the Hero- 
 dian family to be cruel oppressors and for- 
 eigners likewise, those who were tormented 
 by the recollection of a still more shameful 
 servitude, which the sight of every Roman 
 soldier, of every tax-gatherer, brought before 
 them, believed that the divine Kingdom, the 
 Kingdom of God, was to be the deliverance 
 from these. Have you not sometimes won- 
 dered that we are not told of any direct 
 words in which our Lord combated this im- 
 pression ? He might have said at once to 
 the people of Galilee, or Judaea, The King- 
 dom I speak of has nothing whatever to do 
 with those to which you compare it ; you 
 only confuse yourselves by thinking of them 
 together. But He did not say so. He used 
 the phrases, " Thy Kingdom," " The King- 
 dom of God," " The Kingdom of Heaven," 
 on every possible occasion, though He knew 
 that this association was present to the minds 
 of those who heard Him. It is true, that 
 those who had come before Him appealing 
 
III.] THY KINGDOM COME. 39 
 
 to the desire for liberty in their country- 
 men, and holding out the hope of a divine 
 interference to satisfy it, had led their fol- 
 lowers into the wilderness to insurrection 
 and to murder. There was that difference, 
 amidst a multitude of others as wonderful, 
 between his method and theirs. What I 
 am observing is, that there was not this dif- 
 ference. The Jews generally, the Gahleans 
 more than the rest of their countrymen, 
 looked upon themselves as in an oppressed, 
 anomalous condition, such as the chosen peo- 
 ple of God ought not to be in. He did not 
 tell them that they were mistaken. They 
 believed that God meant to deliver them 
 out of this condition. His words and his 
 acts confirmed them m the hope. They 
 thought that they must be brought into a 
 different social position before they could 
 attain freedom. He admitted the necessity. 
 Many public acts, besides his last entry into 
 Jerusalem as the Son of David, proved that 
 He claimed to be what Nathanael declared 
 Him to be, "The King of Israel." His 
 parables, so far from setting aside common 
 language, from discoimecting his Kingdom 
 with the common relations and feeUngs of 
 men, aflBirmed that all facts m nature and 
 
40 THY KINGDOM COME. [Serm. 
 
 social life were testifying of it ; his miracles, 
 so far from diminishing the impression that 
 He came to set men free from a galling 
 yoke, were one and all acts of dehverance ; 
 of deliverance, not from some bondage of 
 which the sufferers were not conscious, but 
 from the most visible, obvious, bodily tor- 
 ments. These are sufficient proofs, I think, 
 that our Lord did not intend us, when we 
 prayed his prayer, to shut our eyes against 
 the actual confusions and oppressions under 
 which men are suffering, or to think that 
 his Kingdom is of too transcendant a char- 
 acter to take account of them. Assuredly 
 when we do, we depart from his teaching 
 and example ; we bring ourselves into a very 
 artificial, visionary state of feeling ; we set 
 aside the great truth, that as nothing hu- 
 man should be foreign from those who are 
 partakers of humanity, nothing human can 
 be foreign from Him who is the Head of 
 it. The lofty expressions of contempt for 
 the littleness of mere earthly transactions, 
 and the vicissitudes of human governments, 
 which some divines affect, are not learnt in 
 his school, or in the schools of his prophets. 
 They rather teach us to be ashamed of the 
 cold indifference with which we trace his 
 
III.] THY KINGDOM COME. 41 
 
 footsteps and listen to his voice, in the 
 present aAd past history of mankind. 
 Surely, then, we are not to condemn those 
 who hope for the cure of the ills which they 
 know to exist, through a larger and Avider 
 sympathy in civil governors, through a 
 deeper knowledge of the ends for which the 
 Church exists, and a more faithful use of 
 the powers with which she is endowed, or, 
 lastly, from the manifestation of Him to 
 whom State rulers and Church rulers alike 
 owe homage. All these expectations are • 
 sustained, not crushed, by the Word and 
 Spirit of God. Without divine succor and 
 encouragement they must have perished long 
 ago, to our great misery, under the pressure 
 of selfish feelings and interests, and of the 
 despondency which experience, not pene- 
 trated Avith a higher principle, brings after 
 it. And wherein then do those who have 
 cherished these expectations, to which we 
 owe so much of all that has been best in 
 th^ world, seem to have wandered from 
 his guidance who justifies their higher aspi- 
 rations ? In this respect, I think, mainly. 
 Our Lord speaks of his Kingdom, or his 
 Father's Kingdom, not as if it were to set 
 aside that constitution of the universe, of 
 
42 THY KINGDOM COME. [Serm. 
 
 which men had seen the tokens in family 
 and national institutions, of which they had 
 dreamed when they thought of a higher 
 and more general fellowship ; but as if it 
 were that very constitution in the fullness of 
 its meaning and power. He who is the 
 ground of the world's order, He in whom 
 all things consist, reveals Himself that we 
 may know what its order and consistency 
 are, how all disorder and inconsistency have 
 arisen from the discontent and rebellion of 
 our wills. Now an opposite feeling to this 
 seems to characterize those who are noticing 
 the present distractions of the world, and 
 are suggesting how, in this day or hereafter, 
 they may be removed. All seem to assume 
 that the constitution of things is evil ; not 
 that we are evil in departing from it. With 
 strange unanimity, eager politicians, restless 
 ecclesiastics, hopeful millennarians, seem to 
 take it for granted that the devil is lord of 
 the universe : only that by an improvement 
 in the arrangements of civil life, by a 
 stronger assertion of priestly authority, or 
 by the final coming of the Son of Man, the 
 evil power may be weakened or broken. 
 Which sentiment, by whomsoever enter- 
 tained, is surely unchristian and ungodly. 
 
III.] THY KINGDOM COME. 43 
 
 The holiest men protested against it before 
 our Lord's coming. Though the Kingdom 
 was not yet shown to be a kingdom for the 
 whole earth, they believed that it was ; they 
 declared its laws, testified that heathens 
 were at war with their own proper ruler ; 
 told the chosen race that by their evil acts 
 as kings, priests, people, they were breaking 
 the everlasting covenant. Any other lan- 
 guage since Christ has come is, practically, 
 a renunciation of his authority, and a denial 
 of his incarnation. Those who use it cannot 
 effectually connect the command ''Repent" 
 with the announcement " The Kingdom of 
 Heaven is at hand," though our Lord's 
 example forbids us ever to separate them. 
 For they caimot say, " There has been a 
 holy, blessed order among you, which you 
 have been darkening, confounding, hiding 
 from men, by your sins and selfishness ; but 
 which must and will assert itself, in spite 
 of you and of all that resist it." Were 
 this mode of speaking generally adopted by 
 pastors and preachers, their hearers might 
 be led each to ask himself. What have I 
 done to frustrate the ends for which the 
 Kingdom of Heaven has been established 
 upon earth ? how can I cease my strife with 
 
44 THY KINGDOM COME. [Serm. 
 
 it, and become its obedient subject ? a ques- 
 tion which, instead of destroying their in- 
 terest in the doings of the world generally, 
 would make that interest practical and per- 
 sonal ; instead of lessening their hopes of 
 the time when the darkness shall pass away 
 and the true light shall shine out fully, 
 would make them less earnest in guessing 
 about it than in preparing for it. 
 
 II. But if our Lord spoke thus of his King- 
 dom, did He frown upon the wishes and long- 
 ings of those who would cast this world be- 
 hind them, and project their thoughts wholly 
 into a future state ? So far as anything in 
 their anticipations is incompatible with an 
 entire recognition of the sacredness of our life 
 here ; so far as they imply the Manichaean 
 notion that the earth, or the flesh, is the 
 devil's creature and property ; so far as they 
 utter a merely selfish cry for escape from 
 toil and warfare ; He certainly gives them 
 no encouragement, who hallowed all human 
 life, who overcame the Evil Spirit, whose 
 own garments were dipped in blood. But 
 this, we must all confess, is only the dark 
 and feeble side of a faith which is, in itseK, 
 gracious and inspiring. To despair of the 
 present must be bad ; to hope for the future 
 
ni.] THY KINGDOM COME. 45 
 
 must be good. And this hope our Lord 
 cherishes and confirms, as much as He dis- 
 owns that despair. Think of those words 
 which came with such power to the mind of 
 a scribe who had maintained the doctrine of a 
 resurrection always, but had probably never 
 before felt it to be a reality : "As touching 
 the resurrection of the dead, have ye not 
 read what was spoken to you by God, say- 
 ing, I am the God of Abraham, and Isaac, 
 and Jacob ? He is not the God of the 
 dead, but of the living ; for all live unto 
 Him." What are all speculations about 
 separate states and intermediate existences 
 to this celestial sentence ? Those whom you 
 read of in ages gone by, who sometimes 
 stand out in such clear individuality, who 
 sometimes melt into shadows, all Hve; for 
 He lives from whom their life came. Noth- 
 ing of it is departed, only the death which 
 encompassed it. They have lost no person- 
 ality. Here, there was but the first dawn 
 of it. They were beginning feebly to be 
 conscious of powers ; to recognize distinc- 
 tions ; to feel after unity. He was educat- 
 ing their affections through the first stage 
 of infancy ; their reason, in its struggles to 
 know its object ; their will, in its endeavors 
 
46' THY KINGDOM COME. [Serm. 
 
 to be obedient : who is now bringing them 
 into more wonderful affinities, infinitely 
 deeper apprehensions, a perfect liberty. And 
 what is true of them is true of all who have 
 yielded to the same guidance, who have 
 desired the same light. All live to Him, 
 with not one sympathy impaired or raised 
 too high for human interests. With Him, 
 as the common centre of all their thoughts 
 and adorations, everything which He be- 
 stowed specially upon each is, necessarily, 
 quickened and perfected, and finds its rela- 
 tion to the gift of every other. With Him 
 as their centre they must care for all whom 
 He cares for, but still, one would suppose, 
 be knit closest in all bands of attachment 
 and service to those with whom it was his 
 pleasure, by holy pledges imperfectly under- 
 stood, to unite them below. Such thoughts 
 followed out, not by the fancy, but by the 
 most legitimate reflection upon the state 
 which must remain if the infirmities an'd 
 sins of earth were purged away, would surely 
 go far to satisfy men who have learnt to 
 mourn over the meanness and incoherency 
 of our earthly existence, considered by itseK. 
 And our Lord's own resurrection, and his 
 appearances to his disciples after He was 
 
III.] THY KINGDOM COME. 47 
 
 risen, which were so brief, and yet carried 
 with them such a wonderful witness of a 
 perpetual presence, — these translate his 
 words into life, and declare that our exist- 
 ence is not rounded with a sleep ; or that 
 it is a sleep in Him at whose voice all cre- 
 ation was first awaked, and mil awake 
 again. Witli such thoughts, brethren, we 
 may comfort ourselves when we pray, " Thy 
 Kingdom come." But we must not think 
 that we are waiting for death to solve a 
 problem which is not solved yet. , The death 
 of Him who took away the sins of the 
 world solved it at once and forever ; we 
 only die to understand how perfect the solu- 
 tion is. 
 
 in. But this we shall not understand if 
 we suppose that while our Lord sanctioned 
 the expectations of those who look for a bet- 
 ter government of this world, and of those 
 who look for a world after death. He did 
 not include in his gift and promise the satis- 
 faction of those who feel that they want not 
 a visible kingdom, but a Kingdom of right- 
 eousness, truth, love ; not a future, but an 
 eternal Kingdom. To them and to their 
 hopes we may say that He spoke first. He 
 awakened their longing, He met them before 
 
48 THY KINGDOM COME. [Serm. 
 
 He could respond to the others. " For 
 now," said John the Baptist, '^the axe is 
 laid to the root of 'the trees." He who is at 
 hand is not coming to deal with external 
 circumstances, but first with the being to 
 whom those circumstances belong. Oiu- 
 Lord spoke straight to the conscience, rea- 
 son, will, in man, which were asking after 
 the Unseen, which were seeking for a Father. 
 Even by his bodily cures He showed that 
 He was the Lord of the unseen influences 
 which pro4uce the outward signs of disease 
 and decay. When He cast out evil spirits, 
 He bore witness that He was holding con- 
 verse with the spirit of man ; that with the 
 pride, lust, hatred, the powers of spiritual 
 wickedness in high places which have en- 
 slaved us. He was carrymg on his great 
 controversy. By this victory He accom- 
 phshed his great work. He manifested forth 
 the true state and glory of man, as the child 
 of God, and the inheritor of truth and 
 righteousness, and built his Church upon 
 that foundation of his own divine Humanity, 
 against which the gates of hell shall not 
 prevail. Here, in this inner region, in this 
 root of man's being, He is still subduing his 
 enemies, He is conducting his mysterious 
 
III.] THY KINGDOM COME. 49 
 
 education. To that which He cultivates 
 within us, He promises the great reward, 
 the knowledge of Him who is, and was, and 
 is to come. But be it ever remembered, 
 that while He gives all encouragement to 
 the highest desires of man's heart and rea- 
 son, He gives none whatever to any mys- 
 tical conceits and imaginations. '' The axe 
 is laid to the root of the tree ; therefore 
 every tree which bringeth not forth good 
 fruit is he^vn do^vn and cast into the fire.'* 
 The Kingdom of God begins within, but it 
 is to make itself manifest without. It is 
 to penetrate the feelings, habits, thoughts, 
 words, acts, of him who is the subject of it. 
 At last it is to penetrate our whole social 
 existence, to mould all things according to 
 its laws. 
 
 For this we pray when we say, " Thy 
 Kingdom come." We desire that the King 
 of kings and Lord of lords Avill reign over 
 our spirits and souls and bodies, which are 
 his, and which He has redeemed. We pray 
 for the extinction of all tyranny, whether 
 lodged in particular men or in multitudes ; 
 for the exposure and destruction of corrup- 
 tions inward and outward ; for truth in all 
 departments of government, art, science ; for 
 4 
 
50 THY KINGDOM COME. [Serm. III. 
 
 the true dignity of professions ; for right 
 deahng-s in the commonest transactions of 
 trade ; for blessings that shall be felt in 
 every hovel. We pray for these things, 
 knowing that we pray according to God's 
 will ; knowing that He will hear us. If He 
 had not heard this prayer going up from 
 tens of thousands in all ages, the earth 
 would have been a den of robbers. He will 
 so answer it, that all which He has made 
 shall become as it was when He beheld it on 
 the seventh day, and, lo, it was very good. 
 
SERMON ly. 
 
 QUINQUAGESIMA SUNDAY. 
 
 Thy Will be done, as ix Heavex, so in Eauth. — 
 Luke xi. 2. 
 
 nPHE prayer we considered last week could 
 not easily be separated from the spec- 
 tacle which we had just witnessed, of a 
 fallen kingdom. Since that time we have 
 been watching attempts to construct a new 
 society out of the ruins of the old. If I do 
 not mistake, many have regarded these 
 experiments with greater impatience, with 
 less complacency, than the events which 
 preceded them, and made them necessary. 
 Such words as these have risen very readily 
 to our lips : " What a weary repetition is 
 here of a thrice-told tale ! Is it possible that 
 phrases which have been tested and found 
 hollow nearly sixty years ago, are still fit 
 for use and circulation now? Can it be 
 that we must pass through another series of 
 
52 THY WILL BE DONE. [Serm. 
 
 the same false promises, vain hopes, bitter 
 disappointments, the same dreams of peace 
 realized in blood, which were appointed for 
 the last generation ? " Not to entertain 
 thoughts of this kind is difficult — difficult 
 even not to give them expression. Yet 
 when they are spoken they must drive others 
 to ask, while we harbor them, does not the 
 question present itself to ourselves, — Is then 
 the belief a fantasy, that men are intended 
 for a brotherhood ? Must the effort to re- 
 alize it terminate in ridicule or in crime ? 
 Supposing that is the fact, should we begin 
 with accusing other men of deception ? 
 Have we not a long list of falsehoods to con- 
 fess which we have been proclaiming our- 
 selves — in pulpits especially — which have 
 been proclaimed throughout Christendom 
 for nearly 1800 years ? 
 
 Such an inquiry may no doubt be evaded 
 by the reply : " O ! we do not take Chris- 
 tianity into account. That^ of course, may 
 affect anything. We complain of those 
 who think they can work all good to their 
 species without it." But our conscience 
 will not be so appeased. It will rejoin, 
 *' And if you take Christianity into account, 
 what then ? You know that it will not of 
 
IV.] THY WILL BE DONE. 53 
 
 course set the world right. Do you believe 
 seriously in your heart, that it can set the 
 world right at all, under any conditions ? 
 If not, you should not pretend to believe it. 
 Certainly this end will not be accomplished 
 by phrases and professions. These are not 
 the least better when they are coined in one 
 mint than in another. It does not help us 
 more to talk of brotherhood on Christian 
 principles, than of brotherhood upon any 
 other principles. The more sacred the lan- 
 guage the more offensive is any trifling use of 
 it. We must not blame our neighbors for try- 
 ing to make men brothers without the Gos- 
 pel, if we are not ourselves convinced that 
 the Gospel can make them so." There is 
 still another resource which I know is com- 
 monly adopted by those who seek to escape 
 from this difficulty. They say, " Chris- 
 tianity declares to us the exceeding sinful- 
 ness of the human heart and will. There 
 is the root of all the confusions and miseries 
 of the world. What mockery then to reform 
 it by new schemes of government and soci- 
 ety." Christianity does, no doubt, declare 
 to us, or rather assumes, the exceeding sin- 
 fulness of man's heart. But it comes not 
 proclaiming sin, but proclaiming a remedy 
 
54 THY WILL BE DONE. [Serm. 
 
 for it. Do we believe the remedy to be 
 effectual? If not, in what sense do we 
 call ourselves Christians ? If we do, how 
 dare we blaspheme Christianity by calling 
 her to prove that evil, social evil or individ- 
 ual, is inevitable ? We cannot then avoid 
 the inquiry, severe though it must be to 
 most of us, What have you meant hitherto 
 by this prayer, " Thy will be done, as in 
 heaven, so on earth ? " What have you 
 taken the Will of God the Father of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ to be ? How do you sup- 
 pose it is done in heaven ? What is implied 
 in asking, that even so it may be done on 
 earth ? 
 
 I. It would be a great mistake to identify 
 this petition with that which I spoke of a 
 fortnight ago. The Name denotes that 
 which a Person is in Himself, his own char- 
 acter. This is an object of contemplation ; 
 it is to be hallowed. A Will imports energy 
 going forth ; it points to action, to effect ; 
 it is to be done. It is very needful for the 
 clearness of our mmds, and for great prac- 
 tical results, to remember this distinction. 
 But it is equally needful to remember that 
 the name and the will exactly correspond to 
 each other, that at all events in a perfect 
 
IV.] THY WILL BE DONE. 55 
 
 being there cannot be the slightest clashing 
 or contrariety between them. Nay more ; 
 if the name be that which has been revealed 
 to us as the name of God ; if it express 
 goodness, mercy, loving-kindness, we cannot 
 think of it at all Avithout thinking of a ^vill, 
 directed towards other beings, and exer- 
 cising itself upon them. To identify Avill 
 with mere sovereignty, is to destroy the 
 earlier petition. We cannot hallow the 
 name of God if we suppose power to be liis 
 most essential characteristic, or the manifes- 
 tation of power to be his cliief delight. 
 This notion of Him is evidently fashioned 
 out of our own low appetites and base fan- 
 cies ; it is the notion whicli lies at the root of 
 the dark fables of heathenism. The whole 
 Revelation whicli is dehvered in the Old 
 and New Testament is nothing else than 
 a continuous protest against it, or rather 
 a continuous unfolding of the truth from 
 which it is a departure. It assaults the nat- 
 ural tendency of our minds, which is to wor- 
 ship all the different shapes and appearances 
 of power that we discern in the world 
 around us ; it leads us to feel that we need 
 some power of an altogether higher and dif- 
 ferent kind to rule ourselves ; it shows us 
 
56 THY WILL BE DONE. [Serm. 
 
 that this power must be a Will ; that it 
 must be moral ; that righteousness must be 
 its essence, power its instrument. A God of 
 righteousness and truth, just and without 
 iniquity, is He whom the Bible speaks of, 
 He who presents Himself to the conscience, 
 heart, will, of his creatures, as the Author 
 of all that is right and good in them and in 
 the universe. 
 
 When we say. Thy Will, this must be 
 the sense in which our Lord would have us 
 speak the words. To enter into the in- 
 most recesses of that Will, was his only, who 
 perfectly delighted in it. But we are sure, 
 that were it possible for us to know as He 
 knew, we should not discover a difference 
 of purpose, another kind of will than that 
 which his acts exhibited ; we should only 
 behold that infinite abysmal love, which, 
 through our evil and selfishness, had been 
 hidden from us. It would be well for us, 
 brethren, if we were more careful of insult- 
 ing the Majesty of Heaven in our confes- 
 sions of ignorance as well as in our boast of 
 knowledge. We have no right to say. We 
 are such poor creatures, we cannot tell the 
 least what are the designs of God ; we can 
 only submit to his irresistible pleasure. It 
 
IV.] THY WILL BE DONE. 57 
 
 is precisely his design which He has made 
 known to us ; what his will is to the human 
 race and each of his members, is not one of 
 the secrets which He witliholds from us and 
 from our children. Nor is there any real 
 awe of Him Avhile we choose to think our 
 own thoughts about it instead of his, whilst 
 we insist upon doing homage to a dreary, 
 naked Omnipotence. For, however we may 
 fancy that there is something at once hum- 
 bUng and elevating in the thought of that 
 which may crush and may uphold us, it is 
 not a contemplation in which we care to 
 abide ; the spirit within us soon starts up 
 from the momentary depression it has caused, 
 soon betakes itself to other and more nat- 
 ural ways of realizing its o^vn dignity. We 
 want a mightier charm than this ; we want 
 the belief and knowledge of a Will that is 
 always originating and effectuating good — 
 good and nothing else. Before such a Being,, 
 the spirit of man trembles ; in his presence it 
 feels its own nothmgness ; to Him it can 
 look up, and be sure that He is raising it. 
 Hence comes a conviction, not of weakness, 
 but of sin ; the sense, not that we have been 
 unable to resist, but that we have actually 
 resisted that power which is workhig for the 
 
58 THY WILL BE DONE. [Serm. 
 
 deliverance and blessedness of us and of our 
 whole race. A power we shall then jojrfully 
 confess it to be, when we know that it is not 
 that merely or principally. We could not 
 bear to suppose — it would be the most fla- 
 grant of contradictions — that a perfectly lov- 
 ing will was ever idle, that it was not con- 
 tinually energizing, continually accomphsh- 
 ing its own deep and gracious ends. Where 
 the limit is to their accomplishment, how is 
 it possible that a creature will can contend 
 with that which has formed it ; by what 
 mysterious concurrence, which cannot be un- 
 derstood in either alone, obedience is pro- 
 duced out of rebellion — here is a depth in- 
 deed, in which we may be content not to 
 see our way ; here is that secret which, 
 except in life and practice, we never pene- 
 trate. I say, except in life and practice ; 
 for we can and do know in our own experi- 
 ence the fact of resistance and the law of 
 submission. We do know that every evil 
 act has been one against which there was a 
 divine remonstrance within us ; we do know 
 that this act has brought disorder and con- 
 tradiction after it ; we do know that, not we 
 ourselves, but He who has curbed us and 
 forewarned us of the evil, has wrought the 
 
IV.] THY WILL BE DONE. 59 
 
 repentance for it ; since only when we con- 
 fessed the wrong and cried to be made right 
 were we brought into our true state. Thus 
 much every man may know in himself ; but 
 to generalize from this experience is a more 
 difficult process than we sometimes suspect. 
 The logical terms in which we express our 
 conclusions are even less adequate to describe 
 the subtle operations of spirit than those of 
 nature ; Ave should not, therefore, suffer them 
 to embarrass us either in our dealinjis with 
 our individual consciences, or in our judg- 
 ments respecting the purposes of God. Gen- 
 erahties are not accurate enougli for the- one ; 
 they are far too narrow for the other. A 
 man cannot be honest in action if he applies 
 maxims and formulas about the extent of 
 prescience and human power to his o^vn par- 
 ticular conduct ; he must be profane and false 
 if he uses them to measure the Eternal Mind. 
 By a strange perversity those who are using 
 their intellects to determine what must be 
 the acts and intentions of God, resent every 
 appeal, though grounded on express reve- 
 lation, to his moral nature ; as if it im- 
 plied that we were circumscribing Him by 
 our own imperfections. But this appeal is 
 a witness against all such circumscription. 
 
60 THY WILL BE DONE. [Serm. 
 
 We say, that we must acknowledge the abso- 
 lute goodness of that will, which was mani- 
 fested in act by the only begotten Son, or 
 we shall make it merely the image of our 
 own. We must have an invariable standard 
 to which'we can refer ourselves ; or we shall 
 make ourselves, with all our variations and 
 contradictions, the standard. We must not 
 let logical formulas, or deductions from our 
 own experience, and the world's experience, 
 or possible dangers, or the fear of losing 
 plausible topics of declamation, come in the 
 way of the strict simple use of this prayer, 
 or force us to mean something less by the 
 words. Thy Will, than a will of efficient 
 good to every creature ; otherwise we shall 
 either be contracting our own love within 
 limits which God commands us to transgress, 
 or blasphemously suppose that it is, at some 
 point or other, greater than his. At all haz- 
 ards, in despite of all reasonings and all au- 
 thority, chng to the prayer. That will never 
 do^you harm, or lead you astray. The 
 more we use it, in the faith that the Will 
 we ask should be done is the right loving 
 and blessed Will, the more we shall know 
 that it is, the more we shall be sure that it 
 must be done. We shall meet every day 
 
IV.] THY WILL BE DONE. 61 
 
 with a set of new impediments to that con- 
 viction ; at times, it will seem the most 
 monstrous and incredible of all convictions ; 
 then when it does, the prayer is specially 
 needed to raise us above the plausible lies 
 of our understandings ; to place us in a point 
 of view whence we can see the truth which 
 surmounts them. That point of view is ob- 
 tained when our state is the lowliest ; we 
 must sink, not rise, if we would feel our re- 
 lation to the Will which is guiding all crea- 
 tion ; the Cross is at once the complete ut- 
 terance of the prayer and the answer to it. 
 
 II. For it is the Cross which tells us how 
 this Will is done in Heaven. We should be 
 giving an intelligible sense to this clause, if 
 we took heaven in its simplest, most out- 
 ward sense, as synonymous with what we 
 call the heavenly bodies ; and if we sup- 
 posed the prayer to be that, as all these 
 silently and calmly obey the law which was 
 given them on the fourth day, so the volun- 
 tary creatures of God, who have set his will 
 at nought, might be brought into a submis- 
 sion as complete, into an order as unbroken 
 and harmonious. There would be a deep 
 significance in such a petition, though we 
 should need great caution to prevent it from 
 
62 THY WILL BE DONE. [Serm." 
 
 turning into tlie most iincliristian and dread- 
 ful of all desires — the desire to be free from 
 responsibility, to lose our wills, to become 
 mere natural creatures. And I do not think 
 any one who has prayed the Lord's Prayer 
 ever rested in this interpretation, even if 
 it might be cherished for a moment. The 
 general feeling of Christian people has been 
 that this Will is done in heaven, not by 
 blind agents, but by intelligent, spiritual 
 creatures ; by wills which might have fallen, 
 but which stood in holy, cheerful obedience. 
 Of such beings Scripture speaks often ; their 
 existence it assumes throughout ; only it 
 does not indulge us with any such account 
 of their condition and circumstances as 
 would lead us away from that one great 
 truth of their history, in which all others 
 are included : '' They do his commandments, 
 hearkening to the voice of his words." We 
 have, in the Bible, no description of celes- 
 tial hierarchies such as the schoolmen of the 
 Middle Ages were wont to draw out ; above 
 all, no allusions to the angehc nature, in 
 terms so common in more modern writers, 
 which would lead us to suppose that it was 
 essentially different from our own. The 
 more carefully you consider the passages in 
 
IV.] THY WILL BE DONE. 63 
 
 Scripture concerning angels, the more you 
 will be struck with the use of a language 
 which seems almost to confound them mth 
 men. And why, but because Scripture 
 never for an instant contemplates the de- 
 rangement of man's state, which is the con- 
 sequence of his disobedience, as determining 
 what that state is. It looks upon the un- 
 fallen creature, or the creature renewed 
 after the fall, as the proper representative 
 of humanity — not upon one Avho is dead 
 in trespasses and sins ; it never treats an 
 anomaly as a law. " Their angels," says 
 our Lord, *' do always behold the face of my 
 Father in heaven ; for the Son of ^lan is 
 come to seek and to save that which was 
 lost." The true form of human existence 
 and society has not perished because certain 
 fragments have been severed from it ; the 
 flock was not destroyed because a set of 
 sheep had wandered from it ; only He, in 
 whom the whole harmony stood perfect, 
 came to reunite the fragments ; the Shep- 
 herd came into the wilderness to carry home 
 rejoicing the lost one. It is the effect of 
 our sin to make us look upon ourselves as 
 the centres of the universe ; and then to 
 look upon the perverse and miserable acci- 
 
64 THY WILL BE DONE. [Serm. 
 
 dents of our condition as determining what 
 we ourselves are : so all the manifestations 
 of God are treated as if they were merely- 
 appropriate to those accidents, till we learn 
 at last to look upon sin, not as that which 
 takes us out of the harmony God has estab- 
 lished, but as that which has been able to 
 subvert the harmony, to frustrate the Di- 
 vine Will. To feel sin, as we are intended 
 to feel it, seems almost impossible while we 
 adopt this scheme ; still more, to feel the 
 might and mystery of redemption. But if 
 we contemplate the Son of Man as the Lord 
 of the unf alien as well as of the fallen crea- 
 tion, if we believe that He perfectly fulfilled 
 that Will under all the conditions of temp- 
 tation and misery upon earth, which He had 
 fulfilled before the worlds were, our minds 
 become quieter and more hopeful. Let 
 Science discover to us as many myriads of 
 worlds as it may ; let each of these myriads 
 of worlds be peopled with myriads of creat- 
 ures ; we know, if they are involuntary^, 
 they are subject to the same Will which 
 rules every animal and vegetable on this 
 planet ; if they are voluntary, their state 
 must be one of cheerful dependence upon 
 that Will, or else of rebellion against it. 
 
rV.] THY WILL BE DONE. 65 
 
 There must be an order for them, and it 
 must be a blessed order. Space and time 
 can make no difference in that which con- 
 cerns the Eternal government, in the prin- 
 ciples of obedience, disobedience, redemp- 
 tion. And however darkly we may see into 
 these things, we are sure of this prayer " as 
 in Heaven ; " we are sure that we are not 
 presuming when we believe it and offer it 
 up. As we do so, the fetters of time and 
 space become more and more loosened 
 through his might who wilhngly took them 
 upon Himself, and then ascended up on 
 high, leading captivity captive, that He 
 might fill all things. It becomes no hard 
 effort to suppose the existence of multitudes 
 of blessed creatures, formed and kept in the* 
 image of Him who said, '* Even so. Father, 
 for so it seemed good in thy sight ; " or to 
 believe that mysteries of love have been re- 
 vealed to them, through our fall and redemp- 
 tion, which they desire more deeply to look 
 into ; or to feel that they must rejoice over 
 one sinner who repenteth. 
 
 in. And therefore the prayer may well 
 go on, " Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on 
 earth." Holding fast the testimony of Christ 
 respecting his Father's Will ; believing that 
 
66 THY WILL BE DONE. [Serm. 
 
 it is continually at work to execute its pur- 
 poses ; believing that there are multitudes of 
 wills in whom it does work effectually, tri- 
 umphantly, who obey it and are free ; believ- 
 ing, lastly, that He who guides them, and to 
 whom they do homage, has taken account of 
 this earth for the purpose' of restoring those 
 who dwell upon it to submission, liberty, 
 unity, we can ask without fear that -all which 
 resists this Will in one place or another may 
 be brought to acquiesce in it, and to become 
 its cheerful servant and child. If place 
 makes no difference in the view which we 
 take of those who confess this Will and yield 
 themselves to it, place can make no difference 
 in its power of reaching and subduing those 
 "who have been refractory. There is nothing, 
 surely, in this fair earth to make it an unfit 
 dwelling for all that is pure and gracious. 
 It is the revolted will which interposes the 
 one barrier to all communications from above, 
 to union and fellowship below. The selfish, 
 self-seeking spirit says, " Thy will be not 
 done ; " love shall not have dominion here : 
 supposing that demon cast out, supposing the 
 spirit of man brought to desire that it should 
 serve in heaven, instead of reigning in hell ; 
 and the earth, the battle-field between them, 
 
IV.] THY WILL BE DONE. 67 
 
 which Christ won when He gave up Him- 
 self, becomes not potentially but actually 
 God's, by its own acknowledgment, as well 
 as by his victory. And we know, assuredly, 
 that spirits which have yielded themselves 
 to the tyranny of the evil power are, day by 
 day, set free from its yoke ; that God, by the 
 mighty instruments which He has ^vrested 
 out of the hands of his enemies, by indi- 
 vidual sorrows, by national calamities, does 
 lead men to feel that it is better to live in 
 their Father's house, than to feed upon husks, 
 or to starve. If we do not think so, why do 
 we use this prayer ? what sense is there in 
 it ? what hope can we have from it ? If we 
 confess so much, how can we ever make it a 
 charge against any people, that they hope 
 for a brotherhood upon earth ? To tell them, 
 if that is the case, that they are not resting 
 their expectations on a safe ground; that 
 there is no brotherhood, unless we begin with 
 confessing a Father ; that we must attain it 
 by giving up ourselves to do his Will ; that 
 if we set up our own, we are enthroning the 
 very principle which has made all unity im- 
 possible : this is right, this is benevolent. 
 But we have scarcely a right to dispossess a 
 man of a pleasant dream unless we can give 
 
68 THY WILL BE DONE. [Serm. 
 
 him a reality in place for it ; for every hope 
 points upwards ; if it does not find an object, 
 it is in search of one ; you cannot crush it 
 without robbing your fellow-creature of a 
 witness for God, and an instrument of puri- 
 fication. I do not mean that falsehood can 
 ever do good to a human soul, or be anything 
 except a curse to it ; but I mean that hope is 
 a deliverance out of the falsehoods of sense, 
 and that there is a truth always correspond- 
 ing to it, which is missed, not because the 
 hope is too strong, but because inconsistent 
 elements are mingled with it, which weaken 
 and debase it. Therefore let us labor dili- 
 gently to clear ourselves of all such mixtures. 
 One I referred to before, and will speak of 
 now. We say that Christianity can bring 
 about a true fraternity among men. But 
 this is an elliptical mode of speech, and may 
 be a misleading one. Christianity, as a mere 
 system of doctrines or practices, will never 
 make men brothers. By Christianity we 
 must understand the reconciliation of man- 
 kind to God in Christ ; we must understand 
 the power and privilege of saying, " Our 
 Father — thy Will be done in earth as it 
 is in heaven." No notion, or set of notions, 
 will bind us together ; He binds us who has 
 
IV.] THY WILL BE DONE. 69 
 
 given his Son for us all, that we might not 
 live forever in separation from Him and from 
 each other. There is another error which 
 is, perhaps, in practice, even more fatal. We 
 .are apt to say, " These large schemes of the 
 universe, which we hear so much of, are vain ; 
 what good can come of them ? let us try to 
 do our duty each m his own sphere." An 
 excellent resolution ; but, too often, adopted 
 merely in spite, and therefore leading to no 
 result. We exalt the little for the sake of 
 disparaging the large ; presently we grow 
 weary of not doing more ; we fly back to 
 great schemes which we have pronounced 
 abortive ; because we find them so we do 
 nothing. Tliis prayer meets us at each 
 point ; it will not allow us to escape by one 
 pretext or the other. It does not treat the 
 projects of men for universal societies, un- 
 bounded pantisocracies, as too large. It 
 overreaches them all with these words, " As 
 in Heaven." It opens to us the vision of a 
 society, in which angels and archangels, and 
 the spirits of the just made perfect, are 
 citizens, and in which we too have an inher- 
 itance. It does not look upon any homely 
 individual task of self-sacrifice as insignifi- 
 cant : " So upon earth " meets every such 
 
70 THY WILL BE DONE. [Serm. IV. 
 
 case, and reminds us that the lowliest tasks 
 beseem the disciples of Him who " took upon 
 Him the form of a servant, and was found 
 in fashion as a man." " Thy Will be done " 
 reconciles the high and the mean ; the Will of ^ 
 Him who created the heavens, and stretched 
 them out ; the Will of Him who was born in 
 the manger ; the Will of that Spirit of Holi- 
 ness in whom they are eternally one. 
 
SERMON y. 
 
 FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT. 
 Give us this Day our daily Bread. — Matthew vi. 11. 
 
 T^HERE are many points of view from 
 -*- which this season of Lent may be re- 
 gard(?d. One of them is given us in the 
 beginning of the Gospel for to-day. The 
 Tempter said to Jesus, " If thou be the Son 
 of God, command that these stones be made 
 bread." He answered, "It is written, Man 
 shall not live by bread alone, but by every 
 word that proceedeth out of the mouth of 
 God shall men live." If these last words 
 had declared that man does not live by 
 bread, they would have been naturally con- 
 strued to mean that he has a higher, more 
 mysterious life than that of his body ; one 
 requiring a diviner nourishment. But this 
 sense, though it may be latent in the answer, 
 has not generally been felt to arise imme- 
 diately out of it. That the most perfect 
 
72 GIVE us THIS DAY [Serm. 
 
 man does, in some sense, live by bread, was 
 shown by our Lord's hungering. He did 
 not exalt himself above the conditions of 
 creatures with bodies, dying bodies ; those 
 conditions He entered into. It was to his 
 weakness, to his suffering, that the Tempter 
 spoke. And the reply did not move the 
 question to a different ground, but met it on 
 its own ground. Man's hod^ lives not by 
 bread alone, but by the Word which pro- 
 ceedeth out of the mouth of God. This 
 was, obviously, the first intention of the 
 language when it was used by Moses. • The 
 manna proved to the Israelites that their 
 support came from the Word of God. That 
 Word did not sustain them without visible 
 food ; but it conferred upon the visible thing 
 its power of sustaining them. Take away 
 the life-giving Word, which proceeded out of 
 the mouth of God, and the httle round thing 
 which lay upon the ground would have been 
 useless. This lesson they were to lay to 
 heart ; the pot of manna in the tabernacle 
 was to remind them of it when they were 
 come into the promised land, and were eat- 
 ing bread made by various processes from 
 the corn which they had themselves sown 
 and reaped. They were not to think that 
 
v.] OUR DAILY BREAD. 73 
 
 this derived its nourishing power less from 
 the Word of God than the manna which 
 their fathers ate in the wilderness. They 
 were not to suppose that this bread had any 
 virtue of its own more than the other. Its 
 virtue lay in its fitness for the creature whom 
 God had endued with a life incomparably 
 more wonderful than that of the corn, won- 
 derful as that is ; wonderful as is its capacity 
 of growth, maturity, conversion into a mate- 
 rial quite unlike itself ; wonderful as is the 
 whole relation of the vegetable to the animal 
 substance. Rightly reflected on, this bread 
 contained a deeper, more comprehensive, 
 revelation of God than the manna. But, 
 because deeper and more comprehensive, 
 therefore less adapted to an infant nation, 
 which had been sensualized and debased 
 by animal and vegetable worship, and by 
 the slavery which must accompany it. 
 Such a people have to begin at the alpha- 
 bet ; they must be taught by the falling 
 of food from Heaven, that they depend 
 upon an invisible Person, a sure Friend, 
 who cares for them ; not upon the hard, 
 material thing which will not come to 
 them when they ask for it ; which they will 
 be least able to procure when they treat it 
 
74 GIVE us THIS DAT [Serm. 
 
 with most reverence. But that truth had 
 need to be fixed in their hearts, again and 
 again, in different stages of their history, by 
 •methods adapted to those stages. In the 
 city as much as in the wilderness; when 
 they had grown old in a settled independ- 
 ence, as much as when they had just es- 
 caped from the flesh-pots of Egypt ; in the 
 monotony of ease, as much as when every- 
 thing around them spoke of famine, and 
 drought, they would be assailed by material- 
 ism and unbelief ; they would be in danger 
 of losing all thought of an unseen Protector. 
 Therefore the heavens would become brass, 
 and the earth iron, the locust and the 
 palmer-worm would eat up the fruits of the 
 ground, the Philistine, or the Assyrian, 
 would lay it waste for the same reason that 
 the manna had fallen in the sight of their 
 fathers ; to show them that they lived by 
 the Word which proceeded out of the mouth 
 of God, and not by any necessary fertility 
 in the soil, or special exemption from the 
 plagues of Egypt, or any strength in their 
 hands or in their wit. There might come, 
 in the latter days of the nation, even a 
 harder and more desperate condition than 
 that which is the result of men's natural 
 
v.] OUR DAILY BREAD. 75 
 
 inclination to trust in things seen, and in 
 the works of their own hands. A stiff rehg- 
 ious formalism, a comfortable conceit that 
 they were going on with suitable decency 
 through a round of appointed services, or, 
 were acquiring merit by acts of voluntary 
 supererogatory devotion, might make the 
 heaven brass and the earth iron in another 
 sense. All real communication might be 
 cut off between them ; the Lord of all might, 
 be exhibited as a tyrant to be won over by 
 presents and bribes ; the heart which should 
 receive his grace might become utterly im- 
 penetrable. In such a period of the history 
 of the Jews, our Lord appeared among 
 them ; at such a time the voice from Heaven 
 said, " This is my beloved Son," and the 
 voice from hell, " If thou be the Son of God, 
 command that these stones be made bread." 
 At such a time. He claimed to be the Son 
 of God, not because He could make stones, 
 bread, but because He could stand on the. 
 old promise, " Man shall not live by bread 
 alone, but by every word that proceedeth 
 out of the mouth of God." And having 
 thus asserted his own filial dependence and. 
 filial faith, and having claimed the privilege 
 of dependence and faith, not for Himself 
 
76 GIVE us THIS DAT [Serm. 
 
 but for man ; He, who came as the firstborn 
 of many brethren, could say to the band of 
 fishermen, his disciples, " After this man- 
 ner, therefore, pray ye : Our Father — give 
 us this day our daily bread." That child- 
 like petition was the fruit of liis Baptism, 
 Fasting, and Temptation. 
 
 The forty days then which bring that 
 Fasting and Temptation to our mind, are 
 given us especially that we may be taught 
 how to pray this prayer. Those who find 
 it quite easy, in all circumstances of indul- 
 gence and comfort, to believe that they re- 
 ceive their bread from God ; who, when it 
 is most abundant, ask Him as to give it 
 — meaning what they say — have not, per- 
 haps, any call to self-restraint. But there 
 are some who know, in their consciences, that 
 they are apt to mock God when they speak 
 these solemn words, — apt to take food and 
 every other blessing as if it were their right, 
 of which no power in heaven or earth except 
 by sheer injustice can deprive them. Some- 
 thing which shall tell them of dependence, 
 some secret reminiscence, insignificant to 
 others, that all things are not their own ; 
 some hint that there are a few milhon creat- 
 ures of their flesh and blood who cannot 
 
v.] OUR DAILY BREAD. 77 
 
 call any of these things their own, is needful 
 for them. If it comes in the form of pun- 
 ishment sent specially to themselves, they 
 cannot say it was not wanted ; if it is a voice 
 addressed generally to the whole Church, a 
 season returning year by year, they cannot 
 pretend that there are any satisfactory rea- 
 sons why they should close their ears to it. 
 What they ought to desire is, that they may 
 keep the end in sight ; so they will never 
 reckon means, of whatever kind they be, of 
 any value for their own sakes ; they will not 
 fancy that to abstain from food is more 
 meritorious in God's sight, than to eat it ; 
 if in either case, equally, they are desiring 
 to recollect that it is a good which He 
 bestows. Above all, they will feel that, 
 whatever else Lent is, it is certiiinly a time 
 of confession, and their great hope of being 
 ever able to use this prayer more faithfully 
 must be grounded on an examination of the 
 causes which have made it so unreal in times 
 past. Let us look manfully at some of these 
 causes this afternoon ; if we study the peti- 
 tion, we shall not be long in discovering 
 them. 
 
 I. It may seem strange that I should put, 
 first of all, our unwillingness to acknowledge 
 
78 GIVE us THIS DAY [Serm. 
 
 God as a Giver ; our inclination to think of 
 Him rather as an Exactor. Such a charge 
 will, I know, sound to some most para- 
 doxical. " What ! " they will say, " do you 
 affirm that people in this day like especially 
 to be reminded of the duties that are re- 
 quired of them, and dislike to be reminded 
 of the gifts and mercies which they may 
 expect with or without the performance of 
 those duties ? Is not precisely the oppo- 
 site error that to which our age is prone ? 
 Are we not most restless and impatient 
 when we are told. Such things you ought 
 to do ; Such men you ought to be ; most 
 eager to receive the comfortable assurance 
 that we may rest, for that God's grace 
 is everything — man's energy nothing ? " 
 Those who make this objection show that 
 they have considerable experience, both of 
 other men's infirmities and of their own. 
 That a certain languor, not incompatible 
 with much fever but one of its symptoms, is 
 characteristic of our time, I should indeed 
 be afraid to deny. We cannot feel it our- 
 selves without being conscious that it is 
 abroad. That when we are indisposed to 
 strenuous effort, we often take refuge in 
 theories, religious or philosophical, which 
 
v.] OUR DAILY BREAD. 79 
 
 disparage it, or represent it as needless, is 
 also indisputable. We try stimulants first, 
 then opiates ; and each empiric, who would 
 suggest a new one, may reasonably speculate 
 upon the failure of the last. But where did 
 this listlessness begin ? what is the root of 
 it ? Our Lord puts this interpretation of 
 it into the mouth of one who had exliibited 
 it and wished to justify it thus : " I knew 
 thee that thou wert an hard man, reaping 
 where thou didst not sow, and gathering 
 where thou didst not strew ; therefore I hid 
 thy talent in the earth ; lo ! there tliou hast 
 that is thine." If we can trust Him who 
 knew what was in man, the two accusations 
 are not inconsistent ; we may be very slow 
 in listening to calls of duty, and the reason 
 may be that we regard Him who calls us an 
 Exactor, not a Giver. I press this confes- 
 sion before all others, not only because the 
 first word of the Prayer suggests it, but 
 because I believe we, the ministers of God, 
 are more bound to make it than other men. 
 We have thought, it seems to me, that our 
 chief business was to persuade and conjure 
 and argue and frighten men into a notion 
 and feeling of their responsibiUties ; whereas 
 our chief business is, assuredly, to proclaim 
 
80 GIVE US THIS DAY [Serm. 
 
 the name of God ; to set that before our 
 fellow-creatures in its f uUness and reality ; 
 80 to convince them of their sin ; so to teach 
 them how they may be delivered from it. 
 Being very eager to make out a case against 
 mankind, comparatively indifferent about 
 the assertion and vindication of the Divine 
 character, we have failed in one object quite 
 as much as the other. We have not dared 
 to speak of God broadly, simply, absolutely, 
 as a Giver, lest we should thereby weaken 
 his claim upon man's obedience ; whereas 
 this is his claim upon their obedience : in 
 this way He enforces his claim. Thus we 
 have begotten in men a feeling that they are 
 obliged to do something which they cannot 
 do. A struggle ensues, passionate, irregu- 
 lar, hopeless, after an unattainable prize ; 
 then bitter discontent and murmuring 
 against Him who seems to have created us 
 for vanity and wretchedness. 
 
 See how this consideration affects the 
 petition for daily bread. If we dared to 
 look upon God as a Giver in the full, free, 
 intelligible sense of the words, we should, in 
 asking for bread, feel that we were asking 
 for the power and energy wherewith to work 
 for it. We should say to ourselves : " This 
 
v.] OUR DAILY BREAD. 81 
 
 is the law under which God has put the 
 universe, a merciful and good law, which if 
 man is able to evade as he is in some regions 
 of exuberant fertihty, the seeming privilege 
 turns out to be his curse. It is desiring a 
 stone, and not bread, to desire that we ma}^ 
 have all we want without the sweat of our 
 brow ; and such a stone the Father will not 
 give us. But when we desire the will to 
 toil, and the wisdom to toil, and the strength 
 to toil, and the fruit of toil, we plead as men 
 with Him who desires that we should sub- 
 due the earth and replenish it, because He 
 has made us in his image, and would have 
 us share his work and his rest. Then we 
 ask according to his ^vill, and He heareth us. 
 Then does the earth bring forth and bud, 
 and God, even our o^vn God, blesses us. 
 We are not the creatures of chance ; we are 
 not the slaves of a Pharaoh ; we are doing 
 the blessed command of Him who created 
 the ground and man to inhabit it." How 
 entirely then does the life and sense of this 
 passage depend upon those which have gone 
 before it ! If we misrepresent the Name of 
 God, and the Will of God, how inevitably 
 does this petition for bread turn to evil 
 instead of good. If we will think of Him, 
 
82 GIVE US THIS DAY [Serm. 
 
 not as the Scripture and the Church teach 
 us to think of Him, as the Author and Giver 
 of all things, but only as one who demands 
 so much work of us, and offers so much pay 
 in return, we fold our hands in indolence 
 and despair ; we cannot love that which He 
 commands, or desire that which He prom- 
 ises. Let us confess, then, this sin first, 
 that we have slandered his holy Name, not 
 believing that He gives to all men Hberally, 
 and upbraideth not. 
 
 II. If we think of God as an Exactor and 
 not a Giver, exactors and not givers shall we 
 be. And so the word us acquires a very 
 contracted signification indeed. The prayer 
 will express a hope that we, who are suffi- 
 ciently well supplied with all necessaries 
 and comforts, may never be stinted of them ; 
 it will express a lazy half -formed wish that 
 people, who have none of our comforts and 
 little of what we call necessaries, may not 
 quite starve. Think what meaning it must 
 have had when it was offered up by that 
 band in Jerusalem, after the day of Pente- 
 cost, who were of one heart and one soul, 
 eating their bread with joy and singleness of 
 heart. They will have understood it to be 
 indeed a petition to the Father, who had so 
 
v.] OUR DAILY BREAD. 83 
 
 loved them as to give his only-begotten Son 
 for them, and who had filled them with his 
 o^vn Spirit, that He would give them that 
 which they needed for body and soul ; would 
 give it them under that condition of which 
 I spoke just now ; and under this further 
 condition, that each, upon whom the Lord 
 bestowed superfluity, should hold himself a 
 steward, and distribute his bounties. As 
 the first principle which united bread and 
 work together had been proved, by a long 
 experience, to be a blessed one, so the sec- 
 ond they will have felt to be the fulfilbnent 
 of Christ's promise, that they should be 
 children of his Father in heaven ; that they 
 should be gracious and merciful as He is. 
 Without the one the Church would have 
 been a hive of drones ; without the second 
 it would have been a collection of separate 
 bees, each working for itself, bringing in 
 its contribution to a common stock, but 
 wanting the sweetness of affection, sympa- 
 thy, subordination. Will it be said that the 
 law of that Church was never intended to be 
 perpetual; that even in apostolical history 
 there are few vestiges of it after the Church 
 had diffused itself beyond a single city or 
 province ? I answer : the accidents of that 
 
84 GIVE us THIS DAY [Skrm. 
 
 Jerusalem Church were indeed transitory ; 
 more transitory than the fall of the manna 
 in the camp of Israel ; but the law which 
 those accidents made known was as per- 
 manent a law as that which the manna re- 
 vealed. The selling of houses and lands 
 was only one exhibition of a state of mind, 
 an exhibition never enforced, as St. Peter 
 told Ananias. But the principle impHed in 
 the words, " No man said that which he had 
 was his o^vn," is the principle of the Church 
 in all ages : its members stand while they 
 confess tliis principle ; they fall from her 
 communion when they deny it. 
 
 Property is holy, distinction of ranks is 
 holy ; so speaks the Law, and the Church 
 does not deny the assertion, but ratifies it. 
 Only she must proclaim this other truth, or 
 perish. Beneath all distinctions of property 
 and of rank lie the obligations of a common 
 Creation, Redemption, Humanity ; and these 
 are not mere ultimate obligations to be con- 
 fessed when the others are fulfilled. They 
 are not vague abstractions, which cannot 
 quite be denied, but which have no direct 
 bearing upon our actual daily existence ; 
 they are primary, eternal bonds, upon which 
 all others depend ; they are not satisfied by 
 
v.] OUR DAILY BREAD. ^ 
 
 some nominal occasional act of homage ; they 
 demand the fealty and service of a Ufe ; all 
 our domgs must be witnesses of them. The 
 Church proclaims tacitly by her existence 
 — she should have proclaimed openly by her 
 voice — that property and rank are held 
 upon this tenure ; that they can stand by no 
 other. Alas ! she lias not spoken out this 
 truth clearly and strongly here or anywhere. 
 She has fancied that it was her first work 
 to protect those who could have protected 
 themselves well enough without her, pro- 
 vided she had been true to her vocation of 
 caring for those whom the world did not 
 care for, of watching over them continually, 
 of fitthig them to be citizens of any society 
 on earth, by showing them what is imphed 
 in the heavenly filial citizenship into which 
 God has freely adopted them. Failing in 
 this duty, she has become powerless for the 
 one she ignominiously preferred. She can 
 give but feeble help to the rich m their hour 
 of need, because she ministered to them with 
 such sad fideUty in then- hour of triumph 
 and prosperity. She can scarcely make her 
 voice heard against schemes for reducing all 
 things to a common stock, for establishing a 
 fellowship upon a law of mutual selfishness, 
 
86 GIVE us THIS DAY [Sebm. 
 
 because she has not believed that the in-, 
 ternal communion, the law of Love, the 
 polity of members united in one Head, of 
 brethren confessing a common Father, is a 
 real one — has left people to fancy that it is 
 only a fine dream, a cruel mockery, inca- 
 pable of bringing any tangible blessings. 
 If she can yet avert such a calamity, it must 
 be by calling upon all of us her members to 
 confess the insincerity with which we have 
 uttered these words, " Give us our daily 
 bread." If we had understood that we 
 were children of one Father, and were ask- 
 ing Him to bless all the parts of his family, 
 while we were seeking blessings for ourselves, 
 that, in fact, we could not pray at all with- 
 out praying for them, we should have found 
 the answer in a new sense of fellowship be- 
 tween all classes, in the feeling that every 
 man, in every position, has an office and 
 ministry which it is his privilege to exercise 
 for those over whom he is set ; in a clearer 
 apprehension of the relationship between 
 the master of a household and his domestics, 
 the landlord and his tenants, the farmer and 
 his laborers, the manufacturer and those 
 who work at the loom or the mill, the trades- 
 man and those who serve in his shop ; be- 
 
v.] OUR DAILY BREAD. 87 
 
 tween these and then between all of them 
 and the outlying mass, wliich seems to be 
 beyond the bounds of all ordinary civil 
 relationships, but which, as it has the great 
 mark of human relationship, may be adopted 
 into these, or be fitted to take a part in the 
 establishment of new societies elsewhere. 
 
 If we meet continually in the street creat- 
 ures of our own flesh and blood, who have a 
 look of hunger and misery, without being 
 able to determine whether it is a greater sin 
 to withhold that which may save them from 
 death, or to give what may lead to the worst 
 kind of death ; if a thousand social problems, 
 which we once supposed were of easy solu- 
 tion, present themselves in new and embar- 
 rassing aspects, tempting us to pass them 
 by altogether and then forcing upon us the 
 reflection that they must settle themselves 
 in some way, whether we forget them or not ; 
 if we hear masses of creatures spoken of as 
 if they were the insects we look at in a mi- 
 croscope, and then are suddenly reminded 
 by some startling phenomenon that each one 
 of them has a living soul ; then, before we 
 become mad, or escape into an apathy that 
 is worse than madness, let us ask ourselves 
 whether we have yet prayed this child's 
 
88 GIVE US THIS DAT [Serm. 
 
 prayer as we would have a child pray it, in 
 simplicity and truth. And if we are con- 
 scious that we have not, let us confess the sin, 
 and see whether He to whom we confess it 
 does not shed some light into our minds 
 which makes our path clearer, — a light 
 which we may beheve He will vouchsafe to 
 our brethren in this land, and in all lands, 
 for their practical guidance, when their large 
 theories are found to be reeds, upon which, 
 if a man leans, they will go into his hand 
 and pierce it. 
 
 III. But the prayer is only for this day^ 
 Hence it is often thought that the spirit of 
 the Gospel is adverse to foresight. How can 
 the command, " Take no thought for the 
 morrow," be reconciled with the kind of 
 anticipation and preparation which seem to 
 distinguish the civilized man from the hunter 
 of the woods ? The answer lies in our own 
 experience. Have we found that anxiety 
 about possible consequences increased the 
 clearness of our judgment, made us wiser 
 and braver in meeting the present, and arm- 
 ing ourselves for the future ? Is it this kind 
 of tem.per which enables a man to plough 
 the ground, to sow the seed in the appointed 
 month, to wait patiently for the harvest ? 
 
v.] OUR DAILY BREAD. 89 
 
 Is it the temper which would have enabled 
 any sailor, any merchant, to venture himself 
 or his goods upon the deep ? We know per- 
 fectly well that the most opposite habit of 
 mind to this, a simple and hearty rehance 
 upon a power whom the ground, and the 
 seasons, and the winds, and the waves obey, 
 could alone have made such acts and enter- 
 prises possible. Clearness of vision, provi- 
 dence, discovery, are the rewards of the 
 calm and patient spirit. The cases are rare 
 indeed where they have been given to any 
 other: Out of that care for the morrow 
 which our Lord denounces, spring the fever 
 of speculation, the hasting to be rich, end- 
 less scheming, continual reactions of fantas- 
 tic hope, and deep depression in individuals, 
 of mad prosperity and intense suffering in 
 nations. If we had prayed for this day's 
 bread, and left the next to itself, if we had 
 not huddled our days together, not allotting 
 to each its appointed task, but ever defer- 
 ring that to the future, and drawing upon 
 the future for its o^vn troubles which must 
 be met when they come whether we have an- 
 ticipated them or not, we should have found 
 a simplicit}^ and honesty in our lives, a ca- 
 pacity for work, an enjoyment in it, to which 
 
90 GIVE US THIS DAY [Serm. 
 
 we are now for the most part strangers. 
 Here, I believe, we shall all find abundant 
 matter for confession, if we look faithfully 
 into our lives. This part of the prayer too 
 has been unfaithfully repeated ; we have 
 been Avearying ourselves in thoughts of what 
 would be, because we have no confidence in 
 Him who is. 
 
 IV. But it is our daily bread we ask for, 
 
 Tov apTOV yjiiuiv tov linovcrLov. This WOrd Ittlov- 
 
 criov gave rise to one of the controversies 
 between Abelard and Bernard in the 12th 
 century. The former following a hint of 
 Jerome, adopted the translation partem 
 supersuhstantialem, and taught Heloise and 
 the nuns in her convent to use it in repeat- 
 ing the prayer. It appears that the prac- 
 tice was not a new one there ; at all events, 
 Bernard had no right to accuse his oppo- 
 nent of wilfully perverting Scripture, when 
 he was following the guidance of the most 
 approved Latin Father. We shall all prob- 
 ably agree that he was right in objecting to 
 a phrase which, even if it had more philo- 
 logical plausibility than really belongs to 
 it,i would be entirely out of harmony with 
 the tone and spirit of the prayer. It is less 
 
 1 It confounds inl with vn-ep. 
 
v.] OUR DAILY BREAD. 91 
 
 easy to say what exact word we should 
 adopt ; we have no analogy to help us, for 
 the word does not exist in any classical au- 
 thor. The balance of evidence seems de- 
 cidedly in favor of those who derive the 
 word as Jerome did, but take it to mean 
 " bread for subsistence." Our translators 
 followed a different course, but they arrived 
 nearly at the same result. Bread for sub- 
 sistence defines accurately what we intend 
 by daily bread, when we intend anything. 
 We ask for bread to sustain us, bread that 
 shall be enough for our needs. What is 
 enough we are happily not called to fix ; 
 the act of prayer throws the decision of 
 that point upon a wiser judge. No one, 
 therefore, could infer from the use of this 
 expression that a rigid sumptuary law is 
 involved in the petition ; that one has, of 
 course, the same needs as another. The 
 Bible admits the distinction of rich and 
 poor ; in commanding hospitality, it assumes 
 that there are some who have the means of 
 exercising it, and others towards whom it 
 may be exercised. But the words are not 
 the less cutting because they do not reduce 
 all expenditure to a level. They may di- 
 late to take in a great variety of cases, but 
 
92 GIVE us THIS DAT [Serm. 
 
 they can never lose their proper original 
 signification. Bread for subsistence will 
 not, under any circumstances, be bread for 
 mere display, for waste, for rivalry. The 
 prayer asserts a broad, palpable, everlasting 
 distinction between the different reasons for 
 seeking wealth, the different ways of using 
 it ; though it leaves every man's conscience 
 to determine in the sight of God which rea- 
 sons govern his acts, which ways he is tak- 
 ing. Honestly offered up, therefore, it 
 will, I conceive, make us very uneasy in 
 that kind of ostentation which men in each 
 class of society are apt to affect for the pur- 
 pose of not being distanced by those of the 
 same grade, and that they may assert their 
 right to a higher. Moralists, satirists, di- 
 vines, have long been using their different 
 weapons against this folly apparently with 
 little success. It is now coming before us 
 in a new form. Competition is denounced 
 as a monstrous evil, which a new organiza- 
 tion of society is needed to remedy. How 
 numerous and weighty are the facts which 
 the advocates of this theory are able to al- 
 lege ! how much excuse does there seem for 
 the root and branch schemes which they 
 suggest ! Yes, jf they were root and branch 
 
v.] OUR DAILY BREAD. 93 
 
 schemes ; if they did find out the source of 
 this evil, if a reconstruction of civil life 
 could prevent its renewal. But we trust 
 neither in satirists, moralists, divines, or 
 communists. Another hand than ours is 
 needed to deal with a disease which has 
 penetrated so deeply, which has so nearly 
 reached our vitals. What we can do is to 
 tell men that this hand is stretched out, 
 that any secret corruption which has been 
 cherished in the heart of individuals, or in 
 the heart of society, will be brought into 
 the clear light ; that national judgments 
 will purge away those of which the removal 
 is not first sought by national repentance. 
 What we can do is to say, He who sends 
 these judgments is willing to give that re- 
 pentance. He invites us now at this time 
 to acknowledge the sins that we know, to 
 ask Him to search our hearts, and discover 
 those which we know not. He bids us be- 
 lieve that the most inveterate cancer as in 
 ourselves, so in the body politic, may be 
 taken from us by his knife, if we will sub- 
 mit to it. He exhorts us not to wait till 
 the dark and evil day actually comes upon 
 us, till the house is left desolate of his 
 presence, and stript of every good gift 
 
94 GIVE us THIS DAY, ETC [Serm. Y. 
 
 which we have received through it. He 
 calls upon us this day to turn to Him with 
 thanksgivuigs, as to the great Giver of all 
 blessings, with confessions as to the Father 
 whom we have grieved by disbelieving in 
 his love, and not showing it forth to our 
 brethren ; with prayer that He will give us 
 and them all we need, and most of all, the 
 heart to receive it from Him as his stew- 
 ards, for the good of those who are dear in 
 his sififht. 
 
SERMON VL 
 
 SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT. 
 
 Forgive us our Debts, as we forgive our Debtors. 
 — Matthew vi. 12. 
 
 \^E sliould be sorry, I tliink, to lose the 
 ' * Avord " trespasses," which we use in 
 our ordinary repetition of the Lord's Prayer, 
 and which is translated, no doubt, from the 
 word a/xapria? in St. Lukc. Yet St. Mat- 
 thew's expression presents a more distinct 
 image to the mind ; it interprets itself more 
 easily. Therefore I have chosen it this 
 afternoon, not wishing you to consider it 
 alone, but belie\4ng that it may help us 
 to a clearer apprehension of a word which 
 for many, at least, has lost its brightness 
 through continual attrition. The idea which 
 the petition embodies, results, I suspect, 
 from the union of that wliich is peculiar in 
 each of these forms. We find it so gener- 
 ally, when Ave take the pains to examine 
 
96 FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS, [Serm. 
 
 different expressions evidently answering to 
 each other, or different reports of the same 
 transaction in the Gospels. From the com- 
 parison of them there proceeds a fuller and 
 more profomid meaning than we could have 
 obtained from either separately. What is 
 called the study of parallel passages, may in 
 this way be really profitable ; it is often 
 made into a very childish exercise, — one 
 which involves no reflection ; sacred words 
 being turned into an irreverent game ; all 
 sense of their unity and relation being lost 
 in the eagerness to hunt out the precise 
 places in which they occur, or their most 
 superficial and insignificant resemblances. 
 
 That there is something in the word 
 " debts," which we are bound to keep in 
 mind when we consider this prayer, is evi- 
 dent from the use of the cognate verb by 
 St. Luke, in the other clause of the sen- 
 tence. " Forgive us our trespasses, for we 
 also forgive every one that is indebted to 
 us." It is evident also from the word a<^cs, 
 " send away," or " remit," which is com- 
 mon to both Evangelists. Every one feels 
 the appropriateness of such an expression to 
 a creditor's release. We have no need to 
 go beyond the very simplest notion of such 
 
VI.] AS WE FORGIVE OUR DEBTORS. 97 
 
 a release ; we are not bound to think of 
 deliverance from a prison, or from any in- 
 fliction consequent upon the failure in the 
 fulfillment of an obligation. Discharge from 
 the debt itself is that which the verb sug- 
 gests. Perhaps we may find that this sense 
 gains, instead of losing strength, when we 
 apply it to trespasses, — to sins. Still we 
 should first fix our minds upon that which 
 stands in the most obvious connection ^vith 
 it. 
 
 I. Our Lord tlien bids us pray. Remit, 
 or send away, or discharge, these debts or 
 obligations of ours. Whatever they are, 
 He bids us ask Him for this ; this and noth- 
 ing less. He who tells us to pray. Our 
 Father, says also. Ask for this full remis- 
 sion. He must mean that it is such a 
 request as a child should make of a father, 
 and a father could grant to his child. He 
 who teaches us to say, " Hallowed be thy 
 Name," bids us ask for this remission. He 
 must mean that God's Name is hallowed in 
 our making the petition, and m his hearing 
 it. He who taught us to say, " Thy King- 
 dom come," bids us say, Grant us this re- 
 mission. He must mean that it is consistent 
 with his Royalty, and part of it, and a proof 
 
98 FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS, [Serm. 
 
 of it, that we should desire and receive this 
 release. He who desired us to pray, " Thy 
 Will be done on earth as it is in heaven," 
 tells us also to ask for this sending away of 
 debts. He must mean that this is the Will 
 which is obeyed in heaven, and that so, we 
 are obeying it on earth. He who taught us 
 to look up to God as a Giver, not as an 
 Exactor, and to pray for the bread which is 
 needful for us, further commands us to ask 
 for this freedom. He must mean that rain 
 and fruitful seasons are not more a sign to 
 men of what He is, than remission ; that 
 one is as much an utterance of his disposition 
 and purpose as the other ; that one is at 
 least as much needed by his creatures as the 
 other. He who came down to declare the 
 Name, the Kingdom, the Will of God, and 
 to bring all good gifts to men, must have 
 wished us to understand Him thus ; or He 
 could not have trained us to the use of a 
 word so precise and yet so unhmited. 
 
 II. The objects of this prayer must be 
 those who were united with us when we 
 said, " Our Father," and, " Give us this 
 day our daily bread." If there were any 
 for whom we did not pray when we said 
 those words, they will be excluded from 
 
VI.] AS WE FORGIVE OUR DEBTORS. 99 
 
 these. If there are any human beings 
 whose nature we suppose Christ did not 
 take, any for whom we suppose the Father 
 does not care, for those we do not ask the 
 remission of trespasses. Where such Hmit- 
 ations begin, where they must end, I have 
 had occasion to consider while I have been 
 commenting on the former clauses of the 
 Prayer. They begin in a feeling that we 
 must, for our own safety, estabhsh cer- 
 tain boundaries beyond which the divine 
 compassion cannot go ; they proceed to the 
 invention of securities and exclusions which 
 compass their end so little that their places 
 must be presently supplied by others ; they 
 end in the discovery that we have destroyed 
 the ground under our own feet, while we 
 have been making it untenable for our fel- 
 low-men. I need not repeat the evidence, 
 but I must repeat the warning. When the 
 publican prayed, " God be merciful to me 
 a sinner," he claimed for himself a place 
 among the whole body of sinners ; he would 
 not say like the Pharisee, I am not as other 
 men are. If in literal imitation of his ex- 
 ample, in real contempt of it, any one of 
 us chooses to say. Forgive me my debts, 
 rather than. Forgive us our debts, he will 
 
100 FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS, [Serm. 
 
 not go down to his liouse justified ; lie will 
 feel that the petition has not been granted. 
 III. And yet when we come to consider 
 what these debts are which we crave should 
 be put away, it does not seem wonderful 
 that we should choose individualizing lan- 
 guage rather than that which is more gen- 
 eral. For each man says within liimseK, 
 Are not these debts mine in the strictest 
 sense? Are they not obligations which I 
 have contracted, and which I have violated ? 
 Upon me lies a burden which I cannot shift 
 upon any other human creature, — the bur- 
 den of duties unfulfilled, words unspoken, 
 or spoken violently and untruly; of holy 
 relationships neglected ; of days wasted for- 
 ever ; of evil thoughts once cherished, which 
 are ever appearing now as fresh as when 
 they were first admitted into the heart ; of 
 talents cast away ; of affections in myself, or 
 in others, trifled with ; of light within turned 
 to darkness. So speaks the conscience ; so 
 speaks or has spoken the conscience of each 
 man. In some it may be a feeble voice, 
 soon lost in the noises of the outward world, 
 or silenced by violent efforts, or choked by 
 the senses, or bribed by the fancy. In 
 others, it is loud and stormy to-day ; then 
 
VI.] AS WE FORGIVE OUR DEBTORS. 101 
 
 comes a reaction of fierce merriment or a 
 temporary lull, which will be followed again 
 by new blasts of passion. In some it is a 
 low but perpetually sounding knell, witness- 
 ing of a death begun and going on in them- 
 selves ; of the past accursed, the present 
 withered, the future vaguely terrible. But 
 each one who has ever known what con- 
 science is, feels that it is upon his own very 
 self these obligations lie. They may some- 
 times present themselves to him in dark out- 
 ward visions, they may be associated insep- 
 arably with certain places and persons. 
 But they sit like nightmares upon him ; 
 they stop his breathing ; they hold him 
 chained. How often would he persuade 
 himself that they are only phantoms ! How 
 often would he task his understanding to 
 prove that he has himself brought them 
 thither by some strange conjuring ! Why 
 cannot he cast them aside as dreams of the 
 night ? Are they anything more ? They 
 come back with fearful distinctness ; the 
 very act of which conscience testifies, every 
 circumstance, look, tone, clearly recorded ; 
 it is no dream of the night. The voice, be 
 it from Heaven or Hell, is a real one, which 
 says, '^ It is done, and cannot be undone," 
 
102 FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS, [Serm. 
 
 and, " Thou art the man." What signifies 
 it that years have passed away. The act is 
 gone, but thou art still the same. The act 
 is gone into Eternity, and there it will meet 
 thee. 
 
 These are the debts; are they to our- 
 selves ? Often it seems so. We have suf- 
 fered by them more than all others — our 
 bodies and souls. But if they are to our- 
 selves, we cannot release them. The more 
 we try, the more hopelessly the coil is 
 twisted round us. Are they to our fellows ? 
 Often we think so. We are bound to them 
 by sacred ties which were forgotten; the 
 friend repulsed, because we did not under- 
 stand him, or his opinions seemed dangerous, 
 or because we took a cry of agony for a 
 mocking laugh ; the child petted and fon- 
 dled into sin, or driven into it by roughness 
 and what we call parental authority ; those 
 who looked to be raised and purified by us, 
 degraded through our weak and groveling 
 ways ; those who would have entered into 
 the Kingdom of Heaven hindered, because 
 we cared not that they should be wiser and 
 better than ourselves. But if our debts are 
 to our fellow-creatures, they cannot dis- 
 charge them. If we could hear each one dis- 
 
VI.] AS WE FORGIVE OUR DEBTORS. 103 
 
 tinctly saying out of the grave, or from 
 Heaven, " I forgive," though the words 
 might be unspeakably dehghtful, we feel 
 they would not penetrate deep enough, they 
 would not set us free from that which has 
 seemed to become a part of our o^vn being. 
 
 Are they debts to God ? The first vague 
 consciousness of such a behef, how terrible 
 it is ! All the former aspects of the debt 
 seem mild to this one ; yet all were surely 
 prophetical of this one. That sense of per- 
 manence of Eternity being bound up with 
 our acts and the results of them, what was 
 this but a '^^^tness that they had a relation 
 to God Himself ? He surely was speaking 
 that voice which we thought came from our- 
 selves, and which was echoed by everything 
 and every person in the world around. Yes, 
 Debts are Trespasses : we have not only 
 forfeited an obligation, but committed a sin ; 
 we have broken a law which was not formed 
 on earth, and cannot be repealed on earth. 
 
 But at this point of despair hope begins. 
 It is sin ; sin against God. These very feel- 
 ings we are groaning under are sinful ; this 
 sense of e\^l is evil. For has it not brought 
 death into the soul ? Is not this torpor, this 
 incapacity for action, feeling, loving, Death? 
 
104 FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS, [Sekm. 
 
 Assuredly it is. And He willeth not the 
 death of a sinner. He cannot be pleased 
 that I should continue in a state of sin. He 
 is not pleased with it. Then come dim rec- 
 ollections of words heard in the nursery, of 
 doctrines which had been reduced mto mere 
 phrases and stored away in the memory as 
 lumber, or more courageously cast aside as 
 absurd contradictions of human experience 
 and ordinary logic; doctrines which had 
 perhaps been associated with the remem- 
 brance of some hard, comfortless teacher, who 
 first imparted them to us in traditional 
 shapes and moulds, or who mixed them with 
 views of the divine character from which the 
 conscience and reason revolted; doctrines, 
 however, which do not sound now as if they 
 were unsuited to our necessities or unworthy 
 of One who cared for his creatures : the 
 doctrine of reconciliation, of a father who so 
 loved the world as to give his only-begotten 
 Son for it ; of a Son who came down from 
 heaven not to do his own Will, but the Will 
 of Him who sent him ; who did that will by 
 laying down his life for the sheep ; who was 
 manifested to take away sin, and in whom 
 was no sin ; by faith in whom a man may 
 rise out of himself, cast away the slough 
 
VI.] AS WE FORGIVE OUR DEBTORS. 105 
 
 of death, and become a new and righteous 
 creature. Such words, however imperfectly 
 understood, yet carry in them an amazing 
 power for one who has felt his debts and 
 known them to be sins. But they acquire a 
 newer and a fuller meaning for him when he 
 finds that what seemed to him an entirely 
 isolated experience is that of numbers of his 
 fellow-men ; when he hears of publicans and 
 harlots who, through the same storm, have 
 sought and found the same haven. Then he 
 learns to say, and not to say in vain, " For- 
 give us our Trespasses." 
 
 IV. There perhaps he stops; the words 
 which follow are either forgotten or they 
 give him no present anxiety. In the spring- 
 tide of wonder and enjoyment, at the discov- 
 ery that there is a communication between 
 earth and heaven, and that the angels of 
 heaven and the God of heaven rejoice over 
 every sinner that repenteth, it does not strike 
 him that there is the least difficulty in remit- 
 ting to other men any debts they may have 
 incurred to him. But the first fervor of these 
 convictions dies away. He seeks to keep 
 them alive by association with those who are 
 or have been sharers in them. By mutual 
 encouragement, that which is feeble and flag- 
 
106 FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS, [Serm. 
 
 ging in each may be invigorated. Every 
 one has realized something which another 
 might be better for knowing ; the barter and 
 interchange of thought will make all richer. 
 It should be so certainly; but those who 
 make the experiment often suspect that the 
 reverse is true. While they are discoursing 
 of that which is passing within, it seems to 
 be within no longer. In the commerce of 
 feehngs, notes and bills which there is noth- 
 ing to meet soon circulate rapidly from hand 
 to hand. And then the latter words of the 
 prayer suddenly assume a disagreeable sig- 
 nificance. " Forgive as we forgive ; " surely 
 here is a condition appended to that which 
 we thought absolutely free ! Does it mean 
 that our forgiveness is the cause of God's 
 forgiveness — that He expects so much of us 
 before He dispenses to us out of his infinite 
 treasures ? Or does it mean that our for- 
 giveness is the measure of his ; that the acts 
 of us fallible creatures determine the kind 
 and degree of the Divine Mercy ? Surely 
 if this be so, the Gospel cannot be large and 
 infinite. Forgiving is not /or^Agiving, as 
 we have been used to think ; a narrow and 
 clumsy derivation must take the place of this j 
 it must import the giving /or an equivalent. 
 
VI.] AS WE FORGIVE OUR DEBTORS. 107 
 
 Accordingly a great part of men, even of 
 religious men, are content to sit down with- 
 out determining what the words which they 
 repeat so often actually signify. They can- 
 not mean that, therefore it is better to sup- 
 pose that they have no distinct meaning at 
 all. " Of course," thinks the Christian who 
 is trying hard to be at peace with himself, 
 " in a sense, I do forgive every one who is 
 indebted to me. I should not be deserving 
 of the goodness I receive if I did not ; and 
 if I come short, I ask to be forgiven ; is not 
 that the very use of prayer ? " 
 
 There are, I am sure, thousands and tens 
 of thousands who repeat this petition in 
 spirit and truth, and upon whom it brings 
 down blessings unspeakable, though they 
 could not express to others what tht?y mean 
 by this clause, and though their own minds 
 are probably far from clear about it. 
 Prayer seeks that which lies below all 
 words ; it aims at the light whereof that 
 which shines in our understandmgs is but 
 the dim reflection. From those who pray 
 as children one desires only to learn ; their 
 lives are better and more beautiful com- 
 mentaries upon their prayers than any the 
 schools can furnish. But it is altogether 
 
108 FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS, [Serm. 
 
 different with those who try to explain 
 away words upon which our Lord dwells 
 with special carefulness ; those words to 
 which He drew his disciples' attention, as 
 if they contained the spirit and essence of 
 the whole form. "If ye forgive not men 
 their trespasses, neither will your Heavenly 
 Father forgive you your trespasses ; " this 
 is his own express language, which He il- 
 lustrates again and again in his other dis- 
 courses, always strengthening not diminish- 
 mg its awfulness ; making in one case the 
 significant addition, "if je from your hearts 
 forgive not every one his brother their tres- 
 passes." It will not do surely to make light 
 of such solemn oracles, or reduce them into 
 nullities, because they do not accord with a 
 notion we have formed about the freeness 
 of Christ's Gospel. But as little ought we 
 to part with our belief in that freeness, or 
 with any deep conviction which has been 
 given us, because something which we have 
 not yet understood seems to contradict it. 
 We need, for our practical life, that the 
 apparently inconsistent principles should be 
 reconciled ; and if we are honest with our- 
 selves we shall not be long in discovering 
 the reconciliation. 
 
VI.] AS WE FORGIVE OUR DEBTORS. 109 
 
 How is it that persons who have had 
 that lively sense of mercy and forgiveness to 
 which I referred are not able to retain it ? 
 They know in their consciences that they do 
 not ; they continually confess it ; they are 
 sure that they ought to retain it, but it will 
 not stay. The feeling of a debt grows up in 
 the mind again, after they supposed it was* 
 canceled ; they refer to the evidence upon 
 which they rested their confidence ; it is as 
 satisfactory as ever ; they assure themselves 
 that all must be right, and yet their hearts 
 say there is much wrong. Then they resort 
 to theological distinctions and formulas ; this 
 sense of debt and sin is very tormenting, no 
 doubt, but it is inevitable ; it must stay with 
 us while we are in this bad world. Perhaps 
 so ; but must it be ever multiplying, nay 
 producing fresh sin ? Must the conscious- 
 ness of it make me sour to others ; often 
 make me false in dealing with myself? 
 Will theological terms and distinctions, or 
 the recollection of by-gone experiences, or a 
 general apprehension that God is at peace 
 with us, make ill-temper gracious or self- 
 deception truth ? Must there not be some 
 other more excellent way than this of 
 bringing the facts of our own lives into 
 
no FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS, [Serm. 
 
 coincidence with the truths of the Bible? 
 One would think that the most obvious, the 
 most excellent way was to study our Lord's 
 own interpretation of the case. He says 
 that when a servant who had been par- 
 doned the debt of ten thousand talents went 
 out of his lord's presence, he found a fel- 
 low-servant who owed him a hundred pence, 
 and that he took him by the throat, saying, 
 Pay me that thou owest, and would not lis- 
 ten to his cry, " Have patience with me." 
 This, he says, was the cause that his own 
 debt came back to him heavier and more 
 hopeless than ever. Is there not a clear 
 light thrown on the dark passages of our 
 lives by this parable ? Only think how we 
 are wont to speak of the obligations which 
 other men are mider to us, of the debts 
 they have incurred to us, of the demands 
 which we have a right to make upon them. 
 Only think how exactly our Lord's lan- 
 guage represents our feelings, how it is ut- 
 tered in all our daily actions. " Pay me 
 that thou owest, servant, child, poor de- 
 pendent, friend, wife, brother ; " is not that 
 the first natural thought of our hearts ? Do 
 we not encourage it, justify it to ourselves 
 and others ? have we not a host of religious 
 
VI.] AS WE FORGIVE OUR DEBTORS. Ill 
 
 excuses for tolerating it till it becomes the 
 habit of our souls ? There is abundance 
 of good-natured charity afloat in the world, 
 charity for all sorts of people, for all forms 
 of distress. But this is the ornamental part 
 of our existence, the capital or fret-work of 
 the building. The substantial part, the pil- 
 lars of it, we seem to think are our rights ; 
 rights to position, property, rank, the hom- 
 age of others, their gratitude. If these are 
 withheld — the hundred pence which each 
 man has a claim upon from his fellow — 
 with what indignation do we repulse the 
 claims which we had acknowledged that 
 mercy and charity have upon us I 
 
 Now, brethren, if this be so, is it very 
 wonderful that the sense of divine forgive- 
 ness, the apprehension of perfect unclouded 
 mercy, should not be very clear and strong 
 in our minds ? 
 
 It is surely the most fantastic of all 
 dreams, that a man can cut his being into 
 two portions, call one of them religious and 
 the other mundane, and administer them on 
 directly opposite principles. One or other 
 must come to nought. If we beheve that 
 the world is governed by a forgiving Being, 
 his forgiveness must be recognized as the 
 
112 FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS, [Serm. 
 
 Law of the Universe, the Law of our be- 
 ing. If we believe that Individual Right is 
 the great principle we are to assert in all 
 common transactions, that principle will be 
 carried to the highest ground of all, and so 
 far as we acknowledge a Divine Being at 
 all, we shall regard Him as one like our- 
 selves ; we shall feel that his main desire is 
 to assert his rights over us. I say, so far 
 as we acknowledge a Divine Being at all ; 
 for I cannot help perceiving that Atheism 
 is the natural, almost the necessary, refuge 
 from such a notion of the Lord of all as 
 this. The naked contemplation of one who 
 has no will but self-will is so intolerable, 
 that the conscience which remains in human 
 beings, in spite of all their theories, shrinks 
 back in horror from the belief that such an 
 one can be he to whom the name of God, 
 the good, was once ascribed. Yet what 
 avails the denial? If self-will do govern 
 the world, if we confess it to be our Lord, 
 we may or may not attribute to it personal- 
 ity ; but it does, all the same, hold us in its 
 iron bonds ; we are in prison, the evil spirit 
 is our jailer, and we cannot come out till we 
 have paid the uttermost farthing. 
 
 Brethren, it is this which makes the con- 
 
VI.] AS WE FORGIVE OUR DEBTORS. 113 
 
 sideration of our times so profoundly awful. 
 We cannot avoid the conviction that the 
 maxims upon which we have been acting 
 will come forth into full display ; that they 
 will be thrown back upon ourselves; that 
 the rights we have asserted against our fel- 
 low-men wiU be asserted by them against 
 us. We have had and we have warnings 
 enough of this catastrophe ; let us hope that 
 they have not been wholly lost i(^on us. 
 Even yet the dark image of mere selfish 
 power, in one or in a multitude, is not re- 
 vealed ; it struggles strangely, wonderfully 
 in the minds of those wlio seem most ready 
 to fall do^vn and worship it with the belief 
 of a Love which must rule at last, which 
 we are permitted to obey now. O ! if we 
 might interpret to any that strange conflict 
 of two opposing principles — two Kingdoms 
 — in the womb of humanity ! O ! that 
 some voice might be heard declaring clearly 
 and mightily, " The elder shall serve the 
 younger. He who won the battle in the 
 wilderness, proved that his Father and not 
 Satan, love and not self, is the King of 
 kings, and Lord of lords." 
 
 But if that proclamation is to be heard on 
 the housetops, it must first be spoken in the 
 
114 FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS, [Serm. 
 
 ear in closets. It must come forth as the in- 
 terpretation and fulfillment of this prayer, 
 " Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive 
 them who trespass against us." We must 
 thoroughly believe and understand that what 
 seems to be a limiting condition of the re- 
 quest, is really an enlargement of its scope 
 and power. We ask to be forgiven, and the 
 revelation of God's mercy in Christ, of the 
 love which is in Himself, of the perfect atone- 
 ment made once for all, is an answer. It 
 seems to be transitory ; we try to fall back 
 upon it, and feel that that which we trusted 
 in yesterday is not so strong to-day. Why ? 
 Because we asked too little, because we did 
 not enter into the fullness of the word, 
 "Remit," "Send away." If we had, we 
 should have prayed not for a momentary 
 sense of Forgiveness, but for the spirit of 
 Forgiveness ; not merely that we may know 
 what God is and is to us, but what He can 
 accomphsh in us ; that we may understand 
 in Him and show forth in ourselves that 
 mercy which is no tolerance of vn-ong, but the 
 tormentor of it ; which does not reject stern 
 disciphne, but makes it an instrument ; which 
 is a fire to consume the evil of all in whom 
 it dwells, of all to whom it reaches. Forgive- 
 
VI.] AS WE FORGIVE OUR DEBTORS. 115 
 
 ness is not forgiveness when it is turned to 
 our ease and comfort. It is in its nature 
 expansive, diffusive ; it cannot be cooped up 
 in the heart of any creature ; it must go forth 
 into the open air, or it dies. The debts, we 
 know it well, cannot lose their penal hold 
 upon the conscience, their present and future 
 terror, till love comes in to fulfill them and 
 transfer them ; till the man who in his pride 
 thought that all nations owed him homage, 
 learns to say, " I am a Debtor to Jew and 
 Greek, to Barbarian and Scythian, to bond 
 and free." The sense of sin — sin itself — 
 does not finally depart from the conscience 
 till love, its great enemy, possesses the 
 ground which it once occupied, till he who 
 was crushed under the sense of powerless- 
 ness and evil, — " To will is present with 
 me, but how to,do that I \vill I find not," — 
 can exclaim, " He worketh in us both to 
 will and to do of his good pleasure," and, 
 " I can do all things through Christ which 
 strengtheneth me." 
 
 Wherefore, as it should be one of our sad- 
 dest subjects of confession this Lent that we 
 have not hved as if we were under the law 
 of Forgiveness which God has established 
 for us and for all, so also let us earnestly be- 
 
116 FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS, ETC. [Serm. VI. 
 
 lieve, whensoever we pray, that we are pray- 
 ing to a Forgiving and Merciful Father, who 
 can yet do for us more than we ask or think ; 
 even inspiring us with his own love, and 
 enabling us to walk in love and to forgive 
 all who are indebted to us, as He for Christ's 
 sake hath forgiven us. 
 
I 
 
 SERMON VII. 
 
 THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT. 
 
 And lead us not into Temptation. 
 
 Matthew vi. 13. 
 
 SAID that the words of our Lord, "- It is 
 written, Man shall not live by bread 
 alone, but by every word that proceedeth 
 out of the mouth of God," were a ground 
 for the petition, " Give us this day our daily 
 bread." Lent, above all seasons, might 
 teach us the sense and power of it. " For- 
 give us our debts, as we forgive our debt- 
 ors," had surely as close a connection with 
 these forty days. To be deUvered from a 
 heavy burden, this is the blessing of confes- 
 sion ; a blessing which (as the prophets so 
 often told the Jews) we cannot realize by 
 any prayer or fast unless we seek to set 
 others free from their burdens. The sub- 
 ject of Temptation might seem, even more 
 than either of these, to embrace the whole 
 
118 LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION. [Serm. 
 
 history and purpose of this time in its rela- 
 tion both to our Lord and to ourselves. 
 But here a difficulty presents itseK. We 
 are told by the Evangelist, that our Lord 
 was " led up by the Spirit into the wilder- 
 ness to be tempted of the Devil." We are 
 taught to pray, " Do not lead or bring us 
 into Temptation." Must we not infer from 
 this opposition, that there is not that close 
 resemblance between his struggles and ours 
 which we have sometimes imagined ; that 
 our spiritual life is not under the same law 
 as his ; that we are to deprecate that kind 
 of trial to which He cheerfully submitted ? 
 There are some, perhaps, who will not 
 feel even the semblance of perplexity here. 
 They will say, "Certainly ; there are mul- 
 titudes of perils into which it was fitting 
 for the Son of God to enter, and which it 
 would be madness for his followers to en- 
 counter. He stood in the might of his im- 
 peccable divine nature ; how can sinners, 
 nay, even mere human creatures if they 
 were not sinners, ever forget their own 
 readiness to fall ? " Persons who use this 
 language cannot be aware what practical 
 heresies they are uttering, how completely 
 they are demohshing the whole intent of 
 
VII.] LEAD us NOT INTO TEMPTATION. 119 
 
 the Gospel, the very ground of man's trust 
 and hope. If there are some parts of our 
 Lord's example that we are not to follow, 
 what authority is to tell us which ? Does 
 not the assertion that He stood by the 
 strength of a nature in which we are not 
 sharers, exclude us as much from commun- 
 ion with one of his acts as with another ? 
 We make void the doctrine of his having 
 taken our nature ; it is too little to say that 
 we lessen the perfectness of the relation ; it 
 becomes imaginary. 
 
 And surely no record of our Lord's life is 
 so entirely outraged by this hypothesis as 
 the record of his Temptation. If He had 
 asserted an independent standing ground. 
 He would have listened to the words of the 
 Tempter. He would, because He was the 
 Son of God, have made the stones bread, 
 have cast Himself from the pinnacle of the 
 temple, have taken to Himself the king- 
 doms of the world and the glory of them. 
 He refused to do this. He would simply 
 stand by faith and dependence on his 
 Father ; thus and thus only would He as- 
 sert his filial character. He did put Him- 
 self upon a level with those whom He called 
 his brethren; He did claim for them a 
 
120 LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION. [Serm. 
 
 right to depend as He depended, to trust as 
 He trusted. Dependence and trust are not 
 inconsistent with the condition of creatures 
 who are human, and who have sinned. Be- 
 cause we depend and trust so little, we 
 prove that we are still trying to be gods — 
 that is our sin. Just so far as we depart 
 from our Lord's example, we show our 
 pride, not our humihty, our seK-confidence, 
 not our fear of ourselves. 
 
 The prayer then cannot be justified on 
 this plea ; it cannot bear a construction 
 which would make it a separation between 
 the creatures who offer it and Him in 
 whose name it is offered. 
 
 Indeed, if we reflect, we shall perceive 
 that such a notion of it would be as much at 
 variance with what we know of ourselves 
 as with what we believe of Him. Is it not 
 the fact that we, too, are led up into one 
 place or another — a wilderness or a city — 
 to be tempted ? Is not this whole life of 
 ours one continual succession of tempta- 
 tions? I say, advisedly, of Temptations; 
 for we shall gain little, I think, by chang- 
 ing that word for " trials ^"^^ as if every trial 
 did not of necessity involve a temptation. 
 When we speak of undergoing " trials," we 
 
VII.] LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPT A TION. 121 
 
 do not mean merely " troubles ; " we mean 
 that in some way or other we are proved, 
 that we have an opportunity given us of 
 doing wrong or right. When we speak of 
 Temptation, we look at the same fact from 
 another side ; we wish to indicate, not 
 merely that we have the good and evil set 
 before us, but that there is a power biasing 
 us to the evil. But this is implied in either 
 form of expression. And therefore, if we 
 suppose that God has brought us into this 
 world, and that we are dwelling in it under 
 his guidance, and that all trials are ordained 
 by Him, we must suppose that He just as 
 much intended us to be tempted as He in- 
 tended his Son to be tempted. If we make 
 out a difference, we do it wilfully.' Our 
 consciences, and Scripture, equally oppose 
 the attempt. 
 
 But why then should we pray, '•^ Lead us 
 not into Temptation ? " I answer. Because 
 this, and no other, is the prayer which, if 
 we believe the Scripture account of our 
 Lord's forty days in the Wilderness, He 
 must Himself have prayed at the very time 
 when He was led up to be tempted, and 
 when He was going through the Tempta- 
 tion. His first act of dependence and obe- 
 
1 22 LEAD US NOT INTO TEMP TA TION. [Serm. 
 
 dience was to go whithersoever He was led ; 
 not to choose his circumstances for Himself ; 
 to be equally ready for the desert or the 
 market-place. His second act of depend- 
 ence was in the desert or market-place, in 
 the full sight and foresight of the Tempta- 
 tions which beset Him to say, " Father 
 bring me not into them." And the prayer 
 was heard. That wicked one touched Him 
 not. The Tempter had no power over 
 Him, not because He exalted Himself in his 
 own strength, but because He would not 
 exalt Himself in it ; because in all things 
 He glorified Him whose will He came on 
 earth to do. It may seem a subtle and 
 shadowy distinction to make ; and subtle 
 and shadoAvy must be all verbal distinctions 
 which concern the Will and its acts. If 
 you would realize the distinctions which 
 words try to embody, you must leave them 
 and turn to facts. There you will find how 
 substantial are tliese subtleties ; that in 
 them lies all the difference between the 
 best and the worst man ; between an angel 
 and a devil. To be incapable of temptation 
 is the privilege of involuntary creatures ; a 
 man, or an angel, dares not desire it. So 
 long as he feels who it is that has made him 
 
VIL] LEAD US NO T INTO TEMl' TA TION. 1 23 
 
 capable of such danger, who has given hhii 
 a will, he is safe ; for his life is a prayer 
 that he may not be left to his own guid- 
 ance. The moment he ceases to offer that 
 prayer he is brought into temptation, he 
 comes under the Tempter's power ; because 
 he has lost trust and allegiance and claimed 
 independence. Then he tries to say that 
 he was tempted by God ; but he is con- 
 scious that he lies ; he knows that his act 
 was one of submission to another than God, 
 that it was a secret defiance of Him. He 
 had a right to believe that God placed him 
 in the circumstances which his own Avill has 
 made destructive ; but that belief, if he had 
 hallowed the Name of God, if he had cried, 
 " Thy \vill be done on earth, as it is in 
 heaven," Avould have been a security against 
 the Temptation ; it would have given him 
 confidence to cry, " Thou, Father, art lead- 
 ing me ; bring me not into this temptation, 
 but through it." 
 
 The deflections Und eccentricities, then, 
 which sin has introduced into our lives do 
 not make the life of our Lord, which exhibits 
 to us humanity in its orderly state, in its 
 perfect harmony, a less practical standard ; 
 on the contrary, they oblige us to look for 
 
124 LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION. [Serm. 
 
 such a standard ; we cannot measure or 
 interpret our own acts without it. In the 
 sunlight of his history, our relations to the 
 Father, and to all which opposes Him, stand 
 out clearly and distinctly revealed ; though 
 it is only in prayer and in action that we 
 can fully appropriate the lesson, and feel 
 the truth as it is in Jesus to be also a truth 
 in us. 
 
 However strange it may be to affirm that 
 God is leading us every day into some cir- 
 cumstances of temptation, and that here Hes 
 the very strength and warrant of the prayer 
 that He will not bring us into it — will not 
 suffer our enemies to prevail against us ; we 
 can boldly adopt that paradox, and find the 
 blessing of it in all ordinary events and in 
 all terrible emergencies. Riches, we know, 
 are temptations ; poverty, we know equally, 
 is a very great one. The king in the Prov- 
 erbs might be judicious in desiring a mean ; 
 but therein too lies a peril of its own, — 
 a kind of secure hardness, self-indulgence 
 comforting itseK with the assurance that it 
 is not luxury, the rich and the poor man's 
 sins both regarded with abhorrence because 
 they interfere mth us and there is no knowl- 
 edge of either. What wild pride and reck- 
 
VII.] LEAD US NOT INTO TEMP TA TION. 125 
 
 lessness there is in the sense of hjealth ! how 
 miserably are those deceived who fancy that 
 a sick-bed is in itself a cure for natural in- 
 firmities, and not an aggravation of them 
 and an excuse for them! What selfishness 
 is there in possession, but O ! how it turns 
 inward, how gnawing it becomes in the 
 hour of deprivation and loss. Various gifts 
 and endowments we speak of as full of 
 danger, and yet the man in the Gospel hid 
 his talent in the earth because he had only 
 one. The physician, lawyer, divine, may 
 each suspect that the other has some especial 
 means of usefulness, some exemption from 
 evils which he has felt ; but the heart knows 
 its own bitterness ; not one of them is wrong 
 in saying that liis position is full of snares ; 
 and that what seem to the on-looker secur- 
 ities, are really dangers. If the busy man 
 is every day tempted to worsliip the ido- 
 lafori^' how many idola speeds are there 
 which continually seduce the contemplative 
 man from his allegiance ! How easy it is 
 for monks to bring evidence that marriage 
 makes the soul less free ; how utterly they 
 fail when they would praise the safety of 
 celibacy. When the characters of those who 
 are bound together are unsuitable, what ir- 
 
126 LEAD USNOTINTO TEMP TA TI ON. [Serm. 
 
 ritation and restlessness ; if they perfectly 
 accord, what fear that each may confirm 
 that which is wrong in the other ! How 
 free from all debate and turmoil the halls of 
 philosophy may be thought by one who has 
 only known the region of politics ; some- 
 times men escape from both for security to 
 the religious world, and find that there they 
 are in the midst of more fierce and impla- 
 cable contentions. 
 
 The last discovery seems appalling. Can 
 religious habits, a religious atmosphere, 
 tempt us into evil, into falsehood, into 
 Atheism ? Experience answers. Yes ! It 
 tells us not only that no sect, no Church, is 
 free from these dangers, but more, that sects 
 and even Churches directly or implicitly, 
 by the idolatries or self -righteousness which 
 they encourage, or by the reaction against 
 them, by pious frauds, or the unbelief which 
 follows upon their detection, may lead us 
 into utter ruin. It is most necessary, in 
 our day especially, to know that fact, and 
 to keep it in our recollection. There may 
 be a Protestantism, a Catholicism, a Chris- 
 tianity without a God ; all that sounds most 
 religious, all that really is full of deepest 
 worth, of divinest meaning, — confessions, 
 
VII.] LEAD us NOT INTO TEMPTATION. 127 
 
 ordinances, the Bible, — may be used to 
 make us in practice, and ultimately in 
 theory, deniers of Him from whom they 
 have proceeded and of whom they speak. 
 Where then lies the security? In this, that 
 He zs, that He lives, and that in one con- 
 dition or another we are still led by Him. 
 Into what perils soever we have come, into 
 what perils soever we may come, let us be 
 sure it was not the Evil Spirit, but God 
 Himself who ordered the whole frame and 
 condition of our lives, and that this frame 
 and condition is not the worst but the best 
 possible for us, the best possible thougli 
 — yea, because — it is one of tremendous 
 temptation. Let us be equally sure that He 
 is not our tempter ; that He never tempted 
 any man to evil ; that we fall into it only V 
 when we think He is not Avith us to deliver \ 
 us from it ; that to think so is to believe a 
 lie ; that at all times, and in all possible 
 states, this is a right and true prayer which 
 He inspires and which He hears. " Bring 
 us not into temptation." Those old words, 
 " The Lord is my Shepherd, therefore can I 
 want nothing. He prepareth a table for me 
 in the midst of mine enemies. Though I 
 walk through the valley of the shadow of 
 
128 LEAD us NOT INTO TEMPTATION. [Serm. 
 
 death, thou art with me ; thy rod and thy 
 staff they comfort me ; " these words have 
 lasted three thousand years, and they are 
 just as living and as good now as they ever 
 were ; as adapted to the temptations of every 
 Englishman in the 19th century as to those 
 of David. 
 
 The words, " Lead us not into Tempta- 
 tion," are of the same kind; equally re- 
 minding us that we are in the midst of 
 enemies, that we may have to pass through 
 a valley of the shadow of death, through a 
 state of utter darkness ; equally telling us 
 that there is One who provides us a table 
 now, and will be with us then. But it is a 
 prayer which goes down more deeply, for 
 He taught his disciples to use it, for whom 
 the table had been prepared in the wilder- 
 ness where there was no bread, but only 
 stones ; who was Himself to pass through 
 the valley of the shadow of death, and to 
 feel all that can be felt of desertion and soli- 
 tude there. He bids us say, " Lead us not 
 into Temptation," assuring us that God is 
 not merely the Shepherd over each lonely 
 man, when passing through hours and days 
 of gloom and doubt and anguish which no 
 other creature knows of, but that He is also 
 
VII.] LEAD us NOT INTO TEMPTATION. 129 
 
 tlie Guide of the flock, of his o^yn Chiirch 
 upon earth, and of the great human family, 
 out of darkness into his marvelous hght. 
 " Lead us not into Temptation," said He 
 who is the Head of the Avhole body, inti- 
 mating that though it consists of many 
 members, and each has its own special trial, 
 which would not be precisely such an one to 
 any other, — though it often seems as if this 
 were the greatest hardship and misery of 
 all, that sorrow is incommunicable, that 
 each person understands so little of his 
 neighbor's, — yet in spite of this seeming 
 diversity and solitude, there is the most 
 intimate relation between all the parts of 
 the body, that what affects one of necessity 
 affects all. We know it to be so, and in 
 our different ways express the conviction. 
 We talk of family likenesses, of national 
 feelings, of a particular age having its 
 characteristic tendencies, its own special 
 good and evil/ The observation of these 
 sympathies is one of the necessary qualifi- 
 cations for conversing with men and de- 
 scribing their acts ; we may have made com- 
 paratively small progress in the inquiry, 
 but all confess it to be real and full of 
 interest. Our hearts bear witness to the 
 9 
 
130 LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION. [Serm. 
 
 Scripture assertion, that we have a common 
 Tempter and a common Deliverer ; that all 
 things, though made the instruments of one, 
 are yet actually and truly the instruments 
 of the other ; that there must be such a cry 
 from all hearts as this, and that it must be 
 the most helpful and uniting of all cries : 
 " Lead us not into Temptation." O strange 
 and mysterious privilege, that some bed- 
 ridden woman in a lonely garret, who feels 
 that she is tempted to distrust the love and 
 mercy of Him who sent his Son to die for 
 the helpless, should wrestle with that doubt, 
 saying the Lord's Prayer; and that she 
 should be thus asking help for those who 
 are dwelUng in palaces, who scarcely dream 
 of want, yet in their own way are in peril 
 as great as hers ; for the student, who in his 
 chamber is haunted with questions which 
 would seem to her monstrous and incredible, 
 but whic^ to him are agonizing ; for the 
 divine in his terrible assaults from cow- 
 ardice, despondency, vanity, from the sense 
 of his own heartlessness, from the shame of 
 past neglect, from the appalhng discovery 
 of evils in himself which he has denounced 
 in others, from vulgar outward temptations 
 into which he had proudly fancied that he 
 
VII.] LEAD us NOT INTO TEMPTATION. 131 
 
 could not fall, from dark suggestions recur- 
 ring often, that words have no realities cor- 
 responding to them, that what he speaks of 
 may mean nothing because to him it has 
 often meant so little. Of all this the suf- 
 ferer knows nothing, yet for these she prays 
 — and for the statesman who fancied the 
 world could be moved by his wires, and 
 suddenly finds that it has Avires of its own 
 which move without his bidding ; for her 
 country under the pressure of calamities 
 which the most skillful seek in vain to re- 
 dress ; for all other countries in their throes 
 of anguish which may terminate in a second 
 death or a new life. For one and all she 
 cries, " Lead us not into temptation." Their 
 temptations and hers, different in form, are 
 the same in substance. They, like her, are 
 tempted to doubt that God is, and that He 
 is the Author of good, and not of evil ; and 
 that He is mightier than the evil ; and that 
 He can and will overthrow it, and deliver 
 the universe out of it. This is the real 
 temptation ; there is no other. All events, 
 all things and persons, are bringing this 
 temptation before us ; no man is out of the 
 reach of it who is in God's world ; no man 
 is intended to be out of the reach of it who 
 
132 LEAD us NOT INTO TEMP TA TION. [Serm. 
 
 is God's child. He himself has led us into 
 this wilderness to be tempted of the devil ; 
 we cannot fly from it ; we cannot find in one 
 corner of it a safety which there is not in 
 another ; we cannot choose that we shall not 
 have those temptations which are specially 
 fitted to reach our own feeUngs, tempers, 
 infirmities ; they will be addressed to these ; 
 they will be aimed at the heel or head, at 
 whatever part has not been touched by the 
 fire, and is most vulnerable. We must not 
 crave quarter from the enemy ; to choose 
 for ourselves where we shall meet him, is to 
 desert that guardianship in which is all 
 safety. But we may cry, " Lead us not 
 into Temptation ; " and praying so, we pray 
 against ourselves, against our evil tenden- 
 cies, our eagerness for that which will ruin 
 us. Praying so, that which seemed to be 
 poison becomes medicine ; all circumstances 
 are turned to goo,d ; honey is gathered out 
 of the carcase ; death itself is made the min- 
 ister of life. 
 
 Away then with that cowardly language 
 which some of us are apt to indulge in when 
 we speak of one period as more dangerous 
 than another ; when we wish we were not 
 born into the age of revolutions ; or com- 
 
VII.] LEAD US NO'T INTO TEMP TA TI ON. 1 33 
 
 plain that the time of quiet belief is passed, 
 and that henceforth every man must ask 
 himself whether he has any ground to stand 
 upon, or whether all beneath him is hollow. 
 We are falling into the temptation, when we 
 thus lament over it. We are practically con- 
 fessing that the Evil Spirit is the Lord of 
 all ; that times and seasons are in his hand. 
 Let us clear our minds from every taint of 
 that blasphemy. God has brought us into 
 this time ; He, and not ourselves or some 
 dark demon. If we are not fit to cope with 
 that which He has prepared for us, we 
 should have been utterly unfit for any con- 
 dition that we imagine for ourselves. In this 
 time we are to live and wrestle, and in no 
 other. Let us humbly, tremblingly, man- 
 fully look at it, and we shall not wish that 
 the sun could go back its ten degrees, or that 
 we could go back with it. If easy times are 
 departed, it is that the difficult times may 
 make us more in earnest ; that they may 
 teach us not to depend upon ourselves. If 
 easy belief is impossible, it is that we may 
 learn what belief is, and in whom it is to be 
 placed. If an hour is at hand which will 
 try all the inhabitants of the earth, it is that 
 we may learn for all to say, " Lead us not 
 
134 LEAD US NOT, ETC. [Serm. VII 
 
 into the Temptation " of our times ; that so 
 we may be enabled with greater confidence 
 and hope to join in the cry of every time, 
 " Deliver us from Evil." 
 
SERMON VIII. 
 
 FOURTH SUNDAY IX LENT. 
 Deliver us from Evil. — Luke xi. 4. 
 
 T^THEN a man prays, " Lead us not into 
 ^ ' Temptation," he prays against him- 
 self ; prays that he may not go where he has 
 an inclination to go ; prays that neither he 
 nor his brethren may have what they have 
 a false taste for, even though God's hand 
 seems to offer it them. Sueh a prayer, till 
 we know something of ourselves, something 
 of his purpose in placing us here, must needs 
 appear strange and perplexing. Is not the 
 one which follows it altogether different ; 
 the simplest, most spontaneous utterance of 
 the heart ; one which all the world has been 
 pouring forth ; which we should certainly 
 have learnt, though no one had taught it 
 us? 
 
 It would be idle, indeed, to deny the uni- 
 versality of this prayer. Wherever men are 
 
136 DELIVER VS FROM EVIL. [Serm. 
 
 visited by any storm, or fire, or earthquake ; 
 wherever they are plagued with any bodily 
 sickness; wherever they are oppressed by 
 their fellow-men ; wherever they have a 
 vague sense of being crushed by fortune ; 
 wherever they have learnt to look upon cus- 
 tom or law as an incubus ; wherever they are 
 stifled by systems ; wherever they are con- 
 scious of a remorse which stays with them 
 and moves with them ; there is a cry ascend- 
 ing to some power, kno^vn or unknown, " De- 
 liver us from Evil." The question what evil 
 is, and whence it comes, is for such sufferers 
 of easy solution ; they know well what they 
 mean by it ; they know or guess generally 
 what brought it to them ; at all events it has 
 overtaken them. They may suppose that 
 some fellow-creature can rescue them from 
 it, or chance, or themselves ; they may look 
 to the physician, the priest, the legislator ; 
 to alterations in government; to new dis- 
 positions of property ; to a friendly execu- 
 tioner ; to suicide. But a deliverer there 
 must be ; something or some person to hope 
 in. If once we believe evil to be omnip- 
 otent, or suppose that it was intended for 
 us and we for it, I do not think it is possible 
 to conceive of human society or human life. 
 
VIII.] DELIVER US FROM EVIL. 137 
 
 Recollect the worship of every country you 
 ever heard of, how many names or charac- 
 teristics of the different divinities had rela- 
 tion to deUverance of some kind, or to the 
 averting or avenging of wrong. If you took 
 these away from the mythologies, you would 
 find that there remained a mere caput mor- 
 tuum ; all that had held them together and 
 appealed to human trust and sympathies 
 would have escaped. 
 
 Now it would surely be a very hard and 
 Stoical doctrine to proclaim that what these 
 different creatures of our flesh and blood 
 have cried to be saved from were not really 
 evils, but only certain conditions of existence, 
 which they fancied to be such. No one, I 
 should think, can imagine that he served 
 truth by maintaining such a proposition 
 against the sense of mankind, and against 
 the witness of his OAvn heart. That from 
 which men have revolted as utterly mmat- 
 ural and inconsistent and unreasonable, that 
 which they have felt to be in positive disa- 
 greement with their constitution, they have a 
 right to call an evil ; and all the theories, po- 
 litical, philosophical, religious, in the world, 
 can never deprive them of the right. Nor 
 can these theories, so far as I see, prove even 
 
138 DELIVER US FROM EVIL. [Serm. 
 
 the most extravagant hopes that our race 
 has indulged to be utterly vain and delusive, 
 or take from any man the right to seek 
 deliverance from human helpers, kings, law- 
 givers, shepherds of the people ; from his 
 own strong arm, from invisible helpers, from 
 some fate that is higher, sterner, more inflex- 
 ible than all other powers. There was a war- 
 rant for all such hopes, even for hope from 
 the last resource of self-destruction. We 
 have no right to take away such refuges 
 until we can provide a better ; and it is at 
 least probable that if a better be found, we 
 shall find some explanation of all the rest. 
 
 We may readily grant them, not only 
 that the prayer has been offered in all 
 places and in all ages, but that in all places 
 and in all ages a deep truth has been ex- 
 pressed in it. But do we, therefore, say 
 that the prayer had no need to be taught, 
 that it sprang up naturally in the mind of 
 man without any inspiration from above, 
 that it was not hke the former, the petition 
 of a man against himself, but altogether one 
 from and for himself ? I rather think the 
 evidence, if it is well considered, will lead 
 us just to the opposite conclusion ; that the 
 prayer was, in all cases., taught and inspired 
 
VIII.] DELIVER US FROM EVIL. 139 
 
 from above ; that what was contributed to 
 it by the natural heart of man in his differ- 
 ent circumstances and positions, was just 
 the false, confused element of it, just that 
 which narrowed its scope and divided its 
 object ; that in its true sense and purport it 
 is in perfect accordance with the cry against 
 temptation ; that He who imparted it to 
 men in the old time, was He who gave it to 
 his disciples in its clearness and purity, in 
 its length and breadth, when He said, 
 '•' After this manner, therefore, pray ye : 
 Our Father — dehver us from evil." 
 
 I. Other portions of the Lord's Prayer 
 have led me to remark that there is a fear- 
 ful tendency in us all, which has infused it- 
 self most mischievously into our theology, 
 to look first at our necessity or misery, only 
 afterwards at our relation to God, and at 
 his nature. The last are made dependent 
 upon the former. We are conscious of a 
 derangement in our condition ; simply in 
 reference to this derangement do we con- 
 template Him who we hope may reform it. 
 We have just been tracing this process in 
 heathenism. A mischief is felt ; if there is 
 a mischief, there must be a deliverer. Un- 
 doubtedly the conscience bears this witness, 
 
140 DELIVER US FROM EVIL. [Serm. 
 
 and it is a right one. But the qualities of 
 the deliverer are determined by the charac- 
 ter or locality of that which is to be re- 
 dressed, or by the habits of those who are 
 suffering from it. From this heathenish 
 habit of mind the Lord's Prayer is the 
 great preserver. Say first, " Our Father." 
 This relation is fixed, established, certain. 
 It existed in Christ before all worlds ; it 
 was manifested when He came in the flesh. 
 He is ascended on high, that we may claim 
 it. Let us be certain that we ground all our 
 thoughts upon these opening words ; till we 
 know them well by heart, do not let us lis- 
 ten to the rest. Let us go on carefully, 
 step by step, to the Name, the Kingdom, the 
 Will, assuring ourselves of our footing, con- 
 fident thatwe are in a region of clear un- 
 mixed goodness ; of goodness which is to be 
 hallowed by us ; which has come and shall 
 come to us, and in us ; which is to be done 
 on earth, not merely in heaven. Then we 
 are in a condition to make these petitions, 
 which we are ordinarily in such haste to ut- 
 ter, and which He, in whom all wisdom 
 dwells, commands us to defer. Last of all 
 comes this " Deliver us from evil." When 
 we are able to look upon evil, not as the 
 
YIII. DELIVER US FROM EVIL. 141 
 
 regular normal state of the universe, but as 
 absolutely at variance with the character of 
 its Author, with his constitution of it, with 
 the Spirit which He has given to us, that 
 we can pray, attaching some real signifi- 
 cance to the language. Deliver us from it, — 
 then we shall understand why men looked 
 with faith to the aid of their fellow-men ; to 
 princes, and cliieftains, and lawgivers, and 
 sages. They were sent into the world for 
 this end, upon this mission. They were 
 meant to act as deliverers. They were to 
 be witnesses of a real righteous order, and 
 to resist all transgressors of it. We can 
 understand why strong men felt that they 
 had better act for themselves than depend 
 upon foreign help. For the Father of all 
 put their strength into them, that they 
 might wield it as his servants in his work ; 
 it was his Spirit who made them conscious 
 of their strength, and of that purpose for 
 which they were to use it. We can see 
 why these hopes were so continually disap- 
 pointed, though they had so right a founda- 
 tion ; why they were driven to think of 
 higher aid, of invisible champions, because 
 those upon the earth proved feeble, or de- 
 serted the cause, and served themselves. 
 
142 DELIVER US FROM EVIL. [Serm. 
 
 It is true that the hosts of heaven are obey- 
 ing that Power which the hosts of earth are 
 commanded to obey ; that they are doing 
 his service by succoring those who are toil- 
 ing below ; it is true, because He who rules 
 all is not a destiny, but a loving will ; not 
 an abstraction, but a Person ; not a mere 
 sovereign, but a Father. All creation is 
 ordered upon this law of mutual dependence 
 and charity; but it is only in the knowl- 
 edge and worship of the Highest that we 
 can apprehend the places and tasks of the 
 lower ; when He is hidden, these are for- 
 gotten ; society becomes incoherent ; noth- 
 ing understands itself ; everything is in- 
 verted ; the deliverer is one with the tyrant ; 
 evil and good run into each other ; we in- 
 voke Satan to cast out Satan. See, then, 
 what a restorative, regenerative power Hes 
 in this prayer ! See what need there was 
 that the Son of God should come from the 
 bosom of the Father, to make men know 
 that they were not orphans, to show how 
 they might be in fact, and not merely in 
 idea, children ! 
 
 II. For now it is not any longer by this 
 or that man, or unseen power, by this or 
 that subordinate agency, by this or that al- 
 
Vm.] DELIVER US FROM EVIL. 143 
 
 teration of events and circumstances, tliat 
 we are forced to bound our plans and pros- 
 pects of deliverance. We have not to work 
 our way upwards by stairs winding, broken, 
 endless, to an indefinite shado^vy point, 
 which we are afraid to reach, lest it should 
 prove to be nothing. We begin from the 
 summit ; we find there the substance of all 
 the hope men have drawn from the promis- 
 ing, but changeable, aspects of the cloud- 
 land below ; we see that all the darkness of 
 earth, all its manifold forms of evil, have 
 come from the rays being intercepted, which 
 would have scattered it and shall scatter it 
 altogether. Therefore we pray boldly, '^ De- 
 liver us from evil," knowing assuredly that 
 we are praying to be set free from that to 
 which the ^\i\\ of the Creator is opposed, 
 against which all the powers of the universe 
 are engaged ; that which all natural things, 
 doing Him quiet homage, are punishing ; 
 that against which all voluntary creatures 
 by the law of their being are pledged to co- 
 operate. We are praying against that which 
 men have not been praying against in vain 
 for six thousand years, but rather which 
 they have been stemming, overcoming con- 
 tinually ; each of their prayers, if offered in 
 
144 DELIVER US FROM EVIL. [Sekm. 
 
 ever so much dimness and confusion, open- 
 ing a vision out of the darkness, because 
 each joi them derived its first impulse from 
 Him, who through them, and in answer to 
 them, was preparing the full discovery of 
 Himself, and of that strength whereby all 
 that resists Him shall be broken. I say 
 the prayer offered with this recollection, 
 becomes one full of cheerfulness and con- 
 fidence. The difficulty is, to offer it in that 
 recollection. God forbid that I should speak 
 lightly of that difficulty ! knowing how great 
 it is ; how hard, when evil is above, beneath, 
 within ; when it faces you in the world, and 
 scares you in the closet; when you hear 
 it saying in your own heart, and saying 
 in every one else, " Our name is Legion ; " 
 when sometimes you seem to be carrying 
 the world's sins upon yourself, and then for- 
 get them and yourseK altogether, — which 
 is worse and brings a heavier sense of mis- 
 ery afterwards ; when all schemes of redress 
 seem to make the evil under which the 
 earth is groaning more malignant ; when our 
 own history, and the history of mankind, 
 seems to be mockiag at every effort for life, 
 and to be bidding us rest contented in death ; 
 O, it is hard, most hard, to think that such 
 
VIII.] DELIVER US FROM EVIL. 145 
 
 a prayer as this is not another of the cheats 
 and self-dehisions in which we have worn out 
 existence ! But, courage ! if the evil were 
 less pressing, we might have leisure to doubt 
 the remedy; when all possibilities are ex- 
 hausted, we begin to understand that here is 
 certainty ; we must believe on some ground 
 or other that evil is not absolute, not vic- 
 torious ; we must beUeve it honestly, and 
 without a trick, not pretending that it is 
 nothing, when we feel inwardly that it is 
 only not at all. And we can believe it 
 honestly with our whole hearts, while we 
 say, " Our Father — deliver us from the 
 evil." Then that which seemed so terrible, 
 because it was so manifold, is condensed into 
 one ; it means in all its forms that which is 
 opposed to the mind and will of Him, who 
 so loved the world, as to give his only-be- 
 gotten Son, that we might be his children, 
 and brethren one of another. 
 
 III. This truth, that evil, though by its 
 nature multiform and contradictory, has nev- 
 ertheless a central root, our Lord teaches 
 us by his temptation in the wilderness, and 
 again by the prayer, " Dehver us from the 
 evil." He, for the first time, made it fully 
 evident that mankind has not merely ene- 
 10 
 
146 DELIVER US FROM EVIL. [Serm. 
 
 mies, but an enemy ; that neither the vari- 
 ous external torments which seem to make 
 up evil, nor the desires and appetites of the 
 man himself, upon which we often charge 
 it, create or constitute the mystery of iniq- 
 uity which is at work. Most blessed was 
 this discovery ; it justified the thoughts 
 which had been in a number of hearts ; it 
 justified the ways of God. I said that the 
 Stoical denial of external evil is an artificial 
 doctrine, at war with conscience and reason. 
 Our Lord never for a moment yielded to it ; 
 He acknowledged palsies, and hunger, and 
 leprosies to be plagues and curses, from 
 which men should seek deliverance. But 
 He did at the same time explain wherein 
 the truth of Stoicism lay. He showed that 
 these sufferings are not the evils of man ; 
 they belong to a wrong condition, but they 
 are not the causes of it ; nay, their sting 
 may be taken out of them, they may be- 
 come instruments for the cure and destruc- 
 tion of evil. He Himself underwent them ; 
 He felt them as none ever felt them ; so He 
 showed that men are intended to feel them. 
 He exhibited love and mercy in them, and 
 through them ; so He showed that they are 
 not the masters of the will ; that they may 
 
VIII.] DELIVER US FROM EVIL. 147 
 
 be its servants. Equally does He prove 
 that the good things of life, the riches and 
 beauty of the universe, are not the origin of 
 its evils, as men have wickedly imagined ; 
 and if not, then that the desires and appe- 
 tites of our heart, which correspond to these, 
 and which they address, are not the origin 
 of evil, and carry in them no necessary cor- 
 ruption. And yet He does bring the sense 
 of evil nearer to us than it was ever brought 
 before; He does explain by his words, by 
 his life, why we must feel that evil to be 
 actually bound up with ourselves, why it is 
 the most difficult of all things not to iden- 
 tify it with ourselves. For He by bidding 
 us deny ourselves. He by giving up Himself 
 in every thought and act, He by presenting 
 Himself as the one great Sacrifice to the 
 Father, makes us perceive that the setting 
 up of self, the worship of self, is the evil 
 from which all others flow, from which we 
 are to pray, "Deliver us." Here is the 
 wonderful Gospel mystery which meets all 
 the mysteries of our own hearts and of the 
 world, and expounds them. Here is that, 
 which makes that last refuge of man in self- 
 murder intelligible. It is self he wants to 
 get rid of ; he has sought evil elsewhere, 
 
148 DELIVER US FROM EVIL. [Serm. 
 
 and not found it ; lie has it in his own be- 
 ing ; that must perish. What a sense of 
 solitude must be in the spirit before it can 
 dream of such an act ! what a feeling that 
 all which it has seen without is centered 
 within ! And yet what it feels in that hour, 
 all the world is feeling in a measure ; this 
 self is the curse of each, as much as it is 
 his. O ! if he could rise for a moment to 
 that perception, if he could feel "It is not 
 /, it is the spirit of self-will, who is counter- 
 feiting me ; it is this from which I must be 
 deUvered; it is this from which my race 
 must be delivered ! That each may be 
 himself, that the universe may be what the 
 Lord of all created it to be ; this must be 
 overcome for each, for all." With what a 
 new and wonderful feeling would he then 
 turn to the wOrds, " Behold the Lamb of 
 God, which taketh away the sins of the 
 world ! " " Lo, I come, (in the volume of 
 the book it is written of me,) to do thy 
 will, O God : thy law is within my heart ; " 
 and to this, " By the which will we are 
 sanctified, through the offering of the body 
 of Christ once for all." Such words may 
 have seemed hitherto quite vague, the frag- 
 ments of an obsolete theology. Seen in the 
 
VIII.] DELIVER US FROM EVIL. 149 
 
 light of this discovery respecting the nature 
 of Evil, seen in the light of that other more 
 glorious discovery respecting the infinite 
 charity of God, how they harmonize with 
 all that our hearts had prophesied of, with 
 our consciousness that we have capacities 
 of sympathy and fellowship, which are de- 
 stroyed by self-will ; with the conditions of 
 a world, created for brotherhood, destroyed 
 by the same self-will. How little a man, 
 who has learnt this lesson, wishes any more 
 to resolve the evil spirit into the feeluigs 
 and passions of the individual heart I How 
 he abhors such implicit practical Manichee- 
 ism, against which Christ's temptation, and 
 the history of his redemption, extending as 
 it does to every thought and movement and 
 appetite of our souls and bodies, as well as 
 to the whole outward universe, is the pro- 
 test ! How he must rejoice to think, '' I 
 can pray, I will pray. Deliver us from the 
 evil. I will pray to the Father of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ against myself, against my in- 
 clination to make self the object of my ex- 
 istence, of my worship, against every act 
 and thought which involves that inclination. 
 I will pray to Him, whose will is that I 
 should be in submission to Him, that I 
 
150 DELIVER US FROM EVIL. [Seem. 
 
 should be his servant in all the powers and 
 affections of my spirit, soul, and body ; who 
 would use all these for the manifestation of 
 his love, for the deliverance of his creatures. 
 I will pray to Him in the confidence that 
 He has accepted the perfect sacrifice of his 
 Son for me, and for all mankind, the sacri- 
 fice which He had Himself prepared, the 
 sacrifice which was the fruit and perfect 
 setting forth of his own love, the sacrifice 
 which was presented to Him by the Ever- 
 lasting Spirit. I will pray in the confi- 
 dence that He will receive the sacrifice of 
 myself and of all to Him in that Name. I 
 will pray in the certainty that He is main- 
 taining a conflict with the self-will which is 
 the curse and dislocation of the world, and 
 that every plague, pestilence, insurrection, 
 revolution, is a step in the history of that 
 conflict, tending towards the final victory. 
 I will pray that we may not be cast down 
 and lose faith, because change after change 
 only seems to bring out the evil more fear- 
 fully, to exhibit some darker and more in- 
 ward form of it. I will pray that we may 
 not acquiesce in any evil about us, or within 
 us, because we fancy that a worse might 
 come from its removal. I will pray to feel 
 
VIII.] DELIVER US FROM EVIL. 151 
 
 that our only safety is in the God of truth 
 and love, to recollect that seK-Avill, as its 
 different veils and bandages and rags of 
 borrowed finery fall off, must be displayed 
 more nakedly and horribly ; to give thanks, 
 nevertheless, that its resources are nearly 
 exhausted, that its rage mil be fiercest 
 when its hour is shortest ; to make, there- 
 fore, no truce with it ; to wish none for my 
 fellow-men ; to act and hve in the confi- 
 dence that if we wait the appointed time, 
 the travail-hour of creation. He who over- 
 came the principalities and powers of evil 
 in the wilderness, in the city, on the cross, 
 in the sepulclire, and who ascended on high, 
 making a show of them openly, will fully 
 deliver us and our race from them, that we 
 may serve without fear Him, the Father, 
 and the Holy Ghost, the one God, world 
 without end. 
 
SERMON IX. 
 
 FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 
 
 For Thine is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the 
 Glory, forever. Amen. — Matthew vi. 13. 
 
 A S this Doxology occurs in only one 
 "^ Evangelist, the Church, in her repeti- 
 tions of the prayer, omits it at least as often 
 as she uses it. The idea contained in the 
 words has been expressed already ; it is in- 
 volved in all the petitions. But the distinct 
 utterance of it at the close of the prayer 
 teaches us some lessons which the prayer 
 might fail to teach us, and yet which we 
 must always remember if we would say it 
 truly. 
 
 I. The words, " Thine is the Kingdom," 
 certainly assume that it is not ours. Now 
 if by " Kingdom " we understand the king- 
 dom of Nature, the courses of the planets, 
 the succession of day and night, of seed-time 
 and harvest, perhaps the temptation to say, 
 
Serm. IX.] FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM. 153 
 
 " This is ours," may not be very great. 
 Some Opifex Mundi^ or Intelligent Princi- 
 ple, or Demiurgus, or fixed law, may be ad- 
 mitted to preside over these arrangements. 
 But if we apply " kingdom," as I suppose 
 most of us would, to the order and conduct 
 of human society generally, or in some of 
 its particular divisions, the feehng is very 
 different. Here we have a claim to be 
 toasters ; over this order man exercises a 
 most evident influence. Is there anything 
 monstrous in the notion, that he established 
 it, and that he upholds it ? There can be 
 nothing strange in it, for we all drop into it 
 most easily and naturally. True, there are 
 old forms which denote a belief the most 
 opposite of this, forms which indicate that 
 the highest ruler of the land, and every 
 subordinate magistrate, derives his author- 
 ity from an Invisible Person, to whom he is 
 nnder a fearful responsibility for the fulfill- 
 ment of his duties. The recognition of an 
 actual King of kings, and Lord of lords, of 
 One not only interfering at certain crises to 
 disturb an existing monotony, but present 
 at all times, the real source of government, 
 through whatever hands it may be admin- 
 istered, — this recognition enters assuredly 
 
154 FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM. [Serm. 
 
 into the institutions and laws of every nation 
 in Christendom ; I might say, of every na- 
 tion in the world. But we have become 
 more and more convinced that these wit- 
 nesses are, as to their real and original in- 
 tent, obsolete. They belong, it is said, to a 
 theocratic period of the world's history ; 
 when that had passed away they hngered 
 still and are even now not without their use 
 in enforcing obligations, the true ground of 
 which cannot be apprehended by the people 
 at large, in giving an historical sacredness 
 and mystery to that which would else seem 
 a creature of the present ; in sustaining the 
 force of laws by sympathies and affections, 
 bv the terrors or hopes of another world. 
 But all these explanations and apologies 
 clearly assume, that the schemes for uphold- 
 ing society, be they rehgious or secular, are 
 of our creation ; that society itself is. Some 
 would throw a decent veil over its origin ; 
 some would lay bare the savage contests, 
 victories of cunning and terror, contests of 
 the weak many and the strong few, out of 
 which it arose ; some would find a resting- 
 place in the physical conformation and men- 
 tal temperament of different races ; ulti- 
 mately, the great majority of those who 
 
IX.] FOR THINE IS TEE KINGDOM. 155 
 
 think for themselves, and of those who are 
 thought for, subside into the conclusion that 
 man is an absolute sovereign over liis own 
 social relations ; or, at all events, that there 
 is merely a reserved right dwelling with 
 some other power, which in ordinary calcu- 
 lations hardly needs to be taken into ac- 
 count. It may happen, undoubtedly, that 
 this claim of sovereignty assumes a shape 
 which we find starthng. We may be sud- 
 denly required to recognize, not the abstract 
 phantom, but the practical exercise of popu- 
 lar supremacy. Then we begin to observe, 
 that whenever that which is in conception 
 so sublime takes a concrete form, it is a 
 very coarse and very narrow one ; the most 
 ignorant part of some city or district em- 
 bodpng the great idea. We may begin to 
 ask. Whether that which seems to be the 
 highest achievement of liberty does not in- 
 volve a perpetual alternation of despotism 
 and servility ; whether that which is the 
 last and highest effort of reason does not 
 lead to incessant contradiction? Such ex- 
 pressions may be true, such doubts amply 
 justified, but do not they come too late ? 
 Have we not already admitted the principle, 
 sanctioned the contradiction ? If this ulti- 
 
156 FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM. [Serm. 
 
 mate sovereignty resides in any creatures, 
 surely there must be a law of gravitation 
 which will make it settle at last where we 
 dread to think that it is settling now. That 
 law cannot forever be resisted by mere pre- 
 scription, or tricks of diplomacy, or arms 
 which may lose their edge and change their 
 object ; or, lastly, by spiritual influences, 
 which we resort to for a purpose, which we 
 wish to be effectual for others but can trifle 
 with ourselves. Surely all these things must 
 come to nought ; all, that is to say, which 
 interposes between us or any country, and 
 the abyss of self-willed mob dominion, if 
 these words which we utter so often have 
 not a reality in them above all realities, a 
 depth beneath all depths. "Yours," says 
 our Lord, " is not the kingdom, though you 
 may be called to sit down in it, and occupy 
 honorable places in it ; though each of you 
 has some place in it ; some work and office 
 assigned you by the Great King, a rule over 
 a portion of his subjects. Yours is not the 
 kingdom ; nor, as so many of you come to 
 think, when all your plots have failed, and 
 you are desperate of overcoming evil and 
 estabUshing good in your fashion, is it the 
 DeviPs kingdom. He claims it ; he says to 
 
IX.] FOR THINE IS TEE KINGDOM. 157 
 
 you, as he said to Me, * It is mine, and I 
 give it to whomsoever I will.' On the 
 strength of that assertion he bids you, as he 
 bade Me, fall down and worship him. He 
 asks you to traffic with him for the means 
 of regenerating your fellow-creatures, and 
 getting the kingdom out of his hands. But 
 you can answer him as I answered : ' It is 
 written. Thou shalt worship the Lord God, 
 and Him only shalt thou serve.' You can 
 say, ' Thine is the kingdom ; thine it is 
 now ; not thine it shall be hereafter. Thine 
 it is who art our Father, and hast called us 
 to be thy children. Thine it is, whom we 
 have asked according to thy will to deliver 
 us from the evil.' " 
 
 Now, my brethren, in making this ascrip- 
 tion, we do not affirm Theocracy in the sense 
 which some persons give to that word, and 
 which may well have made it hateful. We 
 do not say, *' Thine is the kingdom," mean- 
 ing that it belongs not really to an invisible 
 Father, but really to certain visible priests, 
 who claim the homage due to Him for them- 
 selves, and bring men into bondage by the 
 perversion of that truth which is alone able 
 to set them free. We do not mean, accord- 
 ing to the Filmer and Sacheverel doctrine, 
 
158 FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM. [Serm. 
 
 that the divine power is transferred to cer- 
 tain visible kings, in whom it rests absokitely 
 and indefeasibly. We do not mean, accord- 
 ing to the Fifth-monarchy teachers, that this 
 kingdom resides in a certain body of saints 
 whom God has authorized to claim the 
 world as their possession. All these doc- 
 trines we should reject, not as exaggerations, 
 but as evasions ; not more for their folly 
 than for their profaneness. If the words, 
 " Thine is the kingdom," are true words, 
 priests, kings, saints, must say as much as 
 any, yea, more than any : "It is not ours. 
 We exist only to testify whose it is, only to 
 bring all whom we can reach within the 
 experience of its blessedness." They are to 
 make it manifest that their consecration is 
 not a falsehood ; that aU the services by 
 which we hallow our civil, acts are not hor- 
 rible mockeries ; that all the forms of human 
 discourse which unconsciously witness of a 
 divine order and government, need not for 
 the sake of honesty be cast out of it, till it 
 is reduced to little more than the chattering 
 of savages. They are to declare — we aU 
 of us, brethren, are pledged by our baptis- 
 mal vows, to declare — that there is an act- 
 ual eternal ground for what we have treated 
 
IX.] FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM. 159 
 
 as fictions, for what men declare, and de- 
 clare rightly if we could by our lie make 
 God's truth of none effect, to be worn-out 
 fictions. We are bound to affirm that a Fa- 
 therly kingdom is established in the world ; 
 that to be members of it is our highest ti- 
 tle, and that the beggars of the land share 
 it with us ; that in it the cliief of all is the 
 servant of all ; that under Him all may in 
 their respective spheres reign according to 
 this law; that all ranks and orders stand 
 upon this tenure, and are preserved or over- 
 turned by their honor or contempt for it ; 
 that all offices, the highest and lowest, have 
 hence their responsibility and dignity ; that 
 this kingdom has its highest throne over the 
 human will, and its secret impulses and de- 
 terminations ; that it reaches to the most 
 trifling acts and words ; that not one of the 
 suffering myriads in a crowded city is for- 
 gotten by Him who is its ruler, any more 
 than one of the spirits of just men made per- 
 fect ; that when all the subordinate vassals 
 of the kingdom shall confess their depend- 
 ence upon Him, shall know that He is, 
 and shall feel towards those who are beneath 
 them and to one another as He feels towards 
 them, then his kingdom which is now, will 
 indeed have come in power. 
 
160 FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM. [Serm. 
 
 II. And SO it shall come ; for Thine is the 
 Power » Different words from the last, how- 
 ever closely allied to them; and I think 
 harder words to say in perfect sincerity. 
 Here we are not hmited, as in the other 
 case. We were obliged to confess that we 
 did not call the Kingdom of Nature into ex- 
 istence. But we do put forth a great and 
 notorious power over that kingdom ; men 
 can say, with much apparent justification, 
 " Ours is the power," even there. Accord- 
 ingly they did say it. The students of Na- 
 ture went forth, hke the Persian king, with 
 the chains wherewith to bind her, with the 
 magical sounds which were to make her do 
 their biddings. But then the humbling 
 maxim was proclaimed, which has been the 
 foundation of all real discovery and victory 
 in this department : " Man, the servant and 
 interpreter of Nature, knows nothing, can 
 do nothing, except what he had first observed 
 in her." All the boastings to which two 
 centuries of wonderful success might have 
 given birth are stopped by the recollection, 
 that obedience to this canon has been the 
 single secret of success, that any one who 
 would resist it, and determine to conquer 
 without stooping, has gone away discomfited. 
 
IX.] FOR THINE IS TEE KINGDOM. 161 
 
 Nature, even when she seems most confess- 
 ing the dominion of man, is sapng with all 
 her voices, " Yours is not the power ; you 
 are learners, interpreters, receivers ; you 
 can use the strength which you have first 
 asked for; that is all." 
 
 Yet how wide a field remains, if this is 
 denied us ! Ours is surely the power, in 
 some way or other, to affect our fellow-men. 
 There is the direct power which lies in rela- 
 tionship, station, age ; the power of outward 
 attractions ; the power of wealth ; the power 
 of conversation ; the power of moving crowds 
 by speech ; the power of written words and 
 of song ; these, with all the innumerable 
 subtle mysterious agencies which are only 
 known in their operation. Surely, whatever 
 may be said of the objects to Avhicli these 
 powers are directed, their existence must be 
 admitted. It cannot be said that they are 
 not put forth by human beings, that they 
 are not human powers. Can it be pretended 
 that they would be in any respect better if 
 they were less vigorous ; that there is in 
 power itself an inherent curse ? Such a 
 proposition would, I beheve, be a denial as 
 great as there can be of the truth which this 
 ascription afifirms. But upon this point ex- 
 11 
 
162 FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM. [Serm. 
 
 perience has its own testimony to bear, which 
 must be listened to, and which cannot be at 
 variance Avith that which comes from any true 
 authority. These exercises of power do not 
 only bring ivitli them pain, which might be 
 easily understood, but after them, disap- 
 pointment. And this not only when the 
 end sought for has been mean, but when 
 it has been glorious ; when it has been the 
 triumph over wrong and the setting up of 
 right. A bitter wail is heard again and 
 again, that weak insignificant men do the 
 work of the world, and that those who could 
 do it are kept back or crushed ; a wail which 
 they who make it are half ashamed of, but 
 which, nevertheless, they cannot suppress. 
 The thing that was aimed at is not achieved ; 
 hopeless obstacles from the force of circum- 
 stances, and the ignorance of mankind, are 
 said to stand in the way. What is stranger 
 still, those in whom no power is apparent, 
 who are not conscious of its existence in them, 
 are seen to exert it ; the meek people whom 
 the world does not regard, whom the men of 
 power have been used to look upon with 
 scorn, effect what they cannot ; at some time 
 or other that influence reaches even them and 
 overmasters them. Strange facts, but recur- 
 
IX.] FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM. 163 
 
 ring continually, making up the history of 
 mankind! How can they be explained? 
 They are not explained, I think, to any per- 
 son who has much vaunted of his o^vn pow- 
 ers, till he is led to perceive that man, the 
 servant and student of the ways of God, 
 knows nothing in morals, can do nothing m 
 influencing his fellow-men, except what he 
 hath first perceived in Him after whose im- 
 age he is formed. In other and much bet- 
 ter words, he learns to say, '' Thine is the 
 power. Thine are the powers which I have 
 found in myself and called mine. From 
 thee they came, by thee they must be sus- 
 tained and dh-ected. That perpetual rest- 
 lessness which I have experienced, which 
 sometimes made me curse the world, some- 
 times myself, sometimes thy gifts, was the 
 effect of my claiming that which did not 
 belong to me, trying to wield armor which 
 was too weighty. Those whom I com- 
 plained of because they were set in high 
 places, with so little right to be there, were 
 less mischievous than I should have been, 
 because they did less, struggled less, and left 
 more room for thy working. Those whose 
 strength I was forced to admit, though 
 naturally I despised them, might have 
 
164 FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM. [Serm. 
 
 fewer powers than mine, but what they had 
 were submitted to thee, were confessed to be 
 thine ; therefore they had Omnipotence with 
 them. And now, since thou hast taught 
 me, by sore and tremendous discipline, that 
 I cannot strive with thee, I beheve, indeed, 
 that Thine is the power ; the power to make 
 this will conformable to thine ; the power 
 to use what thou hast endowed me with as 
 thine own ; the power to make all circum- 
 stances which have no virtue of their own, 
 and which, whether sad or happy, may be 
 my plagues, really blessed; the power to 
 bring order out of the chaos within me ; 
 the power to change selfish remorse into 
 gracious repentance ; the power to quicken 
 the bodies of thy saints, to restore the 
 age, to renew the earth, to subdue even all 
 things to thyself." 
 
 III. For lastly. Thine is the glory. To 
 what is this Kingdom tending ? What is to 
 be accomplished by this power ? '' Though 
 we admit," it is often said, " that there is 
 some Being who formed individuals and 
 human society, and who is continually di- 
 recting both, still, if we hold Him to be a 
 gracious and benevolent Being, we cannot 
 conceive Him to have any object but the 
 
IX.] FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM. 165 
 
 happiness or well-doing of his creatures ; 
 we must not dream that self-glory is ever 
 his aim. But if not, then surely the 
 blessedness and glory of humanity may be 
 our ultimate aim ; we need not, cannot look 
 higher." This statement you must all have 
 heard frequently, m one form of words or 
 another, and we shall hear more of it yet. 
 We ought not to overlook the important 
 truth which is contained in it, or to be un- 
 thankful for the confutation it contains of a 
 deadly doctrine which divines have been too 
 ready to propagate. If the glory be his, 
 whom we have called our Father, whose 
 Name we have desired to hallow, whose 
 Kingdom we have prayed might come, 
 whose Will is to be done on earth and in 
 heaven, who is the Giver and the Forgiver, 
 who guides us through temptation, and 
 brings us out of evil ; w^ dare not believe 
 for an instant that it is a Self-glorj^ of 
 which we are speaking. It must be that 
 which is the eternal opposite and contra- 
 diction of Self-glory ; the glory of a Bemg 
 whose name and nature is Love. That 
 such a Being must seek the good of the 
 creatures He has formed, we are all agreed. 
 What we say is, that He would not be 
 
166 FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM. [Serm. 
 
 seeking the good of his voluntary creatures, 
 if He did not raise them above themselves ; 
 if He did not give them a perfect absolute 
 object to behold, and to dwell in. Those 
 of our age who speak so much about the 
 glory of humanity, affirm that man wants 
 no such object, or cannot attain it if he 
 does. Either it is really the satisfaction of 
 all his wants, or else the only one he can 
 hope for, to be a Narcissus, ever beholding 
 his own beauty and becoming more and 
 more enamored of it. I am aware that 
 many who use this kind of language would 
 protest strongly against the notion that a 
 man becomes necessarily a seZf- worshipper, 
 a seeker of his own glory, because he seeks 
 the glory of his race or kind. I admit the 
 distinction ; it is a very important one. 
 What I desire earnestly is, that they would 
 ask themselves how it may be practically 
 reaUzed. Humanity cannot be contem- 
 plated merely as an abstraction; it must 
 be seen in some one. For a time we may 
 choose a favorite hero, and think that he 
 embodies all we covet to behold. Imper- 
 fections appear in him, or he does not meet 
 the new cravings of our mind ; he is dis- 
 carded, another is raised up, who has a 
 
IX.] FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM. 167 
 
 shorter reign. We discover that we must 
 not exalt one against another; each one 
 carries in him the nature of all ; each man 
 has that nature very near to him. A great 
 and wonderful conviction! but if existing 
 alone, sure to turn into that state of mind 
 which I just now spoke of. Around, be- 
 neath, above, the man finds no object so 
 worthy of his dehght, admiration, adora- 
 tion, as himself. 
 
 It is very possible, that those who put 
 forth a theory which justifies, as it seems to 
 us, this mournful result, are not practically 
 nearer to it than we are, who denounce it. 
 God forbid that I should exaggerate their 
 danger, or our safety ! I believe that we are 
 one and all haunted by this tendency to 
 self-glorification every day and hour of our 
 lives ; that no religious systems, no religious 
 practices, are a protection against it; nay, 
 will, if we trust in them, infalUbly lead us 
 into it. It signifies not under what pretext, 
 philosophical, political, theological, we build 
 altars to ourselves; the worship is in all 
 cases equally accursed. To throw down 
 these altars, to destroy the high places in 
 which men are burning incense to divinities 
 that will prove at last to be fouler than Be- 
 
168 FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM. [Serm. 
 
 lial or Molocli ; this must be our work. 
 But if we have commenced this process, 
 where it always should commence, in our 
 own hearts, we shall know that we can only 
 drive out the false by turning to the true. 
 It is only God who can break the yoke of 
 the tyrants under whom we have fallen 
 from forgetfuhiess of Him. 
 
 Therefore I have desired that we should 
 meditate upon the prayer of our childhood, 
 in which lies, I believe, the charm against 
 all that has assaulted us in our manhood. 
 Within the few weeks that we have been 
 considering it, as many events have been 
 passing before us as might fill many centu- 
 ries ; it has seemed to meet them all ; to be 
 the best and fullest language in which we 
 can express our fears, hopes, longings, for 
 ourselves, our nation, the world. We have 
 not found that the wants and sorrows of 
 Humanity were forgotten in it, because it 
 begins from a higher ground, because it 
 starts from a Father, because it acknowl- 
 edges all the highest and lowest blessings as 
 proceeding from Him. If we believe that 
 this Father beholds Humanity created, re- 
 deemed, glorified, in his beloved Son ; if we 
 believe that in that Son we may behold it 
 
rx.] FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM. 169 
 
 and behold Him ; that being members of 
 his body we may see Christ in each and 
 Christ in all ; we cannot think less nobly of 
 our kind than those do who shut their eyes 
 to the facts of its corruption and misery, or 
 who will not acknowledge that this corrup- 
 tion comes from our refusal to retain God 
 in our knowledge. If we believe that the 
 Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the Father and 
 Son, is given to us that we may be united 
 to each other, that we may be fitted for all 
 knowledge and all love, we cannot have less 
 noble anticipations of that for which man is 
 destined than those who speak most loudly 
 of his emancipation from all thralldom, and 
 of his infinite capacities. But what we de- 
 sire for ourselves and for our race, — the 
 greatest redemption we can dream of, — is 
 gathered up in the words, *' Thine is the 
 glory." Self -willing, self-seeking, self -glo- 
 rying — here is the curse : no shackles re- 
 main when these are gone ; nothing can be 
 wanting when the spirit sees itself, loses it- 
 self in Him who is Light, and in whom is 
 no darkness at all. In these words there- 
 fore we see the ground and consummation 
 of our prayer ; they show how prayer be- 
 gins and ends in Sacrifice and Adoration. 
 
170 FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM [Serm. IX. 
 
 They teach us how Prayer, which we might 
 fancy was derived from the wants of an im- 
 perfect, suffering creature, belongs equally 
 to the redeemed and perfected. In these 
 the craving for independence has ceased ; 
 they are content to ask and to receive. 
 But their desire of knowledge and love 
 never ceases. They have awaked up after 
 his hkeness, and are satisfied with it ; but 
 the thought, "Thine is the glory," opens 
 to them a vision which must become wider 
 and brighter forever and ever. Amen. 
 
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