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 BV 230 .B33 1881 
 Glover, Richard. 
 Lectures on the Lord's 
 Prayer 
 
LECTURES 
 
 ON 
 
 THE LORD'S PRAYER 
 
OCT 20 1932 
 
 LECTURES 
 
 ON 
 
 THE LORD'S PRAYER, 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. RICHARD GLOVER, 
 
 OF BRISTOL. 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY: 
 
 56 Paternoster Row, 65 St. Paul's Churchyard, 
 AND 164 Piccadilly. 
 
CoKT£;KT3. 
 
 CHAP. PA 
 
 I. The Introduction to the Prayer . 7 
 
 (Dur Jfathci* tuliich art in ^)mbcn. 
 
 II. The Fjrst Petition ... 20 
 
 III. The wSecond Petition . . -30 
 
 "^hj) '^lingtiom come. 
 
 IV. The Third Petition ... 45 
 ^hg SEill be tone in ravtir, as it i0 in ^jcabcn. 
 
 V. The Fourth Petition . . ,60 
 
 (Sibc ns this bag xrur bailg ircab. 
 
 VI. The Fifth Petition ... 74 
 
 (Jforxjibc Its ont hthts, as toe fxirgibc our debtors. 
 
 VII. The Sixth Petition . . .89 
 
 l^cab tts not into temjjtation ; but iclibcr us 
 from ebil. 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER. 
 
 — »--8--;^E^^i^^^- 
 
 I. 
 
 The Inti\oductiojh to the Pf^ayef^. 
 
 nhtn JJC ^jraj), saj), 0ur JJather tohirlt art in 
 heaben. * Lidr x\. 2. 
 
 AINT Matthew's version of the Lord's 
 Prayer has its value heightened by 
 St. Luke's introduction. The disciples, 
 waking more and more to spiritual things, feel 
 increasingly the importance and the difficulty 
 of prayer. Approaching God they feel they 
 want some guide. They would not launch forth 
 their bark on the ocean of Divine possibilities 
 without some one to hold the helm and guide 
 the ship. And so they ask, ^^ Teach its to pray!' 
 What is worth doing, is worth doing well. And 
 
8 Lectures on the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 all who have ever got beyond formal utterances 
 feel that prayer is hardest of all things to do well. 
 They can come with the multitude before God, 
 and perhaps adopt their general utterances ; 
 but when they go alone to speak with God alone, 
 in the stillness of the closet, how unsatisfactory 
 are all their prayers ; how much adrift they 
 feel ; what disproportion they are conscious of 
 between the petitions for time and those for 
 eternity — the prayers for the personal, and those 
 for the common, good ! So all who pray turn 
 to Jesus, the great Master of prayer, above 
 whose head the heaven seemed always open, 
 and address to Him the request, " Teach us to 
 pray." 
 
 They could not have addressed to Him a 
 request more grateful to Him, for one might 
 almost say that Christ's business, His constant 
 occupation, is to be a Teacher of prayer. In all 
 His providential dealings with us, He is chiefly 
 busy teaching us to pray. Here a necessity ; 
 there a mercy ; now a deep grief ; now a gracious 
 rest is sent just to make us look up and pray. 
 He came revealing the Father that He might 
 charm us to go forth to Him. He died that the 
 suppliant might have freer access to God and 
 richer gifts. He is ever knocking at the lattice, 
 and saying to the soul, " Rise up. My love. My 
 fair one, and come away." And here He crowns 
 
Otcr Father zvhich art in Heaven. 9 
 
 and helps all His providential teaching", and the 
 charm of His personal graclousness, by giving 
 us a great lesson in clear, simple language 
 which, though marvellously brief, yet seems to 
 answer every question that the devout soul 
 will ever ask. 
 
 The opening words will now occupy us. 
 
 " When ye prayT He assumes they will do 
 so ; and that all will do so. Whenever we 
 " come to ourselves/' we invariably " arise, and 
 go unto our Father." Some pray from aspira- 
 tion, some from necessity, some from guilty 
 fear, some from soul - distress. Some pray 
 poorly like the Pharisee, some grandly like the 
 Publican, — but all pray. 
 
 Few eyes are so blind to the charms of the 
 Divine as not some time or other to lift up their 
 eyes to the hills from whence cometh their help. 
 So Christ says not '* if ye pray," but " when ye 
 pray," assuming that we will all pray. And, by 
 the form of the petition for bread. He indicates 
 His expectation that prayer will be a daily habit 
 of the soul. Although, however, at some time 
 or other all do pray, and none are so flippant 
 but that the myster}' and necessity which invest 
 us, provoke the aspiration or the cry, yet how 
 few fulfil the expectation of the Saviour, and are 
 daily suppliants ! The daily form may be gone 
 through, but how few sit down daily with their 
 
lo Lectures on the Lord's Prayer, 
 
 God in heavenly places, and communicate their 
 wants to Him ! 
 
 It is well to mark, therefore, at the outset, the 
 Saviour assumes that we will pray, and expects 
 us to pray daily. 
 
 And thus assuming prayer. He sanctions it. 
 If it were a fruitless thing, He would have told 
 us. If there were no replies but the empty 
 echoes of our voices, His piteous soul would 
 have directed us to some other solace. But, 
 V knowing all things, He knows no hindrance to 
 the answering of prayer — no obstacle in the 
 laws of nature — no reluctance in the mind of 
 God. He prayed Himself — found freshness 
 for His worn Spirit in prayer; and, Himself 
 enriched by communion with God, He commends 
 the same great course to us. Give no heed to 
 philosophy, falsely so called, when it forbids you 
 to have hope in prayer, for the Saviour bids 
 you pray. And, bidding us pray, He gives us a 
 niodel prayer, the words of which we may use 
 and expand ; the spirit of which we may catch, 
 which covers all the range of God's mercies and 
 of man's necessities. And with a strange and 
 marvellous opening, He says, " When ye pray, 
 say. Our Father which art in heaven T 
 
 It seems strange that any one — just waking 
 to the fact that there is a God above him — full 
 of rawness, and weakness, and sin, should be 
 
Our Father which art in Heaven. ii 
 
 taught to approach the great God with such an 
 address. May all men, without qualification, 
 look up to God and call Him " Father ? " Some ^^, 
 say, No ! and think they are doing God service - 
 by forbidding the use of this prayer to any but q^^^^^jj^ 
 those that are consciously regenerate. And they 
 bid a man first be sure that he is, in a special 
 sense, a child of God, and then call God n 
 "Father." They improve on the Saviour's j 
 teaching, and substantially " add to the things 
 that are written in the book " a qualification 
 that takes away all the comfort of this word 
 from those who most especially need it. 
 
 It may help to counteract the mischief of those 
 who would restrict the use of the prayer to the 
 regenerate, to remember that there are others 
 who, on somewhat similar grounds, would forbid 
 its use to the regenerate. For some say, " Inas- (f,.^^ 
 much as the regenerate are forgiven once for all, uUa<^^^i. 
 
 and do not need again to ask for pardon, a 
 
 prayer which contains the petition, 'Forgive us 
 our debts,' can only be meant for the unsaved." 
 A variety of this opinion suggests that the 
 prayer was not meant for Christian use at all, 
 but only for the use of the disciples until the 
 Kingdom of God was set up by the atonement 
 of Christ and the pouring out of His Spirit at 
 Pentecost. And the holders of this opinion 
 urge as a proof of its correctness the omission of 
 
12 Lectures on the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 all apparent reference to the name and work of 
 our Saviour. 
 
 We may, with advantage, leave the two ob- 
 jectors to settle their own controversy. If Christ 
 had meant only a particular class to use this 
 prayer, He would have said so. He is not so 
 incompetent that He cannot give a prayer 
 universally suitable. Christ spake not for an 
 age, but for all time. What suits any man, Jew 
 or Gentile, saint or sinner, must essentially suit 
 all men. Instead of Christ being absent from 
 the prayer, it is full of Him. He is the Father 
 to whom we pray. It is His Kingdom for which 
 we pray. He is Head over all things, and there- 
 fore the Giver of our daily bread. It is He who 
 has "power on earth to forgive sins." He is the 
 great Deliverer from temptation and evil. So 
 / that, as prayer belongs to all dispensations, this 
 ■ prayer suited the disciples then, and suits all of 
 us to-day. And if those who deal in such 
 objections were as thoughtful as they are critical, 
 they would soon discover that this prayer is 
 I self-protective; that no one can abuse it; that 
 ' whoever can utter it is free to use it ; and that 
 ! while it suits the earliest beginnings of devotion, 
 I it taxes the highest saintliness to use it in its 
 fullest meaning. 
 
 Liberating ourselves, therefore, from the re- 
 straints which men would impose on us in the 
 
Our Father zvJiich art in Heaven, 13 
 
 matter of this prayer, let us take it that to all 
 men the Saviour's precept is, '* When ye pray, 
 say, Our Father." Oh, what a beginning! 
 To look up to the Great God in heaven — eternal 
 and omnipotent — and to call Him Father ! Every 
 colder name is forbidden. We must not come 
 with the doubtful mood which can only adore at 
 a dreadful distance ; but boldly, close, confidently, 
 like children climbing to a father's neck. If we 
 begin coldly we shall continue coldly. It is with 
 prayer as with other things, " Well begun is half 
 done ; " and if w^e begin with warm trust and 
 confidence and hope, the whole tone of the prayer 
 is helped. It is not easy to say all at once, 
 '* Our Father." The claim implied in such a 
 title seems too bold, and the hope too large. It 
 seems presumptuous so to address God. Yet 
 we must linger over this name till we can adopt 
 it. And looking up, beholding the face of Jesus, 
 and remembering that " he that hath seen Him, 
 hath seen the Father," gradually we gather the 
 confidence and the joyous hope which this word 
 was intended to impart. And, beginning with 
 love and hope, the petitions that follow are 
 higher in their spirit and grander in their scope 
 than they could possibly have been with any 
 other beginning to the prayer. 
 
 Perhaps it may be well to be more precise, 
 and to put and answer the question, What feelings 
 
14 Lectures on the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 exactly does the Saviour desire us to cherish 
 when approaching God ? What are the emotions 
 which this opening word secures ? 
 
 I. This Name of God requires us to COME 
 BEFORE God with sacred self-respect. 
 
 It is penitence, not serviHty, that is the mark 
 of saintliness ; the cringing of a guilty shame 
 is no opening for grace. It is not the true 
 instinct of devotion to pile names of contumely 
 upon ourselves; to "scrape ourselves with the 
 potsherds " of self-reproach. True humility has 
 its basis in self-respect, and finds in an exalted 
 standard of what was possible the reason for 
 deploring its many shortcomings. True saint- 
 liness always implies much of this. It cannot 
 make excuses for its own weakness, or aim low; 
 it aspires after the likeness of its God ! And, 
 accordingly, the Saviour requires us to come 
 before God with the self-respect which remem- 
 bers there is something Divine in all of us ; that 
 we were made in God's image ; that if we have 
 been prodigal children, we are still children. 
 That, as deriving our spiritual nature from Him, 
 we are immortal like Him, and capable of 
 affections kindred to His own. We must not 
 come with the low views of human nature which 
 tolerate everything that is weak and degenerate, 
 but with higher views that deplore everything 
 
Our Father ivJiich art in Heaven. 15 
 
 that mars our manhood. St. Paul protests 
 against a " voluntary humility." Undue dis- 
 paragement of self is apt to lead at once to a 
 low standard and a feeble purpose. When you 
 pray, pray as being God's child by nature ; if 
 not by a second birth. 
 
 2. This name requires us TO COME WITHOUT 
 SELF COMPLACENCY. " Say, OUR Father." 
 Take a high rank ; but the common rank. 
 Remember you are precious in God's sight for 
 being a man — not for being different from your 
 fellow-man. No one may say "My Father" 
 in a sense which denies God's Fatherhood of 
 other men. 
 
 By saying " Our," take the common level of 
 mankind, assuming no superiority, and then look 
 up and say, " Father." All consciousness of 
 peculiar claim or relationship is disallowed. 
 Like the woman with the issue, we must each 
 come as one of the crowd, and as^ such expect 
 acceptance and help. With self-respect, but 
 without self-complacency, we must draw nigh 
 to God. 
 
 3. This name teaches us TO COME TO GOD 
 WITH FULL ASSURANCE OF HiS LOVE TO US. 
 What pure and deep affection is suggested by 
 the parental name — father — mother! What 
 
i6 Lectm'es on the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 intensity of interest ! The fatlier's " life is 
 bound up in the lad's life ! " There is no 
 relationship that inevitably carries with it a 
 stronger affection and a deeper interest than the 
 parental. And this word of Jesus bids us to 
 give God the sweetest and richest of all names 
 to expect the utmost conceivable degree of 
 love and interest : to come to Him as to One 
 that does not merely care for humanity in the 
 lump, but takes an individual interest in each 
 one of us. God's family is no larger for Him 
 than our families are for us ; each son and 
 daughter comes in for His tenderest love. We 
 cannot expect too much from God when we 
 commend our wants to Him, and link our lives 
 to His grace and mercy. We may abuse His 
 love, we may deprive ourselves of its blessed 
 consolations, but we cannot destroy it. We may 
 go to a far country — where His fatherhood will 
 be unable to enrich us ; — but even there the 
 fatherly love yearns after us, and waits to wel- 
 come our return. We may indeed take such an 
 attitude towards our God, and follow such a 
 course that His fatherliness cannot operate to- 
 ward us in any saving or soul-gladdening way. 
 The omnipotence of Jesus was limited in its 
 operation by whatever dulled the susceptibilities 
 of men. " He could do no mighty work " in a 
 certain city " because of their unbelief." And so 
 
Our Father ivJiich art in Heaven, ly 
 
 God's fatherhood cannot smile on the unfillal; nor 
 can it enrich those who keep Him at a distance 
 with its choicest good. To smile on impenitence 
 would encourage it ; to enrich with pardon the 
 wayward would debase him into a more absolute 
 indifference. God is often grieved with a terrible 
 necessity : He desires to bless us, but the heart 
 barred against Him cannot admit a blessing. 
 And His fatherliness is constrained to veil its 
 glory and to interrupt its benedictions. Nay, 
 sometimes God's love finds itself in painful 
 embarrassment, and has to say, O Ephraim, what 
 shall I do with thee .? Sometimes He can do 
 nothing but punish us ; can discover no other 
 way of awaking us from our sins and recovering 
 us from our follies. And then with the inexora- 
 bleness of love He smites us for our sins, and 
 bears Himself toward us as if He were our 
 enemy. But judgment is His strange work. 
 Kven His discipline has mercy at its core. And 
 whenever we return, the P'atherliness that never 
 ceased to warm His heart begins to lighten His 
 face, and to be felt in all the touches of His 
 hand. We must not abuse God's Fatherhood, 
 for it increases the guilt of our waywardness, 
 and, tender as it is, it is not able to bless us if 
 we remain unfilial. But we should not forget it, 
 for He yearns to bless us, and, like Jesus over 
 Jerusalem, He weeps *' tears from the depths of a 
 
 c 
 
1 8 Lectures on the Lord^s Prayer. 
 
 Divine despair," when we know not the day of 
 our visitation. 
 
 That God is indeed a Father to us was one 
 of those things kept secret since the world begun 
 until Jesus came, and, by the infinite love of 
 His life, made the infinite love of God credible. 
 Miss not the grandeur of this revelation. Come 
 trusting — not afraid to ask. The children are not 
 expected to lay up for their Great Father; but 
 the Father lays up for the children. Whatever 
 we have been, it is our duty to reckon on 
 deepest interest and richest love filling God's 
 heart towards us. 
 
 4. The name here given to God teaches us 
 TO COME WITH ASSURANCE OF HiS POWER 
 TO HELP. 
 
 Fathers on earth cannot always help us ; they 
 are on our level ; themselves enfeebled and 
 perplexed. But when Jesus says, " vSay, Our 
 Father which art IN HEAVEN," He raises our 
 view to the greatness and the power of God. 
 There, in heaven, He has leisure to help us. 
 He has the infinite perfection that leaves Him 
 free to bear the burden of others. He has the 
 resources from which He can supply our need, 
 and the place of vantage from which He can 
 influence all that happens. 
 
 Thus the opening word, rightly dwelt on, 
 
Our Father which art tn Heaven. ig 
 
 kindles all higher feelings and hopes ; and when 
 we linger over the Great Name till we learn its 
 meaning and believe its promises, we can then 
 ask, without lightness and without despair, for 
 all the great things God wants to give, and we 
 need to get. 
 
 "When thou prayest, enter into thy closet, 
 and when thou hast shut thy door, .' . . say, 
 Our Father which art in heaven." 
 
11. 
 
 The Fif^^t Petitioj^. 
 
 (Dxix Jfathei* . . . ^nllotoeb be ^hg nmiu. 
 
 Matthno vi. 9. 
 
 [he thoughts of Jesus are not our thoughts, 
 nor His ways our ways. A petition 
 that we should have been apt to have 
 omitted entirely from our prayers, He puts first 
 and foremost of all. Itjs that which was fore- 
 most in His lips and heart. In the crisis which 
 preceded Calvary, we are permitted to overhear 
 the workings of His heart. " Now is My soul 
 troubled," He exclaims, " and what shall I say t 
 — ' Father, save me from this hour.-*' — 'But for 
 this cause came I to this hour : Father 
 GLORIFY Thy name,'" — in this word, putting 
 aside all shrinkings of the flesh. He asks that 
 by His action the glory of God might be 
 advanced. He came to this world that the 
 name of God might be declared and glorified. 
 
Hallowed be Thy Name. 21 
 
 This was one supreme purpose of His Incarna- 
 tion ; and on this part of His work depends, in 
 His esteem, the great bliss of man. 
 
 And, accordingly, to this petition, which asks 
 for the manifesting of the Divine glory, He gives 
 priority over every other. To this petition, thus 
 commended, more consideration should be given 
 than usually falls to it. 
 
 Let us ask and endeavour to answer the 
 question — 
 
 For what exactly do we pray in this petition } 
 
 If we can see exactly what is sought, we shall 
 easily see why the Saviour makes us seek it 
 first of all. 
 
 And, first of all, thjs petition evidently involves 
 a request that — 
 
 The glory of God may be revealed. 
 
 God's name cannot be hallowed until it is 
 knovyn, and it must be told us before it can be 
 known. 
 
 Our want of reverence springs partly from our 
 ignorance. To see God, at once leads to service 
 and to love. The clouds and darkness which 
 are about Him permit suspicious thoughts and 
 darkling fears to take possession of our spirit. 
 But, known, God would at once be trusted and 
 revered. We need, therefo^e^ to know before 
 we can hallow God^s name. 
 
22 Lectures on the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 We do not know God's name. Bits of it we 
 can make out. Something of His power we can 
 read in Nature ; something of His wisdom ; 
 something of His general kindliness. And these 
 we put in, rightly enough, as part of His great 
 name. But the rest of His name is obscure. 
 
 Whether His interest in the race includes an 
 interest in the individual ; with what feelings 
 He regards our sin, our penitence, our aspiration, 
 and our needs — these things are "greatly dark." 
 And when a soul, stretching its wings of faith 
 and hope, ventures to use the opening word of 
 the prayer and say, " FATHER " — at once there 
 rises a deep desire to know how far that name 
 may be trusted, and whether all the comfort 
 which that name suggests may safely be 
 assumed. Accordingly, the deepest desire of 
 awakened hearts is to know God. 
 
 " Show us the Father, and it sufficeth us," said 
 Philip. And in the same spirit, every one who 
 has said " Our Father," lingers on the sweetness 
 of that word and prays — " Lord, teach me this 
 Father name — all it means ; help me to believe 
 and revere it." " Tell me, I pray Thee, Thy 
 name ! " cried wrestling Jacob, forgetting Esau 
 and every earthly trouble in the desire to pene- 
 trate the mystery of God. " Show me now Thy 
 way, that I may know Thee ; " . . . "I beseech 
 Thee, show me Thy glory !" was the cry of Moses 
 
Halloived be Thy Name. 23 
 
 on the Mount. The Psalmist sought above all 
 things, "the light of God's countenance," and 
 deprecated above all things, " the hiding of His 
 face." It was the ancient hope of immortality 
 that men would " behold God's face in righteous- 
 ness, and be satisfied by waking in His like- 
 ness." And so here the prayer rises, " Let Thy 
 name beam forth on us in all its glory." 
 
 To know God is no light blessing : but is the 
 great one which takes precedence of all others. 
 So operative is the mere Knowledge of God in 
 producing all grace and goodness, that the 
 Saviour says — '' To know Thee, and Jesus 
 Christ whom Thou hast sent, is Life Eternal." 
 
 To see God is a converting and quickening 
 experience. " As we behold we are changed into 
 the same image, from glory to glory." Seeing 
 God in the face of Jesus, the sinful woman is 
 melted into tenderness, and washes Christ's feet 
 with tears. Seeing God in Christ, Peter could 
 leave his nets, Thomas lose his unbelief, the 
 dying thief be changed into a saint. The whole 
 story of the conversion of the disciples, of their 
 faithfulness, and of their fitness for heavenly 
 glory, is told in the single word, " I have mani- 
 fested Thy name unto them. . . . And they have 
 received the words which I have given them." 
 And as the knowledge of God is a converting, 
 so is it a quickening thing. God's name is the 
 
24 Lectures on the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 "pattern on the Mount," by which we mould 
 our own life. When that name is clouded 
 with doubt, we shrink from approaching, and 
 decline to serve Him ; but when it gleams 
 forth, and " the beauty of God " is revealed to 
 us, then we aspire after His fellowship ; all 
 powers are consecrate ; we seek to copy what 
 we lovingly adore. The great transformation of 
 character and its perfecting above, come from 
 seeing God — from knowing accurately His full 
 name. " We shall be like Him, for we shall see 
 Him as He is." 
 
 And as all sanctity depends on it, so all con- 
 solation flows from it. There is no tear which 
 the vision of God will not wipe away. The sight 
 of Him lifts the gloom from every valley of the 
 shadow of death. When we are without God, 
 we are without hope in the world ; but to know 
 Him is to know that " all things work together 
 for good," that love rules everywhere, that no 
 necessity is forgotten and no distress despised. 
 The bliss of heaven is simply the knowledge of 
 God ; and the difference between earth and heaven 
 is simply that there God's name is fully known, 
 and perfectly hallowed ; while here our know- 
 ledge and our reverence are alike imperfect. 
 
 Thus we do not ask a light thing ; but the 
 first and foremost of all blessings — that which 
 quickens, that which comforts, that which 
 
Halloived be Thy Name. 25 
 
 brings us near, and makes us like our pattern 
 in the sky. 
 
 And asking for the greatest and most essential 
 boon, we offer a prayer which is answered in 
 many ways. It is a prayer for light and sight — 
 that " the eyes of the heart may be opened, and 
 the Spirit of revelation given.'' It is a prayer 
 for the regenerating influences of the Holy 
 Ghost — for His revelation of the Saviour. 
 
 And God answers this prayer when " a glory 
 gilds the sacred page," when the words of Scrip- 
 ture are a second time inspired, so that they 
 come to us with a warmth, a meaning, and a 
 directness, as if that moment spoken to us by 
 God Himself. 
 
 It is a prayer God answers, when on some 
 mount of wistful contemplation God finds for us 
 a cleft in the rock, and displays His form before 
 us, and utters His great name in the words 
 which end for ever the misgivings of the heart. 
 
 It is a prayer God answers when He manifests 
 Himself by coming and dwelling in us. 
 
 It is a prayer that God answers when He 
 enables us to read His nature as it is reflected 
 in His works ; to argue upwards from all that 
 is beautiful and holy in man to the unsullied 
 beauty of His own character. 
 
 It is a great prayer, that in our lives and the 
 lives of others, God's goodness may be reflected 
 
26 Lectures on the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 as in a mirror ; so that they who do not gaze 
 upward may yet, from the human reflections of 
 His glory, have some knowledge of their Re- 
 deeming God. 
 
 At the Creation, the first work of God was 
 Light. And Light upon Himself is still the 
 first work of the new creation, and the first want 
 of man. 
 
 Therefore, in the foreground of all your 
 petitions, put the prayer for God's revelation 
 of Himself, and present and urge it, until in 
 richest fulness the answer comes to your heart. 
 
 But there is a prayer here for more than the 
 revelation of God's glory. That might come, 
 and we might fail to use it. Accordingly the 
 petition, while involving a prayer that God's 
 name might be made known, asks besides, and 
 chiefly, that when known, it may be hallowed. 
 Thus, secondly, it prays for 
 
 A REVERENT USE OF ALL THE KNOWLEDGE 
 
 OF God that comes to us. 
 
 We can abuse all things, even the mercy and 
 the truth of God. There is such a thing as 
 " holding the truth in unrighteousness ; " holding 
 it irreverently, indolently, waywardly. And it 
 is possible for the name of God to be imparted 
 to us in some degree, and yet for us to lose all 
 the service it was meant to render. 
 
Halloived be Thy Name. 27 
 
 We have therefore to pray that the revelation 
 of God may meet with reverence from us and 
 others; that every result which God's disclosure 
 of Himself ought to have on us may be realised ; 
 that there may be no flippancy in our mood 
 when we gaze upon Him, but the veiled face of 
 the cherubim, the unsandalled foot, the obedient 
 will. We have to offer really the poet's prayer : 
 
 "Let knowledge grow from more to more, 
 But chiefly reverence in us dwell, 
 That mind and heart according well 
 May make one music." 
 
 We pray that, with the deference due from those 
 made, enriched, ruled, and redeemed by God, 
 we may bear ourselves devoutly towards Him. 
 
 If you analyse the general idea of hallowing 
 God's self-revelation, you will find it to contain 
 various qualities of gracious character. 
 
 I. The prayer for power to hallow God's name 
 is a prayer for FAITH. I hallow God's name only 
 when I trust the love and power which it reveals. 
 To hear Divine whispers of His infinite mercy 
 and not take refuge in it, is to dishonour the 
 revelation of that mercy and treat it as untrue. 
 All Divine attributes when revealed should be 
 responded to in action. If God proclaims His 
 name as " Merciful and gracious, longsuffering, 
 and abundant in goodness and truth ; " we hal- 
 low that name when with holy awe we adore 
 
28 Lectures on the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 its infinite majesty, and trust the mercy it dis- 
 closes. If we see God's name written in the life 
 of Jesus, we hallow it only when we entrust 
 ourselves to the Redeemer's love. It is thus a 
 prayer for the faith that saves, for the trust 
 which rejoices in God's care. 
 
 2. It is a prayer evidently for OBEDIENCE as 
 well. I do not hallow God's name of majesty 
 if, with empty recognition, I do Him merely 
 formal reverence. His name of Lord is only 
 hallowed b}^ me when I serve Him ; His name 
 of Judge, when I prepare for His great tribunal. 
 Consecration is of the essence of true reverence. 
 And the heart that hallows God's name admits 
 and responds to all His claims. It is a prayer 
 for the destruction of perversity, and for the 
 grace of child-like obedience. 
 
 3. It is a prayer for Zeal FOR God's GLORY 
 as well. It asks the humility which will rise 
 superior to all petty ambitions, and desire God's 
 honour only. It prays for the watchfulness that 
 will guard against dishonouring Him ; for the 
 purity which will give no occasion to the enemy 
 to blaspheme; for the courage that will "declare 
 God's doings among the people; " that will deem 
 it an honour to intercept, and thus, perchance, 
 convert the animosity that men cherish against 
 their God. 
 
 4. And it asks for a worthy estimate of man, 
 
Hallowed he Thy Name. 29 
 
 If I hallow God's name, I hallow man's name as 
 well, and look with enlightened eye on the 
 Divine element which makes the family likeness 
 of man. By reverence given Him I am saved 
 from the folly of contempt of others, and from 
 the sin of injustice to them. If I hallow God's 
 name of " Father," I am bound to hallow my 
 own name as child, and to rise to the self-respect 
 of an immortal soul. 
 
 It is thus no formal petition and no mere 
 doxology ; no compliment merely, or word of 
 homage. It is a great prayer — man's darkness 
 begging light, and man's weakness begging 
 strength. 
 
 Have we prayed it enough .? Are we of " the 
 generation of those that seek God's face t " 
 Have we had our Peniel wrestlings, and have 
 they issued in ability to say, as Jacob did, " I 
 have seen God face to face, and my life is pre- 
 served } " Have we seen God only in the dim 
 glimmer of human statements, and of cold con- 
 clusions of human logic ; or in " God's light have 
 we seen light clearly } " We do wisely only 
 when we seek to " see Him for ourselves," and 
 learn the truth in the living face of God. Open- 
 ing our ^y^s, therefore, to catch the saving light, 
 let us come to Him breathing first the greatest 
 of all petitions : " OUR FATHER — HALLOWED 
 BE Thy name." 
 
III. 
 
 The $econd Petitiojm. 
 
 Our Jather . . . ^h^ fihtgbnm come. 
 
 Matthew vi. 9, 10. 
 
 |HERE Is a mystic element about each one 
 ' of these first three petitions of the Lord's 
 Prayer. The hallowing of God's name, 
 the coming of His Kingdom, the accomplishment 
 of His will are the supreme necessities of our 
 lives, but necessities which only the awakened 
 and thoughtful nature understands. But every 
 nature that is so awakened adopts most naturally 
 each word of this great prayer, and, offering in 
 succession each petition, rises on the 
 
 \ "Great altar-stairs, 
 
 That slope through darkness up to God." 
 
 When we have said, " Our Father," and offered 
 the prayer for grace to reveal all the meaning of 
 that name, and to help us to revere it, some 
 
Thy Kingdom Come. 31 
 
 answer to our petition comes while we offer it. 
 Discerning God's infinite fatherliness, we observe 
 there is in Him a majesty of stately love 
 hitherto imperfectly recognized ; a royal aspect ; 
 the indications of the presence of all elements 
 of lordship and all fitness to rule. We discern 
 in Him the lordship of the Maker who created 
 us, the Provider who sustains us, the Redeemer 
 who saves us. We feel He has a lien on all 
 our powers ; that the sceptre well becomes 
 His hand ; that His love makes the yoke He 
 lays upon us easy, and His knowledge of us 
 makes the duty assigned us by Him wise. And, 
 seeing this, we offer instinctively the second 
 great petition of this prayer : " Let Thy King- 
 dom come ;" let Thy sovereignty embrace. Thy 
 lordship control us and all men. 
 
 Marking the instinctive rising of the prayer in 
 every heart kindled with reverence for God, we 
 are in a position to notice successively: 
 
 I. The force of this petition. 
 
 II. The duty of offering it more 
 
 EARNESTLY. 
 
 We begin with — 
 
 The force of this petition. 
 
 Simultaneously with our discernment of the 
 Redeemer's right to rule us, there is the regretful 
 
32 Lectures on the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 discovery made that we have withheld our hearts, 
 and our fellow-men have withheld their hearts, 
 from this gracious sovereignty. " Our wills are 
 ours to make them His :" but we do not always 
 do so. That freedom of choice which was given 
 us that our goodness might be better, sometimes 
 makes our evil easier. We keep out the Saviour, 
 break His bands asunder, and cut away His cords 
 from us ; so that, instead of our yielding the 
 command of the spirit to Him, we are outside 
 His empire altogether — not yielding allegiance 
 not admitting duty. And even when we have 
 surrendered to our Saviour, there is still great 
 room for this prayer ; for, to maintain that 
 surrender, it needs to be daily renewed, but 
 rarely is so. What we laid on the altar keeps 
 slipping off. We are perpetually tempted to 
 take back part of the price. Evil slowly dies ; 
 it keeps reviving and re-asserting itself. So that, 
 although we may have lifted the gates to let the 
 King of Glory in, yet there is always some part 
 of us outside His empire. " The Amorite is still 
 in the land," and we have still to supplicate that 
 His Kingdom should come to the unhallowed 
 part of us. 
 
 Recognizing thus successively — that our God 
 ought to be our King, and yet that our whole 
 nature has not been absorbed in His empire — 
 we long that He would establish and extend His 
 
Thy Kifigdom Come. 33 
 
 Kingdom in our heart. For, on our knees, we 
 feel that oursupremest need is a Master; that it 
 is not in man that walketh to direct his steps ; 
 that our nature cannot unfold to its grander 
 proportions until we are led by the Saviour in 
 the soul-enlarging paths of duty. Every part of 
 our being is an aching void when Christ is not 
 in it. Imagination, without Him, is a chamber 
 of dread and darkness. Reason, without Him, 
 lacks light and intuition. The heart, without 
 Him, lacks vital warmth, the joys of the heavenly 
 love and the sufficient consolation. But that 
 void of our being which generates most disquiet 
 is the throne built within us for God ; when it is 
 empty, none else can fill it but God. And the 
 evils of anarchy and darkness — want of con- 
 secutive progress, of clear purpose, and calm rest 
 — the waste of power and opportunity are all 
 realised when God is not there. Man is like 
 some great organ, from which one ignorant of 
 music will only extract hideous noises ; but the 
 master, who knows its secrets and its powers, 
 will so touch it that he will melt men into ten- 
 derest mood or move them to lofty emotions. 
 And even so God knows us — our lowest note or 
 topmost compass — and when He plays upon us, 
 then the grand harmonies of life are all elicited. 
 The stoutest ship will sink in a very moderate 
 storm unless there is some one at the wheel 
 
 D 
 
34 Lectures on the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 to keep her " head to wind," facing and taking 
 in the front the waves that strike her. And 
 man is a ship that goes down unless God 
 steer him. 
 
 Without God for Master, the direction varies 
 in which we move ; we have to retrace our steps ; 
 no worthy cause evokes our energies ; we make 
 the awful mistakes that make our subsequent 
 life a wreck, or a penance, or a despair. With 
 grandest power of service we cannot find the 
 way of doing good. 
 
 Accordingly the poet declares that to be " lord 
 of oneself is heritage of woe." We want a 
 master. And when the Saviour has all tender- 
 ness, wisdom, interest in us ; when He gives 
 " each man his work," suiting always the task 
 according to "the several ability;" when He is 
 not exacting, only wants the obedience which 
 would bless us in rendering more than Him in 
 receiving it ; when His love deserves and sweetens 
 every service ; when that part of our being which 
 is withheld from Him is a part where all the 
 thorns and briars, the care and fears and weak- 
 nesses of our life grow — the enlightened heart 
 needs only the suggestion of the prayer, and at 
 once, in the sense of supplicating for the esta- 
 blishment and extension of Christ's Kingdom 
 within us, it says, '' Thy KINGDOM COME." 
 And this petition having this force in its 
 
Thy Kingdom Come. 35 
 
 relation to ourselves, we offer it further on behalf 
 of others. And in it, 
 
 We pray also for the establishment and ex- 
 tension of Christ's Kij?gdom amongst men. 
 
 His Kingdom is not a secret sovereignty over 
 individual hearts alone, but an empire over the 
 united commonwealth of the Christian Church. 
 A common allegiance to the Redeemer has 
 created the great brotherhood of the Church of 
 Christ. And that Church, united in faith, love, 
 hope, duty, is the Saviour's Kingdom. Standing 
 amidst the ruins of empires, Daniel had foreseen 
 a time when " The Kingdom and dominion and 
 the greatness under the whole heaven would be 
 given to the people of the saints of the Most 
 High, whose Kingdom is an everlasting Kingdom, 
 and all dominions shall serve and obey Him." 
 And inspired by His words, the Jewish people 
 had for centuries been looking, not backward in 
 despair, as the heathen did, but forward in hope 
 for the advent of the golden age in which this 
 Kingdom of God would be set up. The cry of 
 the Baptist, which makes such an upheaval in 
 the general mind, is simply the message that the 
 expected Kingdom is at hand. 
 
 And the hope of John the Baptist was fulfilled, 
 for the Church of Jesus is hardly ever named by 
 the Saviour except under the grand title, " The 
 Kingdom of Heaven," or *' The Kingdom of 
 
36 Lectures on the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 God." As if in the estimation of the Saviour 
 a bit of heaven had become an inhabitant of 
 earth in her ; as if she was the Ideal Community, 
 in whose fellowship men reached their highest 
 growth, and by whose service men became en- 
 riched with God's choicest blessings. 
 
 And as the devout heart feels that for itself 
 the establishment and extension of the Saviour's 
 secret kingdom within is the thing supremely to 
 be desired, so it feels that for the world the 
 establishment and extension of the Saviour's 
 kingdom in it, is the thing most earnestly to be 
 sought. When we hallow God's name we see 
 that the extension of His sovereignty, through 
 the extension of His Church, is the supreme 
 need of mankind ; that His quickening power is 
 perpetually incarnated in her ; that her voice is 
 that through which He most clearly speaks to 
 men, and her hand that which He employs to 
 bless men. 
 
 We see that the Church shares the anointing 
 of the Saviour, and, like Him, has power to 
 " heal the broken-hearted, and give sight to the 
 bUnd, and liberty to the bruised, and to preach 
 the acceptable year of the Lord." We see that 
 she is a " quiet resting-place and a peaceable 
 habitation " for hearts that are worn and weary ; 
 that she is the best guide of youth, the sanc- 
 tifier of manhood, the sacred home of age; that 
 
TJiy Kingdom Come. 37 
 
 philanthropy of every kind has its home in her ; 
 that she ennobles the individual life, and purifies 
 the social condition of men ; that she makes laws 
 just, and nations prosperous with peace. We see 
 that she is the worthy Bride of the Redeemer ; 
 that they twain "walk the world, yoked in all 
 exercise of noble end." That she is indeed, 
 even now, a " New Jerusalem descended out of 
 heaven, having the glory of God, a river of life 
 in her midst, and abounding in trees of life, 
 because in her is the throne of the Lord God 
 Almighty and the. Lamb." 
 
 Those who do not pray see not the glory of 
 the Church, nor the essential service she has 
 rendered, and can render, to mankind. But 
 when we pray we are wise enough to see many 
 things which in our less devout moods we over- 
 look, and soon begin to feel that the world's 
 welfare is bound up in the Church's welfare. 
 When she thrives every essential interest of 
 man is furthered. When she languishes every 
 essential interest of man is injured. 
 
 So the devout ever pray for their dearest 
 friends, their neighbours, their country, the dark 
 places of the earth, " Let Thy Kingdom come 
 to them." 
 
 Such being the force of the petition — its 
 earnest longing for the establishment and ex- 
 tension of the Saviour's empire in our own 
 
38 Lectures on the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 hearts and in the world at large — consider, 
 secondly — 
 
 The duty of offering this petition 
 
 MORE earnestly. 
 
 We do not ofler it as we ought. Indeed, 
 there is no more striking indication of the feeble- 
 ness of true religion amongst us than the 
 habitual neglect of this petition. Instead of 
 being the second great cry of our heart, taking 
 precedence of all our more pressing needs, is it 
 not the case that we hardly offer it at all t 
 
 Who is there that offers it daily, as he is in 
 the habit of asking daily bread } Whose heart 
 lifts up its gates daily, that the King of Glory 
 may come in 1 How rarely do we lift up the 
 brow to be sealed afresh, and, as a daily habit, 
 lay every faculty upon God's altar to be accepted 
 and used by Him t Is it not rather the case 
 that even thedevoutest desire almost everything 
 else about Jesus Christ more than His sove- 
 reignty } We want His comfort, we want His 
 teaching, we want His promises, we want His 
 light, we want His protection, we want His 
 support. But His rule, His command, how 
 many of us are there that put that first and fore- 
 most before daily bread .'* or rather, may I not 
 ask, How few there are that do not omit it 
 altogether from our prayers ? We ought to be 
 
Thy Kingdom Come. 39 
 
 on our guard a^^ainst our religion becoming a 
 selfish thing. Religion, when it is real, is denial 
 of self, destruction of self; and in the degree in 
 which self enters into it, it ceases to be religion. 
 If our piety becomes a selfish thing, and our 
 religion becomes a mere life insurance — a pre- 
 cautionary thing to save ourselves merely, and 
 nothing more — the light that is in us is darkness, 
 and how great is that darkness ! 
 
 If you look at the petitions which are found 
 in this Lord's Prayer, you will see that there is 
 one quality that belongs to every one of them. 
 Every one of them is an altar, and you cannot 
 offer one of them without offering a sacrifice. 
 "Thy name be hallowed:" in this prayer, 
 seeking God's glory, we sacrifice our own. 
 " Thy kingdom come :" here we give up self-will 
 to God's control. "Thy will be done:" in this 
 we abandon our own more selfish plans and 
 desires of life. In asking only for " Daily bread," 
 we give up the lust of wealth and luxury. In 
 " Forgive as we forgive," we sacrifice our resent- 
 ment and our revenge. In " Deliver us from 
 evil," we ask for the refiner's fire. Every petition 
 is an altar ; and whenever we offer any petition 
 that is not an altar, we waste our breath. If 
 any petition does not carry the surrender of the 
 heart with it, we are like a man who asks a gift 
 without holding out his hand to get it, requesting 
 
40 Lectures on the Lord^s Prayer. 
 
 mercy, and locking the door against it. It is 
 vain for us to ask for mercy and joy and 
 assurance and rapture and heaven, and not give 
 ourselves up to be moulded, inspired, enlarged, 
 guided by God. And, therefore, this petition of 
 surrender is the salt of the whole, that which 
 makes all the others answerable. Yet all neglect 
 this petition — at least, I think we do. Am I 
 right .'' And if I am right in assuming that we 
 omit it in the first half of its meaning — the 
 personal part — do we offer it with any greater 
 degree of earnestness in the second half of its 
 meaning, in which we ask for the extension of 
 the Church of the Redeemer } I know on 
 Sunday we say '*Amen" to pulpit prayers for 
 the Church of Christ, and in the week-day 
 prayer-meeting we will offer prayer for its en- 
 largement ; but where is the solicitude and 
 yearning of heart with which we should offer 
 this prayer t Where is that emotion which 
 made the Psalmist say, "Let my tongue cleave 
 to the roof of my mouth, if I prefer not Jerusalem 
 to my chiefest joy " } Where is that patriotism 
 that makes us feel for the mother country of the 
 saints of God } How few of us recognise what 
 we owe to the Church of Christ, to the lives she 
 has cherished, to the Gospel she has preached 
 to us, to the fellowship she has given us, to her 
 hymns of praise, to the inspiration of her noble 
 
Thy Kingdom Come. 41 
 
 examples, to the restraint of her solemn tes- 
 timonies ; and, in gratitude for the blessings 
 received from her, pray for her prosperity and 
 growth. Who is there that can say, as David 
 did, and as the Saviour did, "The zeal of Thine 
 house hath eaten me up " ? Instead of that we 
 are all apt to criticise the Church's failings. 
 The ministers blame the people, and the people 
 blame the ministers, and all blame one another. 
 Oh, it is easy to blame ! The pattern has 
 heavenly perfection in it, the copy is full of 
 earthly imperfection, and no great insight is re- 
 quired to see the discrepancy between the two. 
 The faults of the Church are vastly greater than 
 any think. Still, she seemed to her Saviour 
 worth dying for. She has charms in His eye ; 
 is the bride of His election ; He deems Himself 
 — may I say it } — equally yoked in sweet and 
 everlasting espousals with her; He takes her as 
 His own ; and, if we rightly knew our part, we 
 would pray for her prosperity, day and night, 
 with the utmost fervour. Therefore, in both its 
 parts we cannot afford to neglect this prayer. 
 In its personal bearing it names the only security 
 which is perfect for a human soul. We are not 
 safe until the Saviour has command of us ; and 
 just in the degree in which we withdraw any- 
 thing from His control we give the enemy a 
 leverage over us. Blessed are they that see their 
 
42 Lectures 07t the Lord^s Prayer. 
 
 way in the light of His countenance, that are 
 guided by His eye. They have no regrets ; they 
 "go from strength to strength, every one of them 
 in Zion appeareth before God." Tlius our safety 
 needs it, and is achieved by it. And our joy 
 requires it as well. If I am half Christ's and 
 half my own, I drop between two stools, and 
 have neither the joys that He would give nor 
 the set of perishing delights which, away from 
 Him, I might enjoy. But ask Him to fill the 
 throne of your being, and to dominate you with 
 all His power, and then uncertainty is gone, and 
 self-reproach is gone, and the angels that serve 
 Him day and night are your companions that 
 sing in your ear, and heaven lifts itself before 
 your eye in all its beauty, waiting to reward the 
 holy service which you render. Peace and joy 
 that no one can take away come to the heart 
 where Jesus reigns. There is no peace until He 
 comes. For we cannot get Christ into our 
 heart unless He is in the throne of it. He is 
 either outside or He is in the throne of it ; and 
 when Christ is outside the heart, like the disciples 
 when Christ had not come to them, we are in 
 the storm and in the dark. But let Him come 
 in, and His presence makes heaven. 
 
 "Christ in the heart — Christ in heaven, 
 Heaven is in the heart, and the heart in heaven." 
 
Thy Kmgdom Come. 43 
 
 We wish to be useful, and feel that the only 
 value in life is usefulness. We shall be useful 
 only in the degree in which our obedience to the 
 Saviour is a living and continuous thing. Follow 
 the heavenly vision and men will follow you, and 
 you will be a pillar of cloud by day and of fire 
 by night to those who do not see and follow the 
 Divine leading for themselves. You will charm 
 others to Christ. You will have omnipotence 
 in your hand, grace will be poured into your lips, 
 you will have usefulness of every kind just in 
 the degree in which you welcome Him to the 
 sovereignty of your heart. 
 
 And we need, and the world needs, that Zion 
 shall prosper and extend. What an influence 
 for good operates on all of us w^hen the Church 
 is worthy of her name, " The Kingdom of God," 
 w^hen she is aglow with His presence, and bright 
 with the zeal of consecrated love ! 
 
 To-day the Church is weak because worldly. 
 Men do not say to her, " We will go with you," 
 for they cannot add, " for God is with you." 
 But if, in answer to our prayers, she w^ere to 
 arise and shake herself from the dust of indo- 
 lence, and loose herself from the bands of her 
 weakness, and put on the beautiful garments of 
 compassion, and tenderness, and zeal ; if her 
 feet were shod with *' the alacrity of the gospel 
 of Christ ; " if she pleaded with the hardened, 
 
44 Lectures on the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 and sought the wandering, and healed those that 
 are broken-hearted ; if, in answer to our prayers, 
 she went forth to win souls ; if at home and 
 abroad, endued with power from on high, she 
 went forth " conquering and to conquer " — the 
 wilderness of earth's misery would soon begin to 
 blossom as the rose ; men would be blessed in 
 Christ, and all nations would call Him blessed ; 
 and in the beauty of regenerated lives, the 
 harmony of exalted affections, the quickening 
 hope of immortal good, we should see hovv 
 wisely we pleaded for ourselves and others when 
 we prayed, " OUR FATHER — Thy KINGDOM 
 COME." 
 
IV. 
 
 The Thif(d Petitiojm. 
 
 ®ut Jfnther . . . ^hg toill be iione in ^artlt, n& it 
 
 i0 in ^eabm. Matthnv vi, 9, lo. 
 
 N these words we have one of the most 
 blessed, but one of the least understood 
 of all the petitions of this prayer. It 
 springs, however, naturally out of those preceding 
 it. And if we but approach it by the gradations 
 suggested by the prayer itself, as the angel who, 
 wrestling like an enemy, left the blessing of a 
 Divine friend, so this petition will lose all that 
 is hard and painful in its aspect, and become a 
 fount of strength and consolation. 
 
 It is easy to see how it gets its place in this 
 prayer. Calling God " Father," we at once felt 
 our need of fuller light upon the meaning of that 
 great name. Getting that light, we used it in 
 the second petition, and in it yielded the control 
 of our will and our heart to Him whose worthiness 
 to rule us had been thus revealed to^ us. When 
 the heart has thus been yielded to His command, 
 
46 Lectures on the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 there rises within us the feeling that something 
 else besides the control of our action might with 
 advantage be yielded to Him ; that nowhere 
 v/ould our interests be so safe as in His hand ; 
 that to none could we commit so wisely the 
 entire choice of all our circumstances. And so 
 instinctively, we extend the scope of the previous 
 petition, and say, " Not only rule us, but all per- 
 taining to us ; in all our experience, in all our 
 circumstances, in our every path, for time, for 
 eternity, Thy will be done with us." We cannot 
 offer this petition until we have seen and known 
 the Fatherliness of God ; but when we feel that 
 He is truly "our Father" we cannot help pre- 
 senting it, and we at once begin to marvel that 
 any mournful meaning should ever have become 
 associated with this petition. 
 
 It is far from being a prayer of mere resigna- 
 tion, as a favourite, but enervating hymn might 
 suggest It is not the natural cry of the grieved 
 heart alone, when it seeks by submission to gain 
 peace. It is no stoic utterance accepting the 
 inevitable. It is not the mournful wail of those 
 who, in it, surrender bright hopes and favourite 
 plans. It is something altogether different. It 
 is a joyous prayer of a trusting child. The 
 desire of one who knows his Father will choose 
 a better lot and bestow a richer experience than 
 he can ever hope in his own strength to find. 
 
Thy Will he Done. 47 
 
 There Is no thought in it of disciph'ne to be 
 accepted, or penalty to be endured. The thought 
 of the petition is of heaven, where God's will is 
 absolutely done ; of a place which differs from 
 earth essentially in the one point; — that here 
 poorly, there perfectly, God's plans are realized. 
 There is the perception that all the rich, varied, 
 endless bliss of heaven springs simply from 
 God's will being there always realized. And 
 that just in the degree in which God's will 
 is done on earth, will sorrov/ be ended, and joy 
 enlarged, and the well-being of all increased. 
 And so, as a prayer not of sorrow but of faith, 
 a prayer for fulness of joy, the soul that hallows 
 God's name, and has tasted the bliss of subjection 
 to His control, sends heavenvv'ard this cry, 
 " Father, Thy will be done." 
 
 In considering this petition there are three 
 directions in which our thoughts may move. 
 
 I. The exact meaning of the petition. 
 
 II. The consolation suggestedby it. 
 
 III. The wisdom of adopting it. 
 
 All these matters claim our earnest contem- 
 plation, and will repay it. 
 
 We begin, therefore, with — 
 
 The exact meaning of our petition. 
 
 Its general force has been already indicated, 
 but something must be added to confirm and 
 
48 Lectures on the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 further elucidafe v.'hat has been advanced. For, 
 should the sense indicated be attached to the 
 words, there is a difficulty at once produced in 
 many minds. " Is the will of God not always 
 done.''" Can we — especially on our knees — 
 assume that God's will fails sometimes of ac- 
 complishment .'^ Who can thwart His power, 
 or prevent the accomplishment of His plans } 
 "Who hath resisted His will.?" 
 
 These questions rise naturally, and tend to 
 drive us back to the idea that all this prayer 
 can be is an utterance of submission to those 
 purposes cf God which, with or without our 
 prayer, will certainly find their accomplishment. 
 
 It is to be regretted that a desire to simplify 
 the complexities of life, and to arrange all things 
 after a logical and easily conceivable system, has 
 led the Church of Christ sometimes to acquiesce 
 in a doctrine of God's plans and purposes which 
 has more in common with the Positive philosophy 
 than with Evangelical religion, and which repre- 
 sents all human history as unfolding in a rigid 
 chain of sequences, such as would give no scope 
 for human freedom or for answer to prayer — a 
 chain so rigid that everything is predestinated 
 and fixed. It is easy to perceive the strong 
 reasons which exist for cherishing some such 
 thought ; repugnance to the idea of Chance 
 especially, and the difficulty of conceiving how 
 
Thy Will be Done. 49 
 
 God's great plans could find their realisation, 
 and yet permit any play of human freedom or 
 any variation in its own subordinate designs. 
 
 But we may venture reverently to ask — Is it 
 the doctrine of Scripture that all God's desires 
 and purposes invariably obtain fulfilment ? I 
 think not. On the contrary. It would probably 
 be easy to quote a text contradicting this doctrine 
 for every text that seems to confirm it. 
 
 The truth seems to be that some plan of God's 
 is always and invariably realised ; but that He 
 has many alternative plans, less, more, and most 
 good ; that the best of these is " TlIE WiLL " of 
 God here treated of; and that whether THE 
 WILL of God — i.e.y the very best — be done, or 
 a zvill of God — the best possible in unyielding 
 circumstances — depends on us. 
 
 Resist Him as we will, we and all our actions 
 will yet be included in the sweep of some Divine 
 plan, and everything we do, even our evil, be 
 made contributive to some gracious results. 
 
 But if instead of resisting Him we fall in with 
 His desires — become workers together with Him 
 — then THE Fatherly flan, fullest of mercy 
 and of love, is realised. If we be plastic to His 
 touch, He moulds us into vessels of honour ; if 
 crude and unyielding, it is still He that is the 
 potter, and we are still moulded on His wheel, but 
 He can only fashion us into some vessel of less 
 
 E 
 
50 Lectures on the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 honourable use. If we will make " a wall," He 
 will build over us a palace of silver ; if we will 
 only make a door, He will "enclose us in boards 
 of cedar." Always a plan of God will be realised, 
 but not always the plan His love desires to 
 realise. 
 
 Accordingly we find Him often lamenting the 
 failure of His gracious purposes. " Oh that thou 
 hadst hearkened to My commandments ! then 
 had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteous- 
 ness as the waves of the sea." In these words 
 it is suggested that some other action on Israel's 
 part would have permitted the realisation of a 
 more gracious plan on His. 
 
 " Oh that My people had hearkened unto Me, 
 and Israel had walked in My ways ! I should 
 soon have subdued their enemies, and turned 
 My hand against their adversaries." Here also 
 a will of God was evidently done — and one as 
 full of mercy as the circumstances would allow, 
 but not THE WILL of God, with its choicest 
 benediction. 
 
 It was the will of Christ to have gathered the 
 children of Jerusalem, as a hen doth gather her 
 chickens under her wings, but that gracious will 
 was not done. Nor is that will of God, which is 
 that all men should come to the knowledge of 
 the truth, always realised. The will of God is 
 our sanctification, but that will is not always 
 
Thy Will be Done. 51 
 
 fully realised. With the greatest oath which 
 before Calvary it was possible for Him to use, 
 He swears, " As I live I have no pleasure in the 
 death of the wicked, but that he turn from his 
 wickedness and live." Yet while tJie will of God 
 seeks to save men from death, a zuill of God 
 inflicts the very death from which His higher 
 plan endeavoured to secure them. And it is 
 important that we should recognise this dis- 
 tinction. It is recognised through all Scripture 
 as the most solemn fact of human condition that 
 the gracious will of God depends for its ac- 
 complishment on our concurrence and co-opera- 
 tion. With this, a purpose infinitely tender in 
 its fatherliness will be realised : without this, 
 some lesser will of God, the best possible in the 
 circumstance, but only the second or third best, 
 will be accomplished. Do not let us, because a 
 truth mars the exactitude of our philosophy, 
 neglect it. The Church has suffered much by 
 forgetting that we must become not schoolmen, 
 but " little children," if we would enter into the 
 mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 Let us then have courage to take Christ's 
 words in their simple meaning, especially, I may 
 add, when we know by experience that God's 
 will is not always done. For who is there who 
 has not had it borne in on his soul again and 
 again that God desired him to take such and 
 
52 Lectures on the Lord^s Prayer. 
 
 such steps, and attain such and such joys ; and 
 yet this, that we know to be the will of God, has 
 failed in its accomplishment ? 
 
 Such, then, being the case, in this prayer we 
 recognise that fatherly will which consults for 
 our perfect well-being, which would make the 
 most of all our powers, which foresees all dangers, 
 and would prevent their working mischief, which 
 would make our joy perfect and our usefulness 
 complete. We recognise further, that that "will" 
 may, through our dulness or waywardness, fail 
 of its accomplishment, and so, for ourselves, our 
 friends, and for mankind at large, we pray, " Thy 
 will be done in earth, as it is in heaven." 
 
 If such is the force of this petition, let us 
 consider, secondly — 
 
 The consolation suggested by it. 
 
 Even before we offer it, and before our lives 
 are enriched by the answers that come to it, this 
 word brings soothing and quickening to our 
 hearts. For, perplexed with the entanglements 
 and burdened with the responsibilities of life, 
 this word comes to us with the sustaining thought 
 that, while we are unable to plan it aright, God 
 has planned it for us ; that in the Divine mind 
 there is an ideal plan which embraces every 
 object at which we should aim, the perfecting of 
 our being, our daily protection, the averting of 
 
Thy Will be Done. 53 
 
 all injury to our essential being, our present and 
 our eternal joy. Did we even know what to 
 prepare for, we could not make the suitable 
 arrangement, and would be perhaps more em- 
 barrassed by such knowledge than we now are 
 by our ignorance. In these circumstances what 
 a solace it is to think that God has a plan for 
 each of our lives infinitely tender and fatherly, 
 taking into account every peculiarity of our nature 
 or our circumstances ; that He will supply all the 
 guidance and all the help needed for its accom- 
 plishment, and that all we need to do to secure its 
 accomplishment is to fall in with God's way and 
 co-operate with Him ! 
 
 If we are about to travel in some country 
 hitherto unknown to us, we feel it a great relief 
 if some friend who knows it and us will plan our 
 journey for us. If, knowing exactly our physical 
 powers, our mental tastes, our inclinations and 
 necessities on the one hand, and the distances, 
 scenery, resting-places, facilities of travel of the 
 intended land of our sojourn on the other, such 
 an one will plan our route and fix our resting- 
 places, and indicate what we have to do, what a 
 relief lies in his assistance ! How eagerly we 
 should avail ourselves of his guidance and help, 
 and how much rest of mind would his plan permit 
 us to enjoy ! And, if so, there is a consolation, 
 surely, of the very grandest sort to be found 
 
54 Lectures ofi the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 in the fact that God has made a plan for each of 
 our Hves, and that He not merely exacts service, 
 but renders it; that He charges Himself with 
 planning out the line of our greatest security, 
 progress, usefulness, and joy, especially as the 
 making such a plan for life suggests the purpose 
 to supply all the help of Providence and grace 
 which may be needed to carry it out, and the 
 readiness to impart all the guidance requisite 
 for its fulfilment. Such a fact is sufficient to 
 abate materially one, at least, of the greatest 
 burdens of life — the perplexity of choosing our 
 path. When we can get a pillar of cloud by day 
 and of fire by night to guide us ; when One who 
 knows us better than we know ourselves is 
 willing to guide us, and to make of our life one 
 consecutive success and joy, it becomes possible 
 for us to rest and to breathe freely, even while 
 we recognize most fully the responsibilities of 
 existence and the gravity of a mistake. 
 
 Be of good cheer ! we are of such importance 
 to God that He has a gracious plan of our life, 
 and of each day of that life, and will reveal it to 
 us and enable us to embody it, so that no mistake 
 need be made, nor failure risked, nor regret 
 awakened in all our life. To the thoughtless 
 this consolation may seem slight, but to the 
 thoughtful it will appear supreme. 
 
 Consider, then, thirdly — 
 
Thy Will he Done. 55 
 
 The wisdom of adopting this petition 
 as our own. 
 
 This must be obvious to all our hearts. One 
 of the earliest of our discoveries is that ''it is 
 not in man that walketh to direct his steps," and 
 once made, the discovery is being perpetually- 
 made afresh. So that all who can realise that 
 God will take the trouble to plan our life for us, 
 will at once admit that the wisest course we 
 can adopt is to pray and labour that His plan 
 may be carried out. And the more we think of 
 it the more we see the wisdom of praying it may 
 be so. For, first, we have not in ourselves either 
 the knowledge or experience which would permit 
 us even to plan with wisdom our outward and 
 earthly lot. We never know what would be 
 best for us, even in the commonest matters of 
 daily experience. We are constantly desiring 
 what, attained, would do us harm, and dreading 
 what, when it has come and gone, we admit tc 
 have been our choicest mercy. Joseph cried 
 with anguish of soul over being sold into captivity, 
 though it proved the path to a throne, and tc 
 influence so great that it permitted him to secure 
 protection to his family and his people for 
 generations. Rachel asks for a child, and dies 
 in bearing it. The plains of Sodom, which Lot 
 seemed to choose with such shrewdness, involved 
 him in the loss of wife, and fortune, and friends, 
 
56 Lectures on the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 and of something more precious still. The 
 mission to Egypt, from which Moses shrunk so 
 persistently, was that which gave him immortal 
 fame, and permitted him to render a service to 
 his people and mankind which is not exhausted 
 yet. 
 
 And we are not wiser than our fathers. We 
 still judge of experiences as of men — by " the 
 outward appearances," instead of looking into 
 the heart of things. 
 
 Would any of us think our neighbour wise, if, 
 reversing the Saviour's prayer, he said, "Not 
 Thy will but mine be done " } And should we 
 be wise in doing the same } 
 
 Oh, what a calamity it would be for us if our 
 plan of our life were to be fulfilled ! That plan 
 which combines the maximum of outward com- 
 forts with the minimum of difficulty, trial, or 
 service. The rich man, with his full barns, had 
 probably had his plan of life realised ; and, for 
 his epitaph, God said, "Thou fool," as in a 
 moment all his fortune fell from him, and he 
 stood beggared and naked in the other world. 
 
 Our will done, there would be none of the 
 difficulties that develop strength, none of the 
 trials that refine the heart, none of the demands 
 on our sympathy or service that enlarge the 
 heart. 
 
 If there were even no other world, but this 
 
Thy Will be Done. $7 
 
 were alone the object of our solicitude, every 
 wise man would go to God and say, " Father, 
 Thy will be done/' But the wisdom of offering 
 this prayer becomes more obvious when we 
 remember that, little as we can guess what would 
 be best for us here, still less can we guess what 
 course and what experiences of life would most 
 secure our well-being in the life to come. That 
 life is the life, all we call life here being but the 
 apprenticeship for the life to come; and our 
 experience is good or evil only as it tends to fit 
 or to disable us for its engagements. Now "our 
 will " generally overlooks that world, some little 
 thing at hand hiding the vast beyond ; and in 
 shaping our desires we give but little place to 
 the question how far their fulfilment would 
 increase our capacity for the bliss, or our fitness 
 for the duties of the other world. For a mess 
 of pottage we are apt to sell the distant birth- 
 right. But God sees the issues of all things — of 
 the prosperity we desire and of the trials which 
 we dread ; of the high calling, which by its 
 difficulties develops immortal faculties ; of the 
 " ease in Zion," which by stagnation enfeebles 
 all our powers. When that other world has 
 such nearness, importance, permanence ; when 
 character is the only capital with which we can 
 enter on the life there, is it wise to follow any 
 plan in which its interests are subordinate or 
 
58 Lectures on the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 perhaps imperilled altogether ? When we wake 
 to the sense of our immortality, and are moved 
 by the gracious solicitude which it awakens, the 
 first and last action of instinctive wisdom is to 
 commit the whole ordering of our life to God, 
 and to say, ''Thy will be done." And if to 
 secure our best advantage here and hereafter we 
 shall pray this prayer, there is another great 
 reason still why we should adopt it. Offering it 
 we find a peace that passes understanding, while 
 neglecting it there is to the soul nothing but 
 solicitude and unrest. 
 
 I have shown that there is consolation in the 
 very fact that God is interested in us sufficiently 
 to plan our life. That consolation grows into 
 perfect peace when we submit to His plan and 
 ask that it be realised. 
 
 When we go over to God's side, we shall find 
 God is on ours. And when we enthrone our 
 God, and give up to Him the disposal of all 
 pertaining to us, then restlessness leaves the 
 spirit, faith brings the gleam of peace over a 
 future which was dark with stern solicitude. 
 When God is left free to effect His gracious plan. 
 He comes near with His blessed presence. 
 When we are willing to walk in the paths which 
 God chooses for us. He comes nigh, and is Him- 
 self our living guide. In weariness there is the 
 shadow of His wings, in grief the solace of His 
 
Thy Will be Do7ie. 59 
 
 sympathy. Working on our own lines, a sense 
 of the Divine disapproval makes us afraid ; 
 working on God's, we walk in the light, as He 
 is in the light. His hand upholds and His 
 voice continually cheers us. And life is like 
 the shining light — shining more and more unto 
 the perfect day. 
 
 If these things are so, we have reason to repent 
 of our neglect of this petition, and to repair that 
 neglect. And some confession is due from us 
 of our fault in offering it sometimes in such a 
 tone and with such a meaning as accused the 
 kindliness of God. 
 
 Let us say. Our Father ; let us gaze on the 
 heaven whose bliss is but the fulfilment of His 
 will, and then, with the faith in which lowly 
 submission and joyous trust blend perfectly, let 
 us offer for ourselves, our dear ones, and for 
 mankind at large, the wisest of all petitions — 
 '' Thy will be done in earth, as it is in 
 
 HEAVEN." 
 
V. 
 
 The Fourth Petition. 
 
 ®ur Jfatlwr . . . ^xbz tt0 this Iba^ onx batlg htznb. 
 
 Matthexv vi. 9 — 11. 
 
 |he first three petitions are prayers that 
 rise from the greatness of human nature. 
 The second three are the petitions of its 
 littleness, its weakness, and its need. On this 
 latter half, which embraces these, we now 
 enter. 
 
 The opening petition of this second half of 
 the prayer is strangely situated. Faith has no 
 higher cry than " Thy will be done ; " Penitence 
 no deeper groan than '^ Forgive us our debts." 
 And yet between these two petitions, that of the 
 heights and that of the depths, comes this 
 petition of the shop, of the cupboard ; a prayer 
 for business and for bread. Jesus knows our 
 
Give tis this Day our Daily Bread. 6i 
 
 frame, and remembers we are dust. He does 
 not care to 
 
 "Wind our souls too high 
 For mortal men beneath the sky." 
 
 But requiring us to utter the best part of our- 
 selves first, when we come into His presence, 
 He permits us to bring the feebler and poorer 
 part as well. Nay, He constrains us to do so. 
 He knows that a prayer solely occupied with 
 spiritual things would soon become formal or 
 affected. On the other hand, He knows that 
 a prayer solely occupied with worldly benefits 
 would become very speedily as unreal as it was 
 selfish. Therefore, having united soul and body 
 together in Life, He links matters of the body 
 and matters of the soul together in Devotion. 
 The petition for bread keeps the whole prayer 
 real and honest. The prayer for God's Light 
 and God's Kingdom keeps the whole prayer 
 trustful and devout. 
 
 And this petition in the very heart of the 
 prayer makes us come with the simplicity of 
 little children to our heavenly Father. In 
 studying this, consider : 
 
 I. The force of this petition; and 
 
 II. The wisdom of offering it. 
 We begin with, 
 
62 Lectures on the Loi'd's Prayer. 
 
 The force of this petition. 
 
 Happily it is the simplest of all petitions. 
 " Bread " standing naturally for all the necessaries 
 of life, this petition brings all our earthly neces- 
 sities to God, and charges Him with their supply. 
 It does this, however, in a most singular way, 
 making of what might seem a sordid prayer one 
 of the most beautiful and spiritual of all requests. 
 
 He that has experience in offering this prayer 
 gradually discovers that it reacts upon his spirit ; 
 and that in its few simple words it contains a 
 striking set of correctives on the one hand, and 
 inspirations on the other. 
 
 Looking at the chief of these. He finds this 
 prayer requires him 
 
 (i) To forego all bread but what God gives ; 
 
 (2) To put away greed, ambition, and anxiety ; 
 
 (3) To remember in prayer and action the 
 needs of others besides his own. 
 
 (4) While coming thus to recognise God as 
 a rich Giver of all we need. 
 
 Look at these. 
 
 I. The prayer constrains us to forego all bread 
 save that which God gives. 
 
 Our Pagan forefathers had a livelier sense of 
 congruity in the matter of prayer than we some- 
 times have. Their more honourable prayers 
 were addressed to some honourable deity. 
 
Give us this Day our Daily Bread. 6^ 
 
 Sometimes, however, they wanted dishonourable 
 gain — success in theft, or overreaching ; the 
 bread, not of toil, but of deception. They prayed 
 for that ; but they offered their prayer to 
 Mercury, who amidst other distinctions had this 
 — that he was the god of thieves. 
 
 Like them, we can get bread from one or other 
 of two deities : the god of this world will give 
 it us ; or our Father in heaven. The great God 
 will give it us only on stringent conditions ; that 
 we work for it, and in some measure merit it. 
 The god of this world will give it, or at least 
 promise to give it, on what seem easier terms ; 
 a little fraud, a little keenness, a little dishonour. 
 
 When we say, " Our Father in heaven, give 
 us daily bread," we turn our back on the other 
 giver of bread, on all evil ways of making a 
 living or augmenting our fortune, and ask only 
 such comforts of God's providence as can come 
 to us in an honourable way ; thus deprecating 
 all sinful gains or dishonourable wealth. 
 
 2. This petition requires us^ next, to put away 
 all greedy ambition^ and anxiety. 
 
 For it asks only " bread " — nay, only " to-day's 
 bread." Enough to sustain — not enough to 
 pamper us. Enough for comfort — not enough 
 for display. Enough to free us from needless 
 care — not enough to free us from wholesome 
 dependence upon God. 
 
64 Lectures on the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 It would be a mistake, of course, to take the 
 word " bread " in its barest meaning. " God 
 giveth to all men liberally.'^ And we are to 
 interpret the prayer by the abundant breadth 
 of God's provision. And the word undoubtedly 
 was meant to cover all necessaries of life. These 
 vary : that being the luxury of the strong man 
 which is the necessary of the weak ; civilisation 
 and an artificial mode of life having necessities 
 that a simple life of bodily toil in the open air 
 never feels. So that the one word " bread " 
 carries a variety of meaning in the mouths of 
 worshippers, and in the ear of God ; meaning 
 more or less according to the circumstances of 
 each. 
 
 But the word bread never covers any excess ; 
 and, if we adopt it, we carry to the throne of 
 grace only our necessities. Greed has no voice 
 supplied it in this prayer. The desire to be rich 
 finds no sanction here. We cannot, keeping to 
 the spirit of the prayer, ask for wealth, distinction, 
 the means of indulgence or display. It limits 
 our expression to our modest and essential wants, 
 and it limits us to current wants. 
 
 It is possible, perhaps, to press this too far. 
 Some laying up for the morrow is a course we 
 feel God would smile upon. We must lay up 
 enough in the six working days of each week to 
 support us on the seventh. And it is only an 
 
Give us this Day our Daily Bread. 65 
 
 extension of the same principle to lay up, in the 
 six working decades of life, enough to support 
 us in the seventh. It is Bible doctrine that the 
 fathers should lay up for the children ; and it is 
 the instinct of the Divine law of love, written 
 on the heart, to make provision for the inde- 
 pendence and comfort of those dear to us. 
 
 Still, there is such an awful tendency for the 
 lean kine of to-morrow's possibilities to eat up 
 the fat kine of to-day's peace that the Savioiir 
 limits our prayer to this day's bread. If we save, 
 it must not be out of what we should give away> 
 but out of what we feel at liberty to spend. And 
 there must be no excessive provision. We do 
 not ask enough to hoard largely, and so be in- 
 dependent of God. Merely enough, and enough 
 for each want as it rises, is what we in prayer 
 and labour alike have to aim at. 
 
 Thus, neither greed for more than enough, 
 nor ambition that seeks wealth as an instrument 
 of power, nor unbelieving anxiety about the 
 future, find any expression in this prayer. We 
 have to bring our wants to God, but only those 
 real and present wants that would press on a 
 contented mind. 
 
 How much of mercy and of consolation lies in 
 the very limitation of this prayer ! 
 
 And asking only for the supply of real and 
 present wants, the petition further requires us to 
 
 F 
 
66 Lectures on the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 3. Remember in onr prayers, and in our actions, 
 the needs of others besides ourselves. 
 
 The words " our " in "our bread" and "us" 
 in " give us " are not meaningless. We are 
 prone to think too exclusively of ourselves — to 
 pray in the singular, " Give me my bread ; " and 
 v/hen we pray in the singular number we are 
 apt to act in a selfish mood. For if on our knees 
 we forget others, we are not likely on our feet 
 to remember them. In all this prayer the plural 
 number is prescribed. We have to come always 
 thinking of others, and naming their wants with 
 our own. Jesus " would that we should re- 
 member the poor," and all those less happily 
 circumstanced than ourselves, and present their 
 claims level with our own. 
 
 Nothing so much purifies devotion as love. 
 Nothing lifts the desire up to the throne 
 of God with such acceptance as this loving 
 interest in others. " He that prays for another 
 is heard for himself," says the Jewish proverb. 
 The Saviour, to secure this unselfishness, makes 
 us pray for others' necessities as well as for our 
 own. But while honour, and contentment, and 
 kindness are secured, the petition lastly requires 
 us to 
 
 4. Recognise that God is a great Giver of all 
 good. 
 
 The great Father " lays up for the children ; " 
 
Give us this Day our Daily Bread. 67 
 
 He opens His hands, and all things are full of 
 good. Just below the surface and behind the 
 appearance of things, God is at work ; and all 
 good that comes to us comes from Him. 
 
 Here we recognise that strength to win our 
 daily bread comes from God ; that guidance in 
 worldly matters is given by Him ; that trade is 
 ordered by His providence ; that at numberless 
 points He touches our experience, and in num- 
 berless ways moulds it according to His will. 
 
 And thus able to give us all we need, the 
 prayer recognises that He is willing to give as 
 well. He is not Father only in name ; He gives 
 to all things the desire of their hearts. There is 
 no indifference with Him, no neglect, no slow- 
 ness to put all His powers at our disposal. 
 
 And so when the petition limits our prayer 
 in some directions it inspires it in others, leading 
 us to come to God freely, as a little child to a 
 parent, feeling that all our troubles — the less as 
 well as the larger — command His interest, and 
 that He is able and willing to give us all we 
 need. 
 
 Oh, what comfort is there in such a petition ! 
 If the limits it imposes in some degree fret our 
 more selfish mood, they make us more able to 
 come with faith. The desire that is made by 
 them more pure is made by them more hopeful 
 as well. 
 
68 Lectures on the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 Our unselfish wish rises and finds the heart 
 of God, and we know it is according to His will, 
 and we rest in His love, and rise from prayer 
 knowing that " our bread will be given us, and 
 our water will be sure." 
 
 This petition is too rarely offered in its 
 simple fulness of meaning. We make haste to 
 be rich, and in doing so fall into many snares. 
 We aim at too much, and lose the power to enjoy 
 the enough we have. We think only of our- 
 selves, and lose the quickening consolation of 
 believing God cares for us and for all. Man's 
 brotherhood denied, God's fatherhood is obscured. 
 Nothing would tend more powerfully to hallow, 
 to enrich, to secure our lives, than simply the 
 habitual use of this prayer. " Give us this day 
 our daily bread." Let me, accordingly, in the 
 second place, urge 
 
 Some reasons for offering this petition. 
 
 I. The adoption of this prayer will give us 
 peace. 
 
 Not, indeed, all peace ; but peace from all 
 worldly anxiety and from innumerable disturb- 
 ances of the heart. 
 
 Unless this prayer is offered there is solicitude 
 of many kinds — how to get, how to keep, how 
 to enjoy the good things of earth. And the man 
 who takes on his own shoulders the entire burden 
 
Give lis this Day our Daily Bread. 69 
 
 of these things will find that in the care they 
 involve he has to pay a high price for any satis- 
 faction the comforts bring him. There is a 
 dream of a sort of peace being reached by gain- 
 ing enough at once to give us bread for all our 
 life, and thus being independent altogether of 
 God. 
 
 But care dwells with the rich just as regularly 
 as with the poor. But offer this prayer, and 
 you are at peace. For it casts all the things 
 that mar our peace on our heavenly Father's 
 care. 
 
 It is not narrowness of means that troubles 
 men, so much as largeness of ideas. And this 
 prayer helps peace by reducing the desires within 
 moderate compass. Care for to-day kills only 
 its units, care for to-morrow kills its thousands. 
 And when anxiety, instead of being left to 
 roam at large in all the possible necessities of 
 the future, is restricted to the necessities of the 
 day, it never becomes undue solicitude. 
 
 It is a subtle cure for care, to add the care of 
 others to our own, but it is the Divine cure. 
 Let love think of others, and our care becomes 
 at once genial instead of fretful, hopeful instead 
 of anxious. 
 
 You cannot while thinking only of yourself 
 feel any assurance of God's love and care. The 
 selfish eye is blind and cannot see the unselfish- 
 
70 Lectitres on the LorcTs Prayer. 
 
 ness of God. But when you gather others' cares 
 with your own, and come to Him, He smiles on 
 your kindly, humble desires, and in His smile 
 you have peace. 
 
 This peace is not a light thing, but something 
 richer than any fortune; a sufficiency where 
 wealth is absent, and where wealth is present an 
 influence which permits it to be at once grandly 
 used and richly enjoyed. 
 
 It would be a Balm of Gilead to many a 
 careworn soul simply to adopt this blessed 
 prayer in its lowly faith and loving contentment. 
 
 2. The adoption of this petition zvonld hallow 
 all our life. 
 
 In the words, " He that is faithful in that which 
 is least, is faithful also in much," the context 
 shows it was of Religion in the employment of 
 our money that the Saviour was speaking ; and 
 it is not too much to say that he who is religious 
 in the matter of daily bread is religious in 
 everything. 
 
 For the largest part of the work of all men 
 is directed to the getting of the means of living ; 
 and if in the pursuit of our trade this gracious 
 prayer moderates all selfishness, destroys all 
 greed, and brightens with the smile of God all 
 our activities, it would be found that the whole 
 of life was somehow affected graciously by the 
 one petition. 
 
Give us this Day otir Daily Bread. 71 
 
 There is no mistake more serious than that of 
 divorcing business from rehgion. Under the 
 notion that their rules and objects are altogether 
 separate, many professedly religious persons keep 
 their religion entirely out of their trade. Perhaps 
 allowing that morality has something to do with 
 business, they yet deliberately keep it from 
 being touched, refined, and ennobled by the 
 higher regard for the will of God. 
 
 Such action tends invariably to destroy re- 
 ligious life altogether. For Spirituality only 
 permitted to breathe on Sundays, and limited 
 to a narrow range of private activities, decays 
 and dies. 
 
 But if no shilling comes into our hands but 
 what has been purely asked from God, and is 
 gratefully accepted as from His hands; if in 
 pursuing our calling we are aiming only at daily 
 bread, and are not grasping for any more ; if 
 having prayed for others, the force of the sincere 
 prayer constrains us to share with others what- 
 ever is beyond our needs ; then Religion has 
 room to breathe — a field for her finest activity — 
 a constant service and a perpetual means of 
 growth. Then every transaction is a link to 
 God, deepening truth, honour, and love, and 
 quickening faith in God in matters of eternal 
 interest. Then the workshop or the counting- 
 house becomes a temple, often filled with a 
 
J 2 Lectures on the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 cloud of glory, and the entire life becomes 
 imbued with the Spirit of God. 
 
 If thou wouldst be perfect, pray daily, " Our 
 Father in heaven, give Thou us our daily 
 bread." It is only an extension of this line of 
 remark to add — 
 
 3. The 2cse of this prayer will vastly enlarge 
 our knowledge of God, 
 
 There are grave errors into which the Church 
 never would have fallen if she had given this 
 petition the prominence it deserves. 
 
 For instance, it is hardly conceivable that the 
 worship of saints could ever arise where men 
 regularly and thoughtfully used this petition. If 
 God be a being whose greatness alienates Him 
 from us, and who cannot be expected to take 
 any interest in our common life, we are driven 
 in the exigency of care to seek some lesser being, 
 whose littleness will permit the feelings of 
 sympathy and pity to operate. But if we felt 
 that God is thoughtful of all our common wants, 
 and takes care of our basket and our store — is a 
 real Father, who thinks of His children's food, 
 we need no other friend ; we carry all our cares 
 to Him. 
 
 There would, again, be very little Ritualism if 
 this prayer were regularly used. That error 
 also springs from the thought that God is only 
 a King, keeping a regal distance, whose priests 
 
Give 7 IS this Day our Daily Bread. 73 
 
 are masters of ceremony that know the precise 
 etiquette of approach. As soon as men learn 
 the homeliness of God, and the meekness and 
 lowliness of the Lord God Almighty, and talk 
 to Him of the difficulties of making ends meet, 
 of the children's clothes and schooling, the heart 
 loses all that bad soil of superstitious fear in 
 which Ritualism takes such easy root. 
 
 And so I might go over many doctrines which 
 defraud God of glory and man of comfort, and 
 in every case it would be found that this petition 
 would lead to such light on the engaging qualities 
 of God that the simple offeringof it would enable 
 the spirit to grow out of all its delusions. 
 
 Am I right in these views ? If I am, let us 
 give to this petition a holier and more thoughtful 
 usage than has been our wont. Let us not 
 rudely overlook its delicate restraints and sug- 
 gestions, but, graciously accepting its genial 
 inspiration of contentment and brotherliness and 
 faith, let us like little children go to God and 
 say — " Our Father, give us this day our 
 DAILY Bread." 
 
VI. 
 
 The Fifth Petitiojm. 
 
 (Bnx Jfather . . . Jforgibe ns oxxx bebt^, rts tuc 
 
 for^ibe 0\ir hzhioXS. Matthew vi. 9, 12. 
 
 IVE us bread, and forgive us our debts : 
 so Christ links together the great need 
 of the body and the great need of the 
 soul. What Christ has joined together none 
 should put asunder; we should neither in greed 
 ask only bread, nor in remorse and despair ask 
 only pardon. But we should ask both together, 
 and gather from the union of the petitions the 
 lesson that forgiveness is a prime necessity of 
 life — essential to the soul as bread is to the 
 body. Fools mock at sin, deeming it trivial in 
 its nature and its consequences. Our Saviour 
 treats it as the great calamity of life, and bids 
 us seek to get rid of it by pardon. His view of 
 things was free of all distortion. In the light 
 in which He beheld all things, nothing was 
 
Forgive us our Debts. 75 
 
 exaggerated and nothing obscured. Their real 
 magnitude, their exact form, revealed themselves 
 to His eye ; and it is wise of us to use His vision 
 to correct our own, to accept His estimates, and 
 then to follow His guidance in our prayer. 
 
 In this petition there are two things specially 
 brought before us : 
 
 I. The request ; and 11. The clause 
 
 WHICH IS ADDED TO THE REQUEST. 
 
 We begin with. 
 
 The request. " Our Father, forgive us 
 our debts." 
 
 How solemn ! How consoling is this word ! 
 
 Nothing is more awful than its assumption 
 that we are in debt to the Lord God Almighty. 
 Nothing is more sweet than its suggestion that 
 God is in the habit of pardoning men, and that 
 we have only to ask in order to obtain His for- 
 giveness. Thus, before the petition has Avrought 
 anything directly for us, it acts as a two-edged 
 sword, destroying at once our delusions and our 
 despair. Look at each side of its teaching, as 
 bringing before us the great reasons why we 
 should offer its request. 
 
 I. Observe, We are in debt to God. 
 
 We have only to listen to the voice of con- 
 science to admit this at once. For, amongst 
 the deepest of all our instincts, is the sense of 
 
76 Lectwes on the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 responsibility — a feeling that some things are 
 due from us. We are no sooner conscious of 
 freedom to choose our acts, than we become 
 sensible of certain claims constraining our choice, 
 and the whole realm of duty rises on the soul. 
 Before we discover a personal God, and any 
 specific relationship to Him, every form of 
 goodness which seems possible to us appears 
 binding on us as well. 
 
 Somehow, all the good of which we are capable 
 puts in a claim on us, requiring to be wrought. 
 With every need of our fellow-men which we 
 might meet ; with every example of goodness 
 which we might with advantage copy ; with 
 every precept of goodness there arises a sense 
 that the course which these suggest is duty, and 
 that we are responsible for doing it. And when 
 we have seen God, and have felt our relationship 
 to Him, then all this sense of duty grows in 
 force and delicacy. 
 
 Our creation, and our preservation by Christ, 
 augment our self-respect, and with it our sense 
 of duty to Him. The example of all His virtues, 
 of His thought for others, His purity. His service 
 of constant love, give a sanction to all the similar 
 virtues of which we are capable. 
 
 When we perceive ourselves to be the objects 
 of infinite care, and of redeeming activities, the 
 reception of God's mercies deepens within us a 
 
Forgive us our Debts. *jy 
 
 sense of the duty of rendering a similar service 
 to others in the degree in which it is possible. 
 The fairness of the life of Jesus, His continual 
 service, His character unsullied with a stain of 
 self-seeking, complete our sense of what is grandly 
 possible to us. 
 
 And thus, gradually there rises before us a 
 " Pattern on the Mount," according to which we 
 feel our life must be fashioned. And duty comes 
 to us as the Pillar of cloud and fire to guide us 
 on our way, in the path by which greatness and 
 peace alike are reached. We may turn our back 
 on this ideal of life, but it is there. We may 
 damage the senses by which it is perceived, and 
 the powers by which it is obeyed, but it is there, 
 — a law traced for us by the finger of God. 
 However we becloud, we cannot utterly destroy 
 our sense of responsibility. And we destroy our 
 own dignity as men in the same degree in which 
 we succeed in obscuring it. Bliss, growth, purity, 
 flow from the hearty and obedient recognition of 
 it ; all forms of evil spring from its denial. 
 
 We owe our God all the good of which we 
 are capable. 
 
 And, owing Him this, we fail to meet our 
 responsibilities to Him. We leave undone the 
 things we ought to do, and do those things we 
 ought not to do. When we begin to reckon up 
 our shortcomings, they are more than can be 
 
yS Lectures 07i the Lord*s Prayer. 
 
 numbered. Our own hearts, corrupted and 
 partial as they are, condemn us ; and we feel that 
 He who knows all things must see much ground 
 of blame that we have altogether overlooked. 
 The more we awake and see things in a Divine 
 light, the more faults, gross and inexcusable, lie 
 obvious in our life. Only the ignorant feel 
 innocent. The holier we are, the deeper is the 
 sense of the wickedness of the current selfishness 
 of our lives. The chief of saints felt himself to 
 be the chief of sinners. And whenever the eye 
 is exercised to see the beauty of the Saviour's 
 character, its perception produces simultaneously 
 self-respect and deep repentance. 
 
 And when we add to the actual wrongs we 
 have done the great neglects of which we have 
 been guilty, our sense of sinfulness increases ; for 
 while sins of commission slay their thousands, 
 sins of omission slay their tens of thousands. 
 The sin of the priest and Levite in the parable 
 was only neglect. " Inasmuch as ye did it not," 
 \?> the opening phrase of the verdict, " Depart 
 from Me, ye cursed." 
 
 Only not to trust the Saviour, only not to love 
 Him and our brethren of mankind — what a 
 perdition is implied in these negations ! And 
 our life is full of these deplorable neglects, which 
 combine the maximum of harm with the mini- 
 mum of consciousness of wrong. When we begin 
 
Forgive us our Debts. 79 
 
 to add up these wrongs and these neglects calmly 
 and fairly, and admit into our reckoning all 
 aggravations accruing from the possession of 
 light and the enjoyment of mercy, we cannot 
 fail to understand, in some degree at least, how 
 contrition has been the "seal" upon the brow of 
 all God's saints in every age, and how Christ 
 should speak of "our debts" to God. 
 
 If there are such debts to our God, obligations 
 thus unmet, and faults contracted, let us see that 
 we make not light of such a state of matters. 
 Sin is the great evil, in comparison with which 
 all other evils are insignificant. We should 
 beware of throwing dust in our own eyes, and 
 healing slightly the hurt of our own hearts. We 
 have debts, with nothing to pay; and, bankrupt 
 before God, our wisdom is to take our debts to 
 our Father in heaven, saying, " Father, forgive 
 them." 
 
 For the Saviour's word, assuming the guilt of 
 sin, proclaims at the same time the possibility of 
 its pardon. 
 
 How sweet is the suggestion of this word — 
 that forgiveness is granted to those who seek it ! 
 
 For forgiveness is a great word. It means 
 forth-giving — that is, the absolute dismissal and 
 sending away of that which we acknowledge. 
 And, carrying this large significance, it reproduces 
 
8o Lectures on the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 exactly the force of the term which the Saviour 
 uses. 
 
 There is no philosophy of atonement embodied 
 in the prayer. The Saviour knew, but does not 
 state it, in what way God would achieve His 
 purpose of at once enhancing the obligation of 
 duty while pardoning the breaches of it. How 
 much the forgiveness freely bestowed on us 
 would cost our Saviour, He does not here 
 announce, but simply presents the result of His 
 atoning work before us, and bids us ask and 
 expect the free, absolute, complete forgiveness 
 of our sins. Oh ! what a gospel is there in this 
 word ! There is, perhaps, a gleam of hope de- 
 rivable from philosophy on such matters. The 
 way in which Nature makes the best of all things 
 — gathering up fragments, that nothing may be 
 lost, and turning all corruption into a source of 
 life — suggests a glimmer of hope that perchance 
 our failings may be wrought into some plan for 
 the development of our better natures. But it 
 is only a glimmer. And when our memory 
 declines to forget our faults, when painful ex- 
 periences keep up the recollection of them, when 
 the law — ''What a man soweth, that shall he 
 also reap " — proclaims itself to our souls, then 
 these debts " cleave to us," " take hold upon us," 
 go that we cannot lift our head ; and everywhere 
 
Forgive us our Debts. 8 1 
 
 something" of the tone of the Dies Irae marks 
 the utterance of the awakened heart. 
 
 "What shall I, frail man, be pleading? 
 Who for me be interceding, 
 When the just are mercy needing?" 
 
 are the questions, insoluble and desponding, which 
 rise to the lips of all but the frivolous and worldly. 
 But the Saviour meets all this despair by this 
 simple word — when ye pray, say, " Father, 
 forgive us our debts." For this precept assumes 
 the cross which is to follow, on which, owning 
 the sin of men, sharing its curse and praying for 
 its pardon, He makes propitiation for the sins 
 of the world. It teaches us that " without money 
 and without price," this most-needed and richest 
 of all gifts is to be obtained. That God " abun- 
 dantly pardons," " delighteth to forgive ; " that 
 *' far as the east is from the west, so far He 
 removes our transgressions from us;" that He 
 "blots them out as a cloud," that He "buries 
 them in the depth of the sea," that *'our sins 
 and iniquities He remembers no more for 
 ever." 
 
 So that the burden may be lifted from our 
 hearts ! And the cup of woe, which we have 
 filled, need not be drunk. A Divine pardon may 
 intervene between the fault and the penalty of 
 it. While we cannot forget our fault, we may 
 have, what is far better than forgetfulness, God's 
 
 G 
 
82 Lectures on the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 forgiveness — so rich that we feel at liberty to 
 forgive ourselves. 
 
 " I believe in the forgiveness of sins," is one of 
 the most marvellous and characteristic of all the 
 articles of the Christian Creed. When Luther 
 realised the force of this word, it changed for 
 him " the shadow of death into morning," and 
 led him to that peace and hope which he pro- 
 claimed with such power as to produce the 
 Reformation. And when, adoring our Saviour 
 who died for us, and sheltering ourselves beneath 
 His cross, we offer in faith this prayer to Him, 
 we are saved by the Forgiveness of God coming 
 to us, and its peace, that passeth all under- 
 standing, filling the soul. Reconciliation with 
 God makes the great calm, permits all the noblest 
 blessings of God to descend upon our spirits. 
 And memory is free to linger over its innumerable 
 experiences of mercy, and anticipation to exult 
 in the vastness and tenderness of God's gracious 
 promises. 
 
 Neither coarsen nor endanger your heart by 
 carrying needlessly the burden of unrepented 
 and unforgiven sin, but pray for and get the 
 forgiveness which your Father in the skies longs 
 to impart to you. 
 
 If the consideration of the petition thus 
 solemnises and comforts us, and guides us to the 
 great necessity of life, consider secondly — 
 
Forgive us our Debts. 83 
 
 The clause which is added to the 
 petition. 
 
 For we act wisely only when we offer the 
 petition in its completeness. And when we do 
 so we find that the clause which was perhaps at 
 first a terror to the heart soon sweetens into a 
 thing of gracious meaning. 
 
 Look at this word : FORGIVE US ... AS WE 
 FORGIVE OUR DEBTORS. 
 
 The Saviour does not take away with one 
 hand what He gives with the other, and the ad- 
 dition of this clause does not proceed from any 
 desire to limit the outflow of pardoning grace. 
 He wants, on the contrary, to get the hearts of 
 all who offer this petition into the mood which 
 shall be most receptive of God's infinite gift. 
 
 A little consideration will make this clear. 
 
 For observe : 
 
 I . A certain fitness to use and profit by God's 
 blessings is uniformly a condition of their bestow- 
 ment. Common mercies may be bestowed 
 irrespective of spiritual character. But for His 
 higher gifts some congruity between the charac- 
 ter and the gift is requisite. He does not lift 
 the light of His countenance on those that are 
 going astray. To do so would be to encourage 
 them in their evil. He does not impart the 
 secrets of His love to those consumed by greed 
 and absorbed by the poorest form of selfishness. 
 
§4 Lectures on the Lord^s Prayer. 
 
 They would abuse such assurances, and become 
 harder still in their worldliness. 
 
 He does not give rapturous hope to the 
 worldly, nor guidance to those who would only 
 resent His gracious leading. But all His higher 
 gifts are bestowed where they are welcomed, 
 enjoyed, improved, where they will be productive 
 of some Divine result. 
 
 "The dew that never wets the cold, flinty mountain 
 Falls in the valley free." 
 
 And mercies come, into earthen vessels 
 indeed, but only into vessels hallowed for their 
 reception. 
 
 Observe, 2, Penitence is the conditioji of heart 
 to which alone God can impart forgiveness. 
 However He might wish to do so, God cannot 
 pardon the impenitent. For His pardon would 
 not be a blessing to them ; it would only fearfully 
 injure them. We have just to endeavour to 
 conceive the awful calamity of receiving forgive- 
 ness without repentance, to feel at once how 
 impossible it would be for a God of love to 
 grant it. Pardon thus given would corrupt the 
 soul in every part. It would enfeeble conscience, 
 destroying its constraint and sovereignty. It 
 would develope an ignoble and base contentment 
 with our faulty and sinful character that would 
 degrade us in the scale of being. It would at 
 
Forgive tis our Debts. 85 
 
 once abate all aspiration after improvement. It 
 would make us despise our very God Himself. 
 If the unforgiving could by any laxity of God's 
 rules receive forgiveness, how revenge would be 
 cherished and gratified ! What a " cage of 
 every unclean and hurtful bird " the heart would 
 become ! What a prolific source of mutual 
 hatred, injury, and woe would be found simply 
 in the permission of revenge involved in the 
 non-requirement of repentance ! God does not 
 lend Himself to such mistakes. His work is 
 perfect. When He pardons He does it in such 
 a way as to make it, not a curse, but one of the 
 highest of all blessings, purifying the heart, and 
 invigorating the conscience, and deepening every 
 finer affection. And the state of soul which is 
 competent to gather all this good from His gift 
 is simply Contrition. 
 
 The broken and the contrite heart loves much 
 when forgiven much ; labours to avoid grieving 
 afresh the gracious Saviour ; finds in the removal 
 of its burden of guilt, power of purity to aim 
 higher, and power to pursue the higher aim. 
 Penitence thus turns all it touches into gold, 
 and thrives on the pardoning mercy of its God. 
 
 Accordingly, not from any arbitrary reason, or 
 because He grudges His gifts, but because God 
 is Love, He only forgives where there is the peni- 
 tence that would make forgiveness a blessing. 
 
S6 Lectures on the Loj^d^s Prayer. 
 
 It is an awful thought, but a true one, that, 
 while we are impenitent, punishment is the only 
 mercy of relationship God can give us. He 
 accompanies it with the beseechments of His 
 Spirit, and gracious warnings, in the hope that as 
 a hedge of thorns they may turn us back into 
 the right way. But while He delights to pardon, 
 He cannot forgive us until we have at least 
 begun to repent. 
 
 Lastly observe. That wherever there is repent- 
 ance^ it is easy to forgive onr debtors. 
 
 Pride cannot forgive ; it is too ignorant of its 
 faults, has too exaggerated a sense of its own 
 claims, it is too little and poor to have the 
 generous wealth of feeling which can forgive an 
 injury. Selfishness cannot forgive ; it is greedy 
 of its uttermost farthing, and has eyes so full of 
 beams as groundlessly to assume the existence 
 of many motes which are absent, and to magnify 
 every little fault that happens to exist. 
 
 And considering how much there is of pride 
 and selfishness in all our hearts, it is not surpris- 
 ing that even when amiabiHty is present in its 
 finest equity, and generosity in its richest energy, 
 there should yet be a difficulty in forgiving 
 those who have injured us. 
 
 But when the Spirit of all grace has touched 
 us, and revealed all the glory and all the mercy 
 of the Lord — when our soul has become tenderly 
 
Forgive us our Debts, Sy 
 
 sensitive to the greatness of its Saviour, regard- 
 ful of the claims of man, and obedient to the 
 promptings of its own higher life — t/ien humility- 
 beholds no fault equal to its own ; and the heart, 
 purged of its selfishness by its contrition, pities 
 those who have injured it ; and the sense of 
 boundless wealth enriching it makes it wishful 
 to enrich others ; and so penitence easily pardons 
 every fault by which it has been injured. 
 
 The contrite spirit dreads the thought of re- 
 venge, and in its sense of unprofitableness longs, 
 by pardoning its enemies, to do something to 
 soften the sternnesses and enlarge the bliss of life. 
 
 Now, combine these considerations, and it will 
 at once appear how merciful the Saviour was in 
 making this addition to the prayer. God requires 
 a mood congruous with the mercy He imparts ; 
 penitence alone can profit by forgiveness ; it 
 can always easily forgive. Is it not well that, 
 embodied in the petition, there should be a word 
 which informs us at once whether the petition 
 can be answered, and developes receptivity within 
 us ? This word comes between no one and 
 pardon. For if he is in a pardonable state of 
 mind, he can say, "As we forgive," without one 
 quiver of dismay. While if he is not, this word 
 whispers that he is himself more faulty than he 
 thought, that his sorrow for his own sin is in- 
 adequate ; it sets him to measure his own faults 
 
S8 Lectures on the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 instead of brooding on the faults of others. 
 And, somehow, when he is looking in a Father's 
 face, and thinking of forgiveness, it is easier to 
 be brotherly and to forgive. The insertion of 
 this clause may make it that it takes a long time 
 to offer this petition — perhaps an hour — perhaps 
 a week — perhaps still longer. But when at 
 length, in hope and in humility, he can say, 
 " Father, forgive us, as we forgive," then pardon 
 has her perfect work, and the soul, relieved of 
 its despair and purged of its unbrotherliness, 
 walks in " the glorious liberty of the children 
 of God." 
 
 How many delusions would have been pre- 
 vented, had this petition in its gracious gravity 
 been thoughtfully used ! How many hypocrisies 
 unmasked to the hearts that cherished them ! 
 How much of unbrotherliness, with its backsliding, 
 its ever-widening gulf of separation from God, 
 its darkness and despair, would have been 
 destroyed ! 
 
 Let us endeavour to offer it ; let us seek re- 
 penting grace until it reaches us in sufficient 
 force to let us calmly, simply use it ; and then 
 God's face will beam on us " a morning without 
 clouds," and, at peace with God and man, the 
 beginnings of the eternal joy will hallow and fill 
 and overflow our contrite and thankful hearts, 
 
VII. 
 
 The $ixth Petitioini, 
 
 (Dxxx: Jfather . . . Jeab xxq not inter tcm^jtutiou ; 
 
 but iclibir U0 from Zbxl Luke xi. 2, 4. 
 
 ^E now reach the last petition of this great 
 prayer; and, as the version in St. Luke 
 gives it, not the last petition only, but 
 the last words of the prayer. The fine doxology, 
 " For Thine is the kingdom, the power and the 
 glory," omitted by Luke, does not occur in any 
 of the most ancient manuscripts of Matthew's 
 Gospel ; and where it does so appear, appears in 
 so many different forms as to indicate the absence 
 of any original authority. It has the authority 
 belonging to a very beautiful and ancient litur- 
 gical response, with which the congregations 
 closed and crowned the prayer when used in 
 public worship. But, unquestionably, the Saviour 
 did not teach us to close the prayer with any 
 phrase of this kind. 
 
 He left the form of prayer with an open end 
 
90 Lectures on the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 — with a space vacant for God to say Amen. 
 Knowing we are too apt to finish off our prayers 
 formally, and think them done when they are 
 only uttered, He, by a sacred unfinishedness in 
 the prayer, seeks to keep us, like the men of 
 Galilee, looking up after our ascended cries. He 
 perpetuates the praying mood : makes us watch 
 till God accepts the petitions we send Him, and 
 prepares their answer. 
 
 The last word is the greatest petition of 
 all ; the hardest in the uttering, the grandest in 
 the answering. It springs naturally out of what 
 has gone before. Receiving the pardon of sins, 
 a hypocrite might be satisfied, and finish his 
 petition with a cry which wins it. But the peni- 
 tent looks before as well as behind him. Sorrow 
 for the past becomes solicitude about the future. 
 He is more solicitous about cleansing from the 
 power of sin than in his deepest alarm he was 
 anxious about deliverance from his guilt. He 
 has a keen sense of the likelihood of his falling 
 into sin ; dreads it as the evil of existence, and, 
 moved by many deep desires — love of Christ, 
 love of man, self-respect, regard for his immortal 
 well-being — he cries to God to save him from 
 everything that might lead to his falling into 
 sin. Every petition, as we have seen, involves 
 surrender and sacrifice — in none is the prayer 
 for the " baptism with the Holy Ghost and with 
 Fire" more prominent. 
 
Lead us not into Temptation. 91 
 
 The position which the prayer thus occupies 
 will enable us to appreciate at once — 
 
 I. Its force ; and 11. The reasons for 
 
 OUR OFFERING IT. 
 
 On these two points let us fix our attention. 
 We begin with, 
 
 The FORCE of this petition. 
 
 Lead ns not into temptation ; but deliver us 
 from evil. In some such form the enlightened 
 spirit ever frames its prayer for sanctity. Two 
 sets of things hurt and impede our better life. 
 Things without, that operate adversely to our 
 continuance in well-doing. Things within, which 
 answer too readily to every external obstacle 
 and seduction thus assailing us. Accordingly, we 
 are always driven to some such double cry as 
 this in our longings after purity — from everything 
 without us which might lead to sin ; from every- 
 thing within us which prompts to sin ; O God, 
 deliver us ! 
 
 The Scriptural use of the word *' temptation " 
 makes it the exact and comprehensive word for 
 all outward occasions of sin. For, while including 
 the seduction of the devil, the word is con- 
 tinually applied to all circumstances that put a 
 strain on goodness, to everything that *' tries " 
 us in any way. It includes all afflictions, all 
 over-plenty or over-want, all circumstances 
 
92 Lectures on tJie Lonfs Prayer. 
 
 prejudicial to the soul's prosperity, all valleys of 
 the shadow of death, all stretches of " enchanted 
 ground." Whatever proves a "trial" to the 
 heart is included in this word. 
 
 And, accordingly, when we say, ^' Lead us not 
 into temptation," we deprecate, without peri- 
 phrase or attached condition, everything whose 
 natural tendency is to infeeble the good within 
 us, however much our flesh and blood might 
 desire it. 
 
 The word is directed to God. For of all cir- 
 cumstances He is the disposer ; and over all 
 seductions of the enemy He exerts supreme 
 control. It is our great consolation that He 
 leads us, and that only when He permits 
 are we led into temptation. Sometimes, to 
 punish presumption, He leads into temptation. 
 Sometimes, to teach us our own weakness and to 
 produce watchfulness of spirit, He permits fierce 
 temptations to play upon the spirit. Sometimes, 
 to make us keep close to Himself, He permits 
 the " roaring lion " to come out against us. 
 
 Temptation has, indeed, a great part to play 
 in the development of character. We rise above 
 evil only by resisting it. It is the conflict with 
 temptation in all its forms of active seduction, 
 or the influence of circumstances, which develops 
 an energetic preference for good and the vigour 
 to pursue and to achieve it. 
 
Lead lis not into Temptation. 93 
 
 So that temptation is really, as It were, the 
 string of the kite — something operating as a 
 downward force, but something without which 
 the kite could not rise. Accordingly, Christ and 
 all His followers are led by the Spirit Into the 
 wilderness to be tempted of the devil. 
 
 And no temptation ever assails us save that 
 which God allows. But, recognising the fact that, 
 for His own Divine ends, God leads us into 
 temptation, and that without it no strong spiritual 
 manhood could be reached, none the less should 
 we fear it and pray against it. " It must needs 
 be" that temptations come ; but we do not pray 
 as philosophers, but as penitents, feeling weak- 
 ness, dreading falling. We do not tie God's 
 hands by offering this prayer, for we have said, 
 " Thy will be done," and that larger petition 
 governs this lesser one, and supplies its necessary 
 limitations. While In that petition we accept, if 
 need be, the warfare with " principalities and 
 powers in heavenly places," in this we, like chil- 
 dren, deprecate every strain upon our too weak 
 goodness. That is the prayer of courage and 
 confidence ; this, of humility and self-diffidence. 
 We prefer to be exposed to no peril, and so offer 
 this petition ; but If God sees best, we accept all 
 peril, saying only, " Thy will be done." And we 
 expect that, in the event of the letter of this 
 petition being denied, the spirit of it will still be 
 
 1> 
 
94 Lecttcres on the Lord^s Prayer. 
 
 » 
 granted ; that we shall be supported and de- 
 livered when tempted, and come out of it 
 strengthened, should God see fit to lead us 
 into it. 
 
 In this way the first half of the petition takes 
 its simple form. The Lord reigneth. Our cir- 
 cumstances are His ordering; nothing assails us 
 without His control. We recognise the possible 
 good of temptation, and so say, " Thy will be 
 done." We recognise the probable evil, and so 
 say, " Lead us not into temptation," — leaving to 
 God to embody in His answer the reconciliation 
 of our perhaps divergent prayers. And as the 
 prayer thus rises from the sense of weakness, 
 and the desire to avoid further falling into sin, 
 it is a very comprehensive petition. It asks ex- 
 emption from trials, whose tendency would be 
 to beget weakness or despair. It prays to be 
 denied wealth, if riches would prove slippery 
 places to the soul. It asks to be kept from 
 companionship that would lead astray; from 
 every position in which the spirit would be prone 
 to gather worldliness. It prays to be spared 
 those assaults of the enemy which always pain 
 even if they do not prevail ; from all darkness 
 that would obscure faith ; from all allurements 
 that would enkindle passion ; from all seduction 
 that would turn the soul aside from the right 
 path, or make it settle down in indolent content- 
 
Lead iis not into Temptation. 95 
 
 ment with its poor and meagre goodness. If 
 we have prayed heartily the previous petitions, 
 we shall not fail to offer this as well. 
 
 And, asking to be kept from temptation, we 
 complete the prayer for sanctity by adding, " and 
 deliver us from evil." 
 
 The temptation outside of us would be power- 
 less without the evil within us ; and what we 
 want is the destruction of the latter still more 
 than relief from the former. The Saviour did 
 not contemplate His disciples ever finding their 
 hearts void of evil. He expected them to feel 
 its presence and its pressure more and more, 
 according as their holiness increased. Not the 
 earliest petition, but the latest of the prayer — 
 last to be reached and hardest to be offered — 
 is this cry for deliverance from evil. They who 
 do their utmost to cast out evil from their spirits 
 are those that feel the help of God must be im- 
 parted to make that effort of theirs succeed. 
 They recognise, as those who strive not cannot, 
 the dead weight of earthiness within them — the 
 force of tendencies to go astray — the awful mass 
 and sovereignty of selfishness within them. And 
 so, remembering that we are not creatures of 
 circumstances, that over and above every out- 
 ward seduction there is the inward bias to what 
 is wrong, they cry, " Deliver us from evil." 
 What a sublime petition ! Offering the right 
 
96 Lectures on the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 hand to be cut off, the right eye to be plucked 
 out ! A prayer that cannot be answered without 
 some agony ! A prayer that elects " the refiner's 
 fire," that yearns for purity, at whatever cost it 
 must be reached ! 
 
 It is a prayer for a more tender conscience, 
 which will restrain our " pleasant vices," for the 
 destruction of self-will, for the lifting of our 
 hearts to higher objects and pursuits, for the 
 entire occupation of our hearts with those 
 higher purposes in the pursuit of which alone 
 they are ennobled. 
 
 And so tremblingly we offer it — like the 
 prophet who prayed, " Correct me, but with 
 judgment; not in Thy wrath, lest Thou bring 
 me to naught.'^ If God were not our Father, 
 who would venture to offer such a prayer ? But 
 when there is in Him infinite mercy, and the 
 graciousness which answers all such prayers with 
 infinite tenderness, we venture to raise our 
 thoughts even as high as this, and surrendering 
 the heart to the altar fire, say, *' Lead us not 
 into temptation ; but deliver us from evil." 
 
 Rarely do we offer this prayer; too constantly 
 we shrink from it. Let us consider accordingly, 
 
 The reasons for our offering it. 
 
 These are not always recognised, or the prayer 
 would not be so lightly used or utterly neglected 
 
Lead us not into Temptation, 97 
 
 as it is. Slow as true growth must be, the de- 
 votion of Christian men would not show such 
 a pervading mediocrity, such poverty of senti- 
 ment, such absence of enthusiasm, such meagre- 
 ness of spiritual and kindly purpose as it does, 
 if this prayer purged our lips like a coal from 
 off God's altar. We do not use it except in 
 the most matter-of-course way. How few are 
 they who wrestle with God for deliverance 
 from evil ! 
 
 If we do not offer this prayer, it is, of course, 
 because we fail to see sufficient reasons for 
 adopting it. It is not, therefore, unimportant, 
 but supremely necessary, that we should mark 
 the cogent arguments which commend this 
 prayer to our use. 
 
 Let me name some of them. 
 
 I. The dangers arising from temptation with- 
 out and evil within us are greater than any of us 
 deem them. 
 
 We are arrogant in our conceit of strength, and 
 never know how slender is our power, how great 
 the power of our adversary. In our folly we 
 overlook the new forms which temptation may 
 assume ; the subtle likeness to duty which it 
 may present ; the force of its surprises ; the 
 chance of a concurrence of influences besetting 
 us with a vehemence which would leave us 
 powerless. 
 
 H 
 
98 Lectures on the Lord^s Prayer. 
 
 We perpetually underrate both our good and 
 evil, but especially our evil. All of us have 
 something of Laodicean conceit within us. And 
 even those not quite blind enough to deem them- 
 selves perfect are apt to underrate the force of 
 selfishness in its various forms in the heart. It 
 is well that we should observe that the holiest 
 have feared temptation most, and have most 
 painfully recognised the greatness of the struggle 
 with evil. Paul felt he wrestled not with flesh 
 and blood, but with enemies whose conquest 
 called for " the whole armour of God." He 
 groaned beneath his evil — "who shall deliver 
 me from the body of this death } " 
 
 Men have generally fallen in the matter on 
 which they felt strongest. Abraham — the faith- 
 ful — lied through unbelief. Moses — the man 
 of meekness — through anger; David — most 
 spiritual of the Church's psalmists — through 
 carnality ; Peter — bravest of the disciples, and 
 clearest in vision — through mental confusion 
 and fear. 
 
 You stand } take heed lest you fall. Principle 
 is still limp with the strongest. One hour of 
 indifference, or of despondency, might let you 
 fall before a temptation that would darken all 
 your life. That which we have already attained, 
 inadequate and unworthy as it is, is something 
 which it would be terrible to lose. 
 
Lead us 7iot into Temptation. 99 
 
 What horror of thick darkness comes with 
 backsliding ! What bitterness of spirit ! What 
 despair ! How hard to regain what through 
 unwatchfulness we lose ! If wise, we should 
 prefer any loss to that of character. " Watch 
 and pray, that ye enter not into temptation," 
 for the peril is greater than any deem it ; and 
 the loss involved in falling is vaster than any 
 can calculate. 
 
 Cry, " deliver us from evil : " for the moment 
 deliverance begins to halt declension begins to 
 set in. Growing in grace is the only way of 
 preventing that decline which, like a " con- 
 sumption,'* so often enfeebles, even to the verge 
 of extinction, all spiritual vitality. 
 
 Had some prayed this prayer, they would not 
 have been " scattered in a cloudy and dark day." 
 What years of melancholy barrenness and joyless, 
 purposeless existence the adoption of this prayer 
 would have saved them ! 
 
 Offer this prayer because the danger arising 
 from temptation without and evil within is vastly 
 greater than you think. 
 
 2. The bliss b7'onght by the answer to this prayer 
 is far beyond our thoughts. 
 
 Our true bliss is being, not having. What we 
 are is everything ; what we have, comparatively 
 unimportant. To be victors over temptation, and 
 purged from evil, is the supremest well-being. 
 
ICO Lectures on the Lord^s Prayer. 
 
 Moral strength is the highest kind of health ; 
 and inward purity the richest fountain of peace 
 and joy. Regrets, fears, discontent, shame, 
 remorse, weakness, solicitude about the future — 
 you can name no troubles which compare with 
 these. But in the degree in which the heart has 
 been delivered from its evil, every thought is 
 restful, every feeling genial ; God is seen in 
 the graciousness of His providence, in the ten- 
 derness of His redemption ; duty brightens as 
 the heaven-lit way that leads to God ; memory 
 grows sweet with the consciousness of God's 
 favour and forgiveness ; hope strong and elate 
 with the expectation of the skies. Above all, 
 love reigns, its every prompting and movement 
 freighted with a bliss like that of God's. 
 
 Deliverance from evil is exactly and merely 
 heaven. Its purity of heart sees God — yea, 
 holds Him as its guest, and enjoys with Him 
 intimate communion. Without holiness, men 
 are blind and cannot see God ; with it, life is an 
 Apocalypse — heaven is open, and we see angels 
 ascending and descending on the Son of man. 
 
 The bliss of being is perfected in the degree 
 this prayer is answered. 
 
 How important should this seem in view of 
 our immortality ! What we have we leave ; but 
 what we are we carry with us. We do not 
 know the condition of that other life — how it 
 
Lead jis not into Temptation. loi 
 
 moves or by what processes life is perfected. 
 But surely it were better to enter on its career 
 of duties somewhat fit for them, with souls full 
 of life, ready for the engagements and delights 
 of heaven, than to land on the other side poor 
 meagre ghosts, with feeble potency, shrivelled, 
 fearful and incompetent. 
 
 Character is an eternal thing. We breed 
 within it the worms that die not, or grow within 
 it the Tree of Life of which we shall for ever eat. 
 Is it not wise to seek its perfecting and strength ? 
 especially as all usefulness comes with the vic- 
 tory over temptation and the deliverance from 
 evil. It is not fussy work so much as stately 
 goodness that blesses our fellow-men ; the tongue 
 of the learned which speaks a word in season to 
 the weary, the skill to wipe away the tear, the 
 unction that knoweth all things ; the anointing 
 to heal the broken-hearted, come through our 
 deliverance from evil, and exist in exact and 
 constant ratio to it. 
 
 Do we aspire to be useful ? — wish to leave the 
 world better ? Pray, " Lead us not into tempta- 
 tion, but deliver us from evil," and usefulness 
 will " spring up, we know not how." 
 
 And lastly I would urge : 
 
 Pray this^ for the prayer will be anszvered. 
 
 There is no hard wayside soil, no rocky ground, 
 no thorny ground in the heart of God. When 
 
102 Lectures on the Lord's Prayer, 
 
 we sow it with seeds of prayer they take root 
 and bear fruit in a degree but faintly represented 
 by the hundred-fold which the good soil of 
 human hearts may yield. 
 
 God will answer this prayer when we offer it. 
 Perhaps not always in the way we expect. 
 
 Sometimes 
 
 " He makes us feel 
 The hidden evils of our heart ; 
 And bids the angry powers of hell 
 Assault our soul in every part." 
 
 Sometimes, dreaming only of a Baptism of the 
 Holy Ghost, we get in answer to this prayer a 
 Baptism of Fire. 
 
 But when honestly prayed it is always 
 answered. 
 
 Very marvellous is the degree in which some 
 lives reach deliverance from evil ; so beautiful 
 are they in self-forgetfulness, so strong in the 
 passion of mercy and philanthropy. But even 
 when the answer comes less obviously, it does 
 come. The Eternal God takes His time, and 
 does well whatever He deems worth doing. Lie 
 grows Llis saints zvJiere impatient man wants 
 Hint to inamifactnre them. First the blade, 
 then the ear, then the full corn in the ear — such 
 is God's way, seeming slow, proving omnipotent. 
 
 Whatever power temptation seems to possess, 
 whatever strength and headway evil seems to 
 
Lead us not into Temptation. 103 
 
 have, let us pray this prayer, and gradually 
 nature will become grace, and grace nature ; 
 we shall loose ourselves from the bands of our 
 neck, and shake ourselves from the dust, and 
 put on our beautiful garments ; the Image of 
 God in all its beauty will re-appear in our lives, 
 until at last the complete answer of our deepest 
 yearning will be given, and " WE SHALL BE 
 LIKE Him, because we shall see Him as 
 He is." 
 
 Note on the Sixth Petition. 
 
 The Revised New Testament renders this petition : 
 "And bring us not into temptation, but deHver 
 us from the Evil One." 
 The Author was famihar with the reasons usually- 
 urged for adopting this rendering, but deemed, and still 
 deems, them utterly insufficient. He thinks the old 
 rendering approved by a minority of the Revisers, and 
 therefore inserted in the margiii, ought to be retained on 
 these grounds : 
 
 1. That the Greek word Trovrjpov (evil) — having the 
 same form in the masculine and neuter — might be trans- 
 lated either way. 
 
 2. That to rest a translation, which jars with the whole 
 spirit of the Prayer and of the Gospel, on the fine shade 
 of distinction in classical usage between the prepositions 
 UTTO (from) and ei: (out of) is a mistake ; the New Testa- 
 ment writers speaking and writing Greek as a foreign 
 language, and displaying everywhere a natural indifference 
 to the minuticB of classical propriety. 
 
104 Lectures on the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 3. That such a rendering makes the second clause of 
 the petition quite superfluous. " The Evil One " has no 
 power over us, excepting through temptation. We are 
 delivered from him, when we are guarded from his tempta- 
 tion. And that rendering is not likely to be the correct 
 one which makes any part of the Saviour's words a mere 
 repetition of what had already been sufficiently said. 
 
 4. And lastly, the Bible throughout, by its whole spirit, 
 is at variance with the spirit of a rendering which attri- 
 butes such a ghastly sovereignty to the Evil One. The 
 Manichaeans taught men to believe in two gods, the Good 
 One and the Evil One ; and they could offer the prayer, 
 " Deliver us from the Evil One." The Gospel, on the 
 other hand, while indicating his power and influence, 
 forbids any recognition of his sovereignty ; and the prayer, 
 " Deliver us from the Evil One," could never rise in- 
 stinctively in any Christian heart. When on our knees 
 before our God, we see no second throne and no divided 
 sovereignty. 
 
 On all these grounds, the Author holds that the Old 
 Version is indubitably to be preferred. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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