Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGD
 
 ) 
 
 , 

 
 THE 
 
 LORD'S PRAYER
 
 Ojcforfc 
 
 HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
 
 THE 
 
 LORD'S PRAYER 
 
 BY 
 
 THE LATE E. M. GOULBURN, D.D. 
 
 SOMETIME DEAN OF NORWICH 
 
 LONDON 
 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 
 1898
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THESE meditations on the Lord's Prayer were 
 originally delivered in the form of Sermons. 
 They were frequently made use of, and carefully 
 revised, by the late Dean, for the instruction of 
 various congregations. Possibly intended for 
 publication in something of the same manner 
 as his 'Thoughts on Personal Religion,' they 
 seem to have been kept, in the meantime, by 
 their pious and learned author, as a private 
 store of thought on their great subject. 
 
 The editing required for their present form 
 has been chiefly the omission of recapitulations 
 and repetitions necessary in the separate ser- 
 mons of a series, but not required for a collection 
 in a single book. Two or three notes have been 
 added in explanation and support of the author's 
 arguments. 
 
 B. COMPTON. 
 
 2000668
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. THE STRUCTURE AND COMPLETENESS OF THE 
 
 LORD'S PRAYER i 
 
 II. THE CONTEXT OF THE LORD'S PRAYER . 21 
 
 III. THE SOURCES OF THE LORD'S PRAYER . 36 
 
 IV. THE Two RECORDS OF THE LORD'S PRAYER 56 
 V. OUR FATHER WHICH ART IN HEAVEN . . 76 
 
 VI. HALLOWED BE THY NAME .... 95 
 
 VII. THY KINGDOM COME 115 
 
 VIII. THY WILL BE DONE 137 
 
 IX. As IN HEAVEN, so IN EARTH . . . 158 
 
 X. GIVE us THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD. . 175 
 
 XI. OUR DAILY BREAD 192 
 
 XII. AND FORGIVE us OUR DEBTS . . . 206 
 
 XIII. As WE FORGIVE OUR DEBTORS . . . 222 
 
 XIV. AND LEAD us NOT INTO TEMPTATION . . 240 
 XV. BUT DELIVER us FROM EVIL .... 265 
 
 XVI. FOR THINE is THE KINGDOM, AND THE POWER, 
 
 AND THE GLORY, FOR EVER. AMEN . 282
 
 THE LORD'S PRAYER 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE STRUCTURE AND COMPLETENESS OF 
 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 
 
 Our Father which art in heaven, 
 
 Hallowed be Thy Name : 
 
 Thy Kingdom come : 
 
 Thy Will be done : 
 In earth, as it is in heaven. 
 
 Give us this day our daily bread : 
 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors : 
 And lead us not into temptation : 
 But deliver us from evil : 
 
 For Thine is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the 
 Glory, for ever. Amen. 
 
 THERE are on record three prayers of our 
 Divine Lord, each of which presents Him to 
 us in a different aspect. In one of them, He 
 appears in His human soul, shrinking with
 
 all the sensitiveness of innocence from the cruel 
 necessity imposed on Him by the work of 
 human redemption which He had undertaken ; 
 ' O My Father, if it be possible, let this cup 
 pass from Me : nevertheless, not as I will, but 
 as Thou wilt.' 
 
 In another He appears as a Prophet or 
 Teacher, instructing His disciples after what 
 manner they are to approach God, He Himself 
 not being involved in the prayer which He 
 dictates; for how could He who was 'holy, 
 harmless, undefiled' who had no trespasses- 
 pray, ' Forgive us our trespasses ' ? 
 
 This is the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 In the third prayer, He appears as a Priest 
 interceding for His people ; He embraces both 
 Himself and them in His petition, asking 
 for His own glorification and for theirs with 
 Him. 
 
 This is the prayer in the seventeenth chapter of 
 St. John, usually called the Great Highpriestly 
 Prayer. 
 
 Thus we have from the Lord's lips one prayer 
 for Himself exclusively, one prayer for His
 
 of the Lord's Prayer 
 
 Church exclusively, and one prayer for Him- 
 self and His Church together. 
 
 As in the Ten Commandments we have 
 a complete and exhaustive summary of all the 
 principles of human duty, the seed of all re- 
 ligious precept ; so in the Lord's Prayer do we 
 find the seed of all prayer. Or, to vary slightly 
 the image, we have here under our hands the 
 gamut of prayer, the seven simple notes, in 
 which is latent, and from which may be elicited, 
 the harmony of every prayer which has ever 
 been sounded forth from the human heart in 
 the ear of God. 
 
 For the great marvellousness of the Lord's 
 Prayer lies, like the marvellousness of the 
 Decalogue, in its completeness, in the impossi- 
 bility of adding another petition to it without 
 tautology, and of abstracting a single word with- 
 out the forfeiture of an idea. Other moralists 
 and legislators besides Moses may have promul- 
 gated some one or more of the Ten Command- 
 ments. There are found here and there, in 
 the writings of heathen sages, stray, straggling 
 sentiments of a very grand and disinterested 
 B 2
 
 4 The Structure and Completeness 
 
 morality. But in vain can we seek among the 
 heathen for any code so systematic as the Deca- 
 logue, so reaching to the first foundations of 
 the subject, so masterly in its divisions, so 
 thoroughly exhaustive in its treatment. 
 
 The case of the Lord's Prayer is very similar. 
 The detached petitions of the Lord's Prayer, 
 and even the invocation, ' Our Father which art 
 in heaven/ may have been separately floating 
 about in the Jewish devotional literature before 
 our Lord compiled and digested them into one 
 perfect form. He created out of these previously 
 existing materials a prayer which has in its abso- 
 lute completeness the trace of the Divine work- 
 manship, according to that profound word of 
 Solomon's descriptive of God's handiwork : 
 ' I know that whatsoever God doeth, it shall 
 be for ever ; nothing can be put to it, nor anything 
 taken from it! 
 
 And now, first, as to the grouping of the 
 various parts of this prayer. There are two 
 tables of the law, one teaching us our duty to 
 God, the other our duty to our neighbour. Cor- 
 respondently we find the body of this prayer
 
 of the Lord's Prayer 
 
 falling into two great divisions: (i) petitions 
 for God's glory in the three first clauses, 
 ' Hallowed be Thy name/ ' Thy kingdom come,' 
 ' Thy will be done ' ; and (2) petitions for the 
 supply of man's necessities in the four last 
 clauses, ' Give us this day our daily bread,' 
 ' Forgive us our trespasses,' ' Lead us not into 
 temptation,' ' Deliver us from evil.' Three and 
 four make seven ; and seven is one of the 
 mystical numbers indicating completeness. So 
 it was that on the seventh day God rested, after 
 completing His work of creation, regarding it 
 as 'very good,' i.e. supremely accomplished. 
 
 A foundation is laid for the prayer to stand 
 upon by the invocation with which it opens ; 
 ' Our Father which art in heaven.' And as the 
 prayer is built upon this foundation, so it is 
 terminated in St. Matthew's Gospel by a beautiful 
 finial in the ascription of praise ; ' For Thine is 
 the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory, 
 for ever. Amen.' 
 
 Prayer comes forth from God, and returns to 
 God. It is the voice of His Spirit in man's 
 heart. And when it has finished its course, it
 
 6 The Structure and Completeness 
 
 pours itself again, in the shape of adoration, into 
 the bosom of Him from whom it originated. 
 
 And this general arrangement of the composi- 
 tion penetrates to the very foundation of the 
 subject. What a clear and beautiful light does 
 it throw on the two great aspects of prayer! 
 As the Decalogue teaches that duty to God is 
 the essential foundation of all duty, so the Lord's 
 Prayer teaches that homage to God, quite inde- 
 pendently of the necessities of man, is the 
 fundamental idea of all prayer. 
 
 Two totally distinct views may be taken of 
 prayer. The commonest and most superficial 
 view is that the one object of prayer is for the 
 supply of man's wants, as though a man should 
 say, I need some blessing, bodily or spiritual ; 
 and I go to the Throne of Grace to petition for 
 it. In this view he is a suitor, nothing more. 
 But the higher and more fundamental view of 
 prayer is that of an exercise, by which man 
 does homage to the Father, and at the same 
 time to his Redeemer, and to the Sanctifier of 
 his spirit. A man must prostrate himself in 
 worship before the Uncreated Light and the
 
 of the Lord's Prayer 
 
 Uncreated Love. In this view he is not a suitor, 
 but a worshipper offering a spiritual sacrifice, 
 acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. And he 
 must do this homage as a worshipper, before 
 he represents his necessities as a suitor. 
 
 The practical bearing of this doctrine is that 
 we are not to snatch selfishly and covetously at 
 the blessings which God holds in His Hand, 
 before we have rendered to Him in our hearts 
 that adoration which is His due. Our petitions 
 for self should flow out of, and take their tone 
 from, homage done to our Creator. Get your 
 heart warmed with right and great conceptions 
 of God before you enter upon the business of 
 your suit. Seek to be penetrated with the 
 thought of His wisdom, blessedness, beauty, 
 and love ; think that the praise of all the harps 
 of all the angels falls far below His excellence, 
 and that He deserves infinitely more than all 
 the love of every human heart which ever was 
 or ever shall be created. Thus, to take the 
 lowest ground, will thy prayers for self be most 
 successful. The peevish and greedy child who 
 cares not so much for the parent as for what
 
 he has to give, may easily fail of his petitions 
 to a wise and good father, however clamorously 
 urged; but few parents can resist large confi- 
 dence and warm affection displayed towards 
 them by a child. And, similarly, a deep venera- 
 tion of God's fatherhood, a high regard for His 
 name, for His kingdom, and His will, cannot 
 fail to draw out from Him, and down upon 
 ourselves, if not what we solicit, yet at all events 
 a richer and a better blessing. 
 
 In embarking upon the first group of petitions, 
 it should be understood that the clause, 'As it 
 is in heaven/ applies not merely to the last, but 
 to each one of them. We pray that God's name 
 may be hallowed in earth as it is in heaven, 
 and that His kingdom may come in earth as 
 it already is in heaven, no less than that His 
 will may be done upon earth as it is in heaven. 
 
 In short, our Blessed Lord, who came down 
 from heaven, points us in thought at the begin- 
 ning of our prayer to the bright sphere from 
 which He came, and proposes to us angelic 
 worship, angelic service, and angelic obedience 
 as our rightful model. There is something
 
 of the Lord's Prayer 
 
 exceedingly refreshing in the survey thus sug- 
 gested of heavenly love and zeal and order, 
 before we come down to the workday needs, 
 and sins, and trials of this toilsome, troublesome 
 world ! 
 
 First, Angelic Worship, 'Hallowed be Thy 
 name, in earth, &c.' The name of God in 
 the Holy Scriptures stands for God in His re- 
 vealed attributes and character ; and the petition 
 is that God may be venerated and adored by us, 
 as He is in the habitation of His holiness and 
 His glory; or, in the inimitably simple and deep 
 language of our Catechism, that 'All people may 
 worship Him as they ought to do.' 
 
 A glimpse is given us by the Prophet Isaiah 
 of the seraphim standing before the throne with 
 veiled faces and feet, and crying one to another, 
 'Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of Hosts; the 
 whole earth is full of His glory.' We pray that 
 God may be acknowledged as holy in the hearts 
 of men, just as He is by the Seraphim, that the 
 beauty and awfulness of His character may be 
 universally recognized. This is a petition on 
 behalf of God's Person. We begin with His
 
 10 The Structure and Completeness 
 
 Personality, before we proceed to any other 
 thoughts connected with Him. 
 
 Secondly, Angelic Service. ' That all people 
 may serve Him as they ought to do'; 'Thy 
 kingdom come in earth as in heaven.' The 
 holy angels are not engaged in adoration only, 
 but in service also. In the passage just referred 
 to, which is descriptive of angelic homage, we 
 are told, ' Each one had six wings. With twain 
 he covered his face, and with twain he covered 
 his feet' (this is adoration, after the oriental 
 manner of rendering it); but it is added, 'With 
 twain he did fly' fly to the execution of those 
 ministries with which God charged him. He 
 goes to Nazareth, to announce Messiah's birth 
 to the humble maiden destined to be His mother; 
 or to the wilderness, to minister to the Son of 
 God, when the devil has left Him ; or to Geth- 
 semane, to recruit the failing powers of His 
 humanity; or to the Mount of Ascension, to 
 instruct and console bereaved disciples; or to 
 Herod's prison, to liberate St. Peter; or to a 
 ship's cabin on the tossing waves of the Adriatic, 
 to assure St. Paul of the deliverance of himself
 
 of the Lord's Prayer n 
 
 and his fellow-voyagers. We men have a similar 
 privilege of being instruments of God's service, 
 each of us more or less directly. Our earthly 
 vocations and pursuits are tasks set us by Him, 
 and all contribute something some more, some 
 less to the great scheme of His service. That 
 all may work for God in their various positions, 
 and thus forward that glorious kingdom which 
 shall be set up visibly at the second Advent of 
 Christ this is the substance of the second peti- 
 tion, which is on behalf of God's service, as the 
 first was on behalf of His Person. 
 
 Thirdly, Angelic Obedience. ' That we may 
 obey Him as we ought to do'; 'Thy will be 
 done in earth, as it is in Heaven.' 
 
 Obedience is a distinct thought from Service. 
 Obedience (including resignation) is the pre- 
 rogative of free will. All creatures, even the 
 irrational and inanimate, serve God in their 
 several spheres ; for service may be done by 
 constraint, by the operation of a law which 
 it is impossible to escape. But obedience 
 and submission can only be yielded by free 
 agents, such as men and angels. To men (though
 
 12 The Structure and Completeness 
 
 not to angels) obedience and submission are 
 often hard trials; we often find it difficult to 
 yield them. And therefore here is insinuated 
 for the first time the thought of man's sorrows 
 and sins; so that this petition, like the fifth 
 precept of the Decalogue, acts as a sort of bridge 
 by which we pass from the first to the second 
 part of the Prayer. We pray that we may obey 
 God's commandments and (which involves the 
 same principle) submit to His providential ap- 
 pointments, with the zeal, and cheerfulness, and 
 confidence in His wisdom which the angels 
 exhibit. And with this petition on behalf of 
 God's will we close the first section of our 
 prayer, and proceed to the second. We remove 
 our eyes from the heaven above, on which we 
 have been fixing them, and throw them around 
 us upon earth. 
 
 And when we do so, what observations have 
 we to make upon man's condition ? If we were 
 required to state in three words the great 
 features of man's condition, as experience makes 
 them known to us, could we name three more 
 characteristic and comprehensive features than
 
 these Want, Sin, Trial ? And these features 
 are traced in the Lord's Prayer in the order 
 in which we have experience of them in human 
 life. In a little infant, sin is latent and cannot 
 exhibit itself. But though the infant makes no 
 exhibition of sin, he makes a hundred exhibitions 
 of want. Beyond all creatures on the face of 
 the earth, the human infant is most dependent, 
 most full of wants. But the infant grows to 
 be a child ; and then in trickery, in greediness, 
 in selfishness, in temper, the other feature of 
 man's condition is developed. This child is 
 clearly a sinner, before it can yet understand 
 fully the nature and force of temptation, and 
 while we say of it compassionately, 'All its trials 
 are yet to come.' When the child becomes 
 a young man or young woman, it then feels the 
 strength of passion and the attractiveness of 
 the world's lures, which are two chief sources 
 of temptation ; and as the young man or young 
 woman grow older, they contract acquaintance 
 with trial in the shape of ill health, or poverty, 
 or bereavement, or anxieties. When you have 
 said this, you have not much more to observe
 
 i4 The Structure and Completeness 
 
 on the outline of man's estate. So the great 
 Prophet and Prayer-giver prescribes first, A 
 prayer for human wants ; ' Give us this day our 
 daily bread.' Our dependence upon God for 
 the supply of our wants, the daily acknowledge- 
 ment of this dependence which it becomes us 
 to make, the propriety of asking for simple 
 necessaries, not for luxuries, and generally of 
 being very modest and sparing in our petitions 
 for earthly good, are all indicated here with the 
 utmost brevity and comprehensiveness. But if 
 our Heavenly Father were to supply our bodily 
 necessities, and maintain us in life and health, 
 without at the same time pardoning our sins, 
 the prolongation of life would in fact be only 
 an increase of our condemnation ; for every day 
 we should only be adding to the account which 
 stands against us in the debt-book of God's 
 strict justice. Therefore, with a profound 
 significance, the prayer for bread is tied to one 
 for mercy ; ' Give us this day our daily bread ' ; 
 and (concurrently with the gift) ' forgive us our 
 trespasses.' At this point it is that we connect 
 the prayer with the great Atonement, whose
 
 of the Lord's Prayer 15 
 
 efficacy alone can procure its acceptance. For 
 who is it that has put these words into our 
 mouths? Who hath taught us thus to pray? 
 Our Lord Jesus, who hath made a full, perfect, 
 and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction 
 for the sins of the whole world. We go to God, 
 when we use this Prayer, in the character of 
 Christ's disciples, and in His Name. And if in 
 His Name, then on the ground of His work 
 of mediation and intercession. 
 
 The clause, ' as we forgive them that trespass 
 against us ' (possibly, the only part of the Prayer 
 which our Lord originated), over and above its 
 more obvious meaning, has a special interest, 
 which remarkably coincides with the present 
 argument. Like the first word ' Our/ the use 
 of the plural number connects the prayer in 
 a most vivid way with that precept of the 
 Law which is a summary of the second Table, 
 ' Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.' 
 The praying for our neighbour side by side 
 with ourselves ; the always saying ' our,' and 
 ' us/ and ' we/ instead of ' mine/ and ' me/ 
 and ' I/ is the fulfilment of this precept in a
 
 16 The Structure and Completeness 
 
 practical form. But as if to show that the 
 second clause of the prayer corresponds par- 
 ticularly to the second Table of the Law, we 
 have in this second clause the definite recognition 
 of our neighbour's claims upon us. We naturally 
 love our own souls, and pray that their stains 
 may be blotted out in the Blood of Christ; but 
 our Lord teaches us to pray that this mercy may 
 be extended to us only so far as we extend 
 it to our brother. How could the great Legis- 
 lator of Sinai, who is also the great Prophet 
 of the Sermon on the Mount, more emphatically 
 reiterate His own precept, ' Thou shalt love thy 
 neighbour as thyself? 
 
 But if God should extend forgiveness to us 
 without at the same time bestowing upon us His 
 Grace, what would be the inevitable result? 
 That we should fall into sin again ; and, as the 
 sin would be in this case sin against mercy re- 
 ceived, we should need a larger and more liberal 
 forgiveness. Therefore, from the suit for for- 
 giveness we pass on, by a very natural connexion 
 of ideas, to a suit for preservation from trial, 
 if that may be. ' Forgive us our trespasses,
 
 of the Lord's Prayer 17 
 
 And lead us not into temptation.' But then 
 this may not be always. It is God's will that 
 His people should breathe all their life long an 
 atmosphere of temptation. ' I pray not/ said 
 Christ, ' that thou shouldest take them out of the 
 world ' ; and what is the world but the very 
 scene and theatre of trial? The soldiers of 
 Christ, by the express will of their Captain, are 
 not to be put out of harm's way ; they are to 
 be ever on the field of action, where bullets are 
 flying and shells exploding. If then God will 
 not always secure them from danger, what can 
 He be asked to do for them ? To secure them 
 in danger (or to use our inimitable paraphrase 
 again, ' that He will save and defend us in all 
 dangers, ghostly and bodily '). We do not pray 
 that He will take us out of action ; but that He 
 will keep the bullets from striking us. Here 
 then is the significance of this ' But ' ' Place 
 us not in such trial as shall be an overmatch for 
 our strength ; suffer us not to be tempted above 
 that we are able.' 
 
 'But and if Thou art pleased to suffer it, 
 shield us from harm by Thy Grace.' 
 
 c
 
 i8 The Structure and Completeness 
 
 So end the petitions. And in the ascription 
 of praise which is as a beautiful finial of the 
 Prayer, we throw our eyes upwards once more, 
 to assure ourselves in the confidence of faith, 
 that God, in consideration of His excellence and 
 greatness, will grant our petitions ; we venture 
 to remind Him that His interests are concerned 
 in doing so. We are assured that Thou wilt 
 help us, O God ; Thou art concerned in helping 
 us, O God ; ' For Thine is the Kingdom, and 
 the power, and the glory.' 
 
 Thus is the Lord's Prayer a seed of prayer, 
 containing in germ every petition which the 
 human heart can send up to God, even as the 
 Decalogue is a seed of precept, containing in 
 germ every rule which can be given for human 
 conduct. The great marvel in both is their 
 comprehensiveness and brevity, the extraordinary 
 organization and arrangement, the reduction of 
 the subject treated to a few fundamental ele- 
 ments, manifested in those ten short precepts, 
 in these seven short petitions. 
 
 And thus shines out the ineffable superiority 
 of God's own work ! No human mind at
 
 of the Lord's Prayer 19 
 
 any period of civilization, however advanced, 
 would be competent to draw up either the 
 Decalogue or the Prayer. Everything that 
 man does, you can exhaust ; but this code 
 and this prayer, cannot be exhausted ; there 
 is in them the power of an endless life. 
 And the finger of God can be traced in their 
 perfect simplicity and unostentatiousness. Un- 
 inspired man might perhaps draw up a more 
 high-sounding prayer, seeming richer in its tones 
 of pathos and devotion, than our Lord has done. 
 But uninspired prayer, though abundant in 
 colour, and sparkle, and rhetoric, would lack 
 the grave simplicity of this Divine composition. 
 A clever craftsman can make an artificial flower, 
 which shall seem to a superficial observer even 
 more blooming and more delicately painted than 
 the flowers of Nature : but no craftsman can 
 make a seed, with an imprisoned germ, which 
 shall in due time become a flower, and contain 
 in itself a power of endless reproduction. The 
 production of such a seed, and the composi- 
 tion of the Lord's Prayer, we must leave to the 
 Wisdom of God. 
 
 C 2
 
 20 The Lord's Prayer 
 
 Would that we could always say the Lord's 
 Prayer in perfect sincerity ! The most we can 
 do is to approximate to such a recitation of it. 
 Oh what filial confidence in God does it imply ! 
 what regard for God's glory ; what solicitude 
 for our brother's welfare ! Then all we dare 
 hope is, to be able to say it with a little more 
 of heart and sincerity to-morrow than to-day ; or 
 next year, if God spares us, than this. And this 
 will not be without acting it, as well as praying 
 it. Let us pray then that we may act it, and 
 by acting it work it into the texture of our 
 minds. 
 
 'Only, O Lord, in Thy dear love 
 Fit us for perfect rest above ; 
 And help us, this and every day, 
 To live more nearly as we pray.'
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE CONTEXT OF THE LORD'S PRAYER 
 
 ONE of the indispensable rules for rightly 
 understanding any passage of Holy Scripture 
 is to look at the context in which it occurs. 
 The more noteworthy passages, indeed all 
 passages, grow up out of their context as one 
 plant out of a group. There is a train of thought 
 which leads up to them, and also a train of 
 thought to which they lead up, which it is 
 necessary to seize, if we would make ourselves 
 masters of their true meaning. The Lord's 
 Prayer, as given through St. Matthew, occurs 
 in the Sermon on the Mount. In this section of 
 the sermon our Lord instructs His disciples 
 that prayer is to be offered secretly, and not 
 with ostentation, as the Jews too often offered it ;
 
 22 The Context of the Lord's Prayer 
 
 and that the heathen mistake with regard to it, 
 of repeating petitions over and over again, as if 
 He whom we address did not know what we 
 need before we ask Him, is also to be avoided. 
 Then, because in an exercise of such immense 
 importance, an exercise which is the soul's very 
 breath of life, it is necessary to have very special 
 guidance, He constructs for His disciples a per- 
 fect model of prayer. He appears to design it 
 chiefly for private use ; for He had just been 
 speaking of entering into the closet and shutting 
 the door when prayer is to be made. And yet 
 the adoption of the plural throughout, the ' our ' 
 and the ' us,' seems to comprehend the con- 
 gregation of faithful men as the secondary 
 sphere, at any rate, for which the prayer is 
 adapted. 
 
 But how is the Lord led up to speak of prayer 
 at all ? In the Beatitudes, with which the sermon 
 opens, He describes the spirit and temper which 
 should animate His disciples generally, and 
 then warns them that, while the old platform of 
 the Law and the Prophets would still remain 
 standing, as the basis of all moral duty, a higher
 
 The Context of the Lord's Prayer 23 
 
 and more spiritual standard of obedience would 
 be required of them in order to their entering 
 into the kingdom of heaven, than that which was 
 exhibited by the Scribes and Pharisees. The 
 sixth commandment, for example, as it must be 
 understood by them, would forbid not homicide 
 only, but the railing and reviling words which 
 might lead to it ; the seventh would forbid the 
 lustful look as well as the impure act, and so 
 forth. 
 
 Next in order to moral duties (and inextricably 
 associated with them) are religious observances. 
 Nor let any man dare to put asunder what 
 Almighty God hath closely joined together, 
 morality and religion, or pretend that one can 
 subsist without the other. Religious observances 
 are three, and enumerated in an order which, like 
 everything else in this sermon, is full of signi- 
 ficance Almsgiving, Prayer, Fasting. These 
 religious observances represent respectively that 
 threefold division of duty which St. Paul traces 
 out (though in a different order) in his Epistle to 
 Titus, ' that we should live soberly, righteously, 
 and godly, in this present world.' Almsgiving
 
 24 The Context of the Lord's Prayer 
 
 represents our duty to our neighbour as a 
 religious observance. It embraces (when under- 
 stood in a large sense) every endeavour to help, 
 relieve, or benefit, our neighbour ; it is the 
 outcome and expression of love to our neigh- 
 bour, which is the essence of righteous living. 
 But why should almsgiving be named first? 
 Not surely because it is more important than 
 prayer ; but possibly because this is the order 
 in which experience presents to us our duties. 
 The first things that a child becomes conscious 
 of are visible persons outside it, interested in it, 
 and upon whom it is dependent in Scriptural 
 phrase, its ' neighbours.' As intelligence begins 
 to dawn, and the idea of God, His law, His 
 love, His heavenly home from which man 
 strayed through sin, is thrown into the child's 
 mind, in all the freshness of its faculties, when 
 the dews of the baptismal birth lie glistening 
 upon the soul, the first idea of duty is its duty 
 to its neighbour. 
 
 And as almsgiving is the religious observance 
 which represents our duty to our neighbour, so 
 prayer (in the wide sense of the word embracing
 
 The Context of the Lord's Prayer 25 
 
 every exercise of devotion) is the observance 
 which represents our duty to God that we 
 should live ' godly.' 
 
 Lastly, as our duty towards our neighbour is 
 represented by the observance of almsgiving, 
 and our duty to God by that of prayer, so our 
 duty to ourselves (' that we should live soberly ') 
 is represented by fasting, this too being under- 
 stood in the wide sense of self-discipline and 
 self-control in whatever form it is exercised. 
 
 We have then before us the three great 
 observances of religion with the instructions 
 of Christ as to the method of fulfilling them ; 
 the method being secrecy in each case, with the 
 view of securing that the motive shall be to 
 please God, and not to win the praise of men. 
 Prayer holds the central position, having as it 
 were on its right hand almsgiving, and on its 
 left fasting. And the central position is the 
 most dignified and important, and that which 
 most attracts regard ; even as it was upon 
 Calvary ' on either side one, and Jesus in the 
 midst.' 
 
 While considering this part of the setting of
 
 26 The Context of the Lord's Prayer 
 
 the Lord's Prayer, it is well to observe the con- 
 nexion of the word 'when/ which appears three 
 times, once in connexion with each observance ; 
 when thou doest alms ; when thou prayest ; when 
 thou fastest. 
 
 Those who desire to evade the obligation of 
 fasting, which the Sermon certainly seems to 
 lay upon Christians, are apt to allege that our 
 Lord does not actually bid His disciples fast, 
 but only gives them a rule to be secret in their 
 fasting, when they think it profitable to practise 
 that observance. An unfortunate argument, for 
 purposes of evasion, as it would equally apply to 
 almsgiving and prayer, which no onewould evade. 
 For, as far as this passage goes, Christ does not 
 bid His disciples either to give alms or pray, but 
 merely says, ' when thou doest alms,' ' when thou 
 prayest,' be careful not to let the pious action 
 transpire or get abroad, it being assumed b}' 
 Him that His disciples will certainly practise all 
 these observances, and that all they will need is 
 to be put on their guard against ostentation in 
 practising them. And why might our Lord 
 safely assume this ? how is the assumption in
 
 The Context of the Lord's Prayer 27 
 
 keeping with the fundamental hypothesis upon 
 which the Sermon on the Mount is based ? 
 Because the hearers were not persons ignorant 
 of true religion, but more or less educated, 
 trained, disciplined, in the knowledge of the 
 system of Jewish religion. Almsgiving, prayer, 
 and fasting, would be duties well known to them, 
 as being often referred to in the Law and the 
 writings of the Prophets, and inculcated upon 
 them orally by those expositors of the Scriptures, 
 the Scribes, who sate inMoses'seat. Accordingly, 
 our Lord avowedly takes His stand upon the 
 pre-existing foundation of the Law, as alread} 7 
 laid in the mind of the hearers, and does not even 
 pretend to teach anything strictly new, and which 
 was not contained implicitly in the Scriptures of 
 the earlier dispensation. Thus the assumptions 
 made by the 'whens' are merely in pursuance 
 of the warning He had already given, that He 
 was not come to destroy the Law and the 
 Prophets, but to fulfil. 
 
 The next point is to discern in the juxta- 
 position of the three duties their close and 
 vital connexion with one another. For, seeing
 
 28 The Context of the Lord's Prayer 
 
 that they represent respectively our duty to our 
 neighbour, our duty to God, and our duty to 
 ourselves, must they not be closely and vitally 
 connected ? Our relations lie at the root and 
 foundation of our duties ; and the relation in 
 which we stand to God as our Father involves 
 and carries with it our relation to men as our 
 brethren. Where there is more than one child 
 in a family, the filial relation must necessarily 
 involve the fraternal, and as there is a duty 
 towards the father, so is there a duty also, 
 though of a different kind, towards the brothers 
 and sisters. Moreover, the Law of Moses, in 
 laying down the duty of a man towards his 
 neighbour, implicitly recognized his duty to 
 himself. For the fundamental duty towards our 
 neighbour, as stated in the Law, is, ' Thou shalt 
 love thy neighbour as thyself ; and if thy 
 neighbour as thyself, then thyself also as thy 
 neighbour. Perhaps to the ears of some of us 
 the words 'love of self or 'self-love' have an 
 ugly and ominous sound, as if they meant the 
 same thing as selfishness. You may even see 
 in spiritual books, which counsel high perfection,
 
 The Context of the Lord's Prayer 29 
 
 such phrases of pietism as this : ' Never, till we 
 get rid of self-love altogether, shall we love God 
 with the all-absorbing affection which is due to 
 Him.' Bishop Butler ought to have put to flight 
 for ever, from the minds of English Christians 
 at all events, views so contrary to the true 
 philosophy of our nature, and what is worse, so 
 utterly unscriptural. It is in truth because 
 men love and value themselves so little, accord- 
 ing to the true estimate of what they are, 
 because they care so little for their souls, made 
 in God's image, and redeemed by Christ's blood, 
 and study so little their own eternal interests, 
 that so many of them are lost. And as to the 
 notion that perfect disenthralment from self-love 
 is essential to the highest type of character, are 
 we not told that our Lord, in whom was no sin, 
 'for the joy that was set before Him endured 
 the cross, despising the shame ' ? To what motive 
 in the human heart would the joy that was set 
 before Him make an appeal but to self-love ? 
 And if almsgiving, prayer, and fasting, as 
 representing the threefold division of human 
 duty, are closely welded together, and presented
 
 30 The Context of the Lord's Prayer 
 
 to us by the Divine Legislator in His Sermon 
 on the Mount in combination with one another, 
 is it not quite possible that what so often blocks 
 our prayers, and shuts them out at present from 
 success, may be that there is in our lives a 
 deficiency of the observances which our Lord 
 groups together with prayer, and thus a putting 
 asunder of things which God hath joined 
 together ? 
 
 And first, may there not be a deficiency in 
 our alms? in other words, in recognizing the 
 claims of God and of our neighbours upon our 
 substance ? Are those claims honestly and 
 fairly satisfied, and do we make it a point of 
 conscience to ascertain that we are satisfying 
 them, doing as much for works of piety and 
 charity as we are bound to do? Indeed, without 
 this all professions of sympathy and devotion 
 are so much hypocrisy and self-deceit. It is just 
 that saying to the hungry and destitute, ' Depart 
 in peace, be ye warmed and filled,' which 
 St. James withers with his inspired sarcasm. 
 Nor can any man satisfy his own conscience 
 that he is doing his duty in the matter of alms-
 
 The Context of the Lord's Prayer 31 
 
 giving unless he gives upon system, settling 
 first between God and his own conscience what 
 amount he ought to give, and then by means of 
 an ordinary debtor and creditor account ascer- 
 taining that that amount is really given year by 
 year. 
 
 The proportion of a man's substance specified 
 in Scripture as that which is due to God, and 
 upon which He has a claim, is one-tenth of 
 the whole. It is true that this proportion is 
 mentioned only in the Old Testament, and 
 that in the New we have no more definite 
 guidance on the subject than our Lord's strong 
 implication, in what He says about the widow's 
 mite, that it is the amount, not of the gift itself, 
 but of the self-denial which appears in it, which 
 makes it acceptable to God. But on the other 
 hand, it is to be taken into consideration that, as 
 in the case of fasting, the Gospel dispensation 
 stands upon the dispensation which preceded it, 
 and that there is reason therefore to think that 
 requirements of the old dispensation not ex- 
 pressly abolished (as the whole Jewish ritual 
 is) are in force still. Moreover, this proportion
 
 32 The Context of the Lord's Prayer 
 
 of a tenth as God's due stands quite clear of the 
 Law of Moses, recognized as it was by the 
 patriarchs Abraham and Jacob, long before the 
 giving of the Law. It may indeed be alleged 
 with great show of reason that a tenth to a man 
 of very large means would represent no sacrifice 
 at all, while to one in very straitened circum- 
 stances the giving of a tenth would involve 
 considerable self-denial, a self-denial which 
 might cut him to the quick. But all the re- 
 strictions of God's law are more difficult of 
 observance to some classes of people than others, 
 and yet this circumstance cannot be held to 
 release any class from those restrictions. It 
 is doubtless far harder to bridle one's sinful 
 lusts at eighteen, than at eighty ; but that fact 
 does not exempt the youth of eighteen, any 
 more than the man of eighty, from the obligation 
 of bridling his sinful lusts. Similarly, though it 
 be true that two pounds a year given to God out 
 of an income of only twenty pounds represents 
 a considerable self-denial, whereas a thousand 
 a year out of an income of ten thousand re- 
 presents but little, still it does not follow that
 
 The Context of the Lord's Prayer 33 
 
 God may not require the man who has but 
 twenty pounds to give Him annually two of 
 them for works of charity and piety. At all 
 events these two positions may be advanced 
 with certainty, and do not admit of question or 
 controversy, first, that every one is solemnly 
 bound (as a distinct religious obligation) to 
 give to God a certain proportion of what he 
 possesses ; and secondly, that no mere giving 
 out of our abundance, and what we do not feel 
 the want of, satisfies the requirement that the 
 proportion must be such as to involve self- 
 denial. 
 
 Then as to fasting, do we join it with prayer? 
 if not in the literal sense of periodical total 
 abstinence from food (which possibly in some 
 cases might be found prejudicial to health), yet 
 at all events in the form of stern self-discipline 
 and self-control, as e. g. in sleep, in amusements 
 and recreations, in the time given to light 
 reading, in the general management of our time. 
 The high-wrought civilization, of which we are 
 apt to make so great a boast, has brought with 
 it an amount of cheap resources and refine- 
 
 D
 
 34 The Context of the Lord's Prayer 
 
 ments and a general softness of habits, hitherto 
 unprecedented in the history of our country. 
 We are surrounded on all sides by contrivances 
 to save trouble, to remove petty annoyances, to 
 make life as much as possible a bed of eider- 
 down. And one result of all this softness and 
 luxury (as it always has been in the history of 
 nations) is dissoluteness of morals. God will 
 have His people make a firm protest against 
 such a state of things, by setting an example of 
 self-discipline and self-control. A little stern it 
 will need to be sometimes, not only to stem the 
 stream of tendency in the opposite direction, 
 but also to keep under in each Christian the 
 sinful lusts of the flesh, so apt to be pampered 
 and made exacting and insatiate by the comforts 
 and luxuries which an advanced civilization 
 furnishes. 'Thou therefore endure hardness, 
 as a good soldier of Jesus Christ ' (2 Tim. ii. 3). 
 Are we in any sense or form enduring hardness? 
 are we animated in reference to the spiritual 
 warfare which is being waged on the earth, 
 with anything of the brave Hittite's spirit? 
 ' The ark, and Israel, and Judah, abide in tents;
 
 The Context of the Lord's Prayer 35 
 
 and my lord Joab, and the servants of my lord, 
 are encamped in the open fields ; shall I then 
 go into mine house, to eat and to drink?' 
 (2 Sam. xi. n). It may be nay, it is more 
 than possible, it is probable that our prayers 
 are shut out from their legitimate effect because 
 our lives are so wanting in moral stamina, so 
 easy, so self-indulgent, so absolutely devoid of 
 that self-denial which is the salt of the spiritual 
 character. One more element of vital connexion 
 between the three great observances may be 
 traced in the fact that fasting, rightly and wisely 
 conducted, is a practical furtherance towards 
 the practice of the other two. It is a further- 
 ance to prayer, because real and cordial prayer 
 demands the highest amount of mental energy, 
 and this is seriously impeded by undue indul- 
 gence of bodily appetites. It is a furtherance to 
 almsgiving, inasmuch as the means for indul- 
 gence, when saved from that channel of expen- 
 diture, may supply no small contribution to 
 a man's charitable purse. 
 
 D 2
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE SOURCES OF THE LORD'S PRAYER 
 
 WAS Christianity a new religion, of which 
 our blessed -Lord was the originator? Or was 
 it not rather a new development of the one old 
 true religion, which had subsisted ever since the 
 creation of man, and upon which the hopes of all 
 God's saints and servants both in the patriarchal 
 and Jewish dispensations had been nourished? 
 If there were absolutely no alternative between 
 these propositions, we should rather affirm the 
 latter than the former of them. But the fact is, 
 that in each of them there is an element of 
 truth. In a certain sense, and under a certain 
 aspect of it, Christianity is new. In another 
 sense, and under another aspect of it, it is old. 
 This is what St. John says of the precept to 
 love one another, which is one of the two great
 
 37 
 
 precepts of the Gospel 1 . It was in one sense 
 an old commandment, which the Church of 
 God had received and possessed from the 
 beginning. It dated long before Christ, for 
 Christ referred back to it when He said : 
 ' The first of all the commandments is, Hear, 
 O Israel ; the Lord our God is one Lord : and 
 thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
 heart, soul, mind, strength : this is the first 
 commandment. And the second is like, namely 
 this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.' 
 It is found in so many words in the nineteenth 
 chapter of the Book of Leviticus ; and though 
 not expressed in writing before Moses, it was 
 graven upon man's heart from the beginning. 
 It condemned (we may be very sure) the murder 
 of Abel. And yet in another sense the 
 commandment was ' new,' and originated with 
 Christ. He lit it up with the illustration of His 
 
 1 I write no new commandment unto you, but an old 
 commandment which ye had from the beginning. The 
 old commandment is the word which ye heard. Again, 
 a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is 
 true in Him and in you : because the darkness is passing 
 away, and the true Light already shineth.' i John ii. 7,8.
 
 38 The Sources of the Lord's Prayer 
 
 example, laying down His life for us, and 
 teaching us as the primary precept of His 
 Gospel that we ought also to lay down our 
 lives for the brethren. What a new force and 
 significance did this give to the precept! Let 
 us imagine a beautiful transparency ; a picture 
 traced by a master-hand upon a material capable 
 of transmitting the light. Let us suppose that 
 with a considerable number of other transpar- 
 encies, painted originally with a certain refer- 
 ence to it say to form side-scenes to it, or 
 backgrounds, or skies it is allowed to lie about 
 in a lumber-room, the owner being ignorant 
 what an artistic treasure he possesses. And 
 then suppose that one day, a clearance being 
 made of the lumber-room, it is discovered that 
 the pictures are transparencies, and it is 
 resolved to exhibit them as such. Bright lights 
 in a darkened chamber are placed behind the 
 frames of them, and then the beauty of the 
 main scene is immediately appreciated and 
 admired. And more than this. The minor 
 transparencies are found out to be parts of the 
 same design. Each has its place in forming
 
 The Sources of the Lord's Prayer 39 
 
 one great picture. The light placed behind the 
 transparencies reveals not only beauty in them, 
 but order, harmony, and coherence. Now in 
 the supposed case, is the scene so much 
 admired an old scene or a new one ? Substan- 
 tially old. It has been in existence for many 
 a long year. But virtually, and as regards its 
 treatment, and its effect upon the beholders, 
 it is a newly-found treasure. Now this is the 
 image under which St. John tells us that we 
 should look at the relation between Christianity 
 and the forms of true religion which went 
 before it. The precepts, and even the doctrines, 
 of Christianity were in existence before Christ 
 came, but they were dark, and in confusion, 
 incapable of being fully, truly, and consistently 
 appreciated. Christ, when He appeared and 
 fulfilled the marvellous career which prophecy 
 had traced out for Him, placed a light behind 
 them. And the light was Himself, in His 
 person, in His example, in His doctrine, in 
 His precept. It is not true that before Christ 
 there was no revelation of human immortality. 
 The doctrine of a future state is one, in the
 
 40 The Sources of the Lord's Prayer 
 
 absence of which no real religion can exist in 
 the heart of any man ; and we have the 
 assurance of the inspired writer to the Hebrews 
 that the patriarchs desired 'a better country, 
 that is, an heavenly' that Abraham in particular 
 ' looked for a city which hath foundations, 
 whose builder and maker is God' (Heb. xi. 10, 
 16). But it was reserved for our Lord, the 
 first-begotten from the dead, to bring life 
 and immortality to light, and to illuminate with 
 glorious hopes the prospect beyond the grave ; 
 and therefore before Him immortality was 
 rather insinuated in the inspired Scriptures, than 
 expressly stated; it was spoken of with bated 
 breath, whispered in the ear in closets, not 
 proclaimed upon housetops. And I need not 
 add (because that is so obvious) that the whole 
 elaborate system of sacrifice, both eucharistic 
 and atoning (which is clearly traceable up to 
 the times of our first parents, whose sons 
 practised it), received its illustration and ex- 
 planation from our Lord's life of self-devotion 
 and atoning death, that He was the true Light 
 which gave significance and beauty to those
 
 4 1 
 
 old ritual shadows, and which is seen through 
 them when we look at them from the Christian 
 point of view. 
 
 These general reflections have been handled 
 somewhat at length, because the origin of the 
 Lord's Prayer is in fact determined by them. 
 Did this blessed and beautiful Prayer originate 
 with Christ or not? In a certain sense No. God 
 had a Church, hoping in a foreseen Christ, 
 before the Word was made flesh and dwelt 
 among us. Now in this Church all, or nearly 
 all, the rudiments of the Lord's Prayer are 
 found. The devotional literature of Israel 
 furnishes at all events parallels to each petition, 
 and in some cases the express words of which 
 our Lord was pleased to make use. This has 
 been fully exhibited by Dr. John Lightfoot in 
 his Miscellanies, ch. 20 *. But in order to 
 appreciate this fact rightly, it must be remem- 
 bered that even before the appearance of Christ, 
 the Church of God was under the guidance of 
 
 1 This great master of Hebrew learning must not be 
 confounded with Bishop Joseph Lightfoot of Durham, an 
 eminent Greek scholar of our own generation. B. C.
 
 42 The Sources of the Lord's Prayer 
 
 Christ's Spirit. St. Peter expressly ascribes 
 this guidance to the prophets : ' Searching 
 what, or what manner of time the Spirit of 
 Christ which was in them did signify' (i Pet. 
 i. n). St. Paul ascribes to the whole people 
 of Israel during their pilgrimage in the wilder- 
 ness a certain sacramental connexion with 
 Christ ; ' for they drank,' says he, ' of that 
 spiritual Rock that followed them ; and that 
 Rock was Christ ' (i Cor. x. 4). 
 
 It is not therefore so true or so reverent to 
 say that Christ, in framing the Lord's Prayer, 
 availed Himself of materials made ready to His 
 hand, as that He took up again certain devout 
 utterances which His own Spirit had already 
 inspired. He places them in a new light, and 
 gives them a new illustration in connexion with 
 His own work and teaching. If in a certain 
 sense we must say that the Lord's Prayer is 
 framed of previously existing materials, in 
 another sense we must admit it to be new. 
 The germs of all things were in the chaos, in 
 those dark waters on whose face the Spirit of 
 God brooded ; but this is no drawback to the
 
 The Sources of the Lord's Prayer 43 
 
 wonderfulness of the process of creation, by 
 which all things were reduced into order and 
 method of arrangement, the light being separ- 
 ated from the darkness, and the firmament from 
 the earth, and the sea from the dry land, and 
 firmament and earth and sea being stocked 
 respectively with bodies celestial, terrestrial, 
 and aquatic. The Lord's Prayer is a magnifi- 
 cent creation by the Divine Wisdom which 
 dwelt in Christ, out of elements previously 
 existing, but confused ; a creation in which He 
 methodizes and systematizes prayer, reduces it 
 under its primary heads, and with a wonderful 
 grasp of the subject comprehends the whole of 
 it in the hollow of His hand. 
 
 But in addition to this, the example, work, 
 and teaching of Christ shed a wholly new light 
 upon, and presented under an entirely new 
 aspect, petitions which existed indeed, but could 
 be little appreciated, before His appearance. 
 
 Thus e.g. an ancient Jewish prayer begins 
 with the invocation of the Lord's Prayer in so 
 many words: ' Our Father which art in Heaven.' 
 This exordium was strictly in accordance with
 
 44 The Sources of the Lord's Prayer 
 
 the Scriptures of the Old Testament; for in 
 them the nation of Israel is distinctly recognized 
 as standing in the filial relation to God : ' Thus 
 saith the Lord, Israel is My son, even My first- 
 born ' (Exod. iv. 22). And again : ' Do ye thus 
 requite the Lord, O foolish people and unwise ? 
 is not He thy Father that hath bought thee ? ' (Deut. 
 .xxxii. 6). And again : ' I am a Father to Israel, and 
 Ephraim is My firstborn' (Jer. xxxi. 9). And again : 
 ' Doubtless Thou art our Father, though Abraham 
 be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not : 
 Thou, O Lord, art our Father, our Redeemer ' 
 &c. (Is. Ixiii. 16). But what a totally new force 
 and significance does the Christian revelation 
 give to the appeal, ' Our Father which art in 
 Heaven ' ! A national and natural sonship was 
 all that the Jew could claim, in conformity with 
 his Scriptures : ' Israel is My son ... I am a 
 Father to Israel.' He had never been addressed 
 in these terms : ' Behold, what manner of love 
 the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we 
 should be called' (not collectively or nationally 
 or naturally, but personally and individually and 
 supernaturally), the ' sons of God . . . Beloved, now
 
 The Sources of the Lord's Prayer 45 
 
 are we the sons of God ' (i John iii. i, 2). Of the 
 deep mystery of man's supernatural adoption into 
 God's family nothing could have been known till 
 Christ came to effectuate and to explain it. 
 Christ, God's Son from everlasting, the Second 
 Person in the ever-blessed Trinity, took flesh, 
 that is to say, assumed human nature without 
 any distinct human personality, and thus became 
 Son of Man, in order that He might ally Himself 
 with all men, and qualify Himself to represent 
 all. This is the foundation of the mystery. Holy 
 Baptism, duly administered, incorporates us 
 into Christ, gives us a real connexion with the 
 humanity of the second Adam, as by natural 
 generation we have a real connexion with the 
 humanity of the first. Christ therefore being 
 not only in His divine nature the Son of God, 
 but also in His humanity having been con- 
 ceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the 
 Virgin Mary, we, by our incorporation into 
 Him, effected by the Sacrament of Baptism, 
 become God's children by adoption and grace. 
 Each of us in turn and singly becomes so ; for 
 Baptism is an ordinance administered to each
 
 46 The Sources of the Lord's Prayer 
 
 individually, and quite irrespectively of race or 
 extraction. It seals an individual, not a national, 
 privilege. But now throw all this doctrine 
 respecting the representative humanity of the 
 Son of God and our connexion with it into the 
 old Jewish invocation, ' Our Father which art 
 in heaven/ and with what a new and holy 
 lustre does it light up this venerable form of 
 address! Familiar as the words might have 
 been to the ears of a Jew in our Lord's time, 
 we may say of them, as they are illuminated 
 with Christian doctrine and association, 'Thou 
 hast put a new song in my mouth.' When 
 Christ, the Son of Man no less than the Son 
 of God, is seen behind and through them, 
 representing us before the throne of God, and 
 bidding and encouraging the humblest of the 
 children of Abraham after the promise, to call 
 God Father, they are no more the same words, 
 or rather, while they are the same in sound, 
 they are different in sense. Like the lineaments 
 of our Lord's natural body, when He took up 
 the three disciples into a high mountain apart, 
 they are transfigured. A beautiful and attractive
 
 The Sources of the Lord's Prayer 47 
 
 glory pervades them, which they never had 
 before. Old in the letter, they are new in the 
 spirit. 
 
 We might go through the other parts of 
 the Lord's Prayer, and show how in nearly all 
 the petitions the terms employed are drawn 
 from Jewish forms of devotion, and yet how 
 everywhere those terms borrow quite a new 
 force from the revelations and doctrines of 
 Christianity. We may therefore say generally 
 that in one sense the Prayer is old, in another 
 new ; its rudiments were in existence long before 
 it was framed ; but it has a spirit and a life 
 which did not appear in the rudiments, just 
 as the blossom has a spirit and a life which does 
 not appear in the bud, and as the butterfly has 
 a spirit and a life which does not appear in the 
 cocoon. 
 
 In short, this Prayer is part and parcel of the 
 Christian religion. And the Christian religion 
 in all its essential parts, in its doctrines, in its 
 precepts, in its rites, in its forms of devotion, 
 is a beautiful blossom which unfolded itself out 
 of the bud of the religion of the Old Covenant.
 
 48 The Sources of the Lord's Prayer 
 
 There is perhaps no one feature of modern 
 religious thought more characteristic than its 
 impatience of everything old, its craving for 
 novelty. This craving is in the air just now ; 
 we all inhale it more or less into our mental and 
 moral system. Never was there a greater im- 
 patience of solid theological works, and solid 
 sermons, which set forth old and well-established 
 truth in Scriptural and primitive formularies. 
 Our readers and our congregations must have 
 some fare which stimulates the jaded appetite. 
 If solid nourishment is ever tolerated by them, 
 it must be dressed and served up in an entirely 
 new form, and seasoned with some new con- 
 diment ; and often it will happen that where the 
 nourishment is entirely wanting, the condiment 
 alone serves the turn ; something questionably 
 sound, if it be only smart and flippant, is relished 
 and finds acceptance. With prophetic insight 
 the Apostle Paul foresaw that it would be so. 
 ' The time will come,' predicted he, ' when the}' 
 will not endure sound doctrine ; but after their 
 own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, 
 having itching ears' (2 Tim. iv. 3). And never
 
 The Sources of the Lord's Prayer 49 
 
 surely whatever be the secondary causes which 
 have contributed to bring about the result, 
 whether it be the mental stir prevalent among 
 us on the subject of religion, the rapid rate 
 at which civilization develops itself, the spread 
 of elementary religious knowledge, and the 
 familiarity of almost all with the rudiments of 
 the faith, or all these causes combined never 
 was there a greater appetite for novelty, never 
 was the antiquated more generally distasteful. 
 It is forgotten too that for those Church people 
 who have received a fair religious education, 
 edification is not so much promoted by instilling 
 truth in any new form, as by reminding them 
 of what they already know ; according to that 
 profound word of St. Peter's, 'Wherefore I 
 will not be negligent to put you always in 
 remembrance of these things, though ye know 
 t/iem, and be stablished in the present truth ' 
 (2 Pet. i. 12). 
 
 Another symptom of the love of novelty now 
 abroad is the craving for an additional tinc- 
 ture of imagination in scriptural narratives and 
 biographies. To please readers in this day, 
 
 E
 
 50 The Sources of the Lord's Prayer 
 
 a man must write not so much accurately and 
 truthfully, as pictorially and with scenic effect. 
 We are impatient of the dull matters of fact 
 of history and biography ; we ask for the intro- 
 duction of a poetic element; that the history 
 should become an historical drama, the biography 
 an historical romance. If we care at all for 
 seeing Christ, we would fain see Him under 
 a new aspect; we desire (as we say in our 
 own defence) to realize Him not however with 
 the realization of faith, but with that sort of 
 artificial realization which the imaginative faculty 
 can give. A picture of him in the mind this 
 is what we really desiderate ; and we care not 
 overmuch if, in painting this picture, the author 
 uses the licence conceded to writers of romance, 
 and deals somewhat cavalierly with the facts. 
 Alas! if the interest and fascination of such 
 writing cannot be denied, at how small a fraction 
 must we compute the edification to be derived 
 from it. The old in theology is to be made 
 new, not by touching it up with the pencil and 
 brush of the imagination, and then putting the 
 antique painting into a modern frame, but by
 
 simply accepting the old well-worn truths of 
 Creed and Catechism, and with deep heart- 
 searching and prayer trying to see their applica- 
 bility to the ever-new emergencies of our own 
 inner life. 
 
 Finally, the craving after a sensational worship 
 grows out of the same morbid habit of mind, 
 and is another symptom of the general com- 
 plaint under which, because it is in the air, 
 we all more or less labour. The Church Ser- 
 vices in their old form pall upon us ; they have 
 become to us, in process of time, dull, stale, flat, 
 and unprofitable. We try to make them lively 
 and to give them interest; and so far well. 
 But alas! the interest which we seek to throw 
 into these Services is chiefly derived from ex- 
 ternals. Instead of endeavouring to perceive 
 the intrinsic beauty of the Services in the first 
 instance, in which case the appropriateness and 
 meaning of the sober ritual of the Catholic 
 Church would become apparent as we pro- 
 ceeded, we begin with externals because exter- 
 nals strike the eye or the ear (and so cannot 
 but produce a certain impression), and making 
 E 2
 
 52 The Sources of the Lord's Prayer 
 
 these always more and more florid, we too 
 often end by substituting a spectacle or a 
 musical entertainment for the worship of God 
 in spirit and in truth. But surely our subject 
 teaches us a different lesson respecting the 
 method of communicating interest to the Ser- 
 vices of the Church. All these Services have 
 upon them the stamp of primitive antiquity. 
 But does their age at all deprive them of their 
 force, their beauty, their significance? We 
 believe it to be just the reverse. We believe that 
 in these old forms (even as in the Lord's own 
 Prayer in a much higher degree) there is an 
 exhaustless and ever-fresh applicability, making 
 them words for all time, for all generations of 
 Christians, for all circumstances of the Church. 
 What makes them seem stale to so many of us 
 is, that we do not really know 7 them, have never 
 studied them ; that while their sound is in our 
 ear, their sense is not in our heart. It is pos- 
 sible that, when our Lord gave to the disciple 
 who said, ' Lord, teach us to pray/ the price- 
 less form known as the Lord's Prayer, some 
 little feeling of disappointment may have been
 
 The Sources of the Lord's Prayer 53 
 
 experienced by the applicant for instruction. 
 'And is this all He has to give us? I have 
 heard most of those words before in synagogue- 
 worship, in the devotions issued by great rabbis 
 for the use of their scholars. I anticipated 
 something fresher, newer, more animating, 
 couched not in the old stereotyped devotional 
 phraseology.' If he secretly reasoned thus, 
 it was simply because he had yet never dived 
 under the surface of the phraseology, but merely 
 skimmed it, like a seabird on the wing. Hun- 
 dreds do the same with the Offices of the Book 
 of Common Prayer. With a laudatory fashion 
 of talking about 'our incomparable liturgy/ they 
 combine a profound ignorance of what is in 
 it. They have never mastered the rationale or 
 got an insight into the significance of a single 
 Office of the Church. They have merely heard 
 the Office used; and have taken up with the 
 popular acceptance or the popular censure of 
 it (both equally shallow). To give a single 
 instance where a thousand might be given ; who 
 is there that has not heard the Burial Service 
 read several times ? And how many, even of
 
 54 The Sources of the Lord's Prayer 
 
 those who have heard it very often, have any 
 idea that in the three opening sentences there 
 is a beautiful reference to the order in which 
 the funeral procession enters the church ? The 
 first sentence being the voice of the Saviour, 
 represented by the priest who leads the pro- 
 cession, ' I am the Resurrection and the Life, 
 saith the Lord ' ; the second being the voice 
 of the dead, who is borne into the church im- 
 mediately after the priest, ' I know that my 
 Redeemer liveth,' &c. ; and the third being the 
 voice of the mourners, reflecting on the tran- 
 sitoriness of worldly wealth and glory, and 
 resigning themselves to God's will under their 
 bereavement, 'We brought nothing into this 
 world, and it is certain we can carry nothing 
 out. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken 
 away ; blessed be the Name of the Lord.' 
 
 Far better than any external condiment of 
 music and colour and gesture is the deep under- 
 standing of the true inner meaning of our Ser- 
 vices, at once old and new. This condiment 
 is ever fresh, never palls upon the devout wor- 
 shipper. Then the Light which shined of old
 
 The Sources of the Lord's Prayer 55 
 
 in darkness (though the darkness of ignorance 
 could not wholly envelop it), will shine out, will 
 transfigure the old words with the newness 
 of the spirit, though still in the oldness of the 
 letter. ' Because the darkness is passing away, 
 and the true Light already shineth.'
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE TWO RECORDS OF THE LORD'S PRAYER 
 
 WE may conclude with great probability that 
 those incidents or discourses which are recorded 
 more than once in the Gospels are thus repeated 
 on account of their transcendent importance. We 
 know for certain that the Death and Resurrection 
 of Christ, as being the events upon which all 
 the hopes of humanity are suspended, are the 
 most important incidents of the Gospel history. 
 And, of His Death and Resurrection we have 
 four different accounts from four different pens, 
 whereas the less significant events of His 
 career are passed over by some of the Evan- 
 gelists in silence ; the Transfiguration being 
 recorded by only three of them, the Nativity, 
 the Infancy, and the Ascension by two only, 
 and the striking incident of the childhood only
 
 by one. This circumstance alone furnishes 
 strong presumptive evidence that the repetition 
 of certain Gospel narratives proceeds upon prin- 
 ciple, and that the principle is the superior 
 importance of the event or discourse of which 
 we have several reports. 
 
 This Divine Prayer was first given in the 
 course of the Sermon on the Mount, as recorded 
 by St. Matthew. Our Lord, in fulfilment of the 
 prediction that He should be a prophet like 
 unto Moses, was legislating for His Church 
 while He gave it; and this Prayer enters into, 
 and forms part of, the legislative code, and is 
 solemnly placed by Him upon the statute-book 
 of Christianity. He is giving rules, or rather 
 announcing principles, for three religious exer- 
 cises which were often practised (as by the 
 centurion Cornelius) in conjunction with one 
 another almsgiving, prayer, and fasting. In 
 the performance of these exercises, He says, 
 we are not to court publicity, as the Pharisaic 
 hypocrites of the day did, but rather to shun 
 the eye of men, and seek only the approbation 
 of Him who seeth in secret. Prayer especially
 
 58 The Two Records of 
 
 is to be offered with closed doors in the privacy 
 of our closet. And as Jewish ostentation is 
 to be entirely eschewed in private devotion, 
 so also is that babbling and vain repetition of 
 the heathens, which proceeded on the idea that 
 God needs to be made acquainted with our 
 wants, and that much speaking will succeed in 
 attracting His attention. Upon this last piece 
 of advice the Lord's Prayer immediately follows. 
 It is connected with the warning against vain 
 repetitions by the conjunction, ' Therefore ' ; 
 'After this manner pray ye.' As much as to 
 say, ' I have warned you how you are not to 
 pray ; now therefore let Me show you how you 
 are to pray.' The connexion established by this 
 ' therefore ' is of the closest kind. For the more 
 we study the Lord's Prayer, the more we are 
 struck by its exceeding terseness, by the entire 
 absence of the superfluous and redundant. The 
 minutest particle, as we shall see in the sequel, 
 contributes something to the meaning of the 
 Prayer; not an 'and' or 'but' could be struck 
 out without striking out an idea ; and therefore 
 the connexion of this Prayer with a warning
 
 the Lord's Prayer 59 
 
 against vain repetitions in prayer, is one of the 
 most apposite sequences by which thought can 
 be linked to thought. 
 
 But it would further appear from the preceding 
 warning on the subject of privacy in prayer that 
 our Lord on this occasion designed His Prayer 
 for the use of His people in private devotion. 
 It has indeed been contended by divines of no 
 mean authority, and especially by the learned 
 Dr. John Lightfoot, that on this, the first occa- 
 sion of its utterance, the Prayer was designed 
 as a form for public worship. But surely if this 
 were the case, we should hardly have found in 
 the same paragraph with the Prayer an express 
 warning against praying in the synagogues and 
 at the corners of the street, and an express pre- 
 cept to ensconce ourselves in our closets when 
 we pray. To give the prayer in connexion with 
 such a warning and precept must surely imply 
 at least that it is a form suitable for private 
 devotion, and approved by our Lord for that 
 purpose. Not, of course, that it is the only 
 form which may so be used. It is introduced 
 by the direction, 'After this manner therefore
 
 60 The Tivo Records of 
 
 pray ye,' which though it means primarily 'Use 
 the actual words,' does also mean secondarily, 
 ' Let this be your model in private prayer ; pray 
 thus tersely, thus pithily, thus comprehensively, 
 directing your petitions by a mental reference 
 to those which I have here laid down for you.' 
 
 But primarily the Lord will have us use the 
 actual words as a permanent form of prayer. 
 Forms of prayer are not really, as some suppose, 
 a hindrance to the spirit of prayer in private 
 devotion. The Lord's Prayer is not only a 
 form, but a thoroughly studied and perfectly 
 elaborated form, and yet, if the connexion in 
 which it was given may be trusted, it is designed 
 for use in the closet. Sound and scriptural 
 forms of prayer are of the greatest use in our 
 private moments of communion with God. They 
 act as a check upon the mind in its tendency to 
 wander; they tend to concentrate thought and 
 to prevent diffuseness ; as they have been con- 
 sidered and digested beforehand, there is less 
 liability to go astray in them than when the 
 mind trusts itself to the spontaneous effusions 
 of the moment. But while the mind is re-
 
 the Lord's Prayer 6r 
 
 strained and chastened in its approaches to the 
 Throne of Grace, there can be no reason why 
 its freedom should be crippled. Let there be 
 a platform in private prayer ; the Lord's Prayer 
 itself makes the best of platforms ; but let us 
 always consider ourselves at liberty to enlarge 
 upon this platform, and to weave into the pre- 
 conceived prayer new petitions, as often as we 
 shall feel ourselves moved to do so. The aiming 
 at this will prevent formality a snare into which 
 we are very liable to fall, if we never vary from 
 a fixed routine of religious phraseology. The 
 state of mind to be coveted and striven after in 
 prayer is a state of restrained freedom freedom 
 to present any petition to God through our Re- 
 deemer's mediation and intercession, but freedom 
 restrained by a deep reverence for Him whom 
 we address, and also by the feeling that we 
 know not what we should pray for as we ought, 
 and that, if left to the impulses and reasonings 
 of our own minds, we should often ask things 
 either mischievous or unprofitable. 
 
 The second occasion of giving the Lord's 
 Prayer was different in all its circumstances
 
 62 The Two Records of 
 
 from the first, and occurred probably at an 
 interval of more than two years from the 
 Sermon on the Mount 1 . Our Lord was pray- 
 
 1 In a sermon, or popular treatment of the Lord's 
 Prayer, a discussion of the correctness of the view that 
 the Lord's Prayer was given twice would be out of place. 
 And the Dean states his own view without argument. 
 There are dangers in accounting for a diversity of testi- 
 mony in the relation of similar facts by the supposition of 
 the independence of the facts. There are also dangers in 
 the contrary direction, when shallow observers lose sight 
 of one of the greatest and deepest principles of God's 
 working, viz. the doing things at twice, with most sig- 
 nificant variations on the two occasions. This latter 
 dangerous tendency has more easily commended itself 
 to less thoughtful people, and has often been the cause 
 of unjustifiable accommodations of the original texts of 
 the different Gospels, as well as the loss of the special 
 lessons of the diversities in the narratives, such as are 
 here pointed out by the Dean. In this particular case, 
 St. Luke's record is imbedded in the midst of the great 
 distinctive section of his Gospel, extending from ch. ix. 
 51 to ch. xviii. 15. This section contains the Church's 
 only account of our Lord's ministry in Peraea, on His 
 last journey up to Jerusalem, 'when the days were well- 
 nigh come that He should be received up.' 
 
 When we remember that it was specially entrusted 
 to St. Luke ' to trace the course of all things accurately 
 from the very first, and write them in order,' it is hardly 
 conceivable that such an Evangelist, with such a special 
 commission of the Holy Ghost, should have confused 
 with the circumstances of this last journey, and of the
 
 the Lord's Prayer 63 
 
 ing in a certain place. We are not informed 
 whether His prayer was vocal, as we know it 
 was on some occasions (as for instance on the 
 occasion recorded in the seventeenth chapter 
 of St. John's Gospel), or mental. Anyhow, He 
 was in the posture and attitude of prayer; it 
 was evident to the disciples who were around 
 Him that His whole soul was deeply engaged 
 in it. They waited in reverential silence, not 
 venturing to intrude upon His communion with 
 His unseen Father till He had either risen from 
 His knees, or, if standing, had seated Himself 
 again. At length ' He ceased' praying 1 . When 
 our Lord had risen from His prayer, one of His 
 disciples, who had possibly been watching Him 
 
 Peraean ministry, a notable occurrence at the very com- 
 mencement of the Galilaean ministry, following close 
 upon the call of the Apostles. B. C. 
 
 1 This throws some light upon the Apostle's precept, 
 ' Pray without ceasing ; ' i Thess. v. 17. To pray without 
 ceasing cannot mean that we are always to be engaged in 
 direct acts of prayer ; for from these direct acts the Lord 
 Himself, the great model of human duty, ceased. It 
 cannot imply more than the maintenance of that calm 
 self-recollected state of mind which flows from realizing 
 the presence of God, and which habitually and instinctively 
 refers to God amidst the trials and difficulties of daily life.
 
 64 The Two Records of 
 
 during the exercise, asked Him for a form of 
 prayer (for such was the real significance of the 
 request) such as the Jewish doctors were in the 
 habit of giving to their scholars as a kind of 
 watchword, to distinguish them from the scholars 
 of other schools. John the Baptist had dictated 
 to his disciples a form of this kind ; and many 
 of John the Baptist's disciples had, as we know, 
 before this joined our Lord. Possibly this was 
 one of them. And his asking for a form of 
 prayer, long after a form had been given by 
 Christ, may have arisen from the fact that he 
 was a new convert, who had been but recently 
 drawn into the ranks of Christ's followers. Our 
 Lord replied by definitely giving as a form the 
 same prayer (with a few variations) which He 
 had before given as a model upon which all our 
 prayers should be framed. He now binds upon 
 His disciples the use of the actual words by 
 the phrase with which on this occasion He 
 introduces it: 'When ye pray, say/ The 
 prayer, though substantially the same, is here 
 presented to us in a different point of view, 
 a point of view which is too often missed.
 
 the Lord's Prayer 65 
 
 The Lord's Prayer is the watchword of Christ's 
 faithful soldiers and servants, by the use of 
 which, and by its general currency among them 
 both in private and public devotion, they may be 
 recognized as Christians. To adopt the language 
 of our Church on a different subject, 'it is a sign 
 of profession and mark of difference whereby 
 Christian men are discerned from others.' And 
 this accounts for its position in the Office for the 
 Service of Public Baptism, where the recital of 
 it is directed immediately after the Sacrament 
 has been administered. No sooner is the new 
 recruit formally admitted and registered under 
 the banner of Christ, than the watchword of 
 the Christian army is put into his mouth by 
 being recited for him. And as the mere verbal 
 employment of this watchword distinguishes pro- 
 fessing Christians from Jews and heathens, so 
 the spiritual use of it is a test which establishes 
 a distinction between thorough and shallow 
 Christians. ' If any man,' says St. Paul, ' have 
 not the Spirit of Christ,' however much he may 
 wear the livery of Christian profession, 'he is 
 none of His.' Now the very Spirit of Christ 
 
 F
 
 66 The Two Records of 
 
 breathes in this prayer ; and therefore it serves 
 to discriminate between those who are truly His 
 and those who merely go under that name. Does 
 your heart echo the words, ' Our Father,' &c. ? 
 
 Can you and do you call God your Father, 
 your reconciled Father, in confidence, rever- 
 ence, and love? Are you zealous for His 
 honour? are you seeking His kingdom? are 
 you furthering and acquiescing in His will ? 
 In a word, can you say the Lord's Prayer 
 with your heart as well as with your tongue? 
 Then pass among the citizens of the heavenly 
 Jerusalem as a friend. By this watchword thou 
 hast fellowship with saints all over the world, 
 however widely separated from them by sea, 
 and mountain-range, and long tracts of desert. 
 By this watchword thou hast fellowship with 
 the spirits of the departed righteous, who are 
 waiting in paradise (as thou waitest upon earth) 
 for the accomplishment of the number of God's 
 elect, and the full coming of His kingdom. And 
 when thou passest out of this body of humilia- 
 tion, and art challenged by the angels as to 
 the Captain under whom thou hast served, thou
 
 the Lord's Prayer 67 
 
 shalt by this watchword, recognizing God as 
 thy reconciled Father in Christ Jesus, pass 
 unharmed amid the serried host, and find 
 admittance into paradise. 
 
 In the Gospel of the faithful companion of 
 St. Paul, observe how by the example of prayer, 
 which our blessed Lord set, the disciple was 
 drawn in to seek counsel respecting prayer, 
 to make inquiry respecting an exercise so ob- 
 viously blessed and glorious. It must indeed 
 have been an elevating sight to have seen our 
 Lord in prayer, even if the prayer were mental 
 only, and no words were audible. From the 
 sinless purity of His human nature, and from 
 the habitual intercourse which He held with the 
 Father, one can imagine what must have been 
 in prayer the solemn simplicity of His manner, 
 the chastened fervour of His gestures, the 
 illumination of His features. Almost every 
 prayer of His, one would think, with the excep- 
 tion of that agonizing one in the garden, must 
 have been a minor transfiguration, in which 
 angelic forms, although invisible, must have 
 seemed to be floating around Him. No wonder 
 F 2
 
 68 The Two Records of 
 
 the spectacle of Christ's praying exerted a 
 marked influence upon this disciple! We are 
 not told that, when our Lord preached on the 
 subject of prayer in the Sermon on the Mount, 
 any inquirer was led to evince a special interest 
 in the subject. But now, when He shows them 
 by example how to pray, when He lifts up His 
 eyes and His hands to the Father which is 
 in heaven, the sight is so elevating, so uncon 
 sciously lifts the spectators above the earth, that 
 they long to pray too. The}- become so im- 
 pressed with the idea that prayer is a great and 
 arduous work, that they ask with admirable 
 simplicity what may be the right method of 
 performing it. Our Lord's Prayers, of course, 
 must stand on an eminence above all others, 
 in respect of their influence both with God and 
 men ; still in less degree the same attraction 
 towards prayer emanates from all who pray 
 under the influence of Christ's Spirit and the 
 guidance of Christ's example. And thus it 
 is that in devout congregations, which throw 
 themselves actively into the Services of the 
 Church, respond heartily, kneel humbly, and
 
 the Lord's Prayer 6$ 
 
 sing with the spirit and with the understanding 
 also, devotion becomes contagious, and spreads 
 from soul to soul. The man who sauntered 
 into the church listlessly, perhaps as a pastime 
 on a wet afternoon, or perhaps bent merely upon 
 listening to the sermon, without any design of 
 personal worship, is struck and roused by the 
 calm earnestness of the lips and faces around 
 him, and by-and-by is drawn insensibly into 
 the current of prayer and praise, and so falling 
 down on his face worships God, and reports 
 that God is indeed, as He has promised to be, 
 in the midst of the two or three gathered 
 together in His name. 
 
 It is a serious question for every congregation, 
 how far is their worship likely to prove attractive 
 to strangers who might casually witness it ? 
 Attractive it will prove, and must prove, if there 
 be in it reality and earnestness ; if, in short, 
 it be, not the mere recital of a Liturgy, but a 
 living communion of living souls with the living 
 God. The soul of the most worldly-minded 
 man is still quite susceptible of an influence 
 from the spectacle of earnest devotion in others,
 
 70 The Two Records of 
 
 quite capable of being so impressed by the 
 sight of spiritual worship, that he is involun- 
 tarily drawn into saying to Him, who never 
 refuses to instruct the ignorant, ' Lord, teach me 
 also to pray.' If it be the part of ministers of 
 God to teach men how to pray by precept, it is 
 no less the people's part, as servants of God, to 
 attract them towards prayer by example. Has 
 the worship of our Church, each congregation 
 may well ask, a tendency to do this? Is it 
 stirring, rousing, edifying to the careless and 
 worldly brother who sits amongst us ? Or is 
 it only, as, alas, it is in some churches, the pay- 
 ment of a formal homage, decorous in its ex- 
 ternal arrangements, like a corpse laid out for 
 burial, but stone-cold and dead? 
 
 Secondly, how full of instruction is the cir- 
 cumstance that the inquirer on the subject of 
 prayer is not presented with anything new, but 
 referred to the same old form, which had 
 been given two years ago ! Our Lord thus 
 virtually says to him, ' Everything which can 
 be desired in order to secure the holiness of 
 My people here and their happiness hereafter,
 
 the Lord's Prayer 71 
 
 I have already summed up in one brief but 
 most comprehensive form. I have nothing more 
 to add to that form. Why would you have 
 another? To study and thoroughly to master 
 this, to say this Prayer not only by heart, but 
 with the heart, is more than work enough for 
 a lifetime.' 
 
 There are some who clamour for a new set 
 of forms of public prayer, or (which is much 
 the same thing in point of principle) for several 
 fundamental variations and improvements in 
 the old one. Now since the Prayer-book is 
 uninspired, we may not for a moment maintain 
 that, like the Lord's Prayer, it is incapable of 
 improvement. But this we may and do say, 
 that in the Common Prayer, with which God 
 has blessed this Church of England, there is a 
 vast mine of theological and devotional treasure, 
 which most of those who clamour for its improve- 
 ment have scarcely at all explored. Who has 
 studied the Prayer-book carefully, thoughtfully, 
 with an earnest desire to appreciate the rationale 
 of its arrangements, and with even a moderate 
 furniture of sound learning? Is there one such
 
 72 The Two Records of 
 
 person, who, however he may acknowledge 
 flaws here and there, is not on the whole abun- 
 dantly contented with the Prayer-book ? And 
 as for those who have given the Prayer-book no 
 study at all, why would they have another Form 
 of Prayer before they have mastered the full 
 significance of this? Very much as St. Philip 
 said to the eunuch, ' Understandest thou what 
 thou readest?' so we may say to the majority 
 of professing Churchmen, ' Understandest thou 
 what thou prayest ? ' The words have been 
 in your ears so constantly that they have ceased 
 to make an impression on the mind. Have you 
 ever sought to go below the surface of them? 
 have you ever striven to realize them ? have 
 you ever even asked seriously what they mean ? 
 Ah ! it is not new forms of prayer which we 
 stand in need of ; but new affections to animate 
 the old forms. It is a spiritual impulse, not a 
 verbal variation, which is needed to give men 
 a living interest in these old prayers. When his 
 heart is touched with the sense of any recent 
 mercy, with what fervour will a man say the 
 General Thanksgiving; and what unction will
 
 the Lord's Prayer 73 
 
 there seem to him to be in the words ! When 
 the burden of the sins of his youth presses 
 heavily upon his conscience, how will the Con- 
 fession in the Communion Service ' The re- 
 membrance of them is grievous unto us ; the 
 burden of them is intolerable' seem to him 
 the exact expression of his needs! Offer him 
 a new form of Public Service then, when his 
 mind has conformed itself to the keynote of the 
 old form, and what is the result ? ' Straightway 
 he saith, The old is better.' 
 
 Let the docility too of this disciple be a 
 subject for our imitation. ' Lord,' said he, 
 realizing his own incapacity to pray as the 
 Lord prayed, ' Lord, teach us to pray.' Prayer 
 is a very arduous exercise ; and if we trust 
 to the guidance of our own spirits in it, how 
 easily may we be misled. It would seem at first 
 sight as if nothing could be more honourably 
 ambitious, or could betoken a higher degree 
 of faith, than for two brothers to pray, in the 
 days of Christ's humiliation upon earth, ' Grant 
 that we may sit, the one on Thy right hand and 
 the other on Thy left, in Thy kingdom.'
 
 74 The Two Records of 
 
 Yet the prayer was repulsed ; it did not 
 meet with favour or acceptance. Again, it 
 seemed to St. Paul very desirable that he should 
 no longer be tried by the thorn in the flesh ; 
 but when he besought the Lord thrice that it 
 might depart from him, the terms of the refusal 
 made him feel that the petition had not been 
 a wise one. It was better for him that the 
 infirmity should remain ; for thus would he 
 be kept in closer reliance on the strength which 
 is made perfect in weakness. What we regard 
 as a spiritual blessing, and covet accordingly, 
 might not in the end turn out to be what we 
 hoped for. Much less of course might that which 
 we regard and covet as a temporal blessing be 
 a profitable gift to us. 
 
 In the feeling that we know not what to pray 
 for as we ought, we must seek direction in our 
 prayer. We must study Christ's form of prayer 
 to find out thence with what petitions it is lawful 
 and desirable for us to come boldly to the 
 Throne of Grace. And since not only correct 
 petitions, but fervour in offering them, is neces- 
 sary to the acceptance of our prayers, we must
 
 the Lord's Prayer 75 
 
 earnestly seek the preventing and assisting 
 grace of that Spirit who helpeth our infirmities, 
 and maketh intercession for us with groanings 
 which cannot be uttered. God's Son putting 
 words into our mouth, and God's Spirit adding 
 direction and fervency to those words, we shall 
 not, cannot, pray in vain. The tongue of Christ, 
 the pleading of Christ's Spirit, what can be more 
 acceptable in the ear of our Father which is 
 in heaven ?
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 OUR FATHER WHICH ART IN HEAVEN 
 
 ' WHEN ye pray/ says our Lord, ' say, 
 Our Father which art in heaven.' But surely 
 He does not mean that saying these words 
 is enough. Prayer does not stand in the 
 utterance of articulate sounds. Nor can He 
 mean that the repetition of the words with 
 bare intelligence with an understanding of 
 their meaning and an attention to it is enough. 
 The understanding is not the deepest thing in 
 us. It is indeed good and right to pray with 
 the understanding ; but the understanding can 
 only be used as an accompaniment, it is not 
 the faculty wherewith we pray. ' I will pray 
 with the spirit,' says the Apostle (this is the 
 essential faculty, the exercise of which con- 
 stitutes prayer), ' and I will pray with the under-
 
 Our Father which art in Heaven 77 
 
 standing also ' (showing that the understanding, 
 though necessary, is not the thing most neces- 
 sary). What then is the spirit faculty by which 
 we hold communion with God ? It must be the 
 faculty which enables us to form an idea or con- 
 ception of God. ' No man hath seen God at 
 any time ' ; and therefore this idea or conception 
 cannot possibly be drawn from experience of 
 sight. Though experience may be needed 
 to develop it, it must be implanted in us from 
 without. None will ever enter into any real 
 communion with God without the exercise of 
 this faculty. If the spirit does not pray, if no 
 high conception is formed in our hearts of the 
 Being whom we are about to address, if no 
 yearning towards Him as the author of our 
 existence and the source of all good, is found 
 there, then our prayer degenerates from the 
 true ideal of prayer, as a reasonable service, 
 into a magical incantation, which can never 
 answer any good purpose. 
 
 How then should we conceive of God in 
 prayer? What ideas should we form of Him 
 in our inmost spirit ? Our Lord answers this
 
 78 Our Father which art in Heaven 
 
 question in the first words of His most precious 
 prayer : 4 When ye pray, say ' ; say, not with 
 your mouth only, not with your mind only, but 
 with your spirit, with the deepest thing within 
 you, ' Our Father which art in the heavens.' 
 These words, like all the words of the Lord's 
 Prayer, are exhaustless in their significance. 
 
 First, then, we are to conceive of God, when 
 we resort to Him in prayer, as a Father 
 a Father in heaven, a Father whose character 
 is marred by none of the weaknesses and im- 
 perfections which among ourselves too often 
 detract from the beauty of the parental rela- 
 tionship. God is to be thought of as a Father 
 who is ready, for His Son's sake, to blot out all 
 our sins, and to welcome us back to His bosom 
 despite the worst charges which our conscience 
 may bring against us ; as a Father who loves 
 us with infinite tenderness, who consults for us 
 with infinite wisdom, and who calls us in infinite 
 power to second the designs of His love and 
 His wisdom. We are to think of Him as too 
 affectionate to deny us anything which it is 
 really good for us to have, and at the same
 
 Our Father which art in Heaven 79 
 
 time as too wise to give us what might be 
 useless or mischievous. But then of course 
 the going to God as a Father, from whom all 
 good may be expected, implies faith in Christ's 
 teaching, faith in the teaching of the parable of 
 the Prodigal Son ; and in that other teaching of 
 His about the earthly father who would not give 
 a stone to the hungry child who should clamour 
 to him for bread ; Christ being the first who put 
 forth this truth of God's Fatherhood, as the 
 ground of our approach to Him. 
 
 We cannot indeed say that there was not in 
 heathenism a blind groping after the truth, that 
 man is, by the original constitution of his nature, 
 a son of God. A heathen poet, speaking of God, 
 had said, ' For we are also His offspring.' More- 
 over, under the Old Covenant Jehovah had con- 
 descended to say of the Jewish nation, ' Israel is 
 My son, even My firstborn.' In like manner the 
 doctrine of a future state was augured, surmised, 
 yearned after, before our Lord's appearance, 
 and yet it was reserved for Him to bring life 
 and immortality to light, to rend the veil which 
 shrouded another world, and to exhibit it to us
 
 8o Our Father which art in Heaven 
 
 with clearness and certainty. And thus it was 
 with the doctrine of God's Fatherhood. Man had 
 been made originally in God's image ; that is to 
 say, in virtue of his natural faculties he was 
 God's child. His reason was a spark of God's 
 light ; his affections were an emanation from 
 God's love. Hence, deeply as man has been 
 estranged from God by sin, there has always 
 been an echo (if we may say so) of God's 
 Fatherhood haunting the chambers of his heart. 
 The restoration of the broken alliance has been 
 incoherently sought after ; it has been felt to 
 be that which was needed to satisfy and con- 
 tent the human soul. But after thoughts and 
 yearnings to that effect had been vainly working 
 in man's nature for centuries, without practically 
 influencing his character and conduct, Christ 
 came and announced as a certain truth God's 
 Fatherhood, and His intention of building up 
 anew His family in the Second Adam. Our 
 Lord announced Himself as the Head of the 
 new family, calling Himself the Son of Man ; 
 not a Son of Man, as the Prophets had been 
 termed, but ' the Son of Man,' the second and
 
 Our Father which art in Heaven 81 
 
 better representative of our race. And God 
 is constantly called by the Apostles the Father 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ, and (by our incor- 
 poration into Christ) our Father also. From 
 Nature we might augur God to be powerful, 
 wise, beneficent ; but we could gather nothing 
 respecting His Fatherhood. The sight of 
 Nature its stars and its flowers, its clouds 
 and its sunsets, its winds and its lightnings- 
 would rather awe us by its magnificence than 
 attract us by its sweetness. But Christ's reve- 
 lation assures us that God is our Father our 
 reconciled Father in Him. And this assurance 
 having been made on the authority of One who 
 came from heaven, our hearts give an echo to 
 the doctrine as being true, which echo is the 
 protest of our nature in behalf of its original rela- 
 tionship to God. It is said of certain birds which 
 have been hatched and reared by a mother not 
 their own, that if by chance they hear their own 
 mother's cry, the instinct of Nature is so strong 
 that they fly towards her. Whether this be 
 fact or fiction, it is a beautiful illustration of the 
 matter in hand. Born in sin as we have all 
 
 G
 
 82 Our Father which art in Heaven 
 
 been, and conceived in iniquity, we have as it 
 were been hatched and reared under the wings 
 of the world and the flesh, and belong to an 
 evil brood. But when Christ announces to us 
 that God is our reconciled Father, our original 
 relationship, not to the world and the flesh, but 
 to God, then asserts itself. We run to Him 
 who calls us back to His home and His bosom, 
 and our hearts say, 'Verily, Thou art our Father.' 
 And it is when we go to God with faith in His 
 reconciliation to us, and faith in His Father- 
 hood, yearning towards Him as His offspring, 
 seeking refuge under His wings from the toils, 
 vexations, and troubles of the world, from our 
 sins, yea and from ourselves, and expecting 
 greater blessings than we can tell or think from 
 His fatherly interest in us, then it is that we 
 pray with the spirit or highest faculty of our 
 nature ; this is to say, as our Lord has instructed 
 us to say, ' Our Father.' 
 
 The next words to be considered give us a 
 further insight into the state of mind in which 
 God should be approached ' Which art in 
 the heavens.' We are not of course so to
 
 Our Father ivhich art in Heaven 83 
 
 understand these words as if they meant that 
 the Divine Presence was limited to heaven. 
 ' He fills heaven and earth/ and ' the heaven 
 and heaven of heavens cannot contain Him.' 
 But Holy Scripture speaks of heaven as of a 
 place where God manifests Himself visibly to 
 the myriads of angels who surround His throne. 
 Though place implies to us limitations of space 
 which are not applicable to the Infinite One, 
 still there is revealed something corresponding 
 to our ideas of a place which bears to the rest 
 of the universe a relation similar to that which 
 the heart bears to the body. Life is diffused 
 throughout the whole body; there are the 
 sensibilities of life, and the movements of life, 
 in the extremities as well as in the vital parts. 
 But the heart is the very source and fountain of 
 living energy. The blood, which is the principle 
 of animal life, is propelled by the heart to all 
 parts of the body. When the heart is still, life 
 is extinct. Similarly, the presence of God, 
 which is diffused throughout His whole uni- 
 verse, finds its chief seat and centre in heaven ; 
 and as all movement in the body conies ulti- 
 G 2
 
 84 Our Father which art in Heaven 
 
 mately from the heart, so all the movements of 
 Providence in this lower world the fortunes 
 of individuals no less than the revolutions of 
 government are the effects here below of 
 God's administration in heaven above. When 
 heaven is represented to us in Holy Scripture 
 it is usually described (rather than defined) under 
 the image of a temple or sanctuary, because 
 the worship of God is perpetually proceeding 
 in it. It is into this temple that our blessed 
 Lord passed upwards on the day of His Ascen- 
 sion ; and it is there that He at present executes 
 for us His high priestly ministration, inter- 
 ceding even for the feeblest and most sinful 
 members of His flock. Our Lord called it His 
 Father's house when He told His disciples 
 that there were many mansions in it, that He 
 went to prepare ' a place ' for them, and would 
 return one day to receive them to ' the place ' so 
 prepared. 
 
 Now to say in our hearts, when we pray, 
 ' Which art in Heaven,' is to approach God 
 with reverence and godly fear. The appellation 
 ' our Father ' neqds some qualification of this
 
 Our Father which art in Heaven 85 
 
 kind. It encourages an affectionate dealing 
 with God as the lover of our souls, as longing 
 to embrace us with the arms of His mercy, 
 as bound to us by ties which even our own 
 undutifulness cannot sunder. But there is 
 another element of feeling which should also 
 pervade our souls when we approach the Throne 
 of Grace. It is that of deepest awe, and profound 
 veneration. No exultation in our religious 
 privileges, no appreciation of God's love, how- 
 ever vivid, should be allowed to expel this 
 graver sentiment of deep awe and profound 
 veneration. The seraphim veil their faces and 
 their feet with their wings when they worship 
 God. And we, the heirs of sinful flesh and 
 blood not creatures only (like the seraphim), 
 but fallen creatures shall we not much rather 
 ' rejoice with trembling/ even in our glorious 
 privilege of access to the Majesty on high ? And 
 the method of doing this is to realize God as 
 being in the heavens, when we pray ; to bear in 
 mind continually the heavenly hierarchy adoring 
 round His throne, and our great High Priest 
 waiting to receive our prayers, and to mingle
 
 86 Our Father which art in Heaven 
 
 with them the sweet incense of His intercession. 
 Awe is an essential element of all acceptable 
 worship. 
 
 But there is another and equally important 
 thought suggested by the words, ' which art in 
 the heavens.' Couple with these the preceding 
 words ' Our Father,' and the thought immediately 
 arises that heaven is our home. For a father's 
 house, what else is it but a home to the children ? 
 If our father is domiciled anywhere, is any- 
 where specially present, that place, wherever 
 it be, must be our home. And the Christian 
 who says in his heart, ' which art in the heavens, ' 
 looks forward to this home in the anticipation 
 of hope, sighs for it, pants after it as the hart 
 after the water-brooks. Here is our encourage- 
 ment to go to God in a spirit of sanguine 
 hope that, all difficulties and opposition notwith- 
 standing, we shall be brought hereafter to the 
 habitation of His holiness and His glory. 
 
 We are privileged to cast behind us the 
 incumbrances of our corrupt nature, to seek 
 God in a bright spirit, a spirit radiant with the 
 hope of glory. Just in proportion to the firmness
 
 Our Father which art in Heaven 87 
 
 of our faith will be the liveliness of our hope. In 
 proportion as we grasp firmly the present 
 blessings of forgiveness, acceptance, and peace 
 through the blood of Christ, we shall rejoice 
 keenly in the anticipation of our future recom- 
 pense. And if hope be dead in our hearts, 
 there is great reason to apprehend that our 
 faith is not a living faith, that it is no more than 
 the acceptance of orthodox doctrine, or at best 
 that it is imagination doing duty for faith. 
 
 But before we leave this part of the invo- 
 cation, it is worthy of notice that here the 
 word heaven is in the plural ' Our Father 
 which art in the heavens,' whereas lower down 
 the word is in the singular, ' Thy will be done 
 in earth, as it is in heaven.' In a composition 
 so studied as the Lord's Prayer, this change 
 of the number is not likely to have been acci- 
 dental. What then may we suppose it to import ? 
 Where angelic obedience and angelic zeal are 
 spoken of, there the singular ' heaven ' is used, 
 as being the residence of the holy angels, and 
 so conceived of by Christians. But where man 
 aspires towards his heavenly Father, it is
 
 88 Our Father which art in Heaven 
 
 important for him to be reminded that that 
 Father is not far removed from him, but con- 
 descends to take up His dwelling in the lowly 
 heart; that there is a spiritual heaven in the 
 heart of believers, as well as a local heaven 
 beyond the stars. This is the doctrine taught 
 by God Himself in the book of the Prophet 
 Isaiah (Ivii. 15) : ' Thus saith the high and lofty 
 One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is 
 Holy ; I dwell in the high and holy place ' 
 (i. e. heaven in the ordinary acceptation of the 
 word), 'with him also that is of a contrite and 
 humble spirit.' Now Heaven being nothing 
 else than God's abode, God's dwelling in any 
 place makes that place heaven. Every humble 
 and contrite believer then, every one who prays 
 in the spirit of the publican in the parable, 
 ' God be merciful to me a sinner,' may and 
 should feel that God is not far from him ; that 
 He is nearer than any material object can be ; 
 that his heart is a shrine, a heaven, and that 
 God is enthroned there. So that in the term 
 ' which art in the heavens ' we find consolation 
 as well as awe.
 
 Our Father which art in Heaven 89 
 
 We have still to consider the word 'our,' 
 and what it teaches as to the spirit in which 
 we should approach God. As then by the word 
 ' Father' we express our faith, and by the words 
 ' which art in Heaven ' our hope ; so by the 
 word ' our/ or as it is literally 'of us ' (and the 
 literal rendering gives more point to the senti- 
 ment), we express our connexion, our sympathy, 
 with the whole Church, and our desire to assist 
 (according to our ability) every member of it. 
 
 And this sympathy with the whole Church has 
 two sides a side of obligation and a side of en- 
 couragement. Look at it first under the aspect 
 of obligation. It is surely one main reason of 
 unsuccessfulness in prayer that petitions come 
 before God saturated with the deadly tincture 
 of selfishness. Thought of others, interest in 
 others, too rarely enters into our prayers, even 
 though one or two petitions may be appended 
 to them in which we ask His blessing on our 
 friends. And possibly it may seem that to go 
 beyond the narrow circle of those we know and 
 love, to extend our prayer to the Church of Christ, 
 to our nation and its rulers, and to all classes of
 
 90 Our Father which art in Heaven 
 
 society, chills the spirit of prayer and deprives 
 it of reality and life. And thus much no doubt 
 is true, that, where there is no sympathy and 
 interest at the bottom of the heart, there can 
 be no real prayer. Prayer for another is 
 the expression of concern for him ; and if we 
 have no concern for him, we cannot pray for 
 him. But the Lord's Prayer teaches us most 
 emphatically that this want of concern for 
 our neighbour is a defect which vitiates our 
 prayers ; a defect which must be striven against, 
 prayed against, gradually eradicated. Our 
 Lord has so constructed His model Prayer 
 that we cannot pray for ourselves (in language 
 of His dictation) without praying for others. We 
 are God's children because we are members 
 of Christ. And if members of Christ, then 
 members one of another. He has made it 
 impossible for us to recognize the paternal, 
 without at the same time recognizing the 
 fraternal relationship. And His Apostle teaches 
 us that the latter of these relationships is so 
 bound up in the former, that to affect to recog- 
 nize God as our Father without recognizing
 
 Our Father which art in Heaven 91 
 
 men as our brethren is mere hypocrisy: ' If a man 
 say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is 
 a liar : for he that loveth not his brother, whom 
 he hath seen, how can he love God, whom he 
 hath not seen ? ' 
 
 Then let us seek for and cultivate wider 
 sympathies when we pray. Let us pause 
 momentarily to give a thought to the wants, 
 the sorrows, the sins of our brethren, as well as 
 to our own. Let us fasten the mind (for this 
 will be a help) on any particular burden, under 
 which we know any particular soul to be labour- 
 ing, and ask for that soul relief grace, mercy, 
 and peace. It is no strange idea, or one which 
 we find any difficulty in receiving, that we may 
 help others by our alms, or by some definite 
 effort to benefit them temporally. Why should 
 it be strange that we may help them by our 
 pikers ? 
 
 Moreover, let us look at sympathy with the 
 whole Church in prayer, on its side of encourage- 
 ment. There is in our own individual prayers 
 a felt weakness and insufficiency which is very 
 disheartening. They are such poor, tame, life-
 
 92 Our Father which art in Heaven 
 
 less things, that our hearts misgive as to their 
 ever finding the way to heaven. Consider, 
 then, that wheresoever and at whatsoever hour 
 thou prayest,thou never prayest alone. Hundreds 
 of cries are rising from other hearts in all parts 
 of the Universal Church. In the stillness and 
 solitude of the night season, no less than in the 
 stir of the day, prayer is being offered by some 
 Christians somewhere. The ' Our Father ' may 
 be viewed as the shape in which the prayers 
 of the entire Church reach the ear of God, for 
 what are thousands of ' my Fathers,' when 
 collected into one comprehensive invocation, 
 and offered for us all in common by our great 
 High Priest, but one ' Our Father'? It is as 
 if a great cloud of incense were always going 
 up to heaven from every corner of the earth 
 the incense of holy affections and devout aspira- 
 tions, kindled upon the heart's altar by the Holy 
 Spirit ; or as if, when each of us prayed, even 
 in the solitude of the closet, we brought out 
 our own little censer, and kindled incense there, 
 and added our thin and imperceptible vapour 
 to the great fragrant cloud. The other human
 
 Our Father which art in Heaven 93 
 
 souls, which are praying with us and around us, 
 are indeed unconscious of our contribution to 
 their worship. Not so our Divine-Human Priest, 
 who marks from heaven the struggles of each 
 soul after God, and who collects and offers 
 before the throne the suffrages of us all : 
 
 'He sees my wants, allays my fears, 
 And counts and treasures up my tears.' 
 
 From Him we have always conscious sympathy. 
 From others we can only look for unconscious 
 co-operation. 
 
 We see, then, how much the saying of these 
 first words of the Lord's Prayer implies in the 
 minds of those who use them ; how much of 
 faith, of reverence, of hope, of love to God 
 and man. If the Prayer be said in the entire 
 absence of these sentiments, this is no saying 
 it in the ears of God. Nor can any prayer, 
 however excellent the terms in which it is 
 couched, be counted by Him as prayer, unless 
 it be in some measure animated by these sen- 
 timents. Words by themselves are nothing. 
 Affections go for everything with Him who 
 is a Spirit, and who will be worshipped in spirit
 
 94 Our Father which art in Heaven 
 
 and in truth. If you should whisper but one 
 petition in God's ear, and yet whisper it with 
 faith in His mercy, with yearning after His 
 favour, with sympathy towards His other chil- 
 dren, with reference to His Majesty, or with 
 but one of these sentiments working in thy 
 heart that is prayer. Whereas if thou shouldst 
 recite a whole Liturgy before Him a Liturgy 
 admirably composed and exhaustive of all the 
 subjects of prayer, and shouldst do so with no 
 opening of the heart either towards God or 
 man, this is no prayer. The voice of the heart 
 not of the lips, nor even of the mind is the 
 essence of prayer. Let the heart say but ' Our 
 Father which art in Heaven/ He shall respond 
 to the appeal, and give His blessing, and make 
 us conscious that He gives it.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 HALLOWED BE THY NAME 
 
 THERE are seven days in the week. The first 
 of them, the crown and flower of all, belongs in an 
 especial manner to God. The rest belong to man, 
 for the work of his hands and the supply of his 
 daily wants thereby. Similarly, there are seven 
 petitions in the Lord's Prayer. The first of them, 
 the crown and flower of all, is especially directed 
 to God's glory. In the others man's necessities, 
 whether spiritual or bodily, come gradually into 
 view. For even in the two remaining petitions 
 of the first section of the Prayer, the earth and 
 its inhabitants are implied. God's kingdom, 
 for whose coming we pray, is set up upon earth. 
 And His will we pray may be done in earth. 
 But ' Hallowed be Thy name ' suggests no 
 thought but of His glory.
 
 This is one of Bishop Andrewes' reflections, 
 though not expressed in his language. And 
 we may carry it a little further. As the Sunday 
 is designed to give a colouring to the days of 
 the week, on all of which it should shed its 
 sanctifying influence, so this petition, standing 
 in the foremost place, colours the meaning of 
 all the other petitions ; they would not mean 
 what they do, if they were torn away from their 
 connexion with it. 
 
 ' Hallowed be Thy name.' What is meant by 
 God's name ? and what is meant by hallowing it ? 
 
 (T) Now we may say generally (it is a simple 
 remark, but not therefore a shallow one) that 
 God's name means very much the same thing 
 as a man's name, that is to say, his character 
 and reputation, the prevailing impressions about 
 him. We consider a fair fame the greatest 
 of all treasures, and would not barter it away 
 for anything the world can give. What would 
 it profit us to be surrounded by comforts and 
 luxuries, and to live in the possession of every- 
 thing which wealth can furnish, if every one 
 held a bad opinion of us, distrusted and sus-
 
 Hallowed be Thy Name 97 
 
 pected us, and shunned contact with us? By 
 him who was at once the wisest and the richest 
 of all sovereigns it was said : ' A good name 
 is rather to be chosen than great riches, and 
 loving favour rather than silver and gold.' 
 Now we are told that man was made in the 
 image of God ; and accordingly we find that as 
 man sets great store by his good name, so God 
 doth by His, and therefore teaches us to pray 
 that His name may be held in due esteem, 
 before all other petitions whatsoever, even before 
 that for the coming of His kingdom. What 
 would the enlargement of his dominions be 
 to an earthly prince, in comparison of a loyal 
 esteem and devotion to his sacred person in the 
 hearts of his subjects ? 
 
 But the name of God extends to persons and 
 things which are not strictly part of His character. 
 If a man is held in high esteem and veneration, 
 and has won for himself a universal renown, 
 his children and grandchildren, who carry down 
 his name to posterity, are respected for his 
 sake ; and great store is set by any little thing 
 which belonged to him, or which he happened 
 
 H
 
 98 Hallowed be Thy Name 
 
 to use, and which after his death may have come 
 into the possession of the others. Thus God's 
 name stands not only for God's reputed character, 
 but for every person and thing associated with 
 Him and bearing memories of Him for anointed 
 sovereigns, who are His representatives ; for or- 
 dained ministers, who are His ambassadors ; for 
 the Holy Scriptures, which are His word; for the 
 Sunday, which is His day; for the Church, which 
 is His house of prayer; for the bodies of Chris- 
 tians, which are the temples of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 But it may be said, ' There are very many traits 
 of God's character mentioned in Holy Scripture ; 
 He is called mighty, terrible, true, gracious, 
 merciful, longsuffering, one that will by no means 
 clear the guilty, and by many other names besides. 
 Which, then, of all the Scriptural representations 
 of Him is here particularly meant by His name ? ' 
 The answer is, that the Divine name embraces 
 of course every attribute ascribed to God in Holy 
 Scripture ; but that the character of God, which 
 our blessed Lord both inculcated and exhibited, 
 according to that profound word of His, 'I have 
 manifested Thy name unto the men which
 
 Hallowed be Thy Name 99 
 
 Thou gavest Me,' &c., is the character principally 
 intended here. And it is thus we trace a living 
 connexion between the invocation of the Lord's 
 Prayer and its first petition. The name of 
 God, for the hallowing of which we pray, is the 
 name of ' our Father which is in heaven,' the 
 heavenly Father's name which we adore, and 
 which we have already invoked. That God 
 should be thought of, regarded, esteemed, dealt 
 with by all as a ' Father which is in heaven ' ; 
 that His parental affection, awful majesty, and 
 eternal distinctness from the creature, should 
 be embalmed and enshrined in all hearts, this 
 would be some fulfilment of the petition, ' Hal- 
 lowed be Thy name.' 
 
 But what, secondly, is the meaning of the 
 word ' hallowed ' ? We are in danger of using 
 vaguely this and other words of frequent recur- 
 rence in the Scriptures, without ever defining 
 to ourselves what we mean by them. To be 
 hallowed means either to be made holy (a 
 meaning which here the context shows us that 
 it cannot bear; for God's character cannot be 
 made any holier than it is), or to be exhibited, 
 H 2
 
 TOO Hallowed be Thy Name 
 
 conceived of, and treated, as holy. And this 
 throws us back upon the meaning of the word 
 ' hoi}'' ' or rather of the Hebrew word which 
 is so translated a question of some little diffi- 
 culty if we sift it to the bottom. The learned 
 are not of one mind as to the radical or 
 fundamental meaning of the word in question. 
 Some suppose the radical meaning to be that 
 of separation ; according to which a ' holy' thing 
 would be a thing separated or set apart for 
 sacred uses. Others think that purity or clean- 
 ness is the ground-meaning of the word, and 
 that the divers washings prescribed by the 
 Hebrew ritual were designed to initiate the 
 Jews into the idea of holiness, which in its 
 highest application is moral purity. In the 
 application of the word to God we may combine 
 the two ideas, and say that when God is spoken 
 of as holy, it is meant that He is separated by 
 a deep distinction from His creatures, and not 
 to be confounded with them, or they with Him 
 (a sin which is committed in all forms of idolatry); 
 and, secondly, that He is perfectly pure, exempt 
 from all moral obliquity.
 
 Hallowed be Thy Name 101 
 
 As to the Greek or New Testament word 
 which stands for our 'holy/ it comes from a 
 verb which is represented as nearly as possible 
 in our language by ' to venerate, to regard with 
 religious awe.' 
 
 On the whole, ' May Thy character, O God, 
 be deeply venerated,' is for all practical purposes 
 a sufficiently accurate paraphrase of the petition, 
 ' Hallowed be Thy name.' 
 
 But the idea conveyed by the word 'hallowed' 
 admits of being chiselled a little more, and 
 brought out more sharply. Had our Saviour 
 instructed us to pray, as He might have done, 
 ' Glorified be Thy name,' would there have 
 been any difference in the meaning? Yes, 
 certainly. To glorify God's name is not quite 
 the same thing as to hallow it. Irrational and 
 inanimate creatures may glorify God's name ; 
 but only moral agents can hallow it. Every 
 flower by its fair hues, every leaf by its delicate 
 tracery of veins and its tender green, every 
 insect by its wonderful structure, every star 
 by its radiance, glorifies God, declares, that is, 
 His glory and His magnificence. And accord-
 
 IO2 
 
 ingly the Psalmist sings, 'The heavens declare 
 the glory of God.' 
 
 The whole realm of Nature is a mirror which 
 reflects the glory of the Creator, His skill, His 
 power, His magnificence, His grandeur. But 
 the mirror in which God's holiness is reflected 
 is the hearts and souls of His rational creatures. 
 These hearts and souls venerate, adore Him, 
 lie low before Him in conscious homage; yea, 
 more than this, God's moral image is by grace 
 reproduced in them ; ' the new man/ says St. 
 Paul, ' is renewed in knowledge after the image 
 of Him that created him.' The petition, there- 
 fore, ' Hallowed be Thy name,' if at all deeply- 
 considered, involves the idea of rational moral 
 agents, whether men or angels, by whom and 
 among whom it may be ' hallowed.' 
 
 And though it may well be said that God's 
 character is not really known to us ; that as yet 
 we know not as we are known ; that the Infinite 
 God must necessarily be beyond the contemplation 
 of a finite mind ; that ' no man hath seen God ' 
 seen Him with the mind's eye 'at any time'; 
 that God, fixedly looked upon, dazzles and be-
 
 wilders the human reason, even as the sun, 
 fixedly looked upon, dazzles and disables the 
 bodily eye. 'But the Only-begotten Son, which 
 is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared 
 Him.' ' He that hath seen Jesus hath seen the 
 Father ' ; and we have no need thenceforward 
 to say, ' Show us the Father.' The character 
 of Christ is the character of God reflected in 
 the mirror of a sinless humanity. God's tender 
 yearning over the worst sinners, His infinite 
 compassion for, and condescension to, the infir- 
 mities of man, His deep abhorrence of insincerity 
 and untruth. His strict and sensitive purity, His 
 piercing insight into the most hidden things of 
 human character, His sifting dealings with the 
 consciences of individuals, His vast power, never 
 displayed for its own sake, but always to sub- 
 serve some beneficent end, His wonderful for- 
 bearance towards those who provoke and defy 
 Him, all these traits shine forth luminously 
 in the career of our Lord Jesus Christ. And 
 the great complex of them forms a character 
 irresistibly attractive to simple and sincere souls. 
 This was the spell which drew the disciples to
 
 104 Hallowed be Thy Name 
 
 Him ; not the mere sight of His miracles, though 
 that of course confirmed the impression, but the 
 beauty of holiness which streamed through His 
 whole life and conversation, the sweetness and 
 majesty of His demeanour, which was a true 
 exhibition of God in the flesh. 
 
 The significance of the position of this petition 
 in the prayer is great. ' Hallowed be Thy name ' 
 stands before all other petitions and why? 
 (i) to teach us a lesson as to prayer ; (2) a lesson 
 as to piety ; (3) a lesson as to the supreme object 
 of human desire. 
 
 And, first, a lesson as to prayer. This petition 
 stands first by way of teaching us that the 
 homage which we pay to God in prayer is the 
 first and principal thing in it, and necessary 
 to win Him to comply with our petitions. 
 There are two aspects of prayer, totally distinct, 
 and yet closely interwoven with one another. 
 One is, that prayer is a means of supplying 
 human necessities, whether spiritual or temporal. 
 Another is, that prayer is an acknowledgment of 
 Almighty God, an homage done to His perfec- 
 tions. Under the first of these aspects, prayer
 
 Hallowed be Thy Name 105 
 
 is like standing in a crowd, to see a sovereign 
 pass, and throwing a petition at his feet. Un- 
 der the second of these aspects, prayer is like 
 resorting to the Court, simply to pay one's 
 homage, without any ulterior object. Now 
 by placing this petition first, our blessed Lord 
 teaches that the second of these aspects of prayer 
 is the more important and the more vital of the 
 two. We must adore God in the inner man, 
 before we venture to present any petitions to 
 Him. It is much to have appeared before Him 
 in His heavenly court, to have bowed the knee 
 of the heart before Him, and to have joined our 
 feeble ' Hallowed be Thy name ' to the sera- 
 phim's thrice repeated cry of ' Holy, Holy, 
 Holy,' even if we carry away nothing from the 
 Throne of Grace. For prayer is primarily 
 a duty of loyalty. Only in its lower character 
 is it a means of supplying human needs. My 
 reader, have you sufficiently considered in your 
 practice the higher aspect of prayer? Do you 
 go to God merely for what you can get, or do 
 you go also to pay homage? Is your prayer 
 nothing more than an asking ? or is it a worship ?
 
 106 Hallowed be Thy Name 
 
 And even where petition forms the great burden 
 of the strain, are you careful before you begin, 
 to excite in your heart by every means in your 
 power emotions of reverence and awe towards 
 the great Being before whom you prostrate 
 yourself? 
 
 Secondly, we learn from the circumstance of 
 this petition's standing first, a deeply important 
 lesson as to piety. We are taught by this 
 circumstance that a right apprehension of God's 
 character lies at the root of all true piety, and 
 that where there is a wrong apprehension of 
 that character, there piety is corrupted at its 
 spring. By a law from whose operation none of 
 us can escape, the worshipper becomes uncon- 
 sciously assimilated to the object of his worship. 
 This law has been exemplified a thousand times 
 in the history of false religions. And the ground 
 of it is not difficult to discern. The character 
 of our God will be with all of us the ideal 
 standard of perfection, to which we shall seek 
 (consciously or unconsciously) to conform our- 
 selves. Our views of God cannot but insensibly 
 shape our character and conduct ; in vain shall
 
 Hallowed be Thy Name 107 
 
 we strive to resist the influence of those views, 
 or to establish a religiousness which shall be 
 independent of them ; we might as well strive 
 to withdraw the tides from the constant influence 
 of the moon's attraction. ' All people,' says the 
 Prophet Micah, 'will walk every one in the 
 name of His God ' ; will conduct himself, that is, 
 according to the conceived character of the God 
 with whom he has to do ; ' and we will walk,' 
 adds he, ' in the name of the Lord our God for 
 ever and ever.' 
 
 Now this holy resolution of God's people finds 
 itself embodied in the opening of their daily 
 prayer. For they are instructed to pray before 
 all things else that God's name may be hallowed 
 in their hearts, and in the hearts of all around 
 them. Because indeed everything will go well 
 in the spiritual life, where this hallowing takes 
 place ; every thing as infallibly will go ill, where 
 the name of God is degraded, thought lightly 
 of, regarded with slavish terror, or with pre- 
 sumption, or with indifference. 
 
 One of the best tests then of personal piety 
 which can be applied to ourselves, a better and
 
 io8 Hallowed be Thy Name 
 
 more stringent test by far than any amount 
 of religious exercise or devout observance, is 
 wrapped up in the question, ' What think ye of 
 God ? ' Is God merely a law of Nature with you 
 (He is practically so to many), the influence which 
 keeps the system of the universe at work, but 
 having no free-will, manifesting no spontaneous 
 emotion, no moral choice God stripped of that 
 which constitutes the nobility of man individual 
 personality ? Is there an element of the divine 
 in everything, as some prate, in flowers, in stars, 
 in sunsets, in landscapes, in clouds, in the sea, 
 in men, in natural affection, in natural intellect, 
 in natural enthusiasm, in a mother's love, in a 
 nation's patriotism and beyond the beautiful in 
 all these things, is there no God ? In short, is 
 God merely the charm of Nature, diffused sub- 
 tilly through the whole of it, but having, inde- 
 pendently of Nature, neither a local habitation 
 nor a name ? This is not the God of the Lord's 
 Prayer, for whose name we pray that it may 
 be hallowed, kept i. e. in distinctness and vene- 
 ration, above every name that is named. This 
 is a God inseparably mixed up with the creature,
 
 log 
 
 and having no distinct existence an idolater's 
 God. Or do you think of God as upon the 
 whole liable to be lax in His judgement upon 
 sin, as threatening it with frightful punishments 
 which He has too much clemency to inflict, 
 as readily tolerating in us all certain stains and 
 specks of sin, so long as they are not very black 
 and very flagrant? Is He one who will readily 
 accept us, if we are only on a par with our 
 neighbours in point of moral and religious at- 
 tainment? This again is not the God of the 
 Lord's Prayer, for whose name we pray that 
 it may be hallowed deeply venerated in men's 
 hearts, held to be of stainless purity, and eter- 
 nally exempt from all complicity with sin. Or, 
 again, do you entertain a severe notion of God ? 
 Is His service thought of as a series of irksome 
 restrictions, 'touch not, taste not, handle not'? 
 Do we dread a close contact with Him, desire 
 to keep Him at arm's length, turn our backs 
 upon that ordinance in which He comes into 
 the most immediate neighbourhood with us? 
 Alas ! this is not the God of the Lord's Prayer, 
 whose name is ' Our Father which art in
 
 no Hallowed be Thy Name 
 
 heaven,' and the hallowing of whose name 
 principally stands in the conception of Him as 
 abounding in parental love. 
 
 But in order to give a further point and defi- 
 niteness to this test, let us change the form of 
 the question, and, since Christ is the image of 
 the invisible God, let us ask in the very words 
 of the Saviour, ' What think ye of Christ ? ' 
 We can all form a sufficient idea of His character 
 and deportment, of His ways and words, as 
 reported by the holy Evangelists. We read 
 of His infinite condescension to the humblest, 
 of His deep sympathy with the afflicted, of His 
 patient sweetness with the perverse, of His plain 
 dealing with all consciences, of His withering 
 denunciations of hypocrites, of His lofty stan- 
 dard of precept, far above the moral require- 
 ments of the Mosaic Law the standard of 
 absolute purity and invincible love. Well, 
 is this attractive to us? should we have been 
 drawn by it into the charmed circle of His 
 followers, not, as Judas was drawn, by the 
 prospect of an earthly kingdom in which 
 He would make us sharers? or rather, as we
 
 Hallowed be Thy Name in 
 
 may believe Peter, and John, and Mary, and 
 Martha, were all more or less drawn by the 
 strange fascination of His character, the un- 
 earthly beauty of His way of life ? Or should 
 we have stood outside with the world of that 
 day, sneering, carping, misrepresenting, reviling? 
 endeavouring as far as in us lay to suppress 
 Him and His work altogether? It is a solemn 
 question for each one of us, and not to be settled 
 hastily. But by it we may ascertain how far 
 we are hallowing God's name. For the charac- 
 ter of Christ is God's character mirrored in 
 humanity. And therefore to venerate Christ pro- 
 foundly, and to feel in truth and sincerity the 
 full attractiveness and power of His character, 
 is to hallow God's character and render to Him 
 the homage which is His due. 
 
 But, lastly, we learn from the position of the 
 petition before us a lesson as to the supreme 
 object of human desire and human endeavour. 
 For beyond all doubt the petition which stands 
 first must indicate by its precedence what 
 should be the fondest wish of the human 
 heart. What is prayer but a wish finding utter-
 
 ii2 Hallowed be Thy Name 
 
 ance before God in words? The first prayer 
 therefore which Christ puts into our lips must 
 needs represent what should be our strongest 
 desire. Here then is another test to apply to 
 our consciences ; for what a test are our desires 
 of our moral and spiritual state ! Are they not 
 the test the test by the application of which 
 our moral and spiritual condition may be most 
 readily and most immediately ascertained? We 
 read that 'the Lord appeared to Solomon in 
 a dream by night : and God said, Ask what 
 I shall give thee ' (i Kings iii. 5). The question 
 was designed to be a test of Solomon's character, 
 and of his fitness to meet the heavy responsi- 
 bilities and grapple with the arduous duties 
 which the inheritance of the throne of David 
 brought with it. Solomon, feeling himself to 
 be sadly unfit for these duties and respon- 
 sibilities, asked for the wisdom which might 
 qualify him for his position in other words, 
 which have to our ears a very familiar ring, 
 he asked for grace ' to do his duty in that state 
 of life unto which it had pleased God to call 
 him.' Suppose now the same offer were made
 
 Hallowed be Thy Name 113 
 
 to us as to Solomon, what good thing out of 
 all God's treasury would our hearts, lying 
 naked and open under the eye of God's 
 omniscience, prompt us to choose ? That 
 God's will, whatever it be, should be done 
 in us, by us, upon us would this be the su- 
 preme desire ? Happy man, or woman, who 
 can say so sincerely; yet not the happiest! 
 Or would it be that God's influence should be 
 far more widely spread among men, than it is, 
 that the home mission, that the foreign mission 
 should become mighty forces in the world, tend- 
 ing daily more and more to the extension and 
 establishment of God's kingdom ? Twice happy 
 man, or woman, who can say so sincerely; 
 yet not the happiest ! For there is a thing which 
 lies closer to God's heart, closer (if I may 
 venture to say so) to Himself, than either the 
 doing of His will or the coming of His kingdom. 
 And this is His name His character, as dis- 
 tinct from the acts of His will, which result 
 from the working of His character, and as 
 distinct from His empire, which results from 
 the exhibition of His character. His name or 
 
 i
 
 ii4 Hallowed be Thy Name 
 
 character is nearer to Him than either His 
 kingdom or His will, lying, as it does, under- 
 neath both these. And therefore thrice happy 
 is the man, or the woman, who can sincerely 
 say that his supreme wish is that the Lord God 
 should be sanctified in his own heart and in 
 the hearts of all around him regarded as the 
 Heavenly Father, with unreserved confidence 
 and yearning affection, and yet with deepest 
 awe and reverence, as by those angelic wor- 
 shippers who veil their faces and their feet 
 with their wings, as they cry one to another, 
 ' Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God of hosts : 
 the whole earth is full of His glory.'
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 
 
 THY KINGDOM COME 
 
 ONE has heard of the perspective of prophecy. 
 It is a great feature of inspired predictions to 
 have a long perspective. By this we mean that 
 the graver prophecies, and those which are of 
 universal concern, are not fulfilled by one 
 single event, but by a series of events standing 
 in some relation to one another, either as types, 
 or as gradual preparatives of the last and 
 consummating fulfilment. Our Lord's great 
 prophecy on the Mount of Olives, after He had 
 taken His leave of the Temple, is an instance in 
 point. He predicts there two great events, the 
 destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the 
 world. There is a real and close connexion 
 between them, inasmuch as the first was the 
 judgement of the Jewish, and the second will 
 
 I 2
 
 n6 Thy Kingdom Come 
 
 be the judgement of the Christian Church. 
 The two events are seen in perspective, like 
 two mountain ranges in front of a spectator, 
 one rising behind the other, and the eye taking 
 no cognizance of the intermediate tract of space, 
 which may be immense. And accordingly the 
 eye of the Divine speaker glances rapidly from 
 summit to summit ; and now one of these great 
 events seems to be uppermost in His thoughts, 
 and now another. From this characteristic of 
 inspired prophecy comes a mysterious rich- 
 ness in its predictions. It would be meagre 
 and bald in comparison if it were fulfilled 
 by one historical crisis, and did not involve 
 a perspective. 
 
 Now we may speak of a perspective in 
 prayer, as well as of a perspective in prophecy. 
 And the petition before us is an excellent 
 instance (probably the best that could be 
 furnished) of a long perspective in prayer. 
 The final answer to it will never be given until 
 the second Advent arrives, when the Son of 
 God, having put down all rule, and all authority, 
 and power, shall deliver up the kingdom to
 
 Thy Kingdom Come 117 
 
 God, even the Father, that God may be all in 
 all. For it is emphatically God's kingdom for 
 the coming of which Christ here instructs us to 
 pray. But there are, and will be, many previous 
 answers, all conducing towards this ultimate 
 consummation. The petition before us is 
 answered by any accession to Christ's media- 
 torial kingdom. It is answered whenever a Jew, 
 a Turk, an infidel, or an heretic, is converted. 
 It is answered again, whenever a merely nominal 
 Christian becomes by God's grace a real one. 
 It is answered, again, whenever a real Christian 
 makes a new spiritual attainment, grows in 
 grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and 
 Saviour Jesus Christ. 
 
 Or, to use the very words in which we teach 
 our catechumens, not to be despised, but rather 
 to be valued, on account of their utter simplicity: 
 ' When we say " Thy kingdom come," we pray, 
 first, that all who are not at present Christians 
 may become so ; secondly, that all bad 
 Christians may become good ones ; thirdly, that 
 all good Christians may become better ones ; 
 and, lastly, that the Lord would come again to
 
 n8 Thy Kingdom Come 
 
 receive all good Christians unto Himself.' This 
 petition then is being fulfilled continually all 
 over the world. But it will not receive its final 
 fulfilment till the end of time. 
 
 There is a kingdom of God which cannot be 
 advanced by human efforts and human prayers ; 
 a kingdom which is at present fully established 
 among us, which is here and needs not to come ; 
 a kingdom at which we glance in the doxology 
 annexed to this prayer, when we say, ' Thine is 
 the kingdom.' God's kingdom of providence 
 ruleth everywhere even now ; and we are all, 
 voluntarily or involuntarily, consciously or un- 
 consciously, the subjects of it. All events, 
 however adverse they seem to the Divine plans, 
 all actions of men, however perversely intended 
 by their agents, fall immediately under the 
 control of Him who is Light and Love, and are 
 made subordinate to the great ends of His 
 administration. Great is the comfort to a godly 
 mind of knowing that the kingdom of Divine 
 Providence has the supreme control of all 
 events ; and that its great and inviolable law is 
 this: 'All things work together for good to
 
 Thy Kingdom Come 119 
 
 them that love God, to them who are the called 
 according to His purpose.' 
 
 But we are now in search of some kingdom 
 of God which is capable of being advanced 
 by human prayer and human effort. The 
 first petition of the Lord's Prayer is on 
 behalf of God's holy character of Himself; 
 ' Hallowed be Thy name.' In offering that 
 first petition, we view God as He is in Himself, 
 in the intrinsic excellence and beauty of His 
 Divine nature. But in the second petition we 
 view Him in His relation to His creatures, for 
 we speak of His kingdom. Now a kingdom 
 must have subjects ; the correlative idea to that 
 of a king is a subject. And looking once again 
 at the petition, we find in it a further implication. 
 It appears that the King, whom we are address- 
 ing, must have disobedient and disloyal subjects. 
 For if this were not so, what could be the 
 meaning of a petition that His kingdom might 
 coined How could there be any advance in 
 allegiance to Him, if allegiance be universally 
 and perfectly paid at present? And yet if God 
 is indeed almighty, as we believe, how can
 
 120 Thy Kingdom Come 
 
 any creature exist who is not subject to His 
 sway? Here, then, is for the first time 
 developed the great mystery of man's freewill. 
 In the prayer that God's kingdom may come it 
 is intimated that there are agencies which 
 oppose and counteract His kingdom, that there 
 are rational creatures who are not, or are but 
 imperfectly, subject to His control. That these 
 rational creatures may be brought to submit to 
 His control or to acknowledge it more entirely, 
 that these opposing agencies may be succes- 
 sively taken out of the way or overruled, this 
 is the first thing we ask for in the petition before 
 us; this it is which must prepare the way for 
 the ultimate consummation. 
 
 But in order to arrive at a clear and metho- 
 dical apprehension of the whole subject, let us 
 place ourselves in the position of those to whom 
 the Prayer was first given, and consider what 
 kind of answer it has received between their 
 time and the present, how far the fulfilment of 
 it has been developed since it was first put into 
 their lips. Our blessed Lord then opened His 
 ministry by taking up the echoes which had
 
 Thy Kingdom Come 121 
 
 died away upon the lips of John the Baptist : 
 ' Repent ye ; for the kingdom of heaven is at 
 hand.' This kingdom of heaven, then, would 
 certainly be the kingdom to which the Apostles 
 would understand Him as referring when He 
 taught them to pray, ' Thy kingdom come.' 
 And being Jews, and intimately acquainted with 
 the Jewish Scriptures, they would as certainly 
 understand this kingdom to be that predicted 
 by the prophet Daniel: 'And in the days of 
 these kings ' (Roman Emperors) ' shall the God 
 of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never 
 be destroyed : nor shall the sovereignty thereof 
 be left to another people, but it shall break in 
 pieces and consume all these kingdoms ; and it 
 shall stand for ever.' They must further have 
 understood our Lord Himself to lay claim to.be 
 King of this kingdom, not in His own right, 
 but as representing God, and being God's 
 delegate and viceroy, as is abundantly clear 
 from the greetings of the whole multitude of the 
 disciples on occasion of the triumphal entry : 
 ' Blessed be the King that cometh in the Name 
 of the Lord : peace in heaven, and glory in the
 
 T22 Thy Kingdom Come 
 
 highest.' This kingdom seems to have been 
 the one great subject in which our Lord 
 instructed them. He copiously illustrated its 
 rise and progress by His parables; He pointed 
 to His miracles of exorcism as indicating that 
 the kingdom of God had come upon (overtaken) 
 the men of that generation ; even in the forty 
 days which intervened between the Resurrection 
 and the Ascension, this was His constant topic 
 of discourse : ' He spake of the things pertaining 
 to the kingdom of God.' Even so late as 
 that, their views of the nature of the kingdom 
 were dark, carnal, and erroneous ; they thought 
 of it mainly as the restoration to the chosen 
 people, under a brighter and more beautiful 
 form, of the monarchy of David, which had 
 been so long in abeyance. But ten days after 
 the Ascension, the kingdom came with power, 
 and brought with it its own interpretation of its 
 nature and prerogatives. The Apostles after 
 Pentecost perceived the kingdom of God to be 
 spiritual, while they perceived it also to involve 
 a certain visible organization, into which men 
 were to be brought, quite independently of
 
 Thy Kingdom Come 123 
 
 blood or extraction. They went forth on their 
 different missions to bring men within the 
 kingdom, by heralding to them God's message 
 respecting the Son of His Love. And when 
 the inspired chronicler of the acts of the Apostles 
 ha? brought St. Paul (who was born out of 
 due season into the glorious company of the 
 Apostles) to Rome, the centre of civilization, 
 and the then metropolis of the world, he leaves 
 him there with this pregnant notice of the testi- 
 mony which he bore : ' Paul dwelt two whole 
 years in his own hired house, and received all 
 that came in unto him, preaching the kingdom 
 of God.' And since Paul and the other inspired 
 men fell asleep, the kingdom of God, realizing 
 the similitude of a grain of mustard seed to 
 which its King compared it, has gone on 
 expanding and shooting forth its branches, 
 until, if not a numerical majority of the human 
 race, at all events all the more civilized and 
 influential portion of it has become Christian by 
 profession. One might have anticipated for this 
 kingdom founded by the Son of God and 
 seconded by His Spirit a triumphant career,
 
 124 Thy Kingdom Come 
 
 unchecked by any drawbacks, and unqualified 
 by any reverses. But natural as these anticipa- 
 tions might have been on mere grounds of 
 reason, they would have been wholly opposed 
 to prophecy. The King of the kingdom, and 
 those under Him who founded it, predicted 
 most explicitly for it a dark, rather than a bright 
 future. According to the parable of the sower, 
 the word of the kingdom was only to thrive 
 in one out of every four hearts on which it 
 was thrown. So the tares sown by the great 
 Enemy of mankind were to spring up side by 
 side with the wheat in the field of the kingdom. 
 The net of the kingdom was to enclose fish of 
 every kind, both good and bad. A mystery of 
 iniquity was already in St. Paul's time working in 
 the Church, which was to develop itself in awful 
 dimensions, when a certain mysterious hindrance 
 was withdrawn, waxing into a great apostasy 
 and rising to a head in the appearance of one 
 who is designated as ' that man of sin, the son 
 of perdition ' (2 Thess. ii. 3). St. Peter warned 
 the Church with failing breath that in the latter 
 days there should be 'scoffers, walking after
 
 Thy Kingdom Come 125 
 
 their own lusts/ and ' false teachers, who privily 
 should bring in damnable heresies; even denying 
 the Lord that bought them ' (2 Pet. ii. i ; iii. 3). 
 The aged St. John reminded his disciples that 
 Antichrist should come ; and that the pledge of 
 his coming was to be found in the fact that his 
 spirit was even then abroad in the world, and 
 that there were many subordinate and pre- 
 liminary antichrists, who partook of that spirit 
 (i John iv. 3). So that the picture which both 
 our Lord and His Apostles drew beforehand of 
 the future of the kingdom of God comprised two 
 great features rapid spread and deep corruption. 
 Both features have been constantly and faith- 
 fully exhibited in the history of the Church, and 
 are now under our eyes. On the one hand, the 
 countries which stand in the van of civilization, 
 and represent the chief intellect of mankind, are 
 nominally Christian. The spires and domes of 
 Christian churches form the most characteristic 
 feature of the greatest cities in the world. The 
 greatest sovereigns in the world have taken 
 such titles as ' Defender of the Faith ' and 
 ' Most Christian King.' But if the outward
 
 i26 Thy Kingdom Come 
 
 spread of God's kingdom has been great, 
 equally great has been the spread of the 
 gangrene of corruption. What a frightful 
 departure from the first principles of the Gospel 
 is manifest and patent on the surface of 
 Christendom! How is the one fold of Christ, 
 whose unity He made the special subject of His 
 dying intercession, broken up and parted off 
 into hundreds of folds ! Anti-scriptural doc- 
 trines and superstitious practices, worthy only 
 of Paganism, are still fostered in some com- 
 munions; while our own Church, like Rebecca 
 with the children striving within her, is dis- 
 tracted by errors, on one side Roman, on 
 another Puritan, on another Rationalistic. This 
 glance at the Church's history up to this time 
 gives a very definite meaning to the petition, 
 ' Thy kingdom come.' On the one hand, we 
 pray for the rapid spread of the kingdom, by 
 means of all those agencies, preaching, missions, 
 schools, religious literature, which are instru- 
 mental to this end. On the other, we pray 
 no less for the removal of everything which 
 obstructs the development of the kingdom in
 
 Thy Kingdom Come 127 
 
 righteousness ; for the extinction of heresies ; 
 the suppression of scandals ; the reconciliation 
 of schisms ; the exhibition by professing 
 Christians of a holy example ; the agreement of 
 all those who confess God's holy name in the 
 truth of His holy Word. 
 
 And let us offer this prayer hopefully and 
 sanguinely, looking forward with assurance to 
 its ultimate fulfilment. Let us be nothing dis- 
 mayed by the evils and errors which abound. 
 Let us consider, first, how certain it is that 
 He who originally founded the kingdom in so 
 marvellous a way, by the instrumentality of 
 twelve Galilaean fishermen, and without the 
 aid of arms, eloquence, or power, will surely 
 never suffer so grand and glorious a commence- 
 ment to be abortive, will rather (as at any instant 
 He might) send a second Pentecost, or raise 
 up a second St. Paul. Secondly, let us note 
 that the large admixture of evil with good 
 seems in this fallen world to be a necessary 
 condition of progress ; so that the vices, errors, 
 and schisms, which so disfigure modern Chris- 
 tianity, may after all indicate a real and deep
 
 128 Thy Kingdom Come 
 
 movement of grace in the heart of individuals, 
 and among the masses, which Satan is thus 
 endeavouring to counteract. Lastly, we may 
 take great comfort and gather new hope from 
 remembering that ' the kingdom of God cometh 
 not with observation ' ; that as to its essence, 
 it consists in nothing outward, but in a certain 
 character and frame of mind, being 'not meat 
 and drink, but righteousness, and peace, and 
 joy in the Holy Ghost'; and that therefore its 
 real progress is unnoticed, while the things 
 which obstruct its development meet the eye 
 and strike upon the ear. The work of grace, 
 by which the kingdom is advanced, is an 
 underground process. Its seat is the con- 
 science which is gradually enlightened, the 
 will which is gradually drawn up into com- 
 pliance with God's will, the heart which is 
 only gradually and by successive disciplines 
 of Providence weaned from things of earth. 
 Who ever imagined that the seed was killed, 
 because a hard winter encrusted every bough 
 with icicles, and covered the ground with 
 a mantle of snow? The seed is bursting
 
 Thy Kingdom Come 129 
 
 during this inclement season, and disentangling 
 its germ ; but the process goes on beneath the 
 soil. By-and-by the tender sprout will rise 
 above the surface; and then will follow the 
 bud, and then the blossom in its season. The 
 ripened fruit is the full and visible result ; 
 but it is a result which has been prepared by 
 tedious and hidden agencies. God's kingdom 
 of glory, when it arrives, will be a full and 
 visible result. But it will have been brought 
 about 'without observation,' hiddenly and gradu- 
 ally in the deep ground of the heart. 
 
 We now turn to trace the bearings of our 
 subject on Christian practice. 
 
 And first as to the kingdom of grace, 
 whose progress we profess to desire in this 
 petition. How does such a petition match with 
 our lives? How far do our actions betoken 
 any sincerity in offering it? God's kingdom 
 is to be advanced not by our prayers only, 
 but by our efforts in combination with our 
 prayers. Then what efforts are we making 
 for its advancement ? What are we doing for 
 Christian missions to the heathen abroad? 
 
 K
 
 130 Thy Kingdom Come 
 
 I fear that in the great majority of cases, while 
 this petition is recited punctually at least twice 
 every - day, the corresponding effort to assist 
 foreign missions is not made regularly and 
 systematically at all, in short is never made, 
 except when the subject is brought before 
 us by the annual sermon. And in other 
 cases, where the yearly guinea, the loss of 
 which is never felt, is duly given, and so 
 the duty recognized, is it given with any 
 amount of sympathy or interest in the cause ? 
 Do we care at all how God's work is pro- 
 gressing among the heathen ? Have we ever 
 taken the pains to inform ourselves about its 
 progress ? 
 
 But there are heathens in our own country, 
 who, it will be admitted on all hands, have 
 a prior claim upon us souls numbered by 
 thousands in our large towns, the refuse of 
 our high civilization, who from one year's end 
 to another never attend a place of public 
 worship, who know not whether they have 
 ever been baptized, whose whole notions on 
 religious subjects, if they were not in a high
 
 Thy Kingdom Come 131 
 
 degree painful and shocking, would be in 
 a high degree grotesque. Many efforts are 
 being made to bring in these multitudes into 
 the kingdom. Do we feel, and do we evince, any 
 sympathy with these efforts ? Do we aid them 
 according to our abilities and opportunities? 
 
 If in examining our hearts narrowly, we 
 find at the bottom of them very little interest 
 and sympathy with the Christianization of 
 others, whether at home or abroad, what 
 a hollow mockery is it to recite before God 
 several times a day a prayer, whose very 
 structure and purport implies that we desire 
 before daily bread before meat and drink and 
 raiment the extension of His kingdom upon 
 earth. False pretences are too common in all 
 our prayers. But in no other prayer is so 
 much false pretence liable to be habitually 
 made as in the Lord's Prayer; first because 
 the standard of piety supposed in the petitioner 
 is so high, and secondly because the use of the 
 prayer is so universal. On the lips of the 
 majority of Christians this holy and beautiful 
 form is merely lip-service. Even in days like 
 K 2
 
 132 Thy Kingdom Come 
 
 these, when religious education is so widely 
 spread, the vast majority of Christians in recit- 
 ing it never realize what it implies ; or they 
 would shrink from the notion of offering to the 
 heart-searching God a petition the insincerity 
 of which, as preferred by them, He must 
 immediately detect. 
 
 But it is in respect of the ulterior meaning 
 of the words, ' Thy kingdom come/ that the 
 insincerity, with which they are so frequently 
 uttered, assumes its most awful aspect. For, 
 as we have seen, the consummation for which 
 we here pray, the great event which is the 
 point of sight in the long perspective of the 
 kingdom of grace, to which every line of that 
 kingdom converges, is the second Advent of 
 our Lord. The petition is a prayer for the 
 second Advent, as well as for the acceleration 
 of those preparatory processes by which the 
 second Advent is to be brought about. And 
 we present it to God in an expanded form, 
 when, standing over the grave of some dear 
 relative and friend, we join mentally in the 
 request, ' We beseech Thee that it may please
 
 Thy Kingdom Come 133 
 
 Thee of Thy gracious goodness shortly to 
 accomplish the number of Thine elect, and to 
 hasten Thy kingdom? But if our life be 
 a careless and a worldly one ; if we never 
 make up our spiritual accounts and see how 
 they stand ; if we never turn our eyes upon 
 Christ's judgement-seat, nor prepare ourselves 
 to meet Him when He sits upon it ; if, moreover, 
 we have no heart for that heavenly kingdom 
 of God which His advent will usher in, no 
 relish for that righteousness and peace and 
 joy which will universally prevail in the new 
 heavens and new earth ; if in short there is in 
 us at present no meetness for the kingdom of 
 glory, then the petition to hasten this king- 
 dom is nothing more nor less than calling 
 down judgement upon ourselves, and asking 
 God to shorten the term during which His 
 longsuffering waits to lead us to repentance. 
 Some indeed of the worldly-minded do this 
 from mere thoughtlessness and undesignedly, 
 but there are, alas! others who have more of 
 method and meaning in their madness. The 
 history of many a suicide is this, that a man's
 
 134 Thy Kingdom Come 
 
 worldly prospects being broken, his fortunes, 
 his character, or his constitution (or perhaps 
 all three) having received a fatal blight, 
 a heathenish sentiment comes flitting across 
 his mind that in the grave peace and exemp- 
 tion from cares and suffering may be found, 
 independently altogether of character and con- 
 duct here below. And so he rushes upon 
 death prematurely, forestalling to himself by 
 his own wilful and wicked action the coming 
 of the kingdom. And what is the kingdom 
 to him, when it does come ? Alas ! an infinitely 
 more dreadful evil than any of which while 
 living he had experience. Where he fancied 
 he should find a haven of refuge, he finds 
 a stormy sea of wrath and the shipwreck of 
 his soul. What he hoped would prove a home 
 to him proves in fact the condition of an out- 
 cast ; as it was said of old by the prophet 
 Amos, with a very lively and striking imagery : 
 ( Woe unto you that desire the day of the 
 Lord ! to what end is it for you ? the day 
 of the Lord is darkness, and not light. As 
 if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met
 
 Thy Kingdom Come 135 
 
 him ; or went into his house, and leaned his 
 hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him.' 
 
 Then let us never dare to make such a prayer 
 as this without seeking in penitence something 
 of that righteousness and peace and joy in the 
 Holy Ghost which constitute the meetness 
 for the inheritance of the saints in light. Let 
 us have humble but sure ground for thinking 
 that God's kingdom, should it come to us 
 to-night, would indeed bring to us exemption 
 from all sorrows, and wipe away all tears 
 from our faces. So and so only, we shall be 
 in harmony with God's whole universe. For 
 it is for this blessed consummation that all the 
 creatures, and we may be sure the spirits of 
 the righteous dead, yearn and long, even as it 
 is written : ' The earnest expectation of the 
 creature waiteth for the manifestation of the 
 sons of God. For the creature was made 
 subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason 
 of Him who hath subjected the same in hope ; 
 because the creature itself also shall be 
 delivered from the bondage of corruption into 
 the glorious liberty of the children of God.
 
 136 Thy Kingdom Come 
 
 For we know that the whole creation groaneth 
 and travaileth in pain together until now. And 
 not only they, but ourselves also, which have 
 the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves 
 groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, 
 to wit, the redemption of our body.'
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THY WILL BE DONE 
 
 IN most of the subjects of human knowledge 
 the rudiments may be dispensed with as soon 
 as the subject has been thoroughly mastered. 
 Grammars and exercise books may be thrown 
 away when a language has been duly acquired ; 
 and the man who can read fluently never turns 
 again to his alphabet or spelling-book. But it is 
 otherwise in theology, which is the highest study 
 of all, and the highest subject of knowledge. 
 Here the rudiments, in which children are in- 
 structed, contain the deepest parts of the science ; 
 and however advanced a Christian may be in the 
 knowledge of God's Word, and in experimental 
 acquaintance with Divine truth, he will always 
 return with pleasure and profit to the Lord's 
 Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments ;
 
 138 Thy Will be Done 
 
 especially to the first of these, and find there 
 new treasures of edification, and new depths 
 which he has not yet explored. The structure 
 of other sciences resembles that of a house, 
 which is built by placing the materials in succes- 
 sive layers one upon another. The Divine 
 science of theology, on the other hand, is like 
 a seed, which contains in itself the germ of the 
 flower. Learning in the one case is only an 
 agglomeration of fresh materials to those already 
 laid; learning in the other case is the ex- 
 pansion and development of old and well- 
 known truths. 
 
 The petitioner has just sent up to heaven 
 sighs and prayers that the kingdom of God 
 may come, that is, for the arrival of the kingdom 
 of glory by the extension and acceleration of 
 the kingdom of grace. Now he bethinks 
 himself that he must add active endeavours to 
 his adoration and his aspirations, according to 
 that word of the Divine Master, ' Not every one 
 that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into 
 the kingdom of heaven ; but he that doeth the 
 will of My Father which is in heaven.'
 
 Thy Will be Done 139 
 
 We have been hitherto like the Apostles at 
 the Ascension, looking wistfully upwards into 
 heaven and adoring our ascended Lord ; but 
 now we seem to hear the trumpet-tones of the 
 two men in white garments, suggesting His 
 return as the necessary goal of their thoughts 
 and expectations and energies: 'Ye men of 
 Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven ? 
 This same Jesus, who is taken up from you into 
 heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye 
 have seen Him go into heaven.' 
 
 ' Thy will be done.' Let us endeavour to see 
 what view of God is now introduced into the 
 Prayer. In the first petition we regarded God 
 as having a name or character ; ' Hallowed be 
 Thy name/ In the second we regarded Him 
 as having subjects who might, or might not, 
 do allegiance to Him and be obedient to His 
 sceptre. In the third we regard Him as having 
 a will of His own ; 'Thy will be done.' 
 
 Here then is brought prominently forward 
 what of course has been previously implied 
 nay, what is implied in the mere fact of prayer 
 at all the doctrine of God's personalit} 7 . In
 
 140 Thy Will be Done 
 
 speaking of God's kingdom, and looking around 
 us on the realm of Nature, we might imagine 
 perchance that we are under the empire of pure 
 law. For what we see in Nature is a number 
 of laws, working ruthlessly on with mechanical 
 precision, never turning aside for an instant, 
 nor altering their course for friend or foe. And 
 it is easy to imagine for indeed the pantheist 
 does imagine that we are in the hand of law ; 
 that God, or the ruling power in Nature, is a law 
 or a series of laws an influence which is ever 
 manifesting itself in different forms in the various 
 phenomena of the universe, and which is not 
 even conscious of itself. God, according to the 
 pantheist, is that subtle, impalpable, universal 
 life, which blooms in the flower, which glows in 
 the star, which sparkles on the face of the sunlit 
 deep, which imagines in the poet, which argues 
 in the orator, which aspires in the devout. 
 
 To say that these various manifestations of 
 life in Nature are from God and that they are 
 sustained by His power is of course true ; for ' in 
 Him we live, and move, and have our being.' 
 
 But to confound them with Him, and to turn
 
 Thy Will be Done 141 
 
 universal Nature into God, is to become an 
 idolater. All such fooleries of sentiment are 
 swept away at once by the assertion that God 
 has a will. A will is that which characterizes 
 a person. A mere influence has no will. A law, 
 which unconsciously works itself out, and which 
 has no choice but to work itself out, has no will. 
 But we acknowledge in this Prayer that God 
 has a will ; and we pray that His will may have 
 place or take effect. God therefore is a Person, 
 and we are to think of Him as such. 
 
 But what is meant, in strictness of speech, by 
 a will ? Will is the faculty of rational choice. 
 The lower animals have the semblance of will, 
 inasmuch as in their natural state they are free 
 to go hither and thither, free to eat, drink, and 
 sleep, or to refrain from these actions ; but this 
 is not rational choice, because in what they do, 
 or refrain from doing, they are simply actuated 
 by the impulse of the moment. If they were 
 capable (as to all appearance they are not) of 
 preferring a future good to a present gratifica- 
 tion, and of acting accordingly, they would be 
 possessed of will ; for in this case, from being
 
 142 Thy Will be Done 
 
 merely appetitive, their choice would become 
 rational. In order to make a choice rational, 
 there must be foresight and power of fore- 
 casting in the person making the choice, and also 
 the moral faculty of discriminating right from 
 wrong. 
 
 Now this definition will forward our subject 
 considerably. For we are now considering 
 God's will ; and what has been said leads us 
 naturally to observe upon the great distinction 
 between will as it is in God, and will as it is in 
 fallen man. What is called will in man is often- 
 times nothing better than caprice. It is not 
 rational or moral choice, although exercised by 
 a creature having the faculty of rational or moral 
 choice. It is a mere whim, of which no account, 
 or no reasonable account, can be given. Our 
 attraction to one man more than another, our 
 preference of one man over another, is often 
 due to no other assignable cause than fancy. 
 But this is an infirmity of the will a manifest 
 defect, which we must not for an instant imagine 
 to exist in the all-perfect and blessed God. 
 Hooker somewhere calls attention to the circum-
 
 Thy Will be Done 143 
 
 stance that even when the Apostle Paul is 
 speaking of God's predestination, he guards 
 against being supposed to imply that in this 
 mysterious procedure God acts arbitrarily and 
 without grounds in reason. ' Being predestinated 
 according to the purpose of Him who worketh 
 all things/ (not after His own will, but) 'after 
 the counsel of His own will.' So that even in 
 that act of God which might seem arbitrary, 
 because we cannot fathom the reason of it, there 
 yet is a reason, a deep counsel, a wise thought. 
 God forbid that we should think (for such a 
 thought really entertained would poison the 
 fountain of piety) that in His acceptance of one 
 man and rejection of another He is actuated by 
 caprice; although indeed some people do not 
 hesitate to imply this, when they prate about 
 God's sovereignty. 
 
 One more remark must be made upon this 
 petition, before leaving the speculative part of 
 the subject. The Lord's Prayer being a fabric 
 wonderfully joined together and compacted by 
 that which every joint supplieth, we shall in 
 vain seek to understand it, we shall certainly go
 
 144 Thy Will be Done 
 
 astray in it, unless we take into account the 
 relation which its several parts bear to one 
 another. The first petition, ' Hallowed be Thy 
 name,' is not accidentally the first ; it is the 
 keynote which pervades and dominates the 
 strain. It gives a character to the whole Prayer; 
 it throws a colour on to the succeeding petitions. 
 Thus with ' Thy kingdom come/ What sort 
 of kingdom is God's ? Men have set up king- 
 doms and empires many, and have brought 
 people into them by force. Such was Caesar's 
 kingdom. If provinces were rebellious or dis- 
 contented, a conquering legion swept over them, 
 and the rebellion or the murmur subsided in the 
 awful Pax Romana. Is God's kingdom of this 
 sort? or is this the way in which it is to be 
 made to come or maintained afterwards. As- 
 suredly not. Where is the keynote which is 
 to rule the melody of the prayer ? Here it is ; 
 ' Hallowed be Thy name ; ' may Thy character, 
 O God, be universally acknowledged and have 
 universal homage paid to it! But what is God's 
 true character ? We will learn it from His own 
 Word. There we find two brief but pregnant
 
 Thy Will be Done 145 
 
 oracles to this effect ; ' God is light ' and ' God 
 is love.' ' Light/ that is, if I may so say, the 
 great complex of the intellectual attributes ; love, 
 that is the great complex of His moral attributes. 
 Well then, I am to understand God's kingdom 
 as being a kingdom in accordance with His 
 character, a kingdom of light and a kingdom 
 of love. And if it be a kingdom of light and 
 love, it cannot come or be established by 
 physical force; its coming must be in the con- 
 victions of the conscience, in the dawning of 
 truth upon the mind, in the wider diffusion 
 of a practical and experimental knowledge of 
 God, and of holy tempers flowing from that 
 experimental knowledge. The kingdom is to 
 be interpreted by the name of Him whose 
 kingdom it is. And so with regard to the will. 
 Here too the petition is to take its interpretation 
 from what went before. If ' Thy will be done ' 
 were an isolated petition ; if it grew not naturally 
 out of what precedes it in the prayer ; we might 
 imagine that God's will was an arbitrary one, 
 subject to infirmities of caprice and partiality 
 like our own. But observe that God's will must 
 
 L
 
 146 Thy Will be Done 
 
 be in accordance with His name, which is light 
 and love. As the kingdom of One whose 
 name is light and love cannot possibly be a 
 kingdom of physical force, must be a kingdom 
 of intelligence and sympathy, standing on the 
 convictions and affections of men ; so the 
 will of One whose name is light and love 
 cannot possibly be a groundless, arbitrary, 
 partial, or exclusive will must be grounded 
 in wise counsel, however hidden from us 
 that counsel may be; and must intend good, 
 the highest good, and nothing but good, to the 
 whole race of man and to each individual 
 member of it. 
 
 And now, by way of resolving our petition 
 into its main ideas, we will take, as we did before, 
 the words in which our catechumens are taught, 
 and say that the will of God, for which we here 
 pray that it may take place or have effect, is (so 
 far as we are interested in it) either a will con- 
 cerning us, or a will within us, or a will to be 
 executed by us. According as we view the 
 petition in these several aspects, it will be either 
 the voice of resignation, ' Thy will be done in
 
 Thy Will be Done 147 
 
 what befalls me ' ; or the voice of dependence, 
 ' Work in me, O God, both to will and to do 
 of Thy good pleasure ' ; or the voice of holy 
 energy, ' Make me Thy instrument for the ful- 
 filment of Thy will.' 
 
 First, the voice of resignation. There is in 
 all of us a lower will, a will of the flesh, which 
 shrinks from pain and suffering. This will is 
 not sinful; nor does it betoken a sinful nature. 
 Christians need sometimes to be warned of this. 
 They imagine that great sensibility to suffering, 
 to bereavement, for instance, or bodily pain, or 
 to the prospect of parting from friends, is incom- 
 patible with any high spiritual attainment. But 
 this is a great mistake, against which Holy 
 Scripture seems to enter its protest, when it 
 says, ' No chastening for the present seemeth to 
 be joyous, but grievous.' If it seemed to be 
 joyous, or if it seemed to be anything but 
 grievous, it would cease to be chastisement, and 
 would fail to do the work of chastisement. The 
 Stoics' mode of meeting trial was to freeze the 
 heart, by considerations of reason, into insen- 
 sibility, just as you may make the body callous 
 L 2
 
 148 Thy Will be Done 
 
 by the application of ice. The Christian way of 
 meeting it has always been, in imitation of the 
 Master, to allow full play to the sensibilities, 
 never to cramp the mind into the unnatural 
 acknowledgment that pain is not painful, and 
 at the same time to recognize in our heavenly 
 Father a wiser and more loving will than our 
 own, which ' makes all things work together for 
 good to them that love Him.' 
 
 The Master in the garden showed Himself 
 to be full of the acutest sensibility ; His 
 whole soul throbbed with pain, and recoiled 
 with horror at the presentation to Him of the 
 cup. ' Father, if it be possible/ He cried, as 
 the great blood-drops of the agony chased one 
 another down His gentle and majestic counte- 
 nance, 'let this cup pass from Me.' But in 
 the might of prayer, the higher will, the will 
 of Christ's spirit, wrestled with and gained 
 the mastery over the will of the flesh, which 
 recoiled from suffering ; and the second strong 
 cry is thus worded (the difference is most 
 instructive) : ' O My Father, if this cup may 
 not pass away from Me ' (consistently, that is,
 
 Thy Will be Done 149 
 
 with the great end of Thy glory and man's 
 redemption) 'except I drink it, Thy will be 
 done.' Here the Lord struck the keynote of 
 Christian resignation for all His disciples to 
 the end of time. ' I shrink from and deprecate 
 trial. Nevertheless, if there be in the wise and 
 loving counsels of My Heavenly Father 
 a necessity for it, a design of grace towards 
 Me or Mine, which cannot under the present 
 economy and constitution of things be effec- 
 tuated without it, then let it come to pass ; 
 I am willing that God should do what He 
 wills with Me and upon Me.' Comfort, and 
 cheerful, joyful acquiescence are found in the 
 thought that God's will is the will of One 
 whose name is light and love combined. 
 Thinking of God merely as love, one might 
 find a difficulty in some very stern and afflictive 
 dispensation, which seems to yield no good 
 result, but rather to sour the subjects of it, 
 and to give others occasion to say, ' What 
 profit is it to serve God?' But in these cases 
 we turn with assurance to the sister statement 
 that 'God is light.' We do not (and cannot)
 
 150 Thy IV ill be Done 
 
 know all the circumstances of the case. We 
 have no foresight into the future, no insight 
 into the heart, no general survey of the 
 marvellous and subtle links by which events 
 are concatenated. If we had this, no doubt 
 the God of love would be justified even to 
 our eyes in His doing, and clear when He is 
 judged. A father who, belated in the snow on 
 a wintry night, should, without listening to their 
 screams of fright, bury the bodies of his children 
 in the snow, might not seem at first sight to 
 be acting affectionately, and the children might 
 struggle and cry, and imagine their father was 
 murdering them. But this is only because 
 the children are not aware that the snow 
 acts as a warm mantle, and really cherishes 
 the vital warmth in plants and animals which 
 burrow in it. Had they this knowledge, the 
 kindness of the father's action would be vin- 
 dicated. 
 
 Secondly, the voice of dependence. ' This is 
 the will of God,' says St. Paul, ' even your 
 sanctification.' Now in sanctification there is 
 a twofold element, passive and active, which
 
 Thy Will be Done 151 
 
 must be carefully kept in view, if we would 
 embrace the whole truth. In one respect we 
 are recipients in sanctification ; in another we 
 are agents. In order to the doing of a good 
 action, or even to the thinking of a good 
 thought, the preventing influence of the Holy 
 Ghost must visit us, and the assisting influence 
 of the same Spirit must work with us to pro- 
 duce the effect. Observe that we are so 
 dependent upon God at every stage, that 
 preventing, without assisting, grace is not suffi- 
 cient. If only preventing grace is granted, 
 there will be failure in the issue, just as when 
 a potter's design is frustrated by his work 
 being marred upon the wheel, and he throws 
 aside as rubbish the mis-shapen vessel. By 
 the grace of his Master preventing him, St. Peter 
 walked for a few steps upon the water, but 
 because that preventive grace did not assist 
 him further, because he allowed unbelief to 
 fill him with terror, so that he lost the assist- 
 ing grace, he failed in the issue. When we 
 pray, then, that God's will may be done in us, 
 we ask to be made partakers of the preventing
 
 152 Thy Will be Done 
 
 and assisting influences of the Holy Spirit, 
 whereby alone our sanctification, which is God's 
 will in us, can be wrought. And here again 
 we recognize that the will of God is in accor- 
 dance with His name or revealed character of 
 light and love. For what is it to be sanctified, 
 but to have the conscience filled with light, and 
 the heart with love, by the grace of the Holy 
 Spirit? A growing perception of the will of 
 God as regards what He would have us to 
 do, a growing appreciation of His perfections, 
 and a growing sympathy with man for God's 
 sake, these are sure signs of a progressive 
 sanctification, which is nothing else than an 
 increase of light and an increase of love. 
 
 But, thirdly, this petition is, in another aspect 
 of it, the voice of holy energy. May ' Thy will be 
 done,' not only concerning us in providence, 
 not only within us in grace, but by us also 
 in the active, hearty co-operation of our wills. 
 These wills are created perfectly free ; and 
 their free unrestrained activity in the way of 
 God's commandments the surrender of "them 
 to Him as His instruments is the last thing
 
 Thy Will be Done 153 
 
 we ask in this petition. We, no less than the 
 Spirit of God, must be agents in our own 
 sanctification. That result is not any how to 
 be attained without the concurrence of our 
 own wills. Speculatively and in theory this 
 is a great and perhaps insoluble mystery; 
 practically it presents no difficulty at all. Some- 
 thing as nearly approaching to it as possible is 
 seen in the natural life of man. Look at the 
 operations of agriculture. Not all the toil- in 
 the world can make a blade of oats grow in 
 the absence of the sun's warmth. If God with- 
 holds warmth, men and oxen may labour all 
 the livelong day, and never raise a harvest. 
 And yet if man neglected to scatter the seed 
 and put his hand to the plough, or should 
 even perform these operations carelessly and 
 out of due season, the harvest would be equally 
 frustrated. The concurrence of man's efforts 
 with God's good blessing is essential in Nature 
 to the production of the effect; and why not 
 also in grace, of which Nature is in all her 
 districts a parable? Then that our wills may 
 yield to God's grace is one cf the things
 
 154 Thy Will be Done 
 
 solicited in the petition before us. And alas! 
 who is there among us who, in this aspect of 
 the petition, offers it with entire sincerity? 
 How many good movements and instigations 
 are constantly being made in our hearts by 
 God's Spirit, and to how few of them do we 
 respond with the whole energy of our wills! 
 How little careful are we to turn to practical 
 account on weekdays the good impressions we 
 receive in God's house on Sundays! How 
 thoroughly contented are we that a good im- 
 pression should terminate upon itself! How 
 do we welcome it with complacency as a favour- 
 able omen of our spiritual state, but never make 
 an effort to bring it to good effect in our con- 
 duct ! And this partly from pure indolence and 
 that natural paralysis of the will which makes 
 any exertion irksome ; partly because, from the 
 corruption of our nature, the active performance 
 of God's will involves so very frequently the 
 abnegation and thwarting of our own ! ' If any 
 man will come after Me/ says Christ, (literally 
 ' willeth to come after Me ' ; and observe what 
 the phrase imports), 'if any man willeth to
 
 Thy Will be Done 155 
 
 come after Me,' let him not imagine that this 
 will of the spirit will meet with no opposition 
 or reluctance from the will of the flesh ; on the 
 contrary, let him prepare to encounter this 
 opposition and to stand fast under it, ' let him 
 deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and 
 follow Me' (St. Luke ix. 23). 
 
 God's will be done! What a mockery that 
 this petition should rest so constantly upon 
 our lips, if whenever God's will thwarts ours, 
 we choose ours in preference to His, and thus 
 day after day speeds along without an attempt 
 at self-denial, and while we profess (odious 
 hypocrisy!) to be looking to His Cross for 
 forgiveness, we never dream of taking up our 
 own and bearing it after Him. And yet what 
 inward peace would there be in bearing it! 
 in annihilating our own will, so far as it is at 
 all at variance with God's, and in seeking, with 
 great simplicity and an entire unreservedness, 
 to be and to do all that He would have us to 
 be and to do ! For the corrupt will of man is 
 the source of all the discomposure and fretful- 
 ness which find place in the human heart. It
 
 156 Thy Will be Done 
 
 is the deeply-seated source of sin, and therefore 
 of labour and trouble. 
 
 Alas! how many are there who are more or 
 less willing to acquiesce in God's dispensations, 
 and more than willing, really desirous, to receive 
 the gracious influences of God's Spirit, who 
 have no mind at all to bestir themselves in 
 the putting away of sin, in the correction of 
 faults of character, in the amendment of bad 
 habits, in the cultivation of Christian graces, 
 in the attainment of holiness! To them the 
 answer of God when they say, 'Thy will be 
 done,' is that which He made to Joshua of old : 
 ' Get thee up : wherefore liest thou thus upon 
 thy face? . . . There is an accursed thing in 
 the midst of thee, O Israel : thou canst not 
 stand before thine enemies, until ye take away 
 the accursed thing from among you.' There- 
 fore, Lord, give us grace to take away this 
 accursed thing, our own corrupt will, which 
 lusteth always contrary to Thy will. May each 
 day witness some sacrifice of our will to Thine, 
 so that henceforth we may say 'Thy will be 
 done' with entire sincerity! For there is no
 
 Thy Will be Done 157 
 
 day which brings not with it some opportunity 
 for such a sacrifice. 
 
 ' The trivial round, the common task, 
 Will furnish all we need to ask ; 
 Room to deny ourselves, a road 
 To bring us daily nearer God.'
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 AS IN HEAVEN, SO IN EARTH 
 
 ANCIENT Fathers regarded this clause as 
 qualifying the first three petitions of the Lord's 
 Prayer, and not only the immediately foregoing 
 one ; so that we pray God for the hallowing 
 of His name upon earth as it is hallowed in 
 heaven, and for the coming of His kingdom 
 upon earth as fully and universally as it is at 
 present established in heaven, no less than for 
 the doing of His will here as it is done in heaven 
 above. And it would seem that the compilers 
 of the English Catechism coincided with this 
 view of the applicability of the clause. Their 
 paraphrase of the first part of the Lord's Prayer 
 is as follows : ' I desire my Lord God, our 
 heavenly Father, who is the giver of all good- 
 ness, to send His grace unto me, and to all
 
 As in Heaven, so in Earth 159 
 
 people ; that we may worship Him, serve Him, 
 and obey Him 'as we ought to do.' Here, ' that 
 we may worship Him ' corresponds to ' Hallowed 
 be Thy name'; and 'serve Him' to 'Thy kingdom 
 come ' ; and ' obey Him ' to ' Thy will be done ' ; 
 while the phrase ' as we ought to do ' was no doubt 
 intended to represent 'As in heaven, so in 
 earth.' And ' as we ought to do ' must surely be 
 intended to apply to the worship and service 
 of God, as well as to the obedience which we 
 owe Him. We pray for grace ' to worship Him 
 (in our prayers),' and 'to serve Him (in our 
 calling) as we ought to do,' no less than to 
 'obey Him (in our temptations) as we ought 
 to do. 
 
 The opening invocation of the great Prayer 
 draws up our eyes to heaven, the throne 
 of God, and to Him who sitteth thereon ; ' Our 
 Father which art in Heaven.' There, first, our 
 minds are occupied with God Himself, with His 
 awful name, His majesty and His love ; ' Hal- 
 lowed be Thy name.' Next, the brilliant court, 
 the glorious hierarchy of blessed and adoring 
 angels, which surrounds the great Monarch,
 
 160 As in Heaven, so in Earth 
 
 catches our mind's eye. We long that the same 
 spectacle may meet our eyes, as in its chief 
 seat, so in all the dependencies of the Almighty's 
 vast empire. But here, alas! we discern many 
 rebellious wills counteracting God's will, and 
 actively thwarting His designs. Antagonism 
 to heaven's Sovereign, with all its sad results 
 of misery and disunion, is before our eyes as 
 we look round ; and we sigh for the harmony, 
 order, obedience, of the heaven we have just left 
 in thought. And so we pray, ' Thy will be done, 
 as in heaven, so in earth.' Good quaint Bishop 
 Andrewes, after the manner of the divines of 
 that day, when it was not thought unseemly 
 to provoke a smile from the pulpit, remarks, in 
 making this clause the subject of a sermon, that 
 ' adverbs please God better than verbs.' He 
 means that God looks more to the manner in 
 which we perform our actions than to the thing 
 done ; of which he says that this clause furnishes 
 proof; for God bids us pray not simply that 
 ' His will may be done' but. that it ' may be done 
 as it is in heaven' with fervour, alacrity, and love. 
 And he goes on to observe that there are two
 
 As in Heaven, so in Earth 161 
 
 qualifying clauses beginning with As in this 
 Prayer, both of the greatest moment ; for that, 
 when God would teach us the homage and love 
 we owe to Himself, He says it must be ' as in 
 heaven/ after the model of angelic love and 
 devotion ; and when He would teach us what 
 love we owe to our neighbour, He says it 
 must be a love which forgives him, 'as' we 
 desire to be forgiven ourselves. ' Forgive us 
 our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass 
 against us.' 
 
 An excellent lesson ; and it is well if the 
 quaintness with which this holy and learned 
 man has expressed it makes it cleave to the 
 mind. The manner and measure of our 
 obedience to God, the manner and measure 
 of our love to our neighbour, are matters of 
 prime importance. A stinted, grudging obedi- 
 ence, and a love which says that it forgives, 
 while it makes no effort to forget, are no 
 obedience and no love in God's eyes. 
 
 Let us consider then the words 'As in heaven ' 
 a little more closely. We use the term heaven 
 in two senses. Sometimes we mean by it the 
 
 M
 
 162 As in Heaven, so in Earth 
 
 material heaven, or firmament; sometimes the 
 great temple of the universe, where God holds 
 His court, and unveils His beauty to the 
 hierarchy of the angels. Which of these is 
 meant here ? Probably both ; but more par- 
 ticularly the latter. In the firmament or ma- 
 terial heaven, God's will, whether ordinary 
 or extraordinary, is uniformly and instanta- 
 neously done. All the aerial phenomena, light- 
 ning and hail, snow and vapours, wind and 
 storm, fulfil the Lord's word. The planets 
 revolve in their orbits, and obeying punctually 
 the laws impressed upon them at their creation, 
 ever display a spectacle of serene harmony and 
 order. And even the exceptional cases when 
 the master-hand of the creator and legislator 
 interferes to suspend His own law, when these 
 firmamental laws have been interrupted in their 
 operations by the Divine will, as when sun and 
 moon stood still at Joshua's bidding, as when 
 the shadow went ten degrees backward at Heze- 
 kiah's prayer these in the truest sense prove 
 the rule. But the obedience of the heavenly 
 bodies and the elements is, after all, not the
 
 As in Heaven, so in Earth 163 
 
 obedience of free and accountable beings. 
 Planets and elements must obey ; they have 
 no choice of their own ; they are merely subject 
 to mechanical or chemical laws. For the free, 
 zealous, and loving obedience of rational 
 creatures we must look above the firmamental 
 heavens to the temple of the universe. It is to 
 this temple, far above the material firmament, 
 that our thoughts mount up in the petition before 
 us. Yet it is worthy of remark that the lower or 
 firmamental heaven is a striking type of the 
 upper sanctuary, and shadows it forth to us, so 
 far as things spiritual can be shadowed forth 
 by things material. The powerful attraction by 
 which the planets are tied to the sun, the serene 
 harmony with which they all revolve around 
 the sun, how beautiful an emblem is this of the 
 gratitude and adoring love which keeps the 
 unfallen angels in obedience to God, and of 
 the order and harmony with which they encircle 
 His throne ; while their agency in executing 
 His errands is compared to the subtlety, inten- 
 sity, and potency of certain firmamental forces ; 
 ' He maketh His angels spirits (winds), and His 
 
 M 2
 
 164 As in Heaven, so in Earth 
 
 ministers a flame of fire ' (flashes of lightning) ; 
 Ps. civ. 4. 
 
 It will be remembered that in the petition 
 ' Thy will be done ' we found a double meaning 
 (pp. 49, 50). { Be done ' might mean simply ' be 
 carried into effect' ; in which case the petition 
 would be the voice of acquiescence, or 'Be actively 
 executed' ; in which case the petition would be 
 the voice of holy energy. Both these meanings 
 of the petition are to be carried into the quali- 
 fication, 'As in heaven, so in earth.' 
 
 First, as to the active execution of God's will. 
 We are taught in the Holy Scriptures to think 
 of the service which holy angels do unto God, 
 as consisting of two great elements, one of 
 adoration and the other the execution of Divine 
 messages (whence their name of angels or mes- 
 sengers). It is said of the seraphim, whom 
 Isaiah saw in a vision, ' Each one had six wings ; 
 with twain he covered his face, and with twain he 
 covered his feet ' (in adoration of God and con- 
 fession of the emptiness of a creaturely nature) ; 
 ' and with twain he did fly ' speed to those 
 parts of the world to which God commissioned
 
 As in Heaven, so in Earth 165 
 
 Him (Isa. vi. 2). Again ; we read that in singing 
 their ' Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty/ 
 they rest not day and night ; that their worship 
 is unintermittent. Again ; we are told of angels, 
 who 'do always behold the face of My Father 
 which is in heaven ' ; and Gabriel says of him- 
 self to Zacharias the priest, ' I am Gabriel, who 
 stand in the presence of God/ intimating that the 
 awe of the uncreated presence is always upper- 
 most in angelic minds. Nor are they without 
 the deepest interest in and sympathy with those 
 rational creatures of God who are below them 
 in the scale of creation, and below them also 
 morally, as having fallen by sin, which holy 
 angels never did. ' There is joy in heaven/ we 
 are assured, ' over one sinner that repenteth ' ; 
 they are all ' ministering spirits, sent forth to 
 minister for them who shall be heirs of salva- 
 tion/ and, emblematized by the golden cherubim 
 who bent forward over the mercy-seat of the 
 ark, ' they desire to look/ so Peter tells us, into 
 the counsel of human redemption, as it is 
 announced in the Gospel. Man's imitation of 
 them, therefore, must consist in mingling the
 
 1 66 As in Heaven, so in Earth 
 
 exercises of devotion with a punctual and zealous 
 discharge of the duties of his position; in making 
 haste, and delaying not the time, to keep God's 
 commandments; in not merely doing, but in 
 delighting to do, God's will ; in constantly 
 lifting up his heart to God day and night ; in 
 constantly striving to realize God's presence ; 
 and in sympathizing deeply with his fellow-men, 
 and doing all in his power to succour them. 
 
 But when we pass from the thought of active 
 obedience to that of submission, which indeed 
 is (rather than the other) the force of the original 
 words, how shall we here find any model 
 among the angels ? How can angels practise 
 submission to God's will? Strangers to sin, and 
 therefore strangers to sorrow, how can they set 
 us an example of acquiescence in all which Divine 
 Providence prescribes ? And another thought 
 intrudes to make us seek some other specimen 
 of conformity to Divine will, besides that which 
 the angels furnish. The angels have a nature 
 more exalted and more spiritual than our own. 
 They have never known the trials and infirmities 
 involved in a body of humiliation, and in a pil-
 
 As in Heaven, so in Earth 167 
 
 grimage through human life. Their condition has, 
 as far as it is revealed to us, never been debased 
 and debilitated by a fall. Altogether, they belong 
 to another and higher order of beings. And 
 thus their example in the abstract seems abso- 
 lutely beyond our reach. What we want to see 
 for our encouragement is an angelic life led 
 upon earth by a Son of Man. Well, God points 
 us to just such a life in the career of Jesus 
 of Nazareth. The zeal, the love, the fervour, 
 the spirituality, the sympathy, the activity of a 
 heavenly Being He brought down to earth, and 
 illustrated with the utmost beauty under the con- 
 ditions of humanity. Speaking of Him by pro- 
 phetic anticipation, the Psalmist said, ' I have 
 set God always before me.' His inner communion 
 with His heavenly Father, even when overcast for 
 a time by a cloud of dreadful darkness, as it was 
 upon the cross, was always profound and uninter- 
 mittent. Intense was the zest and zeal, with which 
 He addressed Himself to His great mission : ' My 
 meat/ said He, ' is to do the will of Him that 
 sent Me.' And His deep and universal sym- 
 pathy with men was such, that He frequented
 
 i68 As in Heaven, so in Earth 
 
 all companies, had an ear for every tale of woe, 
 and a heart filled to overflowing with sensibility 
 to sorrows ; while the succour, which invariably 
 accompanied His sympathy was so liberally 
 extended, that His entire course is described by 
 this feature of it : 'He went about doing good.' 
 
 Nor were His vast philanthropic labours 
 accounted by Him any exemption from the 
 duties of devotion. With Him long days of 
 teaching, and working cures, were succeeded 
 by nights of prayer. A higher than angelic 
 devotion alternated with or pervaded a higher 
 than angelic industry. But His passive graces 
 were, if possible, even more conspicuous 
 than His active. As being the seed of the 
 woman, not of the man, He was the first hero 
 who ever gave prominence to the feminine 
 virtues of meek, unresisting endurance. A 
 death of cruelty, vilification, and outrage He 
 met without a murmur on His own account, 
 with ejaculations of affiance in God, with con- 
 siderateness for those whom He was leaving 
 behind, with a prayer for His murderers, and 
 with an infinitely consolatory assurance to a
 
 As in Heaven, so in Earth 169 
 
 poor penitent who was hanging at His side 
 and struggling back, as best He might, to God. 
 And in the garden of Gethsemane, when His 
 pure soul recoiled with shuddering from the cup 
 of woe which He was about to drink, He still 
 took up in His own behalf, and led the way in 
 offering, the prayer which He had placed in the 
 mouth of His disciples. ' Father/ said He, with 
 all the sensibility of flesh and blood, and yet in 
 all the meekness of a perfect submission, 'if 
 this cup may not pass away from Me except 
 I drink it, Thy will be done ' (St. Matt. xxvi. 42). 
 So illustrious an example of conformity to God's 
 will throws even angelic obedience into the 
 shade, while at the same time it introduces into 
 this conformity the idea of resignation which is 
 exclusively His own, as well as that of obedience, 
 in which angels too, though in a lower degree, 
 are our models. 
 
 A grand and elevating thought arises now, 
 viz. that God would have us walk in the steps 
 of our father Abraham, to whom it was said, 
 'Walk before Me, and be thou perfect'; that 
 we should aspire to nothing short of per-
 
 i yo As in Heaven, so in Earth 
 
 faction. If He teaches us to pray that His 
 name may be hallowed, His kingdom come, 
 His will be done, ' in earth, as it is in heaven ' 
 if He teaches us to request that the zeal and love, 
 which animated the human heart of the Re- 
 deemer, may be reproduced in us by His Spirit 
 He unmistakably enforces this truth, that 
 Christians are required to aim deliberately at the 
 highest of all standards. The acquiescence then 
 in a regular and devout exterior, which thousands 
 are so ready to yield ; the dead level of piety and 
 good conduct on which many are content to pace 
 up and down, like a sentinel on a platform, rather 
 than a soldier scaling a citadel, is emphatically 
 protested against in the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 The better sort of people may perhaps be 
 divided into two classes, those who set before 
 themselves a high standard but fail to reach 
 it, and those whose standard is very low and 
 who do in the main come up to it. The latter 
 class plume themselves occasionally on their 
 common sense, their moderation, their avoidance 
 of all extravagances, their knowledge of human 
 life and character. ' You may preach for ever,'
 
 As in Heaven, so in Earth 171 
 
 they say, ' but you will never make men angels ; 
 you cannot get an Act of Parliament' (the most 
 potent force such persons can conceive of) 
 ' to alter human nature. Let your exhortations 
 to virtue and godliness be vague and general ; 
 let them not pierce too much to the quick, or go 
 into men's manner of life too minutely and 
 microscopically ; let them not be chivalrous and 
 Quixotic (for if they are, people will give them 
 up as hopeless), but modest and practicable ; let 
 them inculcate strict honesty in money matters, 
 honourable conduct in society, moral regularity 
 (at least when the heyday of youthful passions is 
 over), regularity in attending church on Sundays 
 (except when one happens to be abroad), all 
 this mixed up with a good flavour of religious 
 sentiment do what you will, you will never get 
 much beyond this rest in it, and be thankful.' 
 
 But verily, in spite of such faithless discourage- 
 ments, every time they take this Prayer into 
 their lips, they make a solemn profession before 
 God that the devotion, the zeal, the obedience, 
 the submission at which they are aiming, is that 
 which is exemplified in heaven, by the holy angels
 
 172 As in Heaven, so in Earth 
 
 and by our Lord Himself. For what a shocking 
 inconsistency (that I may not say, what an awful 
 mockery) must it be for a man deliberately to 
 ask God in the morning that His will ' may be 
 done on earth, as it is in heaven/ and then 
 as deliberately to pass all the rest of the day 
 without a single effort to become more obedient 
 to His will than he has been for months past And 
 yet how many are there who never make any 
 such effort; who are perhaps quite willing to 
 place their standard as high as the society in 
 which they move has placed it conventionally, 
 quite willing to be church-goers, promoters of 
 good objects, thinkers and talkers about religion, 
 but, alas ! not willing to try to lead an angelic 
 life upon earth, or (in other and better words) 
 to be conformed to the mind of Christ. 
 
 There are two elements in this unwillingness. 
 One is a mere indisposition to rouse themselves 
 for any high achievement; and it is to be 
 met by considering that our Lord represents 
 'striving' (or agonizing) to enter in at the 
 strait gate, as distinct from 'seeking? to be a 
 condition of success, and that St. Paul even
 
 A s in Heaven, so in Earth 173 
 
 implies the possibility of running (or making 
 considerable exertions) in the heavenly race, 
 while yet the runner shall not so run as to 
 obtain. The other is a secret distrust of God, 
 as if His mercy could not blot out any sins, and 
 His grace could not achieve any victory in us ; 
 a vain and foolish notion that they who do 
 obtain the prize in the heavenly race start with 
 some natural qualifications in themselves, with 
 a little stock-in-trade of strength and virtue, 
 which less favoured persons do not possess. 
 They have to learn that St. Paul is announcing 
 a real and vital truth, not putting aside out of 
 false modesty an honour he was justly entitled 
 to, when he says, after glancing at his more 
 abundant labours, ' Yet not I, but the grace of 
 God which was with me.' 
 
 But anyhow they are condemned out of their 
 own mouth when they say, 'As in heaven, so 
 in earth.' None live up to this clause who 
 cannot both sigh and aspire with the Apostle 
 sigh with him after this manner, ' O wretched 
 man that I am ! who shall deliver me from 
 the body of this death ' or aspire as he did,
 
 174 As in Heaven, so in Earth 
 
 'Not as though I had already attained, either 
 were already perfect : but I follow after, if that 
 I may apprehend that for which also I am appre- 
 hended of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count 
 not myself to have apprehended : but this one 
 thing I do, forgetting those things which are 
 behind, and reaching forth unto those things 
 which are before, I press toward the mark for 
 the prize of the high calling of God in Christ 
 Jesus ' (Phil. iii. 12-14).
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD 
 
 WE now come to the second part of the Lord's 
 Prayer. Leaving the worship pure and simple 
 of the first part, passing through the transition 
 clause, ' Thy will be done in earth, as in heaven,' 
 we arrive at petition pure and simple (see ch. i). 
 We are to worship before we pray. It is after 
 the adoration of God's character, after aspirations 
 for His kingdom and will, that the voice of human 
 necessity the humble statement of man's many 
 and pressing needs sounds forth in this second 
 section of the Prayer. 
 
 Man's life upon earth is lived in time, or, in 
 other words, his existence is meted out to him 
 in successive portions ; life is one continual 
 passage out of the past into the future over the
 
 176 Give us this Day our daily Bread 
 
 bridge of the present. The divisions of this 
 latter part of the Prayer, then, correspond to 
 these divisions of human life. First, we recog- 
 nize the need of the present, ' Give us this day 
 our daily bread.' But our life had a yesterday, 
 and its yesterday was stained by sins, and is the 
 subject of regretful retrospect. That yesterday's 
 evil may be cancelled by the pure grace and 
 mercy of Him who promises, ' I, even I, am 
 He that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine 
 own sake, and will not remember thy sins ' 
 (Isa. xliii. 25) ; wherefore this is our second suit 
 unto God, ' Forgive us our trespasses! But as there 
 was a yesterday in our life, so, if God should 
 grant us the support which we first sued for, 
 there will be a to-morrow. In the view of this 
 to-morrow, therefore, we pray that God would 
 not allow it to bring an unduly heavy trial, and 
 would preserve us from that sin in future, which 
 we trust that He has forgiven in the past. ' Lead 
 us not into temptation ; but deliver us,' &c. 
 
 It may possibly be asked, ' Why is not for- 
 giveness asked for in the first instance before 
 bread ? ' The Daily Morning and Evening Office
 
 Give us this Day our daily Bread 177 
 
 of the Book of Common Prayer begin most 
 appropriately with a confession of sins and an 
 absolution ; and it would certainly seem as if 
 nothing were more necessary for a sinner, in 
 his approach to the Throne of Grace, than the 
 pardon of his offences. Yet the placing pardon 
 first among our needs would interfere with the 
 order of thought in this latter part of the Prayer, 
 and would be untrue to the phenomena of our 
 mental constitution. By the constitution of the 
 human mind, the present is to every man the 
 most instant, urgent part of human life ; it is ever 
 vividly before one, while the memory of the past 
 is fast fading away, and the hope of the future is 
 not yet realized. The needs, therefore, of the 
 present day, as affecting not only the body but 
 the mind most vividly, figure first in our order of 
 petition. And there would appear to be another 
 reason for this priority. The Apostle says, 
 ' Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, 
 but that which is natural ; and afterward/ &c. 
 (i Cor. xv. 46). Adam was before Christ, and 
 the natural man is the basis upon which the 
 spiritual man is by grace grafted. Bread (in the 
 
 N
 
 178 Give us this Day our daily Bread 
 
 primary and simple meaning of the word) is 
 a want of the body a desire of the natural 
 man. Forgiveness and grace are wants of the 
 soul desires of the spiritual man. Therefore 
 as that which was natural was first in the order 
 of God's creation, the petition for the natural 
 blessing comes in God's Prayer before the 
 petition for the spiritual 1 . 
 
 1 We cannot surely (with a certain class of interpreters, 
 at the head of whom must needs stand St. Jerome) 
 consent to exclude from this petition any reference to 
 man's natural wants, however much we may include 
 under it a reference to our spiritual wants. Because 
 by bread the Lord intended us to understand the bread 
 of the Word and that of the Sacraments, we may not 
 therefore conclude that He intended to shut out the word 
 ' bread ' from its literal commonplace meaning. Such a 
 conclusion is forbidden, if by nothing else, yet certainly 
 by a great canon of interpretation which applies to the 
 entire volume of Holy Scripture, and especially to its 
 deeper parts, viz. that the limitation of any text to one 
 particular meaning is contrary to the mind of the Holy 
 Ghost, whose method is to put into all His utterances 
 a fullness and multiplicity of meaning, all in depen- 
 dence upon the primary meaning, and without excluding 
 it. So that the Holy Scriptures resemble those living 
 creatures in the Book of Revelation (iv. 6) who were ' full 
 of eyes before and behind ' (the eye being that which gives 
 expression and meaning to the countenance). Therefore 
 we should always prefer the richer and fuller view of any
 
 Give us this Day our daily Bread 179 
 
 Observe, then, that the Prayer has now sunk 
 to the lowest point which it is ever to reach. 
 We have been in heaven hitherto, contemplating 
 God's character, surveying the seat of His vast 
 empire and the allegiance of the blessed angels 
 to His will. Now we have descended to the 
 earth, and to the level of man's lowest wants. 
 
 passage of Scripture to that which is narrower, remem- 
 bering that though in the intention of the human writer 
 the application of his words may have been merely 
 contextual and limited to the local temporary circum- 
 stances of which he was writing, yet in the purview of 
 the Holy Spirit, under whose impulse he wrote, many 
 other applications of the words may have been de- 
 signed, many other circumstances foreseen to which 
 they were meant to refer. And to the Lord's Prayer, 
 in which we have to do not only with a human writer 
 but with a Divine Speaker, whose words the human 
 writer records, this remark will especially apply. Nor 
 does it seem that St. Jerome was led to his view of an 
 exclusively spiritual application of this petition by any 
 other reason than a misunderstanding of the word which 
 in our version is rendered ' daily.' His rendering was 
 ' supersubstantial,' which seems to him to mean that the 
 bread spoken of was other than natural bread a view 
 to which the devout author of the Christian Year has 
 given both weight and currency 
 
 ' Nor by our daily bread mean common food.' 
 
 Suffice it to say that the word could hardly have the 
 meaning attributed to it. 
 
 N 2
 
 180 Give us this Day our daily Bread 
 
 For bread or food is a want which we share 
 with the beasts which perish. And not only so. 
 We share with them in a certain sense the 
 expression of this want. 'The lions/ we read, 
 ' roaring after their prey, do seek their meat 
 from God' (Ps. civ. 21). And again, ' He giveth 
 fodder unto the cattle, and feedeth the young 
 ravens that call upon Him' (Ps. cxlvii. 9). 
 
 We must not reason away the force of these 
 expressions. The lower creatures have certain 
 needs, and God has given them certain organs 
 for the utterance of those needs. Their voice, 
 though of course not consciously or deliberately 
 addressed to Him, yet excites the fatherly com- 
 passion of their Creator, who pities them, and 
 places their food in their way. In the petition 
 before us we have man, who is able to recognize 
 the Giver, and to make conscious and deliberate 
 application to Him, uttering his needs rationally, 
 as the lower creatures do by inarticulate cries. 
 How truly is this a prayer for man, representing 
 his relations to, and expressing his sympathies 
 with, all creation. After we have aspired to be 
 as angels in the doing of God's will, we sink
 
 Give us this Day our daily Bread 181 
 
 to the level of the lowest creatures, and sue for 
 daily bread. And is it not the very truth of our 
 condition, that we are akin to the angels by our 
 immortal spirits, and to the beasts that perish 
 by our animal nature ? Is not man, as a fact, 
 a very microcosm, touching heaven and earth 
 at the same time ? Endowed with a mind which 
 can compute the motions of stars, and can flash 
 its ideas upon an electric wire through tunnelled 
 mountains and along the bed of oceans, and 
 still higher, with a spirit which can hold com- 
 munion with God and reflect His image he is 
 yet as dependent upon daily food as the meanest 
 reptile which crawls upon the earth, and has as 
 great necessity to cry to God for it. 
 
 And this daily sustenance we beseech our 
 Father to give us. 
 
 i. God, then, is the Giver of bread, even 
 though He may give it, as He does most other 
 blessings, by secondary and instrumental causes. 
 But alas! how often have we asked Him to give 
 it, without any cordial acknowledgement of our 
 dependence upon Him for it! In the mouth of 
 a very poor man, whose wages scarcely serve to
 
 182 Give us this Day our daily Bread 
 
 supply a large family with a bare maintenance, 
 and who, when thrown out of work by illness, 
 feels how utterly dependent he is upon health and 
 strength, this ' give ' has no doubt something of 
 reality. But the easy competence which most 
 of us enjoy leads us to regard our food as a matter 
 of course; money, we think, can command all 
 things ; and if there is a sure supply of money, 
 food at all events is felt to be at our command. 
 The asking God to give it, when we have much 
 goods laid up for many years, is too apt to 
 degenerate into a hollow form. And whenever 
 this state of mind is extensively prevalent in a 
 nation; when all classes of men above the very 
 lowest begin to trust in uncertain riches rather 
 than in the living God, who giveth us all things 
 richly to enjoy ; then God breaks the staff of 
 bread, in one of the thousand ways in which He 
 may break it, by sending a succession of bad 
 harvests, or withholding the rain or the sun- 
 shine, or by sending a murrain among the 
 cattle, or an enemy to intercept our imports 
 from abroad. Affluent persons then begin to 
 learn what is overlooked in the maxim that
 
 Give us this Day our daily Bread 183 
 
 money can command all things, namely, that it 
 can only command such things as can be had 
 by payment for them ; that gold and silver are not 
 articles of nourishment, and cannot be converted 
 into articles of nourishment where there is 
 a failure of those articles in the market. And 
 by casualties of another kind, such as the break- 
 ing of banks and the failure of speculations, 
 God teaches that, even if money could command 
 all things, the possessors of money cannot always 
 rely on money. How many have learned by 
 painful experience the insecurity of worldly 
 wealth a truth as old as Solomon, but hitherto 
 a dead letter to them ; but then, a living reality. 
 ' Labour not to be rich : cease from thine own 
 wisdom. Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that 
 which is not? for riches certainly make them- 
 selves wings ; they fly away, as an eagle toward 
 heaven ' (Prov. xxiii. 4, 5). 
 
 2. ' Give us.' We have no warrant in this 
 divine prayer for praying, ' Give ME this day my 
 bread.' The bread which God gives me is ours, 
 not mine. Other people have a right in it, a 
 claim upon it, as well as I myself. It is more
 
 184 Give us this Day our daily Bread 
 
 a common than a private stock. I must therefore 
 acknowledge my brother's claim and right, by 
 dealing my bread to the hungry, and giving to 
 him that needeth. If I do not this, or do it not 
 to the extent of my ability, it is a mere mockery 
 to ask God to 'give us bread.' In that case 
 I speak of the bread as being something given 
 for the benefit of all, and I treat it as some- 
 thing given for my own special and exclusive 
 benefit. And this is the hypocrisy condemned 
 by St. James of saying to a brother or sister, 
 who is naked and destitute of daily food, ' De- 
 part in peace, be ye warmed and filled/ while 
 we ' give them not those things which are needful 
 for the body.' 
 
 In the first fervours of Christian faith, the 
 Church realized so vividly the truth that the 
 bread which God gives is a common stock, 
 designed for His whole family, that none of 
 the Jerusalem Christians ' said that ought of 
 the things which he possessed was his own ; 
 but they had all things common. Neither was 
 there any among them that lacked : for as many 
 as were possessors of lands or houses sold
 
 Give us this Day our daily Bread 185 
 
 them, and brought the prices of the things that 
 were sold, and laid them down at the Apostles' 
 feet : and distribution was made unto every man 
 according as he had need ' (Acts iv. 32, 34, 35). 
 This was a beautiful glimpse, evanescent as a 
 dissolving view, of the sympathy between classes 
 which would prevail in the Church of Christ if 
 she reached the Master's great ideal of her. 
 
 Community of goods, as an obligatory enact- 
 ment imposed from without, would obliterate 
 that distinction of poor and rich which is part 
 of the present divinely appointed economy of 
 probation for all classes, while at the same 
 time it would leave entirely untouched the 
 selfishness at the bottom of the human heart. 
 But community of goods, brought about by the 
 spontaneous sympathy of Christians with their 
 fellow-Christians, the uncoerced expression of 
 a family feeling towards all who are of the 
 household of faith and for whom Christ died 
 this is the lofty standard of practice to which 
 we should endeavour to approximate, and to 
 adjust our sentiments as well as approximate 
 our conduct. For the mere large giving to
 
 1 86 Give us this Day our daily Bread 
 
 objects of charity is, after all, not so very diffi- 
 cult an attainment. Men may give largely, as 
 feeling themselves in duty bound to do so, and 
 as discharging the responsibilities of wealth. 
 And yet they may fail entirely to give in that 
 sympathizing spirit which recognizes the poor 
 as brethren and members of one family with us 
 of whom Christ is the Head. Alms are too 
 often given as an act of grace towards persons 
 of a lower caste, rather than from the fellow- 
 feeling of a community in the household of 
 Christ, such as leads us to embrace others 
 with ourselves in our prayers. 
 
 3. ' This day ' ; or, as St. Luke has it somewhat 
 more emphatically, ' day by day' Teaching us 
 in a most significant way that prayer is to be 
 offered daily; that our dependence upon God 
 is from day to day. There is something here 
 of great doctrinal and practical import. We 
 might suppose that God gave us a lease of 
 life once for all at our birth, set the animal 
 economy in motion originally, and then left it 
 to work on till, in His appointed time, it should 
 run down. But the Scriptures give another
 
 Give us this Day our daily Bread 187 
 
 representation of the case. They say that we 
 are momentarily dependent upon God for all 
 the functions of animal life; that 'in Him we 
 live, and move, and have our being'; that 'He 
 giveth to all men life, and breath, and all things ' 
 (Acts xvii. 25, 28) breath, i.e. not merely a cer- 
 tain span, but each successive act by which 
 the span is prolonged. Our dependence upon 
 God, then, being continual, our acknowledge- 
 ment must be continual also must be made 
 ' day by day.' It would not be suitable, or 
 meet the truth of the facts, to go to God once 
 for all, and say, ' Heavenly Father, give me 
 bread for the term of my natural life.' If God 
 supports us day by day, He must be sued day 
 by day to do it. Besides, in a world of uncer- 
 tainties like this, we can only see just what lies 
 under our hand. We live for the day only ; and 
 so, if God should grant us to-day provision for 
 the morrow, it might be superfluous, because ' we 
 know not what shall be on the morrow.' For 
 'what is your life? It is even a vapour, that 
 appeareth for a little time and then vanisheth 
 away.' ' This night ' our ' soul ' may ' be required.'
 
 i88 Give us this Day our daily Bread 
 
 There is a most striking illustration in the 
 ancient law of the 'day by day' in this petition. 
 The manna is expressly called by Moses, ' the 
 bread which the Lord hath given you to eat.' 
 It fell from heaven, without any human agency, 
 and so proclaimed itself to the senses to be 
 (what all food is, even though given by 
 secondary causes) the gracious gift of God Him- 
 self. The people were instructed to gather it 
 every morning; to take neither more nor less 
 than an omer for every man, in which case it 
 exactly supplied the needs of their families ; 
 and not to leave any portion ofivhat they gathered 
 until the morning. May we not say that the 
 whole doctrine of human sustenance is here 
 comprehended? First, our sustenance is the 
 gift of God, though it may come to us by 
 human exertion, and through the intervention 
 of natural causes. Secondly, it is to be sought of 
 God, as the manna was, every morning; 'Give us 
 day by day our daily bread.' Thirdly, we are to 
 seek a sufficient supply, and not a superfluous 
 one ; we are not to ask that which may be laid 
 up for the morrow, but only enough for the day.
 
 Give us this Day our daily Bread 189 
 
 Would that we could enter more fully into 
 the spirit of this ' day by day ' ! How few 
 in that case would our anxieties be compared 
 with what they are ! Every day is, in the view 
 of Holy Scripture, rather a distinct pilgrimage 
 in itself than a distinct stage in one great pil- 
 grimage. Each day brings with it its own 
 responsibilities, its own trials, its own cares. 
 Sufficient unto each day, as our Lord warns 
 us, is the evil thereof. As regards foresight 
 of the future, and a due provision against its 
 contingencies, of course it would be an abdica- 
 tion of the prerogative of reason, which could 
 not possibly be pleasing to God, if we did not 
 exercise such foresight and make such provision 
 to the best of our ability. God reproves such 
 want of foresight by referring us to the instinct 
 of the irrational creatures : ' Go to the ant, thou 
 sluggard ; consider her ways, and be wise : 
 which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, pro- 
 videth her meat in the summer, and gathereth 
 her food/ &c. (Prov. vi. 6-8). But even if He 
 did not expressly reprove it, could we doubt 
 what His mind was? What makes the differ-
 
 190 Give us this Day our daily Bread 
 
 ence between the savage and the civilized man, 
 but that the first subsists uncertainly from day 
 to day on the food which he hunts or snares ; 
 the other deliberates for an unseen future, 
 and sees his way, under God's blessing, to 
 harvests, or to the revenue of handicrafts? 
 And must we not believe that the structure of 
 civilization is reared under a divine instinct, 
 and has the sanction of Him who implanted in 
 man the faculty which looks before and after? 
 
 But rational provision against the future is one 
 thing; anxious care for the future, as if God 
 could not and would not provide for the to- 
 morrow of His children, is quite another. And 
 it is this anxious care not a want of energy in 
 improving our resources which is the great 
 snare of our country and our times. The 
 temptation naturally incidental to all high 
 civilization is a trust in human foresight, and 
 in the protections and provisions which it is 
 able to make for the security and well-being 
 of society. But this trust, singularly unlike 
 trust in God, does not give peace to the heart. 
 On the contrary, it is connected with a profound
 
 Give us this Day our daily Bread 191 
 
 feeling of insecurity, and with a fever of restless- 
 ness. For a little experience of life suffices to 
 prove that, even under the most favourable 
 circumstances, human securities are insecure. 
 
 To realize our day-by-day dependence upon 
 God, if so be we have first made the sincere 
 acknowledgement of His name as ' Our Father 
 which is in heaven/ would be the antidote of 
 this feverish, unsettling, false trust. To leave 
 to-morrow, after we had made all reasonable 
 provision, in His hands, who is too loving 
 a Father to deny us anything that is for our 
 good, too wise to allow us anything that is 
 mischievous ; to throw the future entirely upon 
 His providential care ; to make up our spiritual 
 accounts at nightfall as exactly as if we were 
 not to wake from our sleep, and as if therefore 
 provision for to-morrow would be superfluous ; 
 this is to live in the spirit of the petition, ' Give 
 us this day our daily bread ' ; in the spirit of the 
 precept, ' Be careful for nothing ; but in every 
 thing by prayer and supplication with thanks- 
 giving let your requests be made known unto 
 God '(Phil. iv. 6).
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 OUR DAILY BREAD 
 
 THE three last words of the petition are 
 assuredly no less rich in lessons of wisdom 
 than those which engaged our attention in the 
 last chapter. ' Our ' is the first of these words. 
 What does it imply? Man has not only the 
 use of bread by God's gracious grant of it, 
 he can also establish in it a certain right and 
 property. How, then, does bread become our 
 own ? The plain answer is, By working for 
 it. St. Paul says, with a special emphasis upon 
 the 'own/ as strongly marked in the original 
 as it is in the translation, ' Even when we 
 were with you, this we commanded you, that 
 if any would not work, neither should he eat. 
 For we hear that there are some which walk 
 among you disorderly, working not at all, but
 
 Our Daily Bread 193 
 
 are busybodies. Now them that are such we 
 command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 that with quietness they work, and eat their own 
 bread' (2 Thess. iii. 10-12). And the promise 
 of God by the Psalmist is : ' Thou shalt eat ' 
 (not bread, which drops into thy mouth with 
 no exertion of thine own, but) ' the labour of 
 thine hands' (Ps. cxxviii. 2). And this annexa- 
 tion of bread to honest toil is of very early 
 date ; it traces back to the fall of man, when 
 God said to Adam, as a sentence indeed, but 
 a sentence largely qualified by mercy, ' In the 
 sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread.' What 
 an important element in the petition this little 
 ' our' is! For, in the absence of it, men might 
 so look upon God as the Bread-Giver, as to 
 hope that He would supply them without their 
 own exertions ; but no ! every time you recite 
 the Lord's Prayer you imply that you will do 
 your part in procuring the bread for you may 
 not pray, 'Give us this day daily bread/ but 
 ' Give us this day OUR daily bread/ even that 
 which we have earned and established a sort 
 of claim to. 
 
 o
 
 194 Our Daily Bread 
 
 But it may be asked how we propose to 
 make this doctrine of the necessity of labour 
 universally applicable. Are there not many, it 
 will be said, who are born in such circumstances 
 that they can eat bread to the full without 
 labouring to earn it ? And is it not a condition 
 of any high state of civilization that there should 
 be many who are exempt altogether from the 
 necessity of working for their livelihood ? No 
 doubt this is so ; and since the accumulation 
 of property and wealth in the hands of those 
 of superior ability to their fellows, and their 
 descendants, is a necessary condition, under the 
 present constitution of things, of the balance of 
 society, and the balance of society must clearly 
 be in accordance with the will of God, the 
 exemption of some from the necessity of labour 
 must be viewed as an arrangement of God's 
 good providence. But allowing all this, it still 
 remains true that no man on earth, be his 
 station what it may, is exempt in point of 
 conscience from the obligation of beneficial 
 labour. Industry is an universal obligation. 
 God will tolerate no drones in His hive; and
 
 Our Daily Bread 195 
 
 the millionaire and the man of broad acres 
 must work (as very many, indeed the majority, 
 of such persons do) for the good of all, though 
 not for their own maintenance. There are great 
 provinces of good work appointed to be done, 
 for they cannot otherwise be done at all, by men 
 of independent means, who need not to be paid 
 for their services. Indeed, all voluntary work 
 is costly. It is one of the inestimable advantages 
 of independent means as a gift of God, that it 
 enables some of the very highest work to be 
 done to the glory of God from the highest of 
 all motives, the love of God. 
 
 But alas! looking at this sacred obligation, 
 which lies upon all, to work in some form or 
 shape for others, if not for themselves, how 
 appalling is the thought of the precious hours 
 squandered by many, rich and poor alike, in 
 merest idleness or dissipation, and not un- 
 frequently in a deliberate attempt to kill time ! 
 How many days are spent by people of refine- 
 ment, high position, and easy circumstances, 
 of which, if a candid retrospect were made at 
 night, the record in the journal would be, 
 o 2
 
 196 Our Daily Bread 
 
 ' I have done nothing in the smallest degree 
 useful to-day, nothing which could by possi- 
 bility improve either my own spirit or the 
 condition of those around me.' How many 
 days are spent by people who ought to labour 
 for their livelihood, and do not, in lamentable 
 indolence, and even attacks upon the industry 
 of their industrious neighbours ! It is no small 
 mercy to be exempt from the easy liability of 
 falling into sin so grievous, by the actual 
 pressure of employment in order to main- 
 tenance. Let us not covet for ourselves, or for 
 those in whom we are interested, a position 
 dangerously independent of honest toil. Labour 
 in the work of a regular calling for the man, 
 the labour of keeping house and the home-life 
 of the family for the woman, is an enormous 
 blessing. It keeps the mind bright, elastic, 
 and free from morbid fancies. It makes rest and 
 recreation a real pleasure, both in prospect 
 and enjoyment. It sweetens the bread that is 
 earned by it, while at the same time it does 
 not make us less liberal in distributing it; for 
 experience often shows that the earners of
 
 Our Daily Bread 197 
 
 money with the brain are more generous in 
 giving it than those who are born to it. It 
 opens a clear path in which to serve God 
 without perplexity or scruple. It is in the 
 primitive and natural course of things; and 
 therefore happier in the long run, and more 
 exempt from trial, than a condition of things 
 which results from civilization, and so from 
 artificial causes. 
 
 The next word is ' daily.' In the original it 
 is a very peculiar word, not found in the New 
 Testament except in the Lord's Prayer, never 
 found in the Septuagint (i.e. in the Greek trans- 
 lation of the Old Testament used by our Lord 
 and His Apostles), and never found in classical 
 Greek. The word is unique, used only on this 
 occasion. The interpretation most generally 
 received by modern scholars is that which 
 regards the word as expressing the opposite 
 of one etymologically connected with it, which 
 means ' superfluous.' Thus it would mean 
 enough for our needs, and not more than 
 enough. Our necessities are variable and de- 
 pend on a thousand circumstances, over which
 
 198 Our Daily Bread 
 
 we have little or no control. The habits in 
 which we have been bred and reared, the 
 amount of education we have received, the 
 temperament which we have derived from 
 Nature, the position which we hold in society, 
 the sensitiveness of our minds and bodies, all 
 affect our necessities. We ask God in these 
 words to furnish us with resources, not ac- 
 cording to some fixed standard, but according 
 to those peculiar needs of our own which He 
 best knows, who reads our hearts and surveys 
 our circumstances. And of all our genuine 
 needs we may confidently expect a supply 
 from His fatherly goodness. But anything 
 beyond these needs we have no warrant for 
 asking, or even seeking. The fever fit of 
 competition incidental to a high state of civili- 
 zation, the labouring to be rich, nay very 
 rich, so as entirely to distance our neighbours 
 in the furniture of our establishments, the 
 sumptuousness of our equipages, the ostenta- 
 tiousness of our hospitality, the multiplication 
 of property beyond the demands of reason and 
 modesty, the seeking to 'join house to house,
 
 Our Daily Bread 199 
 
 to lay field to field, till there be no place, that 
 we may be placed alone in the midst of the 
 earth ' (Isa. v. 8), all this is condemned at once 
 and for ever by the utter simplicity and modesty 
 of the petition, ' Give us this day our sufficient 
 (or adequate] supply of bread.' What a mockery 
 is it so to pray morning by morning, while in 
 the actual commerce of life our whole mind is 
 bent on obtaining not competency for us and 
 ours, but opulence ; not a modest position, 
 suitable to our abilities, where we may serve 
 God quietly in our generation, but high place, 
 large means, and positions of influence. It 
 ought to shame us to reflect that, long ages 
 before the Lord's Prayer, with all the sacred 
 and beautiful lessons involved in it, was given 
 to the world, a holy man of God, who lived 
 in the dim light of the elder dispensation, 
 would ask no more of worldly goods at God's 
 hands than this : ' Give me neither poverty nor 
 riches ; feed me with food convenient for me : 
 lest I be full, and deny Thee, and say, Who is 
 the Lord ? or lest I be poor, and steal, and take 
 the name of my God in vain ' (Prov. xxx. 8).
 
 200 Our Daily Bread 
 
 1 Bread ' is the last word in this petition. And 
 it carries on the lesson of the foregoing word, 
 the lesson that we should restrain our desires 
 for earthly things to that which is seen by our 
 Heavenly Father to be needful for the com- 
 fortable maintenance and preservation of life. 
 But of which life ? For into man at his creation 
 there was breathed not the breath of life, but 
 ' the breath of lives.' Man lives a spiritual or 
 supernatural, as well as an animal or natural, 
 life. And therefore however much we may 
 protest against the limitation, which has been 
 made by St. Jerome and others, of this word 
 ' bread ' to our spiritual sustenance, we would 
 insist with equal earnestness that this higher 
 food must be comprehended under the term 
 ' bread.' Surely our bread, as Bishop Andrewes 
 remarks, is not exclusively that animal nourish- 
 ment which is common to us and the inferior 
 creatures. Man's food must be something 
 nobler than the food of cattle ; it must be 
 ' panis angelorum ' angels' food. This ' angels' 
 food ' is the Bread of God, ' which cometh down 
 from heaven, and giveth life unto the world'
 
 Our Daily Bread 201 
 
 (St. John vi. 33) the personal Word of God, 
 who bears up the pillars of the universe, 'up- 
 holding all things by the word of His power' 
 (Heb. i. 3), and who for our sake became incar- 
 nate and was made 'a little lower than the 
 angels' (Heb. ii. 9), in order that He might fulfil 
 God's law, and endure its penalty of death, and 
 then give Himself to sinners as a suitable 
 nourishment for their souls. And now, by His 
 incarnation and propitiatory death, having be- 
 come the Bread of Life, He offers Himself to 
 us for the sustenance of our spiritual life, to 
 be received under the outward elements of 
 food and drink. 
 
 The Holy Eucharist is the means ordained 
 by Himself to be the means of partaking of 
 His Body and Blood, which ' except ye eat 
 and drink,' said He, ' ye have no life in you.' 
 
 This Bread of heaven is the primary bread we 
 seek, and therefore in this petition of the Lord's 
 Prayer we should particularly think (as it ap- 
 pears the framers of the primitive liturgies did 
 think) of the Eucharistic Bread when we use 
 this petition. We should remind ourselves what
 
 202 Our Daily Bread 
 
 grievous symptoms of declension from primitive 
 fervour most Churchmen exhibit in contenting 
 themselves with at most a weekly (instead of, 
 as it was in primitive times, a daily) celebration 
 of this most comfortable Sacrament ; and we 
 should mentally make this petition a sort of 
 preparatory prayer for our next communion, 
 without losing sight of the protest underlying 
 the word 'daily.' 
 
 This petition, moreover, must be held to 
 place the same restriction upon our desires for 
 spiritual, as on those for animal, sustenance. 
 Every thing which contributes to the mainte- 
 nance, vigour, and well-being of spiritual life we 
 may confidently ask of God ; but as for spiritual 
 dainties, spiritual luxuries, spiritual stimulants, 
 spiritual sensations, spiritual excitements in 
 what light do these appear when compared 
 with the grave, quiet modesty of the petition, 
 'Give us this day our daily bread'? 
 
 And yet the religious public, of all schools 
 and parties, ever lusts after a dressing and 
 serving up of true religion with condiments, 
 which may stimulate the dull palate, and give
 
 Our Daily Bread 203 
 
 a relish to the old and (as they are accounted) 
 somewhat stale truths of the Bible and Prayer 
 Book. What a great distastefulness prevails 
 for the solid and the sound in sermons and 
 religious works ! What applause is imme- 
 diately won by a writer or a preacher who 
 commits himself to clever, brilliant, flippant 
 views of God's provision of spiritual sup- 
 port, His holy Word and Sacraments! Then, 
 because the ordinary routine of worship and 
 instruction, as carried on in our churches, 
 is not exciting or stirring enough, we must 
 forsooth convene our congregations in show- 
 rooms and theatres, where the familiar liturgy 
 may be dispensed with, and where devotional 
 exercises may gain a zest from the strange- 
 ness and unsuitableness of their surround- 
 ings. And probably in the movement known 
 as Ritualistic, though here doubtless there 
 are other and deeper principles at work, there 
 is a popular element of the same description, 
 a weariness of approved religious methods as 
 flat and dull, and an attempt to season more 
 highly the dish for the spiritual palate, by
 
 204 Our Daily Bread 
 
 striking novelties, or by appeals to the imagina- 
 tion and the senses. The petition for ' daily 
 bread ' condemns the lust after such novelties. 
 We do not want, for the maintenance and 
 growth of our spiritual life, and we have no 
 warrant for seeking, fascinations, or ecstasies, 
 or devotional raptures, or fits of spiritual en- 
 thusiasm. We need not to be galvanized into 
 spiritual emotions ; all that we want is spiritually 
 to ' live by the faith of the Son of God, who 
 loved us, and gave Himself for us ' (Gal. ii. 20). 
 We want indeed to grow in the knowledge 
 of God, by practising our present knowledge, 
 steadily, quietly, consistently, and with much 
 fewer vacillations of the will than at present. 
 All that can really contribute to this end of 
 our hopes and efforts, we find in the Bible 
 and Prayer Book. If effervescence of feeling 
 can be shown really to conduce to growth in 
 faith and love, we would willingly embrace all 
 or any of its means. But if none of them can 
 claim to do more than supply a stimulant for 
 spiritual sensations, then we say that what we 
 are in search of is nourishment, not stimulants,
 
 Our Daily Bread 205 
 
 and we fall back on our Lord's Prayer and 
 the exposition of it in our Catechism. ' I pray 
 unto God that He will send us all things that 
 be needful both for our souls and bodies/ 
 
 ' Faith's meanest deed more favour bears 
 Where hearts and wills are weighed, 
 Than brightest transports, choicest prayers, 
 Which bloom their hour, and fade.'
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 AND FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS 
 
 WE come now to the first of those conjunc- 
 tions by which the latter section of the Prayer, 
 unlike the former, is knit together. ' Give us 
 this day our daily bread ; and ' (lest daily bread 
 should prove a curse rather than a blessing) 
 ' give us ' therewithal ' daily pardon of our 
 transgressions.' Nothing is more demonstrable 
 than that the supply of our daily wants, if unac- 
 companied with an outflow of God's pardoning 
 mercy, would be a curse, and a heavy one. For 
 imagine everything necessary to the maintenance 
 of this life to be given without this outflow! In 
 that case our trespass accumulates every day, 
 and there is no act of grace running parallel 
 with it to expunge it. 
 
 And possibly there is another implication in 

 
 And Forgive us our Debts 207 
 
 the 'and,' as though it was said, 'Give us 
 this day our daily bread, and ' (that we may be 
 able to enjoy the blessings we have asked for, 
 let us taste also of Thy mercy) ' forgive us our 
 debts.' A full and high relish for God's natural 
 blessings there is not, and cannot be, without 
 an experience and an appreciation of His par- 
 doning mercy. The want of it* would taint all 
 the rest. While, on the other hand, this ex- 
 perience and appreciation gives a zest even 
 to those common and trivial pleasures of life 
 which the natural man takes as a matter of 
 course, and thinks it a hardship to be de- 
 prived of. A fair landscape borrows double 
 beauties when it is seen in the light of God's 
 pardoning love in Christ. It is the mind and 
 heart of the spectator which impart to the 
 landscape its charms. To one of the lower 
 animals, who wants intelligence, a lake and 
 an alp tinted with the sunset is nothing more 
 than any other sight ; it awakes no emotion, it 
 excites no admiration. To a man of refined 
 mind and cultivated feeling, on the other hand, 
 the sight of the lake or the alp is a high and
 
 2o8 And Forgive us our Debts 
 
 pure enjoyment. Now the Christian's mind has 
 received refinement, and the Christian's heart 
 cultivation, from the light and love of God which 
 have been poured into them. In looking at the 
 alp and the lake and the sunset, we can say, 
 ' My Father made them all ' ; and the same 
 Father forgives me my debts. The thought 
 lends them a beauty which otherwise they would 
 lack, for the mind tinges Nature with its own 
 hues. And, on the other hand, who has not 
 heard the tale, so strikingly illustrative of the 
 connexion of thought we are tracing, of a dis- 
 contented and fretful man, who, sauntering about 
 in his peevishness, strayed by a poor hovel, and 
 on looking through the casement saw a miserable 
 creature in tatters with a loaf of coarse brown 
 bread in his hand ? He was about to eat it ; but 
 before doing so the observer saw that he raised 
 his eyes, which were filled with tears, to heaven, 
 and ejaculated, 'All this Thou givest me, and 
 Christ besides.' ' Is he so thankful only for a 
 coarse loaf?' thought the observer. Yes! the 
 mercy of God, which this poor soul had tasted, 
 had sweetened to him the coarsest fare. He
 
 And Forgive us our Debts 209 
 
 well understood that the most delicate bread 
 could not be truly enjoyed without mercy, and 
 that with mercy even the coarsest bread be- 
 comes a dainty. In short, he knew what the 
 AND meant in ' Give us this day our daily bread, 
 AND forgive us our trespasses.' 
 
 But now to the petition itself. ' Forgive us 
 our trespasses ' ; literally, ' Remit to us, dis- 
 charge us from, our debts.' In the version of 
 the Lord's Prayer, as given by St. Luke, the 
 word is 'sins' 'Forgive us our sins.' But 
 even here, in the qualifying clause, the image 
 of a debt appears ; ' for we also forgive every 
 one that is indebted to us' (lit. 'for we also 
 discharge every one that owes us aught '). We 
 have also the parable of the two debtors, in 
 which man's offences against God and against 
 his fellow-man are represented respectively as 
 heavy and slight debts. We may say therefore 
 that our blessed Lord studiously represents sin 
 as a debt, and would have us think of it under 
 that figure. The figure, therefore, must be in- 
 structive ; and we must endeavour to draw forth 
 the lessons suggested by it. 
 
 p
 
 210 And Forgive us our Debts 
 
 First remark that this is a figure of common 
 parlance a figure which has wrought itself into 
 the texture of the language of daily life. For 
 what do we mean when we say, ' I ought to do 
 such and such a thing ' ; 'I did wrong, and 
 I ought to be punished for it.' 'Ought' is 
 originally and fundamentally the perfect tense 
 of the verb ' to owe ' ; and, therefore, when we 
 say, ' I ought to do this,' ' I ought to be punished 
 for not doing it,' what we mean is that such an 
 action or piece of conduct is due from us, and 
 that, failing its performance, it is just, or due 
 from us, that we should suffer. Now in virtue 
 of a threefold relationship in which each one of 
 us is created, we are in debt or under obliga- 
 tion to three parties ourselves, our neighbours, 
 and God which three obligations the gospel 
 of grace recognizes when it teaches us, in the 
 language of the Apostle, to ' live soberly, right- 
 eously, and godly in this present world.' 
 
 First, we owe a debt to ourselves as God's 
 stewards of the body, or animal nature, to keep 
 it in temperance, soberness, and chastity; of 
 the mind, or intellectual nature, to improve and
 
 And Forgive us our Debts 211 
 
 cultivate it by every means in our power, in 
 the knowledge of divine truth ; in the line and 
 for the purposes of our vocation ; thirdly as 
 stewards of the soul, or spiritual nature, to give 
 its interests the pre-eminence and the first con- 
 sideration, to make the mind its subordinate, 
 and the body its instrument and its slave. This 
 obligation to ourselves is repudiated by im- 
 moderate asceticism, which, in its extremer 
 forms, aims, as in the Stoic and the Buddhist, 
 at extirpating and crushing all the bodily and 
 the natural instincts. 
 
 Secondly, we owe a debt to our neighbour 
 that we should 'live righteously'; we are 
 under a natural obligation, arising from our 
 brotherly relationship to him, to love him as 
 ourselves, to respect his rank, his person, his 
 affections, his property, his good name, his 
 spiritual interests. The recluse, who shuts him- 
 self up from human society, that he personally 
 may be out of harm's way, repudiates and refuses 
 to acknowledge this debt. 
 
 Thirdly, and above all, we owe a debt to God 
 that we should 'live godly'; we are under a 
 P 2
 
 212 And Forgive us our Debts 
 
 perpetual obligation, arising from our filial rela- 
 tionship to Him, to ' love the Lord our God with 
 all our heart and with all our mind/ &c. ; to 
 improve in His service and to His glory all the 
 talents with which He has entrusted us ; to yield 
 Him the fruits of His vineyard, that is, a sub- 
 stantial return for all the religious advantages 
 and gracious influences which He bestows ; to 
 do the work of His service with our hands, to 
 run on His errands with our feet, to admire 
 His works of nature with our eyes, to listen to 
 His word with our ears, to sing His praises 
 with our tongue, so that each of our members 
 may yield to Him some homage. The mere 
 moralist, who, while he admits that man is 
 subject to moral laws which he cannot violate 
 with impunity, at the same time ignores or 
 denies the personality of God, and consequently 
 the claims arising out of His relationship to us, 
 repudiates and refuses to recognize this obli- 
 gation. And failing to discharge these debts, 
 or any of them, our consciences assure us that 
 the failure should be met by a corresponding 
 punishment that we 'ought' to suffer. They
 
 And Forgive us our Debts 213 
 
 instinctively recognize God as a judge who, in 
 virtue of the purity and uprightness of His 
 character, cannot clear the guilty. 
 
 But now the figure of a debt having been 
 explained, what is the special instructiveness 
 of it ? What points does it bring out respecting 
 sin, which, but for this representation of it, 
 we might have missed? This chiefly, that it 
 gives such a prominence to sins of omission 
 a prominence foreign indeed to our habits of 
 thought, but altogether in harmony with the 
 teaching of God's Word. If sins had gone 
 under no other name than ' sins/ we might 
 have understood by them nothing but positive 
 wrongs, vices, injuries inflicted upon society, 
 insults offered to God, and so forth. But 
 when sins are spoken of as unpaid debts, how 
 different an aspect does the case assume! A 
 debt is something not rendered which ought 
 to have been rendered. I do not incur a 
 debt to a man when I assault him and break 
 one of his limbs, nor when I calumniate him 
 and take away his character, nor even when 
 I take his property from him by violence or
 
 214 And Forgive tts our Debts 
 
 fraud. The ' being in debt ' to a man means, not 
 that I do anything to him which I should not, 
 but that I leave undone what I should do to 
 him, namely, the repayment of his money. And 
 thus the constant thinking of sin under the 
 image of a debt brings out, more strongly than 
 any other phraseology could do, the omissor}- 
 side of sin that, in its main aspect, sin 
 is the non-payment of something inherently 
 and essentially due ; the non-payment to God 
 of love and glory, to man of sympathy and 
 brotherly kindness. And exactly in accordance 
 with the estimate of sin, which this phraseolog}' 
 leads us to form, will be the Divine Judge's 
 sentence upon sinners at the last day. What 
 He will comment upon in that sentence, and set 
 before them, when it is now too late to amend 
 their error, will be the neglect of duty to Him 
 and to their brethren, which there has been in 
 their wrong-doing ; the waste of time, the non- 
 improvement of talents, the ignoring of claims, 
 the non-recognition of neighbours as neighbours, 
 the non-exhibition of sympathies ' I was an 
 hungred, and ye gave Me no meat: I was
 
 And Forgive ^^s our Debts 215 
 
 thirsty, and ye gave Me no drink : I was a 
 stranger, and ye took Me not in : naked, and 
 ye clothed Me not : sick, and in prison, and ye 
 visited Me not. . . . Inasmuch as ye did it not 
 to one of the least of these, ye did it not to Me ' 
 (St. Matt. xxv. 42, 43, 45). 
 
 It opens a wide field of thought on the nature 
 of sin to regard every form of it in the light in 
 which our Lord here instructs us to regard it 
 as the non-payment of something intrinsically 
 due from us either to God, our neighbours, 
 or ourselves. 
 
 Observe, once more (because this is essential 
 to the right understanding of the petition before 
 us), that the debts, for whose remission we peti- 
 tion, are daily incurred debts. We may say, 
 generally, that each petition of the Lord's Prayer 
 is to be understood in the light of all that has 
 preceded it, and is bound up in the body of 
 thought which has already been accumulated. 
 So here ; ' Give us day by day our daily bread, 
 and,' concurrently with bread (that is, day by day 
 also), ' give us pardon.' Again, the 'Our Father,' 
 with which the prayer begins, is a key-note
 
 216 And Forgive us our Debts 
 
 which dominates the whole strain, and ever 
 recurs in each clause of it; so that this peti- 
 tion is by no means to be understood as the 
 voice of criminals condemned to death and 
 imploring the judge to extend mercy to them, 
 but as the voice of children running to their 
 parent's knees before bedtime, burying their 
 head in his lap, confessing that their conduct 
 and temper during the day has been wrong, 
 and seeking his forgiveness ; ' Our Father, for- 
 give us our debts.' The petition assumes, you 
 will observe, that the petitioner has been placed 
 in, and is realizing, his relationship to God as 
 a reconciled child. He has a warrant and title 
 to call God ' Father,' which no man has, or can 
 have, except through the Sacrament of Baptism, 
 ' wherein he was made . . . the child of God ' ; 
 and he has also the power and disposition to call 
 God ' Father,' which no man has, or can have, 
 except through faith ; for ' Ye are all the chil- 
 dren of God by faith in Christ Jesus' (Gal. 
 iii. 26). 
 
 Our Lord speaks enigmatically to St. Peter 
 of a twofold washing one of the entire person,
 
 And Forgive us our Debts 217 
 
 another of the feet. 'He that is washed' (i.e. 
 he whose whole person is bathed) ' needeth not 
 save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit.' 
 That is to say, there is one great spiritual 
 cleansing when a heathen is turned from dark- 
 ness to light, and is washed, sanctified, and 
 justified in the laver of regeneration by bap- 
 tism. He, upon whom this process has passed, 
 ' needeth not save to wash his feet/ i. e. to wipe 
 off the dust and soil which is necessarily con- 
 tracted by a single day's walk in this naughty 
 world. When we seek from ' Our Father, which 
 is in heaven,' the forgiveness of our sins, it is this 
 wiping off of the daily dust and soil which we 
 solicit, so that our consciences may be kept in 
 a state of habitual brightness and clearness, and 
 that the rust, which the foul breath of this world 
 is apt to form upon them, may be cleared away 
 as soon as it begins to accumulate. Watch- 
 fulness, therefore, and daily self-examination are 
 among the duties which this petition suggests ; 
 for how is the rust to be detected, except by 
 means of these exercises? But the petition 
 speaks of comfort, of large and precious com-
 
 218 And Forgive us our Debts 
 
 fort, as well as of duty. For it shows clearly, 
 as St. Chrysostom says, that 'even after the 
 laver [of regeneration] the profit of repentance 
 is not taken away.' Must not He who, in fram- 
 ing this holy prayer, inserted a petition for the 
 forgiveness of daily sins, have contemplated our 
 falling into such sins, through the frailty of 
 our nature? Must He not have foreseen that 
 the children of God would have need to come 
 to their Father's feet evening after evening, and 
 pour out a confession of lapses of the tongue 
 and lapses of the temper, and sometimes even 
 of more serious falls incurred through forgetful- 
 ness of God? So in this petition He provides 
 a remedy for these lapses, and teaches us to 
 seek a fresh outflow of compassion from our 
 Father's fatherly heart, to obliterate them all. 
 
 It would be to omit a consideration all essen- 
 tial to the right understanding of the subject if 
 it were not pointed out that it is in virtue of 
 Christ's having, while on earth, discharged all 
 our debts, that God now remits them. Christ 
 is the second Adam the second and better repre- 
 sentative of our race. And standing, not for
 
 And Forgive us our Debts 219 
 
 Himself, but for us, in the nature common to 
 us all, He as man discharged every claim of 
 obedience, devotion, love, sympathy, which either 
 God or man had upon Him. Moreover, while 
 perfectly exempt from sin both in His flesh and 
 His spirit, He implicated Himself in all the awful 
 consequences of sin, and submitted in body and 
 mind to its severest penalty, thus discharging 
 the debt of suffering, as He had already dis- 
 charged the debt of obedience. But while we 
 may scripturally and rightly look at our Lord's 
 work for us under this image, let us beware of 
 pressing (as some do) so unduly hard upon the 
 image as to suppose that it will hold good in 
 every point. There is one point in which it 
 does not hold good, and which shows that God, 
 while He employs it, is accommodating His 
 inscrutable ways to our feeble forms of thought 
 and expression. The point is this. Christ, in 
 the payment of our debt, is not a person acting 
 independently of God, or not in concert with 
 the Father. To suppose anything like this is 
 to strain a figurative expression beyond what 
 it will bear. It was of the free mercy and
 
 220 And Forgive us our Debts 
 
 pure grace of God that Christ was sent to pay 
 our debts ; the discharge of them was not more 
 an act of grace on the Son's part than an act 
 of love on the Father's. Now, in the earthly 
 transaction, which is made a figure of this, no 
 man ever heard of a creditor's providing, at 
 great cost to himself, the payment of a debtor's 
 debt by some third person. If the earthly 
 creditor pities and wishes to relieve the debtor, 
 he simply remits the debt. Here therefore the 
 earthly image breaks down beneath the burden of 
 the heavenly truth. And it is to our comfort that 
 it should break down ; for while it expresses 
 sufficiently the love of Christ, who bore our 
 sins in His own body on the tree, it fails to 
 express the love of God, who gave up His Son 
 out of His bosom, thus to bear our sins, and 
 herein gives the glorious pledge that He will 
 do for us all that is further necessary for our 
 holiness and happiness : ' He that spared not 
 His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, 
 how shall He not with Him also freely give 
 us all things ? ' (Rom. viii. 32). As often as we 
 say, ' Forgive us our trespasses,' let us open our
 
 And Forgive us our Debts 221 
 
 hearts to that self-sacrificing love of God, as 
 a sunflower opens its bosom to the sun ; let us 
 believe in its freeness, in its universality, in its 
 moral power, and we shall find that it will not 
 only obliterate our sins, but draw us sweetly and 
 efficaciously out of them.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 AS WE FORGIVE OUR DEBTORS 
 
 THE two sections (or, as we may call them, 
 the two tables) of the Lord's Prayer correspond 
 very exactly to one another. In each of these 
 sections, one of the petitions has a modifying 
 clause annexed to it by the particle ' as.' In 
 the first section, we pray that God's will may 
 be done in earth, 'as it is in heaven.' In the 
 second section, we pray that He would forgive 
 us our trespasses, 'as we forgive them that 
 trespass against us.' There is an evident paral- 
 lelism in the structure of the first and second 
 parts of the Prayer, which is curious and inter- 
 esting. But the parallelism does not extend 
 to the thought which is expressed by the words. 
 The ' as ' in the first section of the Prayer does 
 not mean the same as the 'as' now before us
 
 As we Forgive our Debtors 223 
 
 in its second section. In the clause, ' Thy will 
 be done in earth as it is in heaven/ the 'as' 
 means according to the model of. We pray that 
 men upon earth may imitate, and take as their 
 model, the fervour, alacrity, and zeal with which 
 the blessed angels of heaven execute God's 
 behests. But in the corresponding clause, 'As 
 we forgive our debtors/ we surely do not implore 
 God to make our forgiveness of the sins of 
 others His model in forgiving us. ' God forbid/ 
 says good Bishop Andrewes, that He should 
 no otherwise forgive us than we forgive our 
 brethren.' The 'as' here merely expresses 
 the condition, on which we trust that God will 
 graciously extend His forgiveness to ourselves. 
 And that this is indeed the meaning of the clause 
 is evident from the words in which St. Luke 
 couches the idea, and which are different from 
 the words in St. Matthew : ' For we also forgive 
 every one that is indebted to us.' The 'for' is 
 only another way of stating the ' as.' And the 
 'for' can only mean that we entreat God to 
 forgive us, in consideration of our complying 
 with the condition of pardon, which He Himself
 
 224 As we Forgive our Debtors 
 
 has laid down, viz. that we shall forgive 
 others. 
 
 We have here a good instance of the impor- 
 tance of examining carefully the different phrases 
 in which Holy Scripture conveys an idea. One 
 of these phrases will often explain and guard 
 another ; and perhaps correct an erroneous infer- 
 ence, which might have been drawn from the 
 other phrase, had it stood alone. 
 
 That the clause at which we have now arrived 
 is one of peculiar importance is evident from 
 the unique emphasis which the giver of the 
 Prayer laid on it. It is the only clause upon 
 which He commented after 'His first giving 
 of the Prayer ; thus drawing special attention to 
 it, as if it were the most noticeable point in the 
 whole formula : ' For if ye forgive men their 
 trespasses, your heavenly Father will also for- 
 give you : but if ye forgive not men their 
 trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your 
 trespasses ' (St. Matt. vi. 14, 15). 
 
 But this is by no means the only evidence of 
 our Lord attaching special weight to the clause. 
 At a later period of His ministry, He devoted
 
 As we Forgive our Debtors 225 
 
 a parable to the illustration of the idea which 
 it conveys. The parable of the Unmerciful 
 Servant graphically represents the doom of the 
 unforgiving Christian, and brings out in strong 
 relief a point, obvious indeed, but not expressly 
 noticed in the Prayer; namely, the enormous 
 disproportion between our debts to one another, 
 and those which we all owe to God, the one 
 being represented as ' an hundred pence ' (some- 
 thing short of four pounds in our money), the 
 other as 10,000 talents (something considerably 
 over a million and a half). 
 
 When we consider that our obligations to God 
 extend over every waking moment of our lives ; 
 that the smallest deviation of the heart from His 
 love, and of the will from the intention of serving 
 and glorifying Him, constitutes an unfulfilled 
 obligation, for which punishment is due ; that, 
 moreover, our obligations to our neighbours and 
 to ourselves are all of them in their higher aspect 
 obligations to God ; and that even 'a just' (i.e. 
 a righteous and a spiritual man) ' falleth seven 
 times a day ' (Prov. xxiv. 16), (seVen here being 
 used, as so often in Holy Scripture, for a perfect 
 
 Q
 
 226 As we Forgive our Debtors 
 
 number) ; while, on the other hand, the offences 
 which pass between us and our neighbours, the 
 injuries which they do to us, and the enmities 
 which estrange us from them, are the exception, 
 not the rule, of daily life, this enormous dispro- 
 portion will not at all surprise us ; evidently 
 the aggregate of all the wrongs ever done to 
 us by suspicion, word, or deed, can bear no 
 comparison whatever with the extent of our own 
 unfulfilled obligations to God. Since, then, our 
 blessed Lord has called our attention so very 
 pointedly to this particular clause, we must give 
 the more heed to it, and study to understand the 
 ground of it, and more and more to imbibe its spirit. 
 First ; let us be very clear as to what a con- 
 dition of Divine forgiveness means. The con- 
 dition of God's forgiveness is something alto- 
 gether distinct from its meritorious ground. To 
 distinguish between the two by an illustration, 
 we may suppose that a person imprisoned for 
 debt is entitled to be discharged by the payment 
 of the debt in full by another person, but yet 
 is discharged on the express understanding that 
 he will not exact from others any sums which
 
 As we Forgive our Debtors 227 
 
 may be due to himself. The understanding 
 is only the condition of his discharge ; it is 
 the payment of his debt which constitutes his 
 legal title to it, and which may be called its 
 meritorious ground. The single meritorious 
 ground of our forgiveness is, as was explained in 
 the last chapter, the work of Christ. Standing 
 for us in the nature common to all as our repre- 
 sentative, He discharged in full all our obliga- 
 tions, whether they be obligations to obey or 
 obligations to suffer. And on this meritorious 
 ground God remits to us our debt ; but at the 
 same time not without annexing a condition, 
 with which we must comply. And the condition 
 of our enjoying remission, and the other bless- 
 ings which follow in its train, is that we shall 
 extend to others the mercy which we have our- 
 selves received. 
 
 That this condition should make its ap- 
 pearance in the model prayer of the Christian 
 is most reasonable. For this model prayer was 
 intended to indicate, not only the blessings which 
 we should ask of God, but the spirit in which 
 we must ask them, if we would gain them. On 
 Q 2
 
 228 As we Forgive our Debtors 
 
 a memorable occasion our Lord Himself ex- 
 hibited the spirit in which men should pray, if 
 they would fetch down from heaven the bless- 
 ings they solicit. He said it must be a spirit 
 of faith, and also a spirit of forgiving love. 
 He had just uttered against the barren fig-tree 
 a prayer of malediction : ' No man eat fruit of 
 thee hereafter for ever' (St. Mark xi. 14). 
 The prayer had taken effect instantaneously ; 
 and the disciples when passing the fig-tree 
 next morning remark in surprise the speedy 
 accomplishment of their Master's words ; ' How 
 soon is the fig-tree withered away ! ' Jesus pro- 
 ceeds to instruct them (most appositely to the 
 phenomenon on which their thoughts were 
 dwelling) as to the conditions on which their 
 words of prayer should be, as His had been, 
 words of power. The first of these conditions 
 was, that they should pray in faith : ' Have faith 
 in God,' faith in His word of promise, in His 
 willingness to give, in His ability to give, and 
 therefore in the certainty of His giving such 
 things as it is good for us to have. Now this 
 faith in God is implied in every word of the
 
 As ive Forgive our Debtors 229 
 
 first part of the Lord's Prayer. We cannot 
 sincerely call God ' Father,' nor pray that ' His 
 name may be hallowed/ nor that ' His kingdom 
 may come/ nor that ' His will may be done/- 
 our hearts cannot echo these phrases and peti- 
 tions without ' faith in God.' 
 
 But there is a second, and equally important, 
 condition of success in prayer, which our Lord 
 proceeded to point out: 'And when ye stand pray- 
 ing, forgive, if ye have ought against any : that 
 your Father also which is in heaven may forgive 
 you your trespasses. But if ye do not forgive, 
 neither will your Father which is in heaven for- 
 give your trespasses.' The forgiveness of those 
 who are indebted to us ; the prayer for those who 
 have done us an ill turn ; the not insisting upon 
 claims upon which strictly we might insist ; the 
 remitting freely part of the respect or privi- 
 leges which are rightfully our due this, if it 
 be sincere, and not professed or hypocritical, 
 cannot flow from any motive but love. For- 
 giveness is love's highest exercise both in 
 God and in man. God's bounty to His creatures, 
 His liberality in providing them with sustenance
 
 230 As we Forgive our Debtors 
 
 and outward comforts, is by no means the 
 highest or most convincing evidence of His love 
 for us. ' Scarcely for a righteous man will one die : 
 yet peradventure for a good man some would 
 even dare to die. But God commendeth His 
 love toward us, in that, while we were yet 
 sinners, Christ died for us' (Rom. v. 7, 8). The 
 highest evidence of God's love is His making 
 over His Son to a cruel death for a world in 
 arms against Himself. This gift showed con- 
 clusively a longing on our heavenly Father's part 
 to be reconciled to the worst and vilest of those 
 who had rebelled against Him. It is therefore in 
 this particular act of love, 'the forgiveness of 
 sins/ that this Divine Prayer calls upon us to 
 imitate Him, who 'maketh His sun to shine upon 
 the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the 
 just and on the unjust ' (St. Matt. v. 45). 
 
 Moreover, this forgiveness of offences is, and 
 is felt to be, the most supernatural of all virtues. 
 The moment our thoughts turn to it, we must 
 acknowledge that Nature is not competent to this 
 achievement. To certain exercises of love Nature 
 is more or less competent, though even here she
 
 As we Forgive our Debtors 231 
 
 derives a quickening and a stimulus from 
 grace. Nature may dispose us to relieve abject 
 distress, or to show generosity to a completely 
 crushed and vanquished foe. But to deal indul- 
 gently with one who advisedly passes a slight 
 upon us, or injures our reputation, or stands in 
 the way of our advancement, or thwarts our 
 fondest wishes, this is instinctively felt to be far 
 above the standard of natural virtue. And when 
 the duty of forgiving an enemy, however often he 
 may have offended us, was pressed upon the 
 disciples by their Divine Lord, the Apostles, in 
 the feeling that for compliance with this precept 
 they needed an extraordinary supply of the 
 principle which lifts man above the things that 
 are seen, said unto the Lord, ' Increase our 
 faith.' By far the hardest exercise of love is 
 to forgive those who have offended us; and 
 therefore our Lord selects this rather than any 
 other exercise, in order more conclusively to 
 indicate the presence of the spirit of love in 
 the petitioner. 
 
 Here again, let us admire the high standard 
 which this Prayer contemplates in those who use
 
 232 As we Forgive our Debtors 
 
 it. It assumes that the heart of the petitioner 
 is set, first and before all things else, on the 
 hallowing of God's name and the advancement 
 of His kingdom. It assumes also that his heart 
 is so softened by the exercise of God's par- 
 doning mercy towards himself, that he cannot 
 but extend the same mercy to others. Alas! 
 how often have we allowed ourselves to repeat 
 the words of the Prayer, without the germ of 
 either of these dispositions! And how much 
 therefore have we to answer for in the way 
 of taking God's name in vain in our prayers! 
 How often, when on our knees before Him, 
 have we expressed sentiments to which our 
 hearts were strangers ! And as in saying, ' Thy 
 kingdom come,' when there was in us no pre- 
 paredness for its coming, we have virtually 
 asked God to give us no more space for repen- 
 tance ; so in saying, ' Forgive us our trespasses, 
 as we forgive them that trespass against us/ we 
 have often virtually asked him to stint His large 
 and liberal measure of forgiveness, and to receive 
 our penitence coldly and with nice calculations 
 of its genuineness and depth.
 
 As we Forgive our Debtors 233 
 
 But before we part with this clause, we must 
 attempt to reach the real and hidden ground of 
 this condition, ' As we forgive our debtors.' It is 
 not a condition arbitrarily imposed ; God does not 
 arbitrarily lay any restrictions upon His bounty, 
 although we may so represent the matter to 
 ourselves. Rather the condition is inherent in 
 the constitution of our nature, which is not fun- 
 damentally altered by the Gospel; for to alter 
 it fundamentally would be to construct a new 
 creature, instead of restoring the old one. The 
 human heart, then, is so framed that it cannot 
 open towards God to receive His mercy, without 
 at the same time opening towards man, and even 
 towards injurious and offending man, to give him 
 welcome. It may seem theoretically possible to 
 receive forgiveness from our heavenly Father, 
 without extending it to our earthly brethren ; but 
 it is not practically feasible. The two avenues 
 of the heart, its avenue towards God and its 
 avenue towards man, open, as it were, and close 
 with one and the same door. It is not merely 
 true that a man will not receive forgiveness from 
 God who does not extend it to his neighbour,
 
 234 As we Forgive our Debtors 
 
 but rather he cannot receive it. God may be 
 ready and longing to forgive ; but the avenue of 
 the heart, through which alone forgiveness can 
 be poured into it, is not opened. We may 
 take an illustration from a somewhat analogous 
 feature in the constitution of the human mind. 
 Susceptibility to the beauty of a work of art or 
 of a poem carries with it more or less a desire 
 and an endeavour to produce poetry, to utter 
 oneself in the form of poetry. The receptive 
 faculty is also more or less a constructive and 
 productive faculty ; so that the soul, into which 
 poetry finds a ready entrance, will occasionally 
 seek to pour itself forth in poetry. Similarly 
 in the case before us, love is a thing which 
 we cannot embrace without extending love to 
 others. In that softening of the soul which is 
 the result of realizing the Divine love in Christ, 
 it is nothing less than impossible, to harbour a 
 grudge against our neighbour. And, there- 
 fore, if a grudge were harboured by any 
 soul, this would conclusively show that that 
 soul is not really softened, has never been 
 a recipient of God's pardoning mercy, how-
 
 As we Forgive our Debtors 235 
 
 ever freely that mercy may have been proffered 
 to it. 
 
 When the heart has been thoroughly pene- 
 trated with God's love to ourselves, it is in no 
 humour to make terms with others, to stand 
 upon rights and claims with them, or to measure 
 the amount of forgiveness which it deals forth 
 to them. It cannot possibly take up the mental 
 attitude indicated in that question put by St. 
 Peter to the Master, ' Lord, how oft shall my 
 brother sin against me, and I forgive him ? till 
 seven times?' (St. Matt, xviii. 21.) God's 
 pardon is measureless ; and accordingly any 
 measure of forgiveness to those whose offences 
 against ourselves have been so much less, is felt 
 to be intolerable. God's generosity experienced 
 by ourselves has made additional room in our 
 hearts, and our offending brethren are at once 
 received into that room. The question is, how 
 much love we can show them ; not how little 
 we may show them, consistently with our own 
 safety. Any attempt to limit, or dole out by 
 measure, the forgiveness we extend to others, 
 would only show that we have no real apprecia-
 
 236 As we Forgive our Debtors 
 
 tion of God's love to ourselves ; for this Love is 
 expressly said to include the forgetting of past 
 sins : ' Their sins and their iniquities will I re- 
 member no more/ ' Thou wilt cast all their sins 
 into the depths of the sea.' At any rate, if we 
 have not a power of obliteration over ourmemory, 
 we can habitually do all in our power to banish 
 from our mind every trace of resentment ; if, on 
 principle, we never allow our thoughts to dwell 
 on a slight or an insult (for the dwelling on it 
 ever so little is sure to magnify its proportions) ; 
 if we perseveringly pray for those who have 
 offended or injured us, and seize gladly every 
 opportunity of showing them kindness ; if our 
 wills be right in this matter, and consistently 
 refuse to give a hearing to the feelings of our 
 corrupt nature ; with what comfortable assurance 
 of receiving it may we solicit from God the 
 remission of our own sins ! For can we suppose 
 that He will be less generous and merciful to 
 us than we are to our neighbours? Is it not 
 certain that for every debt we find grace from 
 Him to remit, He will remit ten thousand ; and 
 that for every opening of our sympathies
 
 As we Forgive our Debtors 237 
 
 towards an offending brother, He will pour out 
 upon us such treasures of Divine affection that 
 we shall not have room to receive them? 
 ' What is my hope?' says good Bishop Andrewes 
 in a most urgent and pathetic appeal to the 
 Saviour for pardon. ' It is that Thou even unto 
 seventy times seven dost extend Thy mercy. For 
 this is the measure which Thou hast commended 
 to us. Hast Thou commended it to us that we 
 should exercise it amongst ourselves, but that 
 Thou Thyself shouldest not exercise the same ? 
 Yea, Thou wilt exercise it and much more. 
 Far be it from Thee that Thou shouldest require 
 more perfection to be in us than is in Thyself; 
 that Thou shouldest require us to forgive unto 
 seventy times seven, but Thyself shouldest be 
 unwilling to do so. For Thy mercy surpasseth 
 ours as far as Thou Thyself surpasseth us.' 
 
 Yes, this forgetting as well as forgiving love 
 of our God is to be our model in dealing out 
 forgiveness to our offending brethren. ' It is an 
 arduous and difficult requirement,' you will say, 
 ' if not in the majority of cases, at least where the 
 wrong done has been deliberate, and evidently
 
 238 As we Forgive our Debtors 
 
 of malice prepense, and is of a kind which not 
 only damages us externally, but also wounds the 
 feelings.' Let us see whether another con- 
 sideration, drawn from that love of God which 
 is to be our model, may not, when calmly 
 pondered, somewhat reduce the proportions of 
 the difficulty. We are to love as God loves, to 
 forgive as our heavenly Father forgives. Our 
 mind in the matter is to be framed upon His. 
 But while God loves the worst sinners tenderly, 
 while the measure of His love to them is 
 nothing less than the gift of His Son out of 
 His bosom for them and to them, still He hates 
 their sins, so much so that unless they were 
 delivered from the guilt of those sins by His 
 Son's blood, and from the power of them by 
 His Son's grace, He could not accept them. 
 Assuredly He cannot require us to love what 
 He Himself hates. It is the person of mine 
 enemy that I am required to love, not his wrong 
 or his wrongdoing. And so St. Augustine very 
 beautifully teaches us to distinguish, as the 
 Divine Love does, between the sinner and 
 the sin.
 
 As we Forgive our Debtors 239 
 
 ' It is not the human nature [in thine enemy] 
 that is at enmity with thee, but his sin. If he 
 had no evil, he would not be thine enemy. 
 Wish him well, then, that he may end his ill, 
 and he will be thine enemy no longer.'
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 AND LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION 
 
 WHEN our Lord found in the Temple the 
 man to whom He had restored the use of his 
 limbs at the Pool of Bethesda, He gave him this 
 salutary warning : ' Behold, thou art made whole : 
 sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee ' 
 (St. John v. 14). And the Apostle St. Peter, 
 echoing what his Master had once said respecting 
 the return of the evil spirit, with seven other 
 spirits more wicked than himself, into the 
 man from whom he had been temporarily 
 cast out, says of certain false teachers of his 
 time, ' For if after they have escaped the pollu- 
 tions of the world through the knowledge of 
 the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are
 
 And Lead us not into Temptation 241 
 
 again entangled therein, and overcome, the 
 latter end is worse with them than the begin- 
 ning. . . But it is happened unto them according 
 to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his 
 own vomit again ; and the sow that was washed 
 to her wallowing in the mire' (2 St. Peter ii. 
 20, 22). 
 
 In these and similar passages we find the 
 significance of the ' and/ which links together 
 ' Lead us not into temptation ' with ' Forgive us 
 our trespasses.' Our souls have been healed 
 by the precious balm of Christ's blood, by the 
 blessed restorative of God's pardon ; we have 
 escaped from our pollutions of heart and life ; 
 the unclean spirit has taken his departure, 
 exorcised by the spell of God's great love. Now, 
 therefore, our care must be to sin no more : 
 we must fortify ourselves against the return of 
 the evil spirit to our heart ; we must look to it 
 that we do not, after being washed in the Blood 
 of Christ, turn again to our wallowing in the 
 mire of sin (p. 17). 
 
 We shall appreciate this petition more fully, 
 and repeat it more heartily, if we consider how 
 
 R
 
 242 And Lead us not into Temptation 
 
 apt the same sins and faults of character are to 
 recur day after day with us ; how each evening's 
 self-examination brings to light much the same 
 slips of temper and the tongue, much the same 
 omissions of devotion, much the same waste of 
 time, much the same wandering of the thoughts 
 in forbidden directions, as that of yesterday; 
 so that, alas ! upon the whole we seem to make 
 but little way. It should not be so, our con- 
 sciences tell us. He who confesses sins, without 
 earnestly striving against them, has good reason 
 to fear that his confession has not been an 
 honest one. We profess before God, evening 
 after evening, that we deplore the faults by 
 which we have been that day overtaken. But 
 do we deplore them if we make no effort to 
 avoid them ? And such an effort can only be 
 successful if made under God's direction and 
 in His strength. Reasonably, therefore, we 
 pray, after making mention of sins past, for 
 God's help against sins future : ' Forgive us our 
 trespasses, AND lead us not into temptation/ 
 
 There are two ways of contemplating future 
 trials of our Christian principle. The first is
 
 And Lead us not into Temptation 243 
 
 exemplified in St. Peter. Assured of his own 
 sincere attachment to his Master, and conscious 
 of the warmth of his feelings, he challenged 
 temptation, and asked to have his affection put 
 to the proof: 'Lord, I am ready to go with 
 Thee, both into prison, and to death ' (St. Luke 
 xxii. 33). Observe that, in thus expressing him- 
 self, he did not foresee the exact danger he 
 would have to meet ; he was probably thinking 
 of another form of danger, against which his 
 own heart told him he at all events was proof. 
 He thought of having to fight for Christ with 
 the arms of flesh, and, if his sword was beaten 
 down, of being captured and imprisoned in our 
 Lord's company. And had this been the trial 
 in store for him, there can be little doubt that 
 he would have braved it nobly. He showed his 
 perfect willingness to abide a trial of that sort 
 by drawing his sword, and striking the servant 
 of the high priest. He expected, doubtless, that 
 this would have been the signal for the swords of 
 the apprehending party to leap from their scab- 
 bards, and for a skirmish to ensue between them 
 and the Apostles, in which he would no doubt, 
 R 2
 
 244 And Lead us not into Temptation 
 
 under the impulse of enthusiastic admiration for 
 our Lord, have acquitted himself as a brave 
 man. But the issue was far different. Not a 
 blade was raised to meet his. Our Lord was 
 not going to use, nor to allow His followers to 
 use, violence. He bids Peter (St. Matt. xxvi. 52) 
 ' put up again ' his ' sword into his place/ and 
 repairs, by an exertion of miraculous power, the 
 mischief which that sword had done. And now 
 appeared the other form of temptation, for which 
 Peter was all unprepared not the form which 
 had shown itself to him in the foreground, and 
 which he felt that he could easily conquer, but 
 the form which was lying in ambush for him. 
 Many a man has been found ready to march up 
 to the cannon's mouth in the cause of his country, 
 who would be quite unable to bear the brunt 
 of contempt and ridicule. Peter would have 
 fought to the death by the side of Messiah, and 
 would have gloried in doing so ; but to be 
 pointed at by the finger of scorn among the 
 high priest's servants, to be despised of men as 
 the follower and associate of the Galilaean, who 
 claimed to be Messiah, and yet seemed as if He
 
 And Lead us not into Temptation 245 
 
 could not lift a finger to help Himself out of 
 His own difficulties, this was a trial which 
 could only be met in the strength of grace, not 
 of natural resolution ; and accordingly Peter, 
 who had entrenched himself on natural resolu- 
 tion, fell at once and shamefully, when it was 
 brought to bear upon him. 
 
 The petition, ' Lead us not into temptation/ 
 expresses a spirit the very opposite of that which 
 challenges trial. He who in his morning prayer 
 says this petition with his heart, realizing God's 
 forgiveness of him, and conscious of acceptance 
 with Him through the blood of the cross, while 
 his heart glows with gratitude to his heavenly 
 Father, and to his merciful Redeemer, for making 
 him again welcome after so many falls, feels that 
 he is going forth into a world which is everywhere 
 a scene of temptation, and which offers perils 
 both hidden and obvious at every turn, and that 
 'it is not in man that walketh to direct his 
 steps' (Jer. x. 23) in such a world. He is a 
 reconciled child indeed, and the sweet sense 
 of reconciliation is shed abroad in his heart ' by 
 ithe Holy Ghost which is given unto him'
 
 246 And Lead us not into Temptation 
 
 (see Rom. v. 5). But he is profoundly suspicious 
 of the world ; profoundly diffident of himself. 
 His enemies are versed in spiritual warfare ; 
 they succeed oftener by ambush or stratagem 
 than by direct assault. He cannot see them ; 
 he cannot detect where they are driving their 
 mines, or under what covert they are concealing 
 their forces. He remembers that even in our 
 first parents' state of innocence, before sin 
 had entered their nature and given it a bias 
 towards evil, Satan proved more than a match 
 for them ; in his heart there is ' the infection 
 of nature' which 'doth remain yea in them that 
 are regenerated,' and which is ever ready to 
 correspond with the enemy ; how shall he ever 
 hope to stand against Satan in his own wisdom 
 or strength ? He would therefore, feeling him- 
 self 'to be set in the midst of so many and 
 great dangers, that by reason of the frailty of 
 his ' nature ' he ' cannot always stand upright,' 
 rather decline the contest, if it be God's will, 
 than venture into it. At all events, however 
 assured at present of pardon and Divine favour, 
 his prayer shall never run in the form of a
 
 And Lead us not into Temptation 247 
 
 challenge ; he will never say in the spirit of 
 Goliath, 'I defy the armies of the evil ones 
 'this day' (i Sam. xvii. 10) ; but rather, in the 
 words of Goliath's despised and unarmed adver- 
 sary, ' I come to thee in the name of the Lord 
 of Hosts, the God of the armies of Israel' 
 (i Sam. xvii. 45). ' Our Father which art in 
 heaven, lead us not into temptation.' 
 
 ' Lead us not into temptation.' God is here 
 regarded as the authorizer, rather than the 
 author, of temptation or of trial (for the word 
 might equally well, if not better, be so rendered). 
 Of course there is a certain sense in which 
 reason, reverence, and Holy Scripture assure 
 us that God cannot be its author: ' Let no man 
 say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God : 
 for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither 
 tempteth He any man ' (James i. 13). If by 
 temptation be meant the infusion of a bad 
 thought into the mind, the instilment of an evil 
 suggestion, or the stirring up and quickening 
 into aflame the embers of our natural corruption, 
 then God can never tempt directly ; temptation 
 in this sense must be due exclusively to agents
 
 248 And Lead us not into Temptation 
 
 at enmity with God, viz. the world and the 
 devil. But it should be observed that in this 
 glorious prayer our point of sight is raised above 
 all created agency to Him, by whose permission 
 at least all creatures must act, even when they 
 act in contravention to His will. There is a 
 great truth underlying this reference of all things 
 to God, even those which are in opposition 
 to Him. But let us first consider the primary 
 idea of the Prayer. God may be said to ' bring ' 
 or 'lead' men (the first word is a more exact 
 translation than the second) into trial or temp- 
 tation in one of three ways : firstly, by the agency 
 of His providence ; secondly, by His permis- 
 sion ; thirdly, by the withdrawal of grace. 
 
 First, by the agency of His providence. 1 1 will 
 not be denied that the circumstances in which 
 we find ourselves placed, are appointed by, and 
 under the control of, Divine Providence. By 
 the arrangements of this Providence, one man 
 is born to wealth and large property, another in 
 the condition of a peasant ; one man receives 
 high mental culture, another remains all his life 
 in ignorance of any but the humblest rudiments
 
 And Lead us not into Temptation 249 
 
 of learning ; one person is entrusted with the 
 administration of an empire, another with that of 
 a small household ; one man is surrounded from 
 his earliest youth by religious, another by irre- 
 ligious, associations. It is a great truth, and one 
 which must be carefully borne in mind in forming 
 an estimate of temptations, that all circumstances 
 without exception have their peculiar trials, so 
 that a change of position in life is never at any time 
 an exemption from trial, but only the exchange 
 of one form of trial for another. And this being 
 the case, it might be supposed that circumstances 
 were in this point of view indifferent to men, 
 and that whether God should bring us into one 
 set of circumstances or another, it really would 
 not make much difference, since He never 
 brings us into any which are exempt from 
 trial. But it must be remembered that, while 
 all circumstances are beset with temptations, 
 all temptations are not equally forcible to all 
 characters, nor even to the same characters at 
 all times. A man who is not much open to 
 temptations from the flesh a man of cold, 
 phlegmatic temperament and spare diet may be
 
 250 A nd Lead us not into Temptation 
 
 easily accessible to the snares of intellectual 
 pride ; in which case to place him in a position 
 where he has no leisure, or means, or oppor- 
 tunity to study, would be to shield him from 
 temptation ; and, on the other hand, to give him 
 books, and education, and leisure, and none but 
 himself to provide for, would be to bring him 
 into temptation. And, again, the temptations 
 which for the most part beset us all in youth- 
 clamorous passions, vehement longings to choose 
 for ourselves in life, love of gaiety and dissipa- 
 tion all in the order of Nature, or (to speak 
 more accurately) in the order of God's Provi- 
 dence, relax their grasp in later years. Again, 
 under ordinary circumstances a person may be 
 entirely free from temptations to dishonesty and 
 murmuring; but let his property become in- 
 secure, or a dear friend, intimately associated 
 with him, be taken from his side, and the temp- 
 tation springs up in an instant. So that the 
 petition, ' Lead us not into temptation,' may be, 
 under our present view of it, paraphrased thus : 
 ' Place me not, O God, in circumstances which 
 either my peculiar natural temperament, or my
 
 And Lead us not into Temptation 251 
 
 age, or some unexpected turn of fortune will 
 make severely trying to me/ 
 
 The considerateness of God in not bringing 
 His children into temptation finds a beautiful 
 and lively illustration in one of His dealings 
 with His ancient people. 'And it came to 
 pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, 
 that God led them not through the way of 
 the land of the Philistines, although that was 
 near ; for God said, Lest peradventure the 
 people repent when they see war, and they 
 return to Egypt : but God led the people about, 
 through the way of the wilderness of the Red 
 Sea'(Exod. xiii. 17). The Israelites had been 
 for generations a nation of serfs ; courage and 
 spirit had been trodden out of their hearts by 
 Egyptian oppression. What they longed for was 
 an easy life in servitude among the flesh-pots; 
 they had no mind for the risks and perils 
 involved in striking a bold stroke for freedom. 
 To have led them therefore, just at the moment 
 of their emancipation, through the land of the 
 Philistines, amidst frowning fortresses and sally- 
 ing foes, would have been a grievous discourage-
 
 252 And Lead us not into Temptation 
 
 ment, and God would season them a little by 
 His gracious discipline in the wilderness before 
 He submits them to a trial which, under their 
 circumstances, would have been so fierce; He 
 would not appal them by the sight of fortresses 
 and lances and masterful men, while the asso- 
 ciations of serfdom are fresh upon them, while 
 they are weak, timid, and unnerved. In His 
 fatherly considerateness for their circumstances, 
 He will not lead them into temptation. 
 
 Secondly, God leads us into temptation when 
 He gives licence to the devil, and, under certain 
 restrictions, permits him to tempt us. Even 
 these temptations are ascribed to God, because 
 they are immediately and supremely under His 
 control. And when our Saviour teaches us to 
 pray thus : ' Lead us not into temptation/ rather 
 than thus : ' Do not allow the devil to tempt 
 us,' He mercifully consoles and strengthens 
 our hearts by hiding the created agency which 
 there is behind the temptation, and pointing us 
 to the Infinite Power, Wisdom, and Love which 
 appoints, permits, presides over, and controls 
 the temptation. He takes no express notice
 
 And Lead us not into Temptation 253 
 
 of the devil, who after all is only an instrument, 
 and reminds us that ' Our Father, who is in 
 heaven,' is ruling still, has not for a single 
 moment let the reins of administration slip out 
 of His hands. Yes ! the weakest Christian may 
 address to Satan the same language which his 
 dear Lord addressed to Pilate, 'Thou couldest 
 have no power at all against Me, except it 
 were given thee from above '(St. John xix. n). 
 By thus dealing even with the most manifestly 
 Satanic temptations, by reflecting that Satan is 
 bridled and cannot stir without God's giving 
 him a signal, he may nerve himself for the 
 conflict and gather strength to overcome. 
 
 It should be added here that God's licence for 
 Satanic temptations is of two kinds, and for two 
 different issues. Sometimes the licence is given 
 for action upon a good man, for the trial and 
 approval of his faith and his patience ; sometimes 
 (it is an awful truth ; but it is scriptural, and we 
 must not conceal it) upon a bad man, to seal 
 his doom and sweep him headlong out of life 
 into ' his own place.' The story of good Job 
 furnishes an instance of the first kind of
 
 254 And Lead us not into Temptation 
 
 licence. Satan obtains from God permission to 
 assault successively Job's cattle, Job's servants, 
 Job's children, and Job's health. Stripped of 
 all things, and smarting under the wrongful 
 reproaches of his friends, the servant of God, 
 nevertheless, in the main, though not without 
 distressing misgivings and much self-justification, 
 speaks of God ' the things that are right.' Then, 
 when the faith and patience of Job have been 
 approved, and he himself humbled in the dust 
 and taught many valuable lessons, He who 'doth 
 not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of 
 men ' (Lam. iii. 33), restored to him all his pros- 
 perity in double splendour. 
 
 An instance of a licence for a final assault 
 of Satanic power upon a bad man may be found 
 in the history of Ahab. God is seen by Micaiah 
 in a vision, surrounded by His heavenly court. 
 ' And the Lord said, Who shall persuade Ahab, 
 that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-Gilead ? 
 And one said on this manner, and another said 
 on that manner. And there came forth a spirit, 
 and stood before the Lord, and said, I will 
 persuade him. And the Lord said unto him,
 
 And Lead us not into Temptation 255 
 
 Wherewith ? And he said, I will go forth, and 
 I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his 
 prophets. And he said, Thou shalt persuade 
 him, and prevail also : go forth, and do so ' 
 (i Kings xxii. 20-22). 
 
 And so, in the plain unfigurative language 
 of St. Paul, God sent unto this wicked prince a 
 ' strong delusion, that ' he ' should believe a lie ' 
 (2 Thess. ii. n) and perish in the belief of it. 
 And in the minds of all those who believe the 
 Scriptures to be the Word of God, there can 
 be no doubt that when a man, after a long 
 course of dishonesty, and a vain struggle to keep 
 up appearances, has made shipwreck of the 
 worldly fortunes of himself and his family ; 
 or, after a long course of intemperance, has 
 made shipwreck of his health, and become the 
 prey of nervous irritation and debility ; Satan 
 is often, as a final temptation, permitted to be 
 in that man ' a lying spirit ' ; and a voice whispers 
 to him that life indeed is full of evils, but in the 
 grave there is repose and peace and escape 
 from all troubles ; and, under this ' strong delu- 
 sion,' he adjusts the halter round his neck, or
 
 256 And Lead us not into Temptation 
 
 places the pistol to his brain, or smears the 
 deadly poison upon his tongue, and rushes, not 
 upon eternal sleep of unconsciousness (as he 
 had vainly dreamed), but upon eternal ruin. We 
 all, even the best and holiest among us, stand 
 purely and merely upon grace. Our natural 
 instincts are as corrupt, as tainted at the spring, 
 as those of the prodigal or the suicide-drunkard. 
 How earnestly should we therefore pray, in 
 contemplation of their awful doom, ' Our Father 
 which art in heaven ' . . . ' Lead us not into 
 temptation'! Give us not over for our sins to 
 a ' lying spirit.' Send not upon us a ' strong 
 delusion ' that we should believe a lie. 
 
 Thirdly, the last method by which God 
 leads us into temptation is by the subtraction 
 or withdrawal of His Holy Spirit. The great 
 scriptural example (and these concrete examples 
 enable us to apprehend the truth in a far 
 more lively manner than the most exact and 
 fullest abstract description) is Hezekiah. This 
 excellent and devout prince allowed himself 
 to be puffed up by the extraordinary favours 
 which God had shown him, in miraculously
 
 And Lead us not into Temptation 257 
 
 protecting his city and prolonging his life. 
 ' Who so great a prince as I/ thought Hezekiah, 
 ' from whose ramparts God repels the invading 
 host of the Assyrians, and in whose behalf He 
 rolls back the forward march of Time, and makes 
 the sun return ten degrees, by which degrees it 
 was gone down?' So Hezekiah, for the improve- 
 ment of his own spiritual character, for his own 
 perfecting in holiness, must be taught that he is 
 nothing apart from God, that he stands wholly 
 and merely, like all other saints, on the free 
 grace of God. So we read, ' In the business 
 of the ambassadors of the princes of Babylon, 
 who sent unto him to inquire of the wonder 
 that was done in the land, God left him, to try 
 him, that He might know all that was in his 
 heart ' (2 Chron. xxxii. 31). 
 
 ' God left him,' and the result was an out- 
 break of vanity in the presence of the King of 
 Babylon's ambassadors. Hezekiah conducted 
 them with much self-gratulation over his 
 treasuries and his arsenals, and received from 
 them doubtless the compliments of a hollow 
 flattery. Alas! the spectacle awaked not less
 
 258 And Lead us not into Temptation 
 
 of cupidity than of admiration in these foreigners; 
 and Isaiah was commissioned to predict that the 
 treasures, of which the king was so vain, should 
 be carried as spoil to Babylon, and that his 
 children should accompany them into a state of 
 degrading servitude. 
 
 God's proving us, by the withdrawal of His 
 Holy Spirit, ' that He may know what is in our 
 hearts ' is of course said of Him after the manner 
 of men. 'All that is in our hearts/ even the first 
 springs of thought and will, are to Him 'naked 
 and opened' from the very first; but it is His 
 purpose to make it apparent to ourselves for our 
 humiliation, and 'to men and angels/ under 
 whose eyes we are running our race, so that it 
 may be acknowledged that in man, as he is by 
 nature, there is no good thing, and that salvation 
 is wholly by grace. 
 
 But we must endeavour to enter a little more 
 deeply into the real ground of temptation being 
 ascribed in this Prayer supremely to God. The 
 liability, then, of rational creatures to temptation 
 runs up ultimately into the Supreme Will, which 
 ordained that there should be such creatures. It
 
 And Lead us not into Temptation 259 
 
 might have pleased God to endow no creatures 
 whatsoever with free will and conscience in a 
 word," to have no other creatures than brute 
 animals, which obey Him by instinct, and material 
 objects, which obey Him by natural laws. But 
 ' it was more worthy of God,' says Bishop Butler 
 (and of all his great sayings it is one of the 
 greatest), 'to create beings capable of loving 
 Him, and of choosing His service out of love, 
 than to make all things in the universe mere 
 echoes of His own will, mere machines worked 
 by the action of His own hand.' But then 
 the capability of serving God freely out of 
 love involves a capability of refusing such 
 service upon certain inducements held out to 
 the creature from other quarters. These induce- 
 ments are called temptations. Some creatures 
 fall under temptations. Failure in many cases is 
 incidental to God's plan, is necessarily involved 
 in the creature's having that highest, most 
 solemn, most awful gift of free will. But many 
 stand and conquer, and those who stand are not 
 only approved and crowned, but also forwarded 
 and matured in character, as they could not 
 s 2
 
 260 And Lead us not into Temptation 
 
 have been by anything short of so painful and, 
 in many respects, humbling a discipline. To 
 refer, then, to God as supremely the author of 
 temptation is to recognize Him as the Creator, 
 by His own and gracious will, of a universe 
 in which there is not mere mechanical and 
 chemical action, not mere natural laws, not mere 
 unreasoning instinct, but also moral agency and 
 probation of creatures, with all the tremen- 
 dous issues which such agency and probation 
 involve. Not to be at peace, but to overcome, 
 as Christ overcame temptation, is the true aim 
 of His members. 
 
 The practical lessons to be drawn from the 
 subject are, first, that we should unite watch- 
 fulness against temptation with prayer in 
 the prospect of it. Our Lord, it must be re- 
 membered, supplemented on another occasion 
 the petition before us. He could not intro- 
 duce watchfulness otherwise than by implica- 
 tion into His Prayer, because watchfulness is 
 rather a duty of man, not a grace of God. But 
 in precept He associated watchfulness with 
 prayer as a preservative against temptation's
 
 And Lead us not into Temptation 261 
 
 power. ' Watch/ said He, ' and pray, that ye 
 enter not into temptation ' (St. Matt. xxvi. 41). 
 And He said it at a period when His human mind 
 was in extreme tension on the subject of trial ; 
 for it was in the very midst of His own sore 
 trial in the garden that He gave this warning 
 to sleeping disciples. The recurrence of old 
 faults, which (as already noticed) is so painful 
 an experience in the spiritual life of many Chris- 
 tians, is due no doubt in great measure to their 
 omitting to watch, as well as pray, against those 
 faults. Their thoughts are all abroad ; they 
 maintain no self-collectedness ; heedfulness of 
 dangers they throw to the wind ; they are not 
 on the alert for the snares and assaults of the 
 enemy, and therefore in those snares they are 
 readily entrapped. To pray sincerely, ' Lead us 
 not into temptation,' involves a will to watch 
 against temptation.' 
 
 Secondly, the sincere utterance of this petition 
 against temptation involves the not running into 
 it of our own accord, and (since we pray for 
 others as well as ourselves) the never throwing 
 it in the way of others. Places, haunts, society,
 
 262 And Lead us not into Temptation 
 
 entertainments (innocent, perhaps, in the abstract 
 and for others, but proved by experience to be 
 .spiritually mischievous to ourselves) we must 
 avoid them all if we would live in the spirit of 
 this petition. No mockery can be conceived 
 more shocking than that of perversely going 
 whither we have deliberately asked God not 
 to bring us. And how careful should we be 
 to avoid the awful sin of putting a stumbling- 
 block in our brother's way, of lowering his 
 practical standard of duty by the felt influence 
 of our example, nay, even of shocking his reli- 
 gious prejudices. 
 
 Men act as tempters to one another oftentimes, 
 and Satan, whose legions of evil angels give 
 him a kind of ubiquity, though of course neither 
 he nor any other creature can be personally 
 omnipresent, goes under the name of the tempter 
 in Holy Scripture, as having human temptation, 
 in all its varied forms, for his special province. 
 But in the Lord's Prayer the agency both of 
 evil men and of evil spirits is pretermitted and 
 passed over sub silentio in the very petition 
 which has temptation for its subject.
 
 And Lead us not into Temptation 263 
 
 This entire exclusion of Satan from that part 
 of the Prayer which deals with temptation, an 
 exclusion which may at first sight surprise us, 
 ought to be a help and a comfort to us in our 
 warfare, teaching us that formidable as is the 
 power of Satan, his strength is as nothing in 
 comparison with the strength of the Almighty, 
 who controls him, and holds him bitted and 
 bridled, even when He suffers him to tempt. 
 
 There have been dark and impious heresies 
 in the Church, which have acknowledged two 
 co-ordinate principles of light and darkness, 
 good and evil two gods in rivalry one with 
 another, of almost equal power. And though 
 theoretically such absurdities are no longer 
 maintained by Christians, they make a step in 
 this direction, who, in a spirit of puritanical 
 austerity, virtually recognize Satan not as the 
 usurper, which he is, but as the rightful lord of the 
 world, who has all human society and all human 
 institutions for his province. It is not so. ' The 
 earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof.' 
 Human society is a creation of God's ; human 
 law is an ordinance of God's. And God is Light
 
 264 And Lead us not into Temptation 
 
 and Love ; He is ' Our Father which is in 
 heaven.' 
 
 The evil which is in the world is a usurpation 
 and a tyranny ; He has it under perfect control 
 now it is subserving His ends, even while it 
 aims a blow at Him and eventually He will cast 
 it out. Hold His hand fast in your temptations, 
 and you are perfectly safe. He ' will not suffer 
 you to be tempted above that ye are able ; but 
 will with the temptation also make a way to 
 escape, that ye may be able to bear it'(i Cor.x. 13).
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 BUT DELIVER US FROM EVIL 
 
 THE seventh and last petition of the Lord's 
 Prayer. That it is indeed a seventh petition, 
 and not to be counted (with some divines) as 
 part of the sixth, is evident. The subject- 
 matter of the first is Temptation. The subject- 
 matter of the second is Evil. Now temptation 
 and evil are not identical, nor even coextensive ; 
 they do not cover the same field. As Bishop 
 Andrewes pithily observes : ' Every evil is not 
 temptation, neither is every temptation evil.' 
 Sin is the evil of evils, the greatest and most 
 fundamental evil. But sin and temptation are 
 by no means identical, though they are often 
 confounded. To be severely tempted is not 
 necessarily to sin. Our Lord, we are told,
 
 266 But Deliver us from Evil 
 
 'was tempted in all points like as we are, yet 
 without sin ' either in act or tendency. 
 
 Yet while we stoutly maintain such a distinct- 
 ness of idea in these two clauses as constitutes 
 them separate petitions, we would at the same 
 time recognize their intimately close connexion, 
 which is indicated by the conjunction ' but.' 
 
 In reciting the paraphrase, which is given in 
 the Catechism of this part of the Prayer, children 
 often make a mistake, the correction of which 
 may be profitable to older persons, and give 
 some insight into the connexion we are in search 
 of. Instead of saying, ' That it will please Him 
 to save and defend us in all dangers, ghostly 
 and bodily,' they alter the preposition, and say, 
 'From all dangers, ghostly and bodily.' This 
 gives the teacher the opportunity of explaining 
 that to be saved in danger is a very different 
 thing from being saved from danger. He who 
 never crosses the water is saved, by this 
 precaution, from the dangers of the sea ; but he 
 who puts out to sea amidst shoals, and rocks, 
 and quicksands, and is brought safely through 
 all to the end of his voyage, is saved in the
 
 But Deliver tts from Evil 267 
 
 dangers of the sea. One escapes by not running 
 the risk, the other escapes in running it. Now 
 in spiritual matters it is our heavenly Father's 
 will that we should all of us undergo risks in 
 one form or another. None of us can be 
 allowed to stay at home ; we must all put out 
 to sea. Is it not life appointed for probation of 
 a Christian ? Is it not God's object, in leading 
 us through the wilderness of the world, 'to 
 prove ' us, ' that He may know what is in ' 
 our ' hearts ' ? No circumstances can ever be, 
 none ever are, exempt from temptation ; for 
 where there is exemption from temptation there 
 can be no room for probation. You may try to 
 discover a shady nook in life, secluded from 
 public notice, and from the snares which beset 
 those who live in the great world ; but the nook 
 is no harbour of refuge ; it has its perils as well 
 as the open sea. You cannot shut the door 
 upon the devil. The devil is busy in churches 
 as well as in theatres ; in what is called religious, 
 as well as in what is called worldly, society ; in 
 an atmosphere of piety as well as in an atmo- 
 sphere where everything is avowedly regulated
 
 268 But Deliver us from Evil 
 
 by this world's maxims. Give yourself to literary 
 seclusion, and you are apt to fall into the snare 
 of intellectual pride. Give yourself to religious 
 seclusion, so that life shall be one ceaseless 
 round of prayer and meditation, and you no 
 less certainly incur the danger of spiritual pride. 
 Embark on a sacred pursuit with the idea that 
 it will shield you, and you will soon experience 
 the fearful aptness of familiarity with holy things 
 to deaden our reverence for them, and to turn 
 the edge of religious impressions. If God gives 
 you the happy competency which is so much 
 longed for and so loudly praised, great is the 
 risk which He gives you with it of settling down 
 into a lukewarm life, stirred by no breath of 
 spiritual aspiration, a life in which the moral 
 element is hardly at all a feature. If He trusts 
 you only with one talent, there arises immedi- 
 ately a temptation to say, ' Is it not a little one ? ' 
 and on that ground to cover it up in a napkin, 
 and to hide it away in the earth. If He 
 surrounds you with the domestic affections, 
 and gives you a quiet and a happy home, you 
 may easily fall into the snare of loving father
 
 But Deliver us from Evil 269 
 
 or mother, son or daughter, wife or child more 
 than Him, and so in the end may prove 
 unworthy of Him. Great are the temptations 
 to impurity in celibacy. Great are the tempta- 
 tions to worldly carefulness in marriage. A life 
 of leisure is full of temptations to indolence ; 
 a life of business, full of temptations to neglect 
 prayer and to ignore claims upon our sympathy. 
 If you live too much alone, you shall become 
 selfish ; if too much in company, you shall be 
 entangled and hampered by secular ties. Change 
 in position, age, circumstances will bring no 
 real relief ; it will eventually prove nothing more 
 than the exchange of one class of trials for 
 another. This universal prevalence of tempta- 
 tion in all positions is probably indicated in that 
 obscure title which is given to the tempter in 
 the Epistle to the Ephesians, ' the prince of the 
 power of the air/ The air is everywhere; or 
 rather in every place which men can reach to, 
 and where they can exist. A supply of air is 
 a condition of natural life, and natural life 
 would collapse without it. Similarly temptation, 
 of which Satan was the first originator, and
 
 270 But Deliver us from Evil 
 
 with which he has still so much to do, is 
 a condition of moral life. It travels with us 
 wherever we go ; we inhale it as the element in 
 which we live, and move ; we can no more 
 avoid it than a bird, by taking wing, can avoid 
 the atmosphere. He may soar to the highest 
 pinnacle of the Temple, or creep into an obscure 
 cranny in the heart of a decayed oak ; but alike 
 in both positions he finds the atmosphere there 
 before him. 
 
 God then saves us IN, and not FROM, spiritual 
 dangers, although we may lawfully pray to be 
 altogether shielded from such dangers as would 
 overwhelm our courage, overtax our strength, 
 and lay prostrate our faith. And the ' but ' at 
 the beginning of this petition tacitly recognizes 
 temptation as a Divine ordinance for man. The 
 two petitions with their connective particle may 
 be paraphrased thus : ' Place me not by Thy 
 providence in situations of trial, nor suffer the 
 devil to try me above my strength, nor with- 
 draw Thy Spirit from me when I am tempted ; 
 but since temptation is Thine uniform appoint- 
 ment and our inevitable lot, in all those
 
 But Deliver us from Evil 271 
 
 temptations, which it is Thy will that I should 
 endure, deliver me from the evil to which the 
 temptation might lead, so that I may not receive 
 any detriment thereby.' It is exactly the line of 
 thought, in which the mind of our blessed Lord 
 travels when He says, in interceding for His 
 disciples, ' I pray not that Thou shouldst take 
 them out of the world ; but that thou shouldest 
 keep them from the evil/ To take them out of 
 the world would conflict with Thy design and 
 appointment for them ; they are to be ' the salt 
 of the earth and the light of the world/ and 
 must therefore come in contact with that society 
 which they are to be the means of enlightening 
 and preserving from corruption ; but from the 
 taint of worldly sentiments and worldly ways, 
 and so eventually from the awful doom of being 
 ' conformed to and condemned with the world/ 
 I pray that they may be delivered by Thy 
 grace. 
 
 What then is 'the' evil, from which we sue 
 to be delivered in this petition ? The word 
 employed in the original, according to its ety- 
 mology, means that which causes toil or hard-
 
 272 But Deliver us from Evil 
 
 ship, and so does injury or mischief; and it 
 might with great force be rendered in the 
 passage before us, ' Deliver us from that which 
 is mischievous,' this being as nearly as possible 
 equivalent to the petition in one of our collects, 
 'We humbly beseech Thee to put away from 
 us all hurtful things.' 
 
 Now it must stand to reason that, in teaching 
 us to pray against that which does mischief, 
 our Lord must intend to fix our thoughts prin- 
 cipally, though not exclusively, upon the source 
 of all mischief. And this source of all mischief 
 is sin. Sin is mischievous, not only to the 
 bodies of men which shall die, and to the cir- 
 cumstances of men which shall pass away, but 
 to their souls, i.e. to their characters, which shall 
 endure in another condition of existence. The 
 ancients had a fable of Pandora, that she was 
 a woman framed by the gods to bring misery 
 upon the human race, and wonderfully endowed 
 for that purpose. A box was given her by the 
 gods, in which they had enclosed all kinds of 
 evils and troubles, and at the bottom, hope. 
 She persuaded Epimetheus to open the box, so
 
 But Deliver us from Evil 273 
 
 that all the evils and troubles escaped, and 
 spread over the earth. With difficulty the box 
 was closed again in time to preserve hope, the 
 last and lowest of its contents 1 . Probably this 
 is the fabulous, legendary form, which the true 
 history of our first mother's act took among the 
 old heathens. Her act of eating the forbidden 
 fruit an act stimulated, it would appear, by 
 a desire of larger knowledge than her Maker 
 saw fit to communicate an act of pure sin, 
 as distinct from an act of immorality, that is, 
 a simple violation of the will of God, as ex- 
 pressed in a restriction arbitrarily imposed 
 this act set open the floodgates of misery and 
 inundated the world with evil. Yet still our 
 Pandora and her colleague contrived to detain 
 or imprison hope, in virtue not of her own 
 deserts, but of God's most gracious and com- 
 fortable promise. The woman had brought the 
 mischief; but the woman was to bring also, in 
 some mysterious manner, the seed who should 
 repair the mischief, and who is expressly called 
 by St. Paul 'the Lord Jesus Christ who is our 
 
 1 Bacon's Wisdom of the Ancients, No. 26. 
 T
 
 274 But Deliver us from Evil 
 
 hope.' And it is in hope of God's mercy through 
 Christ, and of Christ's grace, being extended to 
 us, that we now pray : ' Deliver us from evil 
 from the mischief which has gone forth over 
 the face of the whole earth, and is now every- 
 where abroad.' 
 
 Yet while it is maintained that sin is the evil 
 of evils, the most fundamental and the most 
 formidable of all evils, so that in comparison 
 with the least departure from God's will, bodily 
 pain, disease, pestilence, famine, earthquake, 
 flood, and fire are altogether light calamities ; 
 while it is maintained that 'the sting' of all 
 natural evil, and ' of death,' the greatest natural 
 evil, is 'sin,' and that where sin has loosed 
 its hold upon the heart of man, these evils 
 have lost their sting ; we may not put so 
 unnatural a strain upon this truth as to deny 
 the existence of evil in disease or other forms 
 of natural calamity. Our blessed Lord did not 
 teach stoicism respecting outward disasters ; on 
 the other hand He inculcated the simple and 
 natural view of them, and manifested for those 
 who suffered for them an unbounded sympathy.
 
 But Deliver us from Evil 275 
 
 When applied to for cures, He universally 
 bestowed them ; and in several cases, attracted 
 by His own divine compassion, He called to 
 the sufferer, addressed to him or her a few 
 words, to revive the dying embers of hope in 
 his heart, and then restored him by an act of 
 miraculous power. The main object of His 
 coming was no doubt to break the power of 
 sin over the human heart But He did not as 
 a fact break this spiritual power of sin, without 
 concurrently breaking in a thousand instances 
 its natural power: ' Whithersoever He entered, 
 into villages, or cities, or country, they laid the 
 sick in the streets, and besought Him that they 
 might touch if it were but the border of His 
 garment: and as many as touched Him were 
 made whole.' 
 
 We find our warrant then for prayers against 
 all forms of natural evil in this last petition of 
 the Lord's Prayer : ' Deliver us from that which 
 is mischievous ' in other words, ' Put away 
 from us all hurtful things ' ; ' Save and defend 
 us in all dangers, not ghostly only, but bodily 
 also ' ; ' From lightning and tempest ; from 
 T 2
 
 276 But Deliver us from Evil 
 
 plague, pestilence, and famine ; from battle and 
 murder, and from sudden death, Good Lord, * 
 deliver us.' 
 
 But attention should be pointedly called to 
 the fact that this petition is the last in the 
 Lord's Prayer, and presupposes that the heart 
 and soul of the petitioner has gone along with 
 the previous petitions. It is to be taken in 
 connexion with all that has preceded, and post- 
 poned to them all. 
 
 Men who care little for the honour of God, 
 or even for spiritual blessings to themselves, are 
 ready enough to cry to Him for deliverance 
 from the evils of human life when the thunder- 
 cloud of adversity blackens and breaks over 
 their heads. 
 
 Nor does our most merciful Father then turn 
 a deaf ear to His children, except under special 
 circumstances. 
 
 But this is but the maimed trunk of the 
 childlike prayer taught by the Lord. The 
 habitually prayerful Christian places foremost 
 God's fatherly character, His honour, kingdom, 
 and will, and only at last reaches the idea
 
 But Deliver us from Evil 277 
 
 of man's deliverance from some pressing 
 emergency. 
 
 But there is another significance in the final 
 position of this petition. It leaves us not 
 saddened with the thought of evil. It opens 
 a vista of the glorious future of the Christian 
 Church. For the prayer, ' Deliver us from 
 evil/ will never be fully and completely 
 answered until a condition of existence super- 
 venes, of which we have no present experience. 
 Neither sin, nor the consequences of sin, will 
 entirely lose their hold upon us, and let us 
 go free, until those times of the restitution of 
 all things, which shall be ushered in by the 
 second advent of Christ. 
 
 So long as death, and the various agencies 
 which contribute to death, linger here below, 
 the Church of God cannot be fully delivered 
 from evil. Potentially indeed evil has been ex- 
 tirpated by the work of Christ; or, in other 
 words, His person and work are powers intro- 
 duced into the moral system of man, which are 
 sufficient ultimately to secure a triumph over 
 all evil ; but the experience of every day teaches
 
 278 But Deliver us from Evil 
 
 forcibly that evil is not yet actually abolished. 
 Nor, whatever Utopian dreams some may enter- 
 tain of the prospects of our race, and whatever 
 vaunts others may make of the actual progress 
 of man, can evil ever be abolished by any other 
 agency than that of a second manifestation of 
 the Saviour. 
 
 There is loud boasting of the advance of 
 physical and linguistic science, of the enormous 
 spread of secular education among the working 
 classes, as ' ameliorating ' (in the cant of the 
 day) the condition of humanity. But it is more 
 than doubtful whether there is any increase of 
 faith in God, any diminution of rebellion against 
 Him, even in Christian nations. The great 
 exhibitions of national industry which we have 
 witnessed in our times, the march of intellect 
 and the progress of Europe in the arts of 
 peace which we hear so loudly applauded, 
 have evidently done nothing whatever to ex- 
 tirpate from the hearts of kings and statesmen 
 that greed of territory, that lust of dominion, 
 which are the origin of sanguinary wars; and 
 a devil perhaps might smile sardonically, as an
 
 But Deliver us from Evil 279 
 
 angel might be conceived to weep, on remarking 
 that the chief bearing of what is called human 
 progress on these wars is the invention of 
 weapons which mow down soldiers by scores, 
 where our ancestors used to kill them in detail 
 by units. And as for death, has science or the 
 progress of civilization at all materially affected 
 its prevalence ? What if the modern physician 
 can add a few more years to his patient's span, 
 or alleviate his pain somewhat more effectually 
 than with his few herbs and simples the ancient 
 one could ? It is no great triumph after all, 
 when it is considered that the creature thus 
 temporarily relieved must exist for ever. If the 
 threescore years and ten now be prolonged to 
 fourscore, the fourscore must come to an end, 
 a little later. A man's house may be fur- 
 nished with all that can make this life agreeable 
 and refined; but he cannot live in it for ever. 
 He must be carried out one day, and laid in 
 the sepulchre. And when that time comes, his 
 few more years, or the alleviations of his 
 condition at the close of life, will seem to 
 him a very small matter, in view of the
 
 280 But Deliver us from Evil 
 
 new and untried experiences on which he is 
 entering. 
 
 But assuredly, as God is true, all the deliver- 
 ance for which man yearns deliverance from 
 evil, moral, natural, social awaits His redeemed 
 in future. The Deliverer, when He comes the 
 second time, shall bring it with Him. The 
 hopes of our race are wrapped up in His Divine 
 person, and can only be fulfilled by His own 
 personal agency. Therefore we, who are tossed 
 in the vessel of His Church on the waves of 
 this troublesome world, look for His glorious 
 appearing in this final petition of our Prayer. 
 Like the crew in St. Paul's ship, we cast four 
 anchors out of the stern the anchors of faith, 
 hope, love, and allegiance to present duty and 
 wait for the day. Glorious beyond anything 
 which natural sunrise can shadow forth will 
 be the morning of the advent and the resurrec- 
 tion of the saints. 
 
 For the Son of Righteousness will rise, with 
 healing in His wings for every malady of His 
 people ; and the dead in Christ will bestir 
 themselves to meet Him, and will recognize
 
 But Deliver us from Evil 281 
 
 joyfully Him whom, having not seen, they have 
 so long and so dearly loved; and all shadows 
 which have rested upon the truth and providence 
 of God, as well as those which have darkened 
 man's estate, shall flee away; and the perfect 
 coming of the kingdom shall be also a perfect 
 deliverance from evil; for 'there shall be no 
 more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither 
 shall there be any more pain ' (Rev. xxi. 4).
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM, AND THE 
 POWER, AND THE GLORY, FOR EVER. 
 AMEN 
 
 IN the second section of the Lord's Prayer 
 we have turned our thoughts to the condition 
 of man here below; to his wants, his sins, his 
 temptations, his dangers. We have used a 
 familiar language in so doing ; we have spoken 
 with ' the tongues of men ' ; for on all sides the 
 accents of human distress and human trial 
 (natural or spiritual) break upon our ear. But 
 in passing on to the Doxology l we change our 
 language and speak with ' the tongues of angels.' 
 
 1 The Dean does not discuss the doubts cast upon 
 the text of the Doxology by most modern editors of 
 St. Matthew's Gospel; as he did not discuss the question 
 of the independent records of the Lord's Prayer, p. 62 note. 
 
 It is omitted in the three most ancient MSS. which stiil 
 exist of this part of the New Testament. It is however
 
 For Thine is the Kingdom 283 
 
 We join ourselves to the heavenly hierarchy, 
 and recite the anthem of praise, which they also 
 recite in a realm where want, sin, and trial are 
 unknown. 
 
 Moreover praise is the legitimate and ordained 
 issue of prayer. If the heart is rilled with God's 
 blessings drawn down into it by prayer, it will 
 expand towards God in praise. The Psalter, 
 
 found in a large number of later MSS., some of which may 
 possibly represent copies still older than those which have 
 recently been assumed to be almost exclusive authorities 
 for the text of the New Testament. Most of the versions, 
 and all the earlier Greek commentators from Origen down- 
 wards (except St. Chrysostom and his personal followers), 
 support it. Moreover, its liturgical use, though a plausible 
 account of a possible introduction into the Scripture, does 
 not negative its previous existence in the Scripture. 
 
 Whether or not it formed part of the Lord's Sermon on 
 the Mount was therefore not unanimously determined 
 by the ancients, and cannot now be positively settled by 
 the moderns. 
 
 But even if it has not our Lord's personal authority, 
 ' it was added,' says a venerable writer of the fifth century, 
 ' by the divine luminaries and masters of the Church as 
 the concluding acclamation of the Prayer.' 
 
 At least, therefore, the Doxology has on it so high a 
 stamp of Church authority that it must be accepted as 
 sanctioned by the Holy Ghost to be the Church's refrain 
 of our Lord's own sentiments, the octave of His keynote 
 of human prayer. B. C.
 
 284 For Thine is ihe Kingdom, and 
 
 viewed as a consecutive book of devotions, 
 illustrates this, the earliest Psalms being for the 
 most part supplicatory, sometimes even plain- 
 tive, but the whole collection ending with noblest 
 bursts of praise, the close of all being, 'Let 
 everything that hath breath' (breath by the 
 cunning device of man, like a wind instrument, 
 and breath by the nobler inspiration of God, the 
 living voice of man and animals) ' praise the Lord.' 
 Indeed it would seem that this Doxology may 
 have been drawn from the recorded words of 
 David himself. For thus did that devout king, 
 after making large preparations for the build- 
 ing of the temple by his successor, bless the 
 Lord : ' Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and 
 the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the 
 majesty; for all that is in the heaven and in 
 the earth is Thine; Thine is the kingdom, 
 O Lord, and Thou art exalted as head above all.' 
 You will observe that in the ascription of praise 
 now before us three attributes are selected out of 
 a larger number specified by David ' the king- 
 dom, and the power, and the glory,' a beautiful 
 glimpse being thus opened, at the close of the
 
 the Power, and the Glory, for Ever 285 
 
 prayer, of the mystery of the great Triune Name 
 into which, before His ascension, our Lord bade 
 His apostles baptize their converts, thereby for- 
 mally making disciples. Observe that the unity 
 of the Godhead conies out at the opening of the 
 pra}^er, the address being made to the Father, 
 as the fountain of Deity. And then, like some 
 beautiful flower which, so long as it is in the 
 bud or only half-opened, is not seen to present 
 distinction of parts, but when it has fully ex- 
 panded, under the influence of dew and sun- 
 shine, shows three stamens rising up from the 
 calix, this address to the heavenly Father, when 
 it has reached its full blossom, insinuates the 
 distinction of three several Persons in the bosom 
 of the Godhead, inasmuch as ' the kingdom ' of 
 God, which now is, as distinct from that which 
 is to be, is the mediatorial kingdom of the Son ; 
 and the power by which that kingdom is being 
 advanced is the power of the Holy Ghost', and 
 the glory of founding, furthering, and consum- 
 mating this kingdom will be poured ultimately 
 into the treasury of the Father. 
 
 1 Thine/ we say first, ' is the kingdom/ Now
 
 286 For Thine is the Kingdom, and 
 
 observe that when we previously spoke of the 
 kingdom it was in the terms of a holy wish 
 or devout inspiration, not of an affirmation. We 
 said, ' Thy kingdom ' (i. e. our Father's king- 
 dom) 'come.' We now assert that God's 
 kingdom exists already; 'Thine is the king- 
 dom.' The apparent inconsistency is soon 
 explained by a reference to Holy Scripture. 
 The apostle St. Paul teaches us that God the 
 Father is at present governing the Church and 
 the world, not immediately, but by a representa- 
 tive and vicegerent, the Lord Jesus Christ, God 
 manifest in the flesh ; and that this administration 
 of Jesus Christ in the place of God the Father 
 (typified by Joseph's administration in Egypt in 
 the place of Pharaoh) has an appointed term, 
 which is thus described : ' Then cometh the end, 
 when He shall have delivered up the kingdom 
 to God, even the Father ; when He shall have 
 put down all rule and all authority and power. 
 For He must reign, till He hath put all enemies 
 under His feet. The last enemy that shall be 
 destroyed is death. For He hath put all things 
 under His feet. But when he saith all things are
 
 the Power, and the Glory, for Ever 287 
 
 put under Him, it is manifest that He is ex- 
 cepted, which did put all things under Him. 
 And when all things shall be subdued unto 
 Him, then shall the Son also Himself be subject 
 unto Him that put all things under Him, that 
 God may be all in all' (i Cor. xv. 24-28). Now 
 in the petition, 'Thy kingdom come,' it is 
 rather the final and more immediate kingdom of 
 God the Father, as lying in the future, which 
 We have in view ; whereas in this ascription, 
 ' Thine is the kingdom,' our thoughts are rather 
 fastened upon the mediatorial kingdom, under 
 which we now exist, and which indeed con- 
 stitutes the present economy. 
 
 But is Christ indeed reigning? some may ask. 
 What evidence do the things which are seen 
 furnish of the present existence of His kingdom? 
 Beyond the two Sacraments of the Gospel and 
 other rites of our religion which are adminis- 
 tered among us, little enough. Nineteen cen- 
 turies have dragged their slow length along, 
 since He returned to the heaven from which He 
 was sent forth. During that long lapse of time 
 every kind of heresy and contradiction has shot
 
 288 For Thine is the Kingdom, and 
 
 up in the society which He founded ; there is 
 scarcely any form of misbelief, or of unbelief, or 
 of sin, which the Church has not witnessed, nay, 
 which has not been developed in her bosom 
 Even the wiser part of those who should watch 
 for the bridegroom have slumbered and slept. 
 Under these painful circumstances, is Christ 
 really governing ? or have the reins of adminis- 
 tration slipped from His hands? It is quite 
 clear that unless we firmly believe Him to be 
 governing, despite all appearances to the con- 
 trary, we cannot say sincerely, 'Thine is the 
 kingdom/ But it is the province of faith to 
 make this glorious affirmation, appearances 
 notwithstanding. 
 
 Faith calls to mind the word of prophecy. 
 She remembers that not a bright, but a very 
 dark, future was predicted for the Church. The 
 Church was to be a field overrun with tares ; 
 a draw-net, which gathered fish of every kind, 
 good and bad. ' The Spirit spake expressly, 
 that in the latter times some should depart from 
 the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and 
 doctrines of devils ; speaking lies in hypocrisy ;
 
 the Power, and the Glory, for Ever 289 
 
 having their conscience seared with a hot iron ' 
 (i Tim. iv. i, 2). 
 
 Antichrists were many in the days of the 
 apostle St. John ; and were at length to cul- 
 minate and grow to a frightful head in one great 
 antichrist, an awful person, to be revealed in the 
 latter days. The first ministers of the new 
 dispensation expressly say that agencies antago- 
 nistic to the mediatorial kingdom counterwork- 
 ing it, so far as it is permitted to the creature 
 to counterwork the Creator abounded in their 
 times. ' Now we see not yet all things put 
 under Him.' So that faith's assurance that 
 Christ is at present administering the kingdom 
 is not seriously chilled by noticing the out- 
 ward prevalence of unbelief, sin, and all the 
 ills which flesh is heir to. ' These things,' says 
 faith, 'were all foreseen, predicted, provided 
 for. If there were no evil counteracting the 
 Saviour, there would be no evidence of the 
 surpassing skill and wisdom, or of the extra- 
 ordinary patience and longsuffering, with which 
 He administers the affairs of the kingdom. To 
 see Him presiding at the helm of His Church 
 
 u
 
 290 For Thine is the Kingdom, and 
 
 in a calm, when the sun shines and wind and 
 tide favour the ship's progress, and she speeds 
 on the wings of an auspicious breeze towards 
 the haven of glory, would furnish no proof of 
 His skill or power as a pilot. But let the vessel 
 of the Church labour in the storm heavily ; let 
 her be tossed with waves, so that the ship is 
 wellnigh full; let her be in danger ever and 
 anon of foundering, and then let Him arouse 
 Himself from sleep and with a word extricate 
 her from her grievous peril, and enrich her, by 
 means of her past trials, with many precious 
 lessons of experience, and give her a larger 
 reach of faith and a stronger yearning of hope, 
 and then shall we indeed know that " the Lord 
 reigneth " ; that His divine wisdom and love are 
 employed in His administration ; that " His is 
 the kingdom," and that He is ordering to God's 
 glory and to the welfare of His own people even 
 " the unruly wills and affections of sinful men." ' 
 The next thing which we profess in this ascrip- 
 tion is that ' God's is the power ' ; the power, 
 that is, which is gradually establishing and will 
 eventually consummate the kingdom. The word
 
 the Power, and the Glory, for Ever 291 
 
 used in the original is that which is appropriated 
 in the New Testament to the expression of moral 
 and spiritual, as distinct from physical, force. 
 And standing in this connexion, it shows the 
 nature of the kingdom. It implies, what is 
 elsewhere expressly asserted, that it is internal 
 and spiritual, and furthered by internal and 
 spiritual agencies. 'The kingdom of God 
 cometh not with observation ; neither shall they 
 say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the 
 kingdom of God is within you ' (St. Luke xvii. 
 20, 21). This being the case, it is no wonder 
 if the things which are seen give but little notice 
 of the existence or progress of the kingdom. It 
 is an object of faith, and not of sight. If it 
 pleased God to lay open to us what He care- 
 fully conceals, the whole theatre of the moral 
 world the hearts and characters of all men, 
 and the various agencies which from different 
 quarters are being brought to bear on those 
 hearts and characters we should then no more 
 doubt of the existence and development of 
 Christ's spiritual kingdom than we can ques- 
 tion the existence and the wide spread of the 
 u 2
 
 292 For Thine is the Kingdom, and 
 
 English empire. And observe whose is this 
 spiritual force which is abroad in the world, 
 and which, marching hand in hand with Divine 
 Providence, is gradually bringing all things into 
 subjection to Christ, and putting all things under 
 His feet. It is the power of God the Holy Ghost. 
 ' My speech and my preaching/ says St. Paul, 
 ' was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, 
 but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power? 
 And again : ' Our Gospel came not unto you in 
 word only, but also in power, and in the Holy 
 Ghost, and in much assurance ' (i Thess. i. 5). 
 
 The third profession which we make in this 
 ascription is that ' to God belongs the glory.' 
 The word ' glory ' is often used with the vaguest 
 possible notion of its import. The Greek word 
 which is so translated is etymologically con- 
 nected with a verb meaning 'to esteem,' or 
 'account.' The substantive therefore means 
 originally 'estimation,' 'reputation' the credit 
 which a person gains, the esteem in which he 
 is held for any excellence which he possesses, 
 or any exploit he performs. We shall take the 
 word here in this its earliest sense ; and regard
 
 293 
 
 God's 'glory' as meaning the credit of His 
 character, the estimation in which He is held 
 among His rational creatures. And the asser- 
 tion is that to God supremely to ' the God and 
 Father of our Lord Jesus Christ' belongs the 
 credit of establishing the kingdom of Christ by 
 the power of the Holy Ghost, and the credit of 
 every blessing, spiritual and temporal, which is 
 conferred on the subjects of that kingdom. The 
 counsel of redemption originated with the Father, 
 for 'God so loved the world that He gave His 
 only-begotten Son ' out of His bosom, to save 
 sinners ; it has been furthered in every step by 
 Him who also ' sent forth the Spirit of His Son 
 into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father' (Gal. 
 iv. 6) ; and as each soul is delivered from the 
 burden of the flesh, and gathered safely under 
 the Redeemer's wing, the holy angels ascribe to 
 God all the glory of its salvation. And when 
 all things have been put under the Redeemer's 
 feet, when sin is extirpated and death abolished, 
 and, the purposes for which it exists having 
 been fully answered, the mediatorial kingdom 
 is laid down, when the Son Himself becomes
 
 294 F r Thine is the Kingdom, and 
 
 subject unto Him that put all things under Him, 
 and God is all in all, then shall the ascription, 
 ' Thine is the glory ' receive its fullest verifica- 
 tion, and the praise of the Father shall thrill, 
 with one strong pulsation, through the rational 
 universe. To the very furthest point, then, in 
 the horizon of the future does this ascription 
 stretch forward. And the devout Christian 
 makes it, not in a spirit of faith only, rising 
 above present appearances and his immediate 
 surroundings, but in a spirit of hope also, looking 
 for and hasting unto the day when evil shall be 
 finally abolished, and when in the hearts of His 
 saved and glorified people there shall be no note 
 which is not perfectly attuned to our heavenly 
 Father's praise. 
 
 But what is the connexion of this Doxology 
 with the body of the Prayer? what the exact 
 significance of the conjunction 'for,' which is the 
 link of connexion? 
 
 ' For/ then, expresses our ground of confidence 
 that the petitions which we have offered will re- 
 ceive an answer. Because God has the supreme 
 authority, and all power necessary to give effect
 
 the Power, and the Glory, for Ever 295 
 
 to His authority, and because every blessing 
 which He confers will redound to His glory, 
 therefore we believe that He will hear us, who 
 are the subjects of His Son's kingdom. 
 
 And the recital of these our grounds of confi- 
 dence, while it is an encouragement to ourselves, 
 is also an argument to induce God to hear us. 
 
 First, it is an encouragement to ourselves. We 
 have arrived at the end of our prayer a period 
 when the hands are apt to hang down and the 
 knees to become feeble. We have asked much. 
 We have travelled far in the path of spiritual 
 desire. But we must not faint, if we desire to 
 carry away the blessing. The hands of Moses, 
 as he interceded on the Mount, grew heavy with 
 weariness; but, as victory over Amalek was 
 dependent upon their continual uplifting, means 
 were resorted to for holding them up. So, before 
 we close our Prayer, we make an effort to lift up 
 the drooping hands by glancing at the sovereign 
 authority, universal control, and illustrious re- 
 nown of our God ; by reminding ourselves that 
 His is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory. 
 
 But by reciting our grounds of confidence
 
 296 For Thine is the Kingdom, and 
 
 we not only encourage ourselves, but move 
 God to give ear to our cry. When we say, 
 ' Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and 
 the glory,' we remind God that it is His 
 matter, and not ours only, which we bring 
 before Him ; that His glory is concerned in 
 helping and relieving us. In short, the last 
 petition and the Doxology of the Lord's Prayer 
 find their paraphrase in those supplications of 
 the Litany : ' O Lord, arise, help us, and deliver 
 us for Thy Name's sake for Thine honour.' 
 
 This seeking to interest God in ourselves by 
 considerations drawn from His own glory has 
 its warrant in numberless passages of Holy 
 Scripture such, for example, as this from the 
 prophet Ezekiel : ' Thus saith the Lord God ; 
 I do not this for your sakes, O house of Israel, 
 but for Mine holy name's sake ' (Ezek. xxxvi. 22); 
 and this from the Psalms : ' They provoked Him 
 at the sea, even at the Red sea. Nevertheless 
 He saved them for His name's sake, that He 
 might make His mighty power to be known.' 
 God's supreme motive in all things that He does 
 is revealed as His own glory a position sound
 
 the Power, and the Glory, for Ever 297 
 
 and scriptural in itself, though sometimes most 
 unscripturally misrepresented and misunder- 
 stood. When it is said that God seeks in all 
 things His own glory, this must be taken in 
 connexion with the other statement that ' God 
 is love.' God is not a self-seeking being (forbid 
 it, Lord, that we should ever so horribly mis- 
 conceive of Thee) ; the glory which He seeks 
 is the glory of pure, intense, ardent love. And 
 love is so far from self-seeking that it is self- 
 sacrificing; or in other words, the attribute of 
 love is the very contradictory of self-seeking. 
 ' God so loved the world that He gave,' out 
 of His bosom, 'His only-begotten Son' (St. John 
 iii. 16). Christ so loved men that He laid down 
 His life for them. And thus, when it is said 
 that His own glory is God's great motive, what 
 is meant is that He seeks in all things to glorify 
 love and truth, which are the essential consti- 
 tuents of the Divine character. And so, when 
 we say to Him, ' Thine is the glory,' we humbly 
 suggest that, by helping us, He will be further- 
 ing the cause of love and truth, which is in fact 
 His own cause.
 
 298 For Thine is the Kingdom, and 
 
 Amen sums up all that precedes. It is trans- 
 literated, not translated, from the Hebrew, 
 transplanted from the use of the Synagogue 
 to that of the Christian Church. St. Cyril 
 of Jerusalem, in commenting upon the Lord's 
 Prayer, as it stood in the canon of the Liturgy, 
 and was recited in connexion with the prayer 
 of Consecration, says that we set our seal upon 
 the Lord's Prayer when we respond to it by a 
 fervent Amen. This expression may perhaps 
 give us a wider insight into the force and sig- 
 nificance of Amen than we have hitherto gained. 
 Our Catechism Englishes it, we all know, by 
 'so be it' a rendering which recognizes no 
 more in Amen than the expression of Christian 
 desire. And, as it stands at the end of prayers, 
 this is no doubt part of its meaning, though by 
 no means the whole. In order fully to seize 
 its significance it should be borne in mind that 
 the original word is an adjective, signifying 
 ' firm ' or ' faithful/ and, when used adverbially, 
 'truly, surely, verily.' If a verb has to be 
 supplied there is nothing in the word Amen to 
 indicate what its mood and tense shall be, which
 
 the Power, and the Glory, for Ever 299 
 
 therefore must be determined by the context. 
 When a desire is expressed in the context, as it 
 is in every petition, the Amen signifies that the 
 person who says it assents to the desire. When 
 merely an affirmation is made, as in the sen- 
 tences of God's wrath in the Commination 
 Service, and as in our Lord's words at the end 
 of St. Matthew's Gospel, ' Lo, I am with you 
 even unto the end of the world, Amen/ the 
 Amen signifies that the person who says it 
 either assents to the affirmation if another has 
 made it, or confirms it if he has made it himself. 
 When the Lord's Prayer is succeeded by the 
 Doxology, the word must evidently express 
 assent both to the petitions of the Prayer, and 
 to the affirmations of the Doxology (the Doxology 
 of course being an affirmation and not strictly 
 a prayer). But even in prayers which are merely 
 petitions, and which are not succeeded by an 
 ascription of praise to God, we desire to vindicate 
 for Amen the meaning of ' so it is ' as well as 
 of ' so be it.' It is something more than the 
 voice of desire; it is the voice of faith also. 
 It is the setting of our seal upon the prayer,
 
 300 For Thine is the Kingdom, and 
 
 says St. Cyril, this expression connecting itself 
 easily and naturally with St. John the Baptist's 
 words, ' He that hath received ' Christ's ' testi- 
 mony hath set to his seal ' put his seal to the 
 assertion ' that God is true ' (St. John iii. 33). 
 He who says Amen to a prayer not only ex- 
 presses a wish that God may give, but also a 
 belief that He does and will give (in His own 
 good time and way). And 'since the petitions 
 of the Lord's Prayer, being put into our mouth 
 by the Lord Himself, cannot but be for things 
 expedient, we may confidently believe nay we 
 ought to believe that God gives them to us ; 
 and the Amen with which we close the prayer 
 should mean, in a large paraphrase, just this : 
 ' This is the confidence that we have in Him, 
 that if we ask anything according to His will, 
 He heareth us'; and, as what our Lord teaches 
 us to ask must be 'according to His will,' we 
 know that when we offer them fervently and 
 humbly 'we have the petitions that we desired 
 of him ' (i John v. 15). Let our Amen be thus 
 the voice of faith, and our recitation of the 
 Divine prayer shall not be without large success.
 
 the Power, and the Glory, for Ever 301 
 
 For He hath said, ' What things soever ye de- 
 sire when ye pray, believe that ye have received x 
 them, and ye shall have them ' (St. Mark xi. 24). 
 
 In conclusion ; let us fail not to observe how, 
 in the ascription, the Prayer which in its earliest 
 section was occupied with God, with His 
 honour, kingdom, and will, closes upon the same 
 key in which it opened. The 'us' and 'our' of 
 the second section flow back again into the 
 ' Thine ' of the first. Like a river which, taking 
 its rise in the fountains of the great deep, loses 
 itself again, after it has run its course, in the 
 reservoir of the sea ; so the Lord's Prayer, 
 which took its rise in the thought of God, and 
 commenced with expressions of devotion and 
 affiance, ends with similar thoughts and similar 
 expressions. The mental eye is not suffered 
 to rest on our wants, sins, trials, nor on self in 
 any shape, lest it should become jaundiced. 
 It is purged at the beginning, purged again at 
 the end, by being made to gaze on the love and 
 the loftiness, on the power and glory of our God. 
 Alas ! how our best and most earnest prayers come 
 
 1 The tense of this verb is past, not future. B. C.
 
 302 For Thine is the Kingdom 
 
 short when judged by such a standard! How 
 often has prayer sunk down with us into a mere 
 whining recital of our needs, in which there has 
 been no thought of the beauty and blessedness 
 of the Divine character, nor indeed any loftier 
 desire than that of relief "under an immediate 
 pressure ! Let us learn in deepest humility to 
 look God more in the face when we pray, 
 to set His revealed character more steadily 
 before the eyes of our mind. Let us occupy 
 our hearts with His perfections, and He will 
 occupy Himself with our wants. The real balm 
 for the troubled spirit is to be sought in the 
 consideration of His fatherhood, His sovereignty, 
 His controlling wisdom, His irresistible power, 
 His boundless love. Think more of these, and 
 less of our own distresses, and the balm shall 
 begin to distill ; even ' The peace of God, which 
 passeth all understanding, and shall keep our 
 hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.'
 
 MR. MURRAY'S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 BY DEAN GOULBURN. 
 
 THREE COUNSELS OF THE DIVINE MASTER 
 FOR THE CONDUCT OF SPIRITUAL LIFE. Crown 
 
 Svo, ys. 
 
 Part I. THE COUNSEL FOR THE COMMENCEMENT. 
 ,, II. THE COUNSEL FOR THE VIRTUES. 
 ,, III. THE COUNSEL FOR THE CONFLICT. 
 
 LIFE OF JOHN WILLIAM BURQON, late Dean of 
 Chichester, with Extracts from his Letters and Journals. Two vols, 
 Svo, 24.5-. 
 
 CANON GORE'S NEW WORK. 
 
 AN EXPOSITION OF THE EPISTLE TO THE 
 
 EPHESIANS. By the Rev. CHARLES GORE, Canon of West- 
 minster. Crown Svo, 3$. 6d. Eighth Thousand. 
 
 ' A new work by Canon Gore is an ecclesiastical event. The book is a popular 
 exposition in the best sense, conveying to the simplest understanding the results of 
 the best modern knowledge of this Kpistle. The general effect or the book is 
 
 bracing Surely no one can read this book without a quickened desire to be 
 
 a Christian.' Guardian. 
 
 ' It is a brave and earnest book straight from the heart of an earnest and brave 
 man.' Independent. 
 
 THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. A Practical Ex- 
 planation. By the Rev. CHARLES GORE, Canon of Westminster. 
 Crown Svo, ^s. 6d. Ninth Thousand. 
 
 CONTENTS. The Sermon The Beatitudes in General The Beati- 
 tudes in Detail The Deepening of the Law The Christian Motive 
 The Lord's Prayer Unworldliness Christian Characteristics Con- 
 cluding Warnings. 
 
 LUX MUNDI. A Cheaper Edition. A Series of Studies 
 in the Religion of the Incarnation. By Various Writers. Edited 
 by the Rev. CHARLES GORE, D.D. Crown Svo, 6s. Twenty-first 
 Thousand. 
 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET,
 
 MR. MURRAY 9 S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 THE BAMPTON LECTURES, 1891 ; The Incarna- 
 tion of the Son of God. By CHARLES GORE, D.D., Principal 
 of Pusey House, Oxford, Editor of Lux Mundi. 8vo, 7*. 6d, 
 Eighth Thousand. 
 
 DISSERTATIONS ON SUBJECTS CONNECTED 
 WITH THE INCARNATION. By CHARLES GORE, Canon 
 of Westminster. 8vo, 'js. 6d. Third Thousand. 
 
 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF THE REV. JOHN 
 BACCHUS DYKES, M. A., &c. With Portrait. Crown 8vo, 
 ^. 6d. 
 
 'Will not only be read with interest by the multitude of those who have loved 
 his many hymn tunes, which have become almost inseparable from certain popular 
 hymns, but as a study of an earnest and devout Churchman it has a very consider- 
 able value.' Times. 
 
 'To say that millions every Sunday sing the tunes of J. B. Dykes is to be beside 
 the mark. 1 Birmingham. Gazelle. 
 
 MINISTERIAL PRIESTHOOD. Six Chapters Pre- 
 liminary to the Study of the Ordinal. With an Inquiry into the 
 Truth of Christian Priesthood, and an Appendix on the recent 
 Roman Controversy. By R. C. MOBERLY, D.D. Demy 8vo, 141. 
 
 ' As one of the authors of Lux Mundi, Canon Moberly's exposition is dis- 
 tinguished by the high qualities which have made the school to which the writer 
 belongs, so influential in the Church of England. 1 Manchester Guardian. 
 
 A SMALLER SCRIPTURE HISTORY OF THE OLD 
 AND THE NEW TESTAMENT. I. Old Testament History. 
 II. Connexion of Old and New Testaments. III. New Testament 
 History to A. D. 70. With Coloured Maps and New Illustrations 
 from Photographs of the Holy Land. 370 pp., i6mo, y. ftd. 
 
 THE CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF OUR LORD. 
 
 Based on the Gospel Narrative, and the Manners and Customs of 
 the Jews of Palestine. By the Rev. J. BROUGH, M.A., Chaplain 
 to the Forces. Crown 8vo, 55. 
 
 'This work shows careful study and an intimate knowledge of the Bible and 
 Biblical expositions. We can strongly recommend it, and honestly thank the 
 author for his book.' Manchester Guardian. 
 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
 
 A 000 089 971 6