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The Model Prayer
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<xxl><B>THE MODEL PRAYER</B></xxl>

<l><B>A SERIES OF EXPOSITIONS ON</B></l>

<xl><B>“THE LORD’S PRAYER”</B></xl>

<l><B>BY</B></l>

<xxl><B><abbr rend=spell>J. D.</abbr> JONES, <abbr rend=spell>M.A., B.D.</abbr></B></xxl>

<xl><B>AUTHOR OF “THINGS MOST SURELY BELIEVED,” “THE GOSPEL OF GRACE,” ETC.</B></xl>

<i>THIRD EDITION</i>

LONDON

JAMES CLARKE & CO., 13 & 14, FLEET STREET, <abbr rend=spell>E.C.</abbr>
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.h2
PREFATORY NOTE
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The Expositions in this volume were originally
given as Sunday morning lectures. They
are printed in deference to the wishes of
members of my congregation, who, finding
them helpful when first delivered, desire to
possess them in more permanent form. They
do not lay claim to any originality. I
have derived help from many quarters, especially
from the expositions of the Lord’s Prayer
written by Dr. Dods and Dr. Stanford respectively.
My thanks are also due to my friend
Mr. <abbr rend=spell>E.</abbr> Carr for many valuable suggestions,
and for kindly undertaking to see this little
volume through the press.

<abbr rend=spell>J. D. J.</abbr>

<i>Feb., 1899.</i>
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.h2
CONTENTS
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#<abbr=one>I</abbr>.—The Disciples’ Request:chap1#      #9#

#<abbr=two>II</abbr>.—“Our Father”:chap2#        #25#

#<abbr=three>III.</abbr>—“Hallowed be Thy Name”:chap3#         #44#

#<abbr=four>IV.</abbr>—The Second Petition:chap4#         #62#

#<abbr=five>V.</abbr>—The Third Petition:chap5#         #82#

#<abbr=six>VI.</abbr>—“Daily Bread”:chap6#        #100#

#<abbr=seven>VII.</abbr>—“Forgiveness”:chap7#        #117#

#<abbr=eight>VIII.</abbr>—“Temptation”:chap8#         #137#

#<abbr=nine>IX.</abbr>—The Model Prayer:chap9#         #157#
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.h2 id=chap1
<abbr=one>I</abbr> | The Disciples’ Request.
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“And it came to pass, as He was praying in a certain
place, that when He ceased, one of His disciples said
unto Him, Lord, teach us to pray, even as John also
taught his disciples.”—<sc>Luke</sc> <abbr=eleven>xi.</abbr> 1.
.pm letter-end
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It is my purpose, God willing, to give at intervals,
on Sabbath mornings, a series of expositions
of that prayer which our Lord taught His
disciples to pray, which, because of its beauty,
its spirituality, its broad, loving charity, has well
deserved the names “Epitome of the Gospels”
and “Pearl of Prayers.” But before I address
myself to the consideration of the prayer itself,
I would like to clear the ground a little—to
explain its setting—to consider the circumstances
that called it forth, so that we may be
able to appreciate and understand it the better.

This prayer—the Lord’s prayer as we commonly
call it, though I often think it might be
more appropriately called “The Disciples’
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Prayer”—is a prayer we learned at our mother’s
knee; it is hallowed for many of us by the
fact that those who taught it to us at the
first have exchanged prayer for praise: earth
for heaven. Their lips have been silent for
long years, but the prayer they taught us in
our childhood, we repeat morning and evening
still! Ah! how many times we have repeated
it! From the very dawn of life this has been
our prayer! We repeated it as children! We
are repeating it to-day, as grown up men!
Some of us are repeating it as old men! This
prayer is one of the dear familiar things of life.
But there is a danger in our very familiarity
with this beautiful prayer. The peril is that
by using it so often, it may become to us a mere
form of words; the danger is that when we
repeat it, we may do so mechanically—that we
may say the Lord’s Prayer <i>without praying</i>.
“Familiarity breeds contempt,” we say. People
who live in the Alps think nothing of the
splendid scenery that we English people go
hundreds of miles to see. The dwellers in
inland towns long for the time to come which
will allow them to spend a brief holiday by the
sea. They are fascinated, spell-bound by the
changeful, mysterious, beautiful ocean. There
are on the other hand, those of us who live in
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towns like this, who allow weeks and months to
pass by without ever visiting the shore. There
is ever this danger, that through our familiarity
with them, the beautiful things around us should
lose their beauty, and appear common-place in
our eyes. That is the danger we are in with
regard to this “Pearl of Prayers.” It is one of
the familiar things of life, and our very familiarity
with it may have dulled our sense of its
beauty. Frequent usage may have dimmed our
perception of its sweet simplicity, and its soaring
spirituality. There is the danger of its
becoming on our lips a mere form of words.
There is the danger of its becoming, instead of
a real, throbbing, living prayer, a cold, heartless,
formal utterance.

The next best thing to saying a new thing, is
to say an old thing in a new way. Originality
consists not so much in discovering new truth,
as in making old truth real and vital. The
painter does not invent the beauty of nature
which he depicts on his canvas, he simply brings
it out and makes it visible. “I never see the
kind of things you paint in your pictures,” said
a lady one day to Turner, the great artist.
“Don’t you wish you did, madam?” was the
painter’s reply, The fault was in the lady’s
vision. The artist saw beauties in nature
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which were missed and unheeded by the crowd,
and painted them for us on his glowing canvases.
The preacher sees wonders and glories
in old and familiar things—glories missed or
unheeded perhaps by those who have less time
to read and ponder this grand old book. It is
his business to bring them out, to show to his
people the peerless beauty there is even in the
most common and familiar things. Buttercups
and daisies are common little flowers. They
cover our fields. They carpet our meadows.
We cannot take a walk in the fields in summer
without treading hundreds of them under foot.
They are so cheap and common that no one ever
thinks of making a posy of daisies, unless it be
our children, and they often enough fling the
little flowers away before they reach their
homes. Yet there is beauty in the daisy, and a
glory in the buttercup. It is only familiarity
that has made us blind. We should think them
beautiful perhaps if they were as rare as orchids.
And even as it is, we need only listen to a lover
of flowers as he describes to us the delicacy and
beauty of the daisy and the buttercup, to realise
that even these—the commonest flowers that
bloom—reveal something of the glory of God.
Probably there is no form of words so absolutely
and universally familiar as the Lord’s Prayer.
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I would like, if I can, to reveal to you some
of its wonder, and beauty, and glory. There
are, in this old familiar prayer, heights we have
never scaled, depths we have never sounded. I
want, if I can, to help you to realise its meaning,
to feel its power, to grasp the sweep of its
demands, so that this—the most familiar of all
prayers—may be on our lips, fresh, real, vital;
so that we may pray, not with the lips only, but
with the understanding also, so that when we
use these sacred words, whether it be in public
or in private, we may not simply repeat the
Lord’s Prayer, but really and truly <i>pray</i>. To
bring out the full meaning of this familiar
prayer, to illustrate its truths, to point out the
demands it makes—that is the aim I have set
before myself in this series of expositions which
I purpose to deliver.

I would first of all call your attention to the
circumstances of the origin of this prayer. My
text sets these forth. Jesus Christ had been
praying. He was a man of prayer. His
favourite temple was the mountain top. Away
from the noise and bustle of the town, in
the solitude of the mountain summit, in the
solemn hush and silence of the night, Jesus
Christ prayed. No one can talk much with
God without bearing about with him visible
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results of that high fellowship. Moses, after
he had been on the mount with God, came
down with a countenance that had caught and
retained some of the divine glory. His face
shone. John <abbr rend=spell>G.</abbr> Paton, the heroic missionary,
tells in his autobiography how his saintly father
would withdraw every day to talk with God,
and as children he and his brother used to
notice with wonder and awe the beautiful light
upon their father’s face when he came forth
from that interview. Do not think me fanciful
when I say that I believe that the Master’s face
in the morning used to proclaim plainly in what
sacred communion He had been spending the
night. The halo of the old painters may be
fancy, but I am sure that there would be a
radiance about the Saviour’s face, an aspect of
such unruffled serenity and calm upon His
countenance, as would proclaim to all that Jesus
had been spending the night in holy fellowship
with God. There were many things to try our
Lord in life—the malignant hatred of the
Pharisees, the persistent blundering of the
disciples; and often when Jesus left the mountain
He was tired, worn, weary, but after His
night of prayer Jesus always came down from
the mountain peaceful, calm and strong. And
I cannot help thinking that His disciples must
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often have noticed that expression of calm and
peace on their Master’s face after His nights of
prayer. It quickened within them the desire to
pray as their Master prayed, that they too might
enjoy the like peace and strength. And that
leads me to remark in passing that people are to
be convinced of the supreme value of prayer—not
by tracts about prayer, not by eloquent
and clever sermons which profess to explain
away all the difficulties connected with prayer,
<i>but by seeing in us the effects of prayer</i>. When
they see us calm, happy, and strong in the
midst of the difficulties and worries and cares
of life, they will want to know the secret, and
so they too will be led to pray. Was it not
so with these disciples? Jesus had gone apart
to pray. And when He ceased, one of his
disciples said unto him, “Lord, teach us to
pray, even as John also taught his disciples.”
They wanted to be in command of the secret
of peace. They wanted to be in possession of
the key to God’s storehouse of power. “Teach
us to pray.” And it was in answer to that
request that Jesus gave to them the “Pearl of
Prayers.”

Now, looking at this request of the disciples
for a moment, will you notice that
it is:
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<abbr=one>I.</abbr> <i>A Confession of Need.</i> “Teach us to pray.”
We ask the question sometimes, “Why do men
pray?” Why do men pray! We might just
as well ask, “Why does the nightingale sing?
Why does the eagle soar into the boundless
blue?” The nightingale sings because it was
made to sing; the eagle soars away because
its pinions were made for flight, and man prays
because he was made for prayer. “Teach us
to pray.” That is just the cry of men who
must have their instincts satisfied. Man was
made to pray. This is the cry that gives
expression to the necessity of his nature. “Lord,
teach us to pray.” Let me remind you that this
is not a need which Christianity has created.
Oh, no! the need is in the very make and
constitution of a man. Christ only satisfied the
need. Prayer is as old as man himself. The
first man is far removed from us; in outward
circumstances we are utterly unlike him, but
we are like him in this respect, in our need
of prayer. Society to-day is very different from
the primitive simplicity of society in the time
of the patriarchs; but we are like Abraham
and Isaac and Jacob in this respect—we all
pray. The Bible is a book of prayers. It is
the great prayer-book of the world. All the
prayers in it are not on the same spiritual
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level. In many you will find much that is
mistaken. But there they are—the prayers of
Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David, Solomon, Elijah,
Hezekiah—all bearing witness to the same need,
the same instinct. And I will not confine what
I am saying to the men who are mentioned in
the Bible. This sense of need is universal.
God made man for Himself, and wherever you
find man you find his heart and flesh cry out
for the living God. The African who worships
his fetish, the Hindoo who prostrates himself
before his idol, even those poor, benighted
people who do their praying by machinery—all
these by their acts bear witness to the universal
need. Indeed, it is this sense of need that
makes the wide world one. When an infant is
in need of anything it cries, and the cry of the
little one is its prayer. When we men are in
need of anything we <i>pray</i>; we may pray in a
hundred different ways; we may utter no
spoken word, but pray we must. In this
respect, men the whole world over are the
same. North and south, east and west, whereever
you find man, you find him with this
instinct for God, under this necessity to pray.
It was because these twelve disciples felt
that necessity that they made this request
eighteen hundred years ago to the Man who
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was best able to answer it, “Lord, teach us
to pray.”

<abbr=two>II.</abbr> This request of the disciples is <i>a confession
of ignorance</i>. “Teach us to pray,” said the
disciples. Prayer was a necessity to them. But
<i>how</i> were they to pray? What were they to
<i>pray for</i>? These disciples felt that there might
be a right and a wrong way of praying; that
there might be a right and a wrong in the things
prayed for. And they judged rightly. Prayer
is the key to the treasure house of God, but it
will lie useless in man’s hand until he is shown
how to use it. So here comes the Confession of
Ignorance, “Lord, teach us to pray.” “We
know not how, nor what to pray for—Thou
must show.”

“Teach us to pray!” Teach us <i>how</i>! for
there is a right and wrong of praying. Man
<i>must</i> pray—he cannot help himself. But how
he blunders in his attempts at prayer sometimes.
Look at the Hindoo cutting and maiming himself!
Look at the Mongol with his praying
machine! Ah, yes, man needs to be taught <i>how</i>
to pray. I think the disciples wanted to know
what I may call without irreverence the “etiquette”
of prayer. “Wherewithal shall I come
before the Lord and bow myself before the High
God?” that was their difficulty. They knew
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not how they were to enter into the presence of
the great King. If a man wishes to be presented
to the King, he must obey all the formalities of
Court etiquette, and to many that seems rather
a formidable task. Perhaps these disciples
thought there were equal difficulties in the way
of approach to the throne of the Heavenly
grace. They wanted to know the etiquette of
God’s court. “Teach us to pray. We know
not how.” Do we need an intermediary at the
throne? Do we need to be introduced to Him
that sits thereon? By what name shall we
address Him? “Lord, teach us to pray. We
know not <i>how</i>.” And here Jesus instructs their
ignorance. “You need no intermediary, go
boldly to that Throne yourselves; you need
no introduction to Him that sits thereon—He
knows you, calls you by your name; address
Him not as King, Judge, Lord—call Him
Father.” It was in answer to their confession
of ignorance that Jesus taught His disciples <i>how</i>
to pray.

But further, these disciples knew not what to
pray <i>for</i>. They did not know what they were
to ask for in their petitions! Nor do we! We
are “the sons of ignorance and night.” We do
not know what is best for us! I often think
that if God wished to be unkind to us, He has
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only to answer our prayers; for we ask Him
for things that can only do us harm. The little
child often begs for things that look nice, or are
pleasant to the taste, but the mother, who knows
the harm that would result if these things were
given says “No.” We are like little children
in our ignorance, and have often asked our
Heavenly Father for things that would only
injure us. We have all of us to make this confession
of ignorance. We have all of us to
acknowledge “We know not what to pray for.”
We all need to go to Jesus with this request,
“Lord, teach us to pray.” And He will teach
us. He will tell us what to pray for. He will
tell us what <i>He</i> prayed for. He will tell us how
He told out to His Father all His desires, but
ended every prayer with these words, “Nevertheless,
not my will but Thine be done,” and He
will give us the assurance that whatsoever we
ask of the Father in His name after the Spirit
of His prayers, the Father will give unto us.

<abbr=three>III.</abbr> This request of the disciples is a confession
that <i>the old prayers are no longer good
enough</i>. “Lord, teach us to pray,” they said.
Had, then, these disciples never prayed before?
Yes, many a time, every day of their lives, and
probably several times each day. I imagine that
before Jesus called the twelve, they had been
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what the world would call “religious men.” In
fact, we need not imagine it, we know it. Several
of them had been disciples of John the Baptist
before they became disciples of Jesus. The Jews
were, we are told, particularly conscientious
in the matter of prayer. Three times a day
they withdrew for devotion. And these disciples
were good Jews, strict Jews, punctilious
in their regard for all points of ritual. We are
justified, therefore, in saying that the disciples
all through their lives had been attentive to
the duty of prayer. What, then, is the
explanation of this request “Lord teach us to
pray?” Well, the explanation is simply this:
<i>the old prayers no longer satisfied them</i>; even the
prayers John the Baptist had taught them
seemed strangely deficient or inappropriate.
After living with Jesus, after hearing Him
preach, after listening to His words about
God, the old stereotyped prayers seemed to
lose all their beauty and power. The disciples
felt they could not pray them any longer.
They had received from Jesus a new revelation
of God, and this new revelation of God created
the need for a new prayer. There is a familiar
ballad the first line of which runs, “I cannot
sing the old songs.” Some change has taken
place in the singer’s feelings which makes
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the old song inappropriate, impossible. It
was so with these disciples. They could
not pray the old prayers, because their hearts
were changed. We all know something of this
kind of feeling. Sometimes I look back over
old sermons, and very often I have to say to
myself, “I could not preach that again.” God
has been teaching me during the years of my
ministry, and leading me into a fuller knowledge
of the truth. In sermons, as in wellnigh everything
else, “<i>Time makes ancient good uncouth</i>.”
It was so with the twelve. They had been
to school to Christ; from their great Master
they had learned many a new and glorious
lesson about God, and the result of their new
knowledge of God, their larger, grander conceptions
of His character, was the absolute
necessity for a new prayer. They had outgrown
the old ones in which they had been
brought up. They no longer expressed their
feelings or satisfied their needs. You have
an illustration of what I am trying to point out
in the history of Paul. He was a prominent
man in religious circles before he became a
Christian. He was scrupulous in his observance
of religious duties. After the straitest sect
he lived a Pharisee, and if the Pharisees were
punctilious about one thing more than another,
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it was their prayers. But yet, in the account
of his conversion, Scripture, after describing
Saul as alone and blind in the house in the
street called Strait, adds this remark, as if
recording a new fact in Saul’s history, “Behold
he prayeth.” Saul had said his prayers thousands
of times before, but now, for the first time,
he was praying the new prayer, which a sense
of his own sin and the gentleness of God had
made necessary. Oh, yes, when religion is a
formality then a prayer which is also a formality
will suffice. But once we see the love of
God, once we feel our own unworthiness,
we shall find the old formal prayers will no
longer suffice. We shall need a new prayer
then, and like these disciples we shall come to
Christ with the request, “Lord, teach us to
pray.”

Notice what the disciple adds, “As John
also taught his disciples.” Christ might imitate
John in the act of teaching, but in the prayer
taught Jesus was no imitator. Here Jesus
was grandly, supremely original. This was
a new prayer He gave. John could not have
given it. No <i>man</i>, however saintly and good,
could have given it. It surpasses the best
efforts of man as the sunlight surpasses the
starlight. No one but the Son, who lay in
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the bosom of the Father; no one but the
Son, who had intimate knowledge of the very
heart of God, could have taught this prayer,
for it opens with a New Name for God—the
name Father—and no man knoweth the Father
but the Son.

This short but perfect prayer is the Master’s
answer to the request of His disciples. They
say that prayer is never answered! This
“Pearl of Prayers” is the best refutation of
that statement. It was given in answer to
prayer. “Lord, teach us to pray,” said the
disciple, and the answer to his request was
this prayer, which has met the needs and
expressed the desires of God’s people throughout
all generations. And so this prayer itself
becomes the best proof of the truth proclaimed
in our hymn,

.pm verse-start
Beyond our utmost wants
  His love and power can bless,
To praying souls He always grants
  More than they can express.
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.h2 id=chap2
<abbr=two>II</abbr> | “Our Father”
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.pm letter-start
“After this manner therefore pray ye, Our Father
which art in heaven.”—<sc>Matt.</sc> <abbr=six>vi.</abbr> 9.

“When ye pray, say Father.”—<sc>Luke</sc> <abbr=eleven>xi.</abbr> 2.
.pm letter-end
.sp 2
I said last Sunday morning that in the prayer
He taught, Jesus was grandly, supremely
original. That originality appears in most
striking fashion in the invocation with which
the prayer opens. The prayer Jesus taught
His disciples to pray begins with a new name
for God, “When ye pray, say <i>Father</i>.”

In the Old Testament God is very seldom
spoken of as Father, and when the name <i>is</i>
used, it is always with reference to the <i>nation</i>
of Israel and not to individuals—that is to
say, the name “Father,” the few times it
occurs in the Old Testament, stands for a
<i>national</i> not a <i>personal</i> relationship. The
Old Testament has many names for God—names
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that tell of His might, His power, His
majesty. It speaks of Him as Jehovah; it
speaks of Him as the great “I am”; it
speaks of Him as “King” and “Lord”—but
from Genesis to Malachi you will not find
a single instance of an individual speaking of
God as “Father.” Moses did not dare to use
this name. David, the sweet singer of Israel,
missed this note of tenderness from his songs.
Isaiah, in the sweep of his passion and genius,
never took this name into his lips. It was
left to Jesus Christ to tell us God’s best and
truest name. It was left to Him to say,
“When ye pray, say Father.”

I suppose no one can pass from the Old
Testament to the New without being conscious
of a change of atmosphere. Between the books
there is a difference of theological climate. It
is the difference between starlight, clear but
cold, and the warm and gracious sunlight; it is
the difference between law and gospel; it is the
difference between debt and grace; it is the
difference between fear and love; it is the
difference between servitude and sonship; it is
the difference between Sinai and Calvary. And
the whole of this vast difference is made by
this word “Father.” That name is written
large upon every page of the New Testament,
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and that new name has brought with it a new
joy and gladness into the world.

This name “Father” is a new name. It is a
name <i>no one but Jesus could have revealed to
men</i>. We could never have known God the
Father save through the Incarnate Son. Men
only saw God <i>from the outside</i>. They only
judged Him by His works. They were impressed
by His greatness, His wisdom, His
power, as revealed to them in the wonders of
earth and sea and sky, and they named Him
accordingly. But men felt that, after all,
wisdom and power and might were only <i>parts</i>
of God’s ways; they felt there was a secret
about God which they had not been told, and
they had to confess that, strain as they would,
there were clouds and thick darkness about
Him through which no eye could pierce. But
here we get a view of God, if I may so speak,
<i>from the inside</i>. Here you have God’s heart
laid bare. Here you have light thrown
upon the inmost nature of God. The secret
hidden from prophet and psalmist and seer is
here declared to the world in this name
“Father.” Who could have given God this
name? Who could have discovered this
grand secret? Who could have thrown this
light upon the Divine nature? Only Jesus—only
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the Son who from eternity had lain in
the bosom of the Father. The knowledge
of God, <i>the Father</i>, is only to be gained through
the Incarnate Son. “No man knoweth the
Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever
the Son shall reveal Him.” And it seems to
me that one of the chief ends for which Christ
came to earth was just to tell us this new
name, and so to bring sunshine into our souls
and hope into our lives. In Bethlehem, in
Nazareth, in Galilee, in the garden of Gethsemane,
on the Cross of Calvary, Jesus was
spelling out for us this new name, revealing to
us that God is more than wisdom, more than
power, more than justice; that God above
and beyond everything else is Love. So the
very opening phrase of this “Pearl of Prayers”
brings us the best news ever whispered into the
ears of men. It tells us that love is at the
heart of all things. It tells us that God is our
Father and we are His children.

Is God Father to everybody? Yes, to everybody.
He is Father to the humblest, the
poorest, the most degraded. God said, “Let
us make man in our likeness,” and in the image
of God created He him. All men belong to
God’s family, and upon all some trace of the
family likeness is to be seen. The old Greek
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poet, whose words Paul quoted in his memorable
speech at Athens, had a glimpse of this truth
when he wrote, “We also are his offspring.”
Yes, God is the <i>Father</i> of all men! That is
the truth that has been rediscovered within
the last half century, the truth of the Universal
Fatherhood of God, and a blessed and glorious
truth it is. That many men have forgotten
God and rebelled against Him does not affect
the reality of His Fatherhood. Absalom
turned out a wayward, disobedient son. He
brought trouble, shame, and distress upon his
father David. But the son’s wickedness could
not destroy the father’s love. When news
came that Absalom was dead, David wept long
and sore, and the agony of his broken heart
found expression in that pathetic cry, “O
my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom;
would God I had died for thee, O Absalom,
my son, my son.” And you can parallel that
story of David and Absalom from modern life.
I read of a young man who had sunk into a life
of excess and sin and shame. He brought
disgrace upon all connected with him, and one
by one men turned their backs upon him. One
only clung to him—his poor old father. The
one who had suffered most at his hand was the
one who continued to bear with him. “Why
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don’t you turn him out?” said his friends to
the long-suffering old man. “I cannot,”
replied he; “I am his father.” Those are
hints, suggestions of the truth about God. God
is the Father of men, and though men sin, the
Father still loves. That is what Jesus would
teach us in that most precious of all the Parables—the
Parable of the Prodigal Son. God is
Father not only to the obedient son, but He is
Father also to the son who has strayed into the
far country and is wasting his substance there
with riotous living. The Father’s heart yearns
for that absent and wayward child; and when
that son returns in his rags and with penitent
heart, it is the dear word “Father” that leaps
to the prodigal’s lips, and it is with the word
“Son” that the father welcomes him home
again. Yes, God is the Father of <i>all</i>. His love
embraces <i>all</i>—the lost, the ruined, the undone.
His family is co-extensive with the race. But
let me go on to say—paradoxical as it may
sound—that though God is the Father of all
men, <i>all men are not sons</i>. Wendt, the great
German scholar, puts it in this way, “God
always is the loving Father of all men; nevertheless,
men must <i>become</i> sons of the Heavenly
Father by attaining His spirit of gratuitous,
forgiving love.” That is the Bible teaching I
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myself firmly believe. This old book proclaims
the Fatherhood of God, and yet talks
about men <i>becoming</i> God’s sons. It talks about
<i>receiving</i> the spirit of adoption whereby we cry,
Abba, Father. The right to become children
of God, it says, is given to those who receive
Christ and believe in His name. In a word,
while God <i>is the</i> Father of <i>all</i>, men become His
sons only through Jesus Christ. <i>Possible</i> sons
all men are; but sonship becomes actual and
real only in Jesus Christ. It is those who are
in the home, who experience the father’s tenderness
and care, who know what sonship
means. The son who has wilfully left home,
who has taken his life into his own hands, who
has wandered into the far country, he cannot
know what a father’s sympathy and love
mean. He has deprived himself of the privileges
of sonship. It is only the child who has remained
at home who is obedient to the father’s
commands—it is only he who can really be
called a son at all. He alone knows the blessings
of sonship. He alone knows the father’s
affection and love. Christ came into the world
to show us the Father, to seek lost children and
bring them back again home. Those who
receive Him into their hearts receive the spirit
of adoption. They know what sonship means.
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They speak the name “Father” with a new
accent. It becomes to them invested with a
richer and fuller meaning. God is the Father
of all men. Yes, but specially of them that
believe.

Now this new name, “Father,” Christ places
at the very commencement of the model prayer.
<i>This name is to be the very basis of our prayer.</i>
To pray aright, certain things are required in
him who prays. The Psalmist asked himself
this question one day, “Who shall ascend
into the hill of the Lord and who shall stand
in His holy place?” Who has the right to
worship God and pray to Him? That is the
Psalmist’s question translated into present day
speech. And he proceeds to answer the question
he himself asks. And this is the answer
he gives, “Who has the right to worship and
pray? He that hath clean hands and a
pure heart, who hath not lifted up his soul
unto vanity nor sworn deceitfully.” But the
Psalmist’s answer is one of blank despair. For
who is there whose hands are clean? Who is
there whose heart is pure? Where is the man
who has not lifted up his soul unto vanity?
Brethren, when we look upon ourselves what
do we see but sin! <sc>SIN!</sc> SIN! and the cry
that breaks from our lips is the terrible cry of
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the leper of old—Unclean, unclean. If we
have to wait till our hands are clean and our
hearts pure we shall <i>never, never</i> ascend unto
the hill of the Lord or stand in His holy place.
But thank God there are no impossible conditions
of that kind to be fulfilled before you
and I can pray. What right have I, sinful man,
to pray? What warrant have I for coming
boldly to the throne of grace? Well, brethren,
I have no right but that which this name gives.
I have no warrant save that which the name
“Father” supplies. That is my right—not
that I have clean hands or a pure heart, but
that I am a son, and He, the Almighty God,
is <i>my Father</i>. I have read a story somewhere
which says that when one of the Roman Emperors
was entering Rome in triumph, a little
child darted through the ranks of the soldiers
who lined the road and made for the gorgeous
car in which the Emperor was seated. Some
of the soldiers tried to restrain the little one
and said to him, “It is the Emperor.” “<i>Your</i>
Emperor,” said the little one, “but <i>my</i> father.”
That was the little child’s right to sit even in
the triumphal car. And so some would say,
“What right have you, a poor sinner, to
approach the King of Kings and Lord of Lords,
before whom Cherubim and Seraphim veil
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their faces with their wings and continually do
cry?” What right? Well, the right this word
gives. Lord of the Universe? Yes. Maker
of the worlds? Yes. King of Kings? Yes.
But <i>my Father</i>. Who shall dare keep child
and parent apart? When ye pray, say
“Father,” said our Lord. Let us preface
every prayer with that blessed word. It is
our claim upon God. No prayer can be too
bold; no petition can appear presumptuous
when we have commenced by saying
“Father.”

But this word not only supplies our <i>warrant
for prayer</i>, it also suggests to us the <i>spirit
in which our prayers must be</i> offered. We must
pray in the spirit of filial trust, in the spirit of
<i>childlike confidence</i>. “He that cometh to
God,” says the Apostle, “must believe that
<sc>He is</sc>.” We must believe first of all in the
<i>reality</i> of God. To many God is a name and
nothing more. The world to them would be
no emptier than it is if there were no God at
all. We must first of all believe that God is.
But that is not all. The Mongol, the Hindoo,
the African savage believe that God is; but
no one would say that their devotions illustrate
the true spirit of prayer. No: we must not
only believe that God is, we must also believe
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He is a <sc>REWARDER</sc>. We must believe He is
eager to bless. Some would have you believe
that God is the helpless creature of His own
laws, bound and held captive by them, and
therefore unable to listen or to answer the cry
of men—like one of those great stone impassive
deities of Egypt, that sit there with staring
eyes, and hands on knees, the very picture of
impotence and helplessness. If God were no
more than that, prayer would be a mockery, a
delusion, a sham. But the God we are asked
to believe in is a <sc>Rewarder</sc>—a <sc>Father</sc> more
eager to bless us than any earthly parent is to
answer the request of his child. And Christ
puts this word in the very front, in order to
help us to come with boldness, in order to beget
within us a spirit of childlike expectancy and
trust. I fancy when I hear some prayers, that
we imagine God keeps His heart bolted and
barred, and that we have, by the importunity
of our petitions, to force and batter our way
through. That was the kind of notion Job
had. You remember his cry, “Oh, that I knew
where I might find Him.” Well, what would
Job do if he did find Him? “Oh,” says Job,
“I would order my cause before Him, and
fill my mouth with arguments.” Job thought
that every blessing had to be wrung out of the
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hands of God. “I would fill my mouth with
arguments,” as if nothing were to be had from
God except by hard and importunate pleading.
“Fill your mouth with arguments?” What
need is there for that? Go to Him and call
Him “Father”—that is all the argument you
need. Brethren, we receive not, because
sometimes we ask amiss. The old book says
that according to our faith it shall be done
unto us. We have received little, because
our faith has been so little. We have treated
God as if He were close, economical, niggardly.
This word “Father” is here to teach us confidence,
trust, faith, holy boldness; to inspire
us with that perfect love which casteth out all
fear. Let us go to God in the childlike spirit
of a simple trust; let us use this golden key to
His great treasure house, which He has placed
in our hands; when we pray, let us say
“Father,” and we shall find that before we
call He will answer, and while we are yet
speaking He will hear.

“Father,” that is how the prayer begins in
Luke’s version. That glorious word stands
alone in all its royal simplicity. Matthew in
his version expands that into “<i>Our</i> Father,
which art in heaven.” “<i>Our</i> Father!” No
word in this old book is meaningless, and this
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little word “our” gives us a glimpse of the
splendid truth. It is not the singular, but the
plural possessive pronoun that our Lord bids us
use, not “<i>my</i> Father,” but “<i>our</i> Father.” Of
course it is legitimate to use the singular
pronoun “my,” and say “<sc>MY</sc> Father.” There
come times when, with a great rush of feeling,
we realise that God loves us as individuals, and
then we take refuge in the first person singular,
just as Paul did when he said “The Son of
God loved <sc>ME</sc>, and gave Himself for <sc>ME</sc>.” In
fact, religion never becomes real and vital until
it becomes individual and personal, until we can
say like Thomas, “<i>My</i> Lord and <i>my</i> God.” But
in this prayer Christ would have us think not
simply of ourselves, but also of others—not
simply of blessings peculiar and personal, but
of blessings shared. So we are to say, not “<i>my</i>
Father,” but “<sc>OUR</sc> Father,” and by doing so we
have linked ourselves to all others who pray this
prayer. “<i>Our</i>,” that is the pronoun of partnership.
We have said “<sc>OUR</sc> Father” in this
church this morning, we have confessed that we
have the <i>same Father</i>. But people who are the
sons and daughters of the one Father must be
brothers and sisters the one to the other. So
that when we said “<i>our</i> Father,” we did more
than simply proclaim God’s Fatherhood—we
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proclaimed our <sc>BROTHERHOOD</sc>. And I will not
confine myself to this congregation. It is not
simply the brotherhood of those of us who meet
week by week in this Congregational Church
that we proclaimed when we said “our Father,”
we proclaimed the <i>brotherhood of the race</i>. Not
my Father simply, but <sc>OUR</sc> Father—for He is
the Father of all! The great truth of the
Fatherhood of God implies the correspondingly
great truth of the <i>brotherhood of man</i>, and universal
brotherhood depends upon the universal
Fatherhood. You cannot have this brotherhood
of man, except by getting them to kneel together
and say “our Father.” The link that binds
men together is the possession of a common
Father. When we address God by that sweet
name, we awake to the fact that we are all
members of one great family, bound to one
another by the strongest and dearest of ties.
Oh! we pray for the time when jealousy, pride,
hatred and war shall cease, when “man to man
the world o’er shall brothers be for a’ that!”
I will tell you when that time shall come. It
shall come when you can get all men everywhere
to kneel down and begin their prayer with these
grand but simple words “Our Father.”

.pm verse-start
“Then shall the whole round earth be every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.”
.pm verse-end
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“Our Father, <i>who art in Heaven</i>,” says
Matthew. Our Father is high and lifted up,
He is “in Heaven.” That does not mean that
God is not with us here on earth. He is the High
and Holy One who inhabits eternity; but He is
also the one who dwells in the lowly and the
contrite heart. But as Dr. Morison puts it, “On
earth there are spots, hearts at least and many
of them, where God is not. He is not admitted.
He is shut out. But in heaven He is all in all.
In a peculiar fulness of acceptation, then, God
may be said to be in Heaven.” But this little
phrase, “who art in Heaven,” is something more
than a topographical direction. It is more,
shall I say, than God’s postal address. This
little phrase <i>tells us what kind of a Father we have</i>.
I do not think it at all fanciful to say with Dr.
Stanford, that, as Heaven is the place of perfection,
“our Father, who art in Heaven” may be
interpreted to mean, “our Father, who art the
one perfect Father.” But whether this interpretation
is legitimate or not, the idea is a true
and Scriptural one. God is the model—the
pattern Father. Paul says that “of Him every
fatherhood in heaven and earth is named.”
You can look at the tender relations that bind
the best of fathers to the best of sons here on
earth, and I tell you they but faintly illustrate
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the tender relations that bind God to you. He
is the one perfect Father. He is perfect in <sc>LOVE</sc>.
“No earthly father loves like Thee, no mother
half so mild.” Mothers may forget their children
but God will never forget us. Parents may
turn their backs upon us, father and mother
may forsake us, and even then God will take us
up. He is perfect <i>in wisdom</i>. Earthly parents
are not always wise. They are sometimes unwise
in severity; they are oftener, I think, unwise
in their love; and many a child’s character
has been injured, if not ruined, by the unwisdom
of its parents. But God is all wise. He is
always thinking upon His children for their
good. In perfect wisdom, perfect love, He is
working for the best. He is perfect in <i>helpfulness</i>.

Human love can do much, but there are
times when human love is helpless. Have you
ever seen a mother watch by a sick child? I
have seen a little one lie in her cot with fevered
brow, fighting for life. I have seen her eyes
make mute appeal to her mother, and I have
seen the mother sitting there in torment and
agony, watching the death struggle going on
and powerless to help, the very picture of
impotent, defeated love. But God is perfect
in <i>helpfulness</i>. There is no limit to <sc>His</sc> power.
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He will be a refuge for us in trouble; He will
make our bed in sickness; He will make us
conquerors over temptation; when we pass
through the waters He will not suffer them
to overflow us; and when we enter the valley,
into which no human friend can accompany
us, God will be with us still, His rod and staff
they will comfort us. “Our Father, who art in
Heaven,” one other idea the words suggest to
me. “Heaven” is spoken of in the Bible as the
place of dominion and authority. “The Lord
hath prepared his throne in the heavens,” says
the Psalmist, “and His kingdom ruleth over
all.” In another psalm we get the picture of
kings and princes plotting together to destroy
the kingdom of God. “He that sitteth in the
heavens,” in the place of supreme dominion,
“shall laugh.” Your governors and kings are
not the true rulers of the universe; they may
fret and fume and bluster as they will, but they
are only puppets in the hands of Him who sitteth
in the heavens. When, then, our Lord teaches
us to say, “Our Father, who art in Heaven,”
the blessed truth conveyed by it is, that our
Father is in the place of supreme dominion,
that love rules the universe. It is the truth
proclaimed by the little silk weaver as she passed
through the streets of Asolo and sang, “God’s in
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His heaven—all’s right with the world.” What
a blessed truth this is, and what peace and
strength it brings into the soul when it is
realised and felt. Paul had realised it, so he
could say, “I know that all things work together
for good.” That President of the Orange
Free State had realised it, whose favourite word
was, “All will come right,” which word stands
engraved to-day on his tombstone! Yes!
what peace will be ours when we remember our
Father is in Heaven. I remember hearing my
friend Mr. Hopkin Rees, one of our devoted
Chinese missionaries, telling about one of his
converts in that far-off land, who had to bear
much from heathen relatives when she became
a Christian. They beat her, locked her up in
a room, and tried to starve her into surrender.
How do you think that poor woman sustained
herself? I will tell you. By the thought that
her Father was in Heaven, and that “all would
come right.” Mr. Rees had translated an old
Welsh hymn into Chinese, the last line of every
verse in which runs, “Fy nhad, sydd urth y
lliw.” It cannot sound as sweet in any other
tongue, but this is a rough translation, “My
Father’s at the helm.” And that was the song
that poor woman sang day after day, “My
Father’s at the helm.” Yes! He’s at the
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helm! Let not your heart be troubled! “Your
Father’s at the helm.”

“Our Father, who art in Heaven.” The
gospel is in that phrase. I have not been able
to translate into language the half of the beauty
and glory I myself have seen in it. You must
find out for yourselves, by experience, the joy
and peace it can bring into life. This name is
ours to use; the love implied in it is ours to
enjoy. Not one of us need go through life
alone; not one of us need be orphaned and
poor; not one of us need carry a troubled
anxious heart. For Christ has taught us to
see love on the Throne, and to call to the
Almighty and Everlasting God who fainteth
not, neither is weary, “Our Father, who art
in Heaven.”
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.sp 4
.h2 id=chap3
<abbr=three>III</abbr> | “Hallowed be Thy Name”
.sp 2
“Hallowed be Thy Name.”—<sc>Matt.</sc> <abbr=six>vi.</abbr> 9; <sc>Luke</sc> <abbr=eleven>xi.</abbr> 2.
.sp 2
Last Sunday morning we talked together of the
new and beautiful name by which Jesus taught
us to address God when we draw near to Him
in prayer. “When we pray, say Father.” This
morning we pass on to the consideration of the
first petition in the prayer itself. Between this
first petition and the invocation there is the
closest and most intimate connection. In the
invocation Jesus gave us a new name for God.
In the first petition He teaches us to pray for
grace, to honour that new name of “Father” by
thought and life.

This “Pearl of Prayer” divides itself naturally
into two parts, and it is a fact worth
noticing that the petitions in the first half of the
prayer are all concerned with God’s honour and
glory. Our first thoughts when we kneel in
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prayer must be of God. Our first petitions must
concern themselves not with our own personal
advantage but with God’s glory and praise. This
petition, “Hallowed be Thy name,” stands first,
because it is the first in natural order. For
there is an order, “an order of precedence”
shall I say, in prayer. I have seen a volume of
sermons by Mr. Jackson, of Edinburgh, which
bears the title “First things first.” “First
things first” is a rule we may well remember in
our prayers. “Seek ye first the Kingdom of
God and His righteousness,” said our Lord, and
that precept is one for prayer as well as for life.
Have you noticed how faithfully Jesus Himself
observed the rule He here laid down for others?
Examine His prayers, and you will find that with
Him first things always came first. The glory
of God was always the master petition in the
prayers of Christ. He had to pass through times
of sore distress and pain and agony—and Christ
was not above asking for relief, deliverance,
escape from the pain. But His own wishes were
always kept in a subordinate place, it was ever
“God first” with Him. “Nevertheless, not
My will but Thine be done.” “Father, glorify
Thy name.” That is the true order in prayer—God
first. But we oftentimes reverse the
order. Instead of “first things being first,”
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first things are often last and last things often
first. Our prayers are occupied mainly with our
own wants and needs and desires. It is a case
oftentimes of “self first.” When we pray even
this prayer, the petitions that we utter with the
deepest fervour and earnestness are petitions
for personal blessing. “Give us this day our
daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses.
Deliver us from evil.” But the true order
is the one observed here, “God first.” The
King of all the petitions is the one that stands
in the forefront. The Westminster Confession
says that the chief end of man’s life is “to
glorify God.” The old divines who drew up
that confession had gained a clear glimpse into
the true relation of things. Above all personal
interest, above all selfish advantage, stands the
glory of God. In the soldier’s thought, far
above any consideration of personal comfort or
safety, or even of life, stands the thought of the
honour of the flag and his country’s weal. And
so in the Christian’s mind far above the thought
of self must stand the thought of God. “First
things first.” Before the prayer for daily
bread, for forgiveness, for deliverance, comes
the prayer that God may have the glory due
unto His name. My object this morning is
to point out, if I can, the sweep and grandeur
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of this petition, so that we may understand
what it is we pray for when we say, “Hallowed
be Thy name.” Let me first of all try to
explain what is meant by <i>the name of God</i>. As
Bishop Westcott points out in his “Revelation
of the Father” no thoughtful person can read
the Bible without being struck by the importance
which is attached to the Divine names
in the different books. And the <i>names</i> of God
are important because they are revelations of
God’s nature. You remember that when Jacob
wrestled with the angel till break of day by the
side of the brook Jabbok his last request to his
antagonist was this, “Tell me I pray Thee,
Thy name.” What was it Jacob really wanted
to know? I will tell you. He wanted to
know the nature, the character of the mighty
Wrestler. He wanted to know whether it was
love or wrath that had constrained him to pass
through that terrible agony. “Tell me, I pray
Thee, Thy name,” tell me Thy character,
reveal to me Thy heart, “to me Thy name, Thy
nature show,” that was the real meaning of
Jacob’s cry. Well, the Bible is a great book
of “names.” If you will turn up your concordances,
you will find in them a long list of
“names” for God. And the point to notice is
that every name applied to God means something;
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every name tells us something about
Him; every name is a light upon His nature.
When you hear a man’s name, it tells you
nothing about his character. You are not
a whit nearer knowing what a man is really
like for hearing that his name is John, or David,
or Thomas, or Joseph. The names of men
mean nothing, or perhaps it would be truer to
say, their meaning has absolutely no relation to
character. They are mere labels. But it is
different in the case of God. Every name
applied to Him is significant. It expresses
some aspect of His character. Men caught
fresh glimpses into the depths of the Divine
nature, and their new knowledge they expressed
by a new name. So that the names of God are
all of them keys to God’s character. They
help us to spell out the secret of His nature.
When then, you read of a man crying out, “Tell
me Thy name,” you understand that what Jacob
really wanted to know was what God was.
And when you read of the Psalmist saying,
“They that know Thy name, will put their
trust in Thee,” you know that what the
Psalmist means is this—that those who really
<i>know</i> God, who know His heart, <i>will</i>, cannot
help trusting Him. That, then, is the meaning
of “God’s name,” it means the character of
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God, as that character has been revealed to
us.

When, where and how has that name been
revealed to us? Well, it has been revealed, as
the writer of the letter to the Hebrews puts it,
“by divers portions, and in divers manners.”

(1) It has been revealed to us in <i>Nature</i>.
The Psalmist watching his sheep in the still
and starry night saw God in the arching sky,
and sang, “The heavens declare the glory of
God and the firmament sheweth His handiwork.”
And one of our own great poets,
John Ruskin, has said, “It is but the outer
hem of God’s great mantle, our poor stars do
gem.” The Arabs speak of tracing God’s
footsteps in the world; Kepler, in studying the
planets, said he was thinking God’s thoughts
after Him; Mrs. Barrett-Browning cries,
“Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every
common bush afire with God.” Yes! God
reveals His name to us through nature. I have
been shown rocks which bear upon them
indentations that have some resemblance to a
cloven foot, and I have been told of legends
that connect those marks with the devil. The
devil, so the legends say, made those particular
rocks a momentary resting-place, and in the
cloven foot he has left his mark upon them
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for ever. But, brethren, it is not the devil’s
mark, but God’s mark that the great world
bears. I can see God’s mark on the sky and
the sea, on mountain and flood, on flower and
tree. When I look at the great mountains
I cannot help remembering that it was God
who planted them there. “He weighed the
mountains in scales and the hills in a balance.”
When I look at the great and wide sea, at
the sunny, sleepy sea, at the angry, restless
sea, I remember it was God who placed it
there. “He measured the waters in the
hollow of His hand. He has placed bounds
for it which it cannot pass.” When I see the
lightning flash, I remember that the lightning
is His messenger. When I hear the thunder
roll, I remember that the thunder is His voice.
When I see the birds of the air, I remember that
not one of them falls to the ground without
God. When I see the lilies of the field, I
remember that God clothes them. Oh, yes,
the world speaks of God. It is true, as Coleridge
sings in his magnificent “Hymn before
Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni”—

.pm verse-start
“Earth with her thousand voices praises God.”
.pm verse-end

But Nature does not tell all the secret. If
we knew only what Nature tells we should be
// File: 049.png
.pn +1
compelled to cry with the old Hebrew prophet,
“Verily, Thou art a God that hidest Thyself.”
After all Nature has to say, our entreaty is still,
“Tell me, I pray Thee, Thy name.”

(2) God’s name has been revealed to us
more plainly <i>in the Bible</i>. In this book you
have one name for God following another, and
with every fresh name came new light. Westcott
says that “the three chief stages in the
history of the Old Testament are characterised
in broad outline by the names under which
God was pleased to make Himself known in
each!” First He is El-Shaddai, the God of
might. Then He is Jehovah, the Great I AM,
the God of the covenant. Then He is Lord of
Hosts, the King of the Universe, the Disposer
of Events, the Ruler of the world. It was a
great event in the history of men when God
announced by His servants and prophets a new
name for Himself: We talk about great
discoveries—the discovery of a new mountain
range, or river, or lake in the Dark Continent,
the discovery of some new facts in the realm of
science, the discovery of some new method of
applying Nature’s forces to do men’s work. I
am not saying these are not great discoveries,
but I do say the greatest discovery that ever
happens in this world of ours is the discovery
// File: 050.png
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of a new name for God. You have the history
of those names, those discoveries in the Bible.
To trace the giving of these names is to
trace the history of men as they were being
led out of darkness into His most marvellous
light.

But who would not feel that, if the Bible
stopped short at the book of Malachi, the light
at best was only the dim and uncertain twilight.
If the old book finished there, our cry would
be still, “Tell me, I pray Thee, Thy name.”
Well, thanks be to Him, He has told us His
name. He has kept nothing from us.

(3) God has revealed Himself fully to us <i>in
Jesus Christ</i>. He had given glimpses of Himself
to seers and prophets before. But God
was greater and better than the best word
even Isaiah had said about Him. And at last,
when the fulness of time was come, God told
the final truth about Himself by sending Jesus
Christ into the world. He is the effulgence of
His glory and the express image of His person.
There are likenesses between human beings.
We talk about “family likenesses.” There
are striking resemblances between father and
son, mother and daughter, brother and sister.
But with the resemblances there are also
differences. You can always distinguish between
// File: 051.png
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one and another. But between God and
Jesus Christ the likeness is absolute. There
are no differences. Jesus is the Word of
God. He is what God is, expressed in terms
of human thought and speech. God has kept
nothing back from us. He has reserved no
secret. You may enter into the holiest place
by the blood of Jesus. What is God’s name?
God’s name is Jesus Christ. In Jesus you get
the full and final revelation of God’s character.
God could not fully reveal Himself through
nature. He could not have been pictured for us
in a book. It was only in a <i>life</i> that God could
fully reveal Himself, and that full revelation
He gave in the life of His Son. When Philip
said to Jesus, “Shew us the Father,” Jesus
answered, “I and my Father are one. He that
hath seen me hath seen the Father.” Jesus
was God’s answer to the cry of man—“Tell
me, I pray Thee, Thy name.” It is by looking
at Jesus, then, that we discover the character
of God. And if you ask me, after studying
Christ’s life, what I find God’s character to be
and what His best name is, I answer that His
nature is love, and that the best name that
describes Him is the name “Father.” When,
then, Jesus tells us to pray, “Hallowed be
Thy name,” He is telling us to honour God’s
// File: 052.png
.pn +1
character as revealed in Himself. He is telling
us to honour God as Father both in thought
and life.

Now let me pass on to ask, <i>How may we
hallow God’s name?</i> You remember the old
commandment “Thou shalt not take the name
of the Lord thy God in vain.” Well, we must
give a strict obedience to that old commandment
if we are to hallow God’s name. There are
men in our midst who can scarcely utter a
sentence without dragging in the name of God.
They interlard their speech with oaths, and
blasphemously use the name of the sacred
Majesty on High. Such men dishonour and
degrade the Holy Name. But if we imagine
that by abstaining from the vulgar and wicked
habit of swearing we have “hallowed God’s
name,” we are much mistaken. The Jews of old
gave scrupulous obedience to the letter of the
command, “Thou shalt not take the name of the
Lord thy God in vain,” but they violated its
spirit. They were so scrupulous that they
would not even pronounce the sacred name.
They passed it over in silence; they would never
tread upon a piece of paper lying on the ground
for fear the sacred name might be written upon
it. And yet the Jew, while giving this strict
literal obedience to the command, was all the
// File: 053.png
.pn +1
while violating its spirit, and by his sin, his
greed, his hypocrisy, was dishonouring that
God whose name he feared to pronounce.

And for the matter of that, there are people
amongst us who attach, as the ancient Jews
did, a superstitious reverence to the name, who
treat it as if it were a charm; who pay an
idolatrous worship to the mere word. I have
been occasionally to services in the cathedrals
and parish churches of our land, and I have
noticed that the men and women who attend
them will bow at “the name.” Now I am not
prepared to say that act is wrong, but I am quite
prepared to say that the tendency of all such
practices is to make people imagine that God is
to be honoured and worshipped by mere
externalisms. The danger of such a practice is
that of making people imagine they have
“hallowed God’s name,” by bowing in church.
Brethren, it is all a very pitiful delusion. What
is the use of bowing at the name, if people go
home to be selfish and unkind, or to their
business to be hard and over-reaching; or into
society to be gossips and tale-bearers? In spite
of the outward respect they pay, such people
dishonour God’s name, drag it through the mire,
and make it the jest of blasphemers and fools.
“Hallowing God’s name” does not mean bowing
// File: 054.png
.pn +1
when that sacred name is pronounced: it means
honouring the character of God, as that character
has been made known to us in Jesus Christ.
This is a prayer not simply for the man to
pray who is fighting against the blaspheming
habit, it is a prayer that the best of Christians
may well utter. Well, how shall we “hallow
God’s name?”

(1) <i>By cherishing worthy ideas of God.</i> We are
<i>dishallowing</i> (if I may be allowed to use the
word) God’s name when we have unworthy ideas
of His nature. We are sinning against this
name “Father” when we think of God as
harsh, unkind, cruel. Our new theology may
have its defects and its dangers, but at any rate
it “has hallowed God’s name.” It has made
God more beautiful, more tender, more loving
and lovable. Do you know I am not surprised
that men broke out into revolt against the stern,
hard, pitiless theology of a century ago. Theologians
were attributing to God conduct that
would be branded as hateful in men! Augustine
and Calvin have laid the Church under vast
obligations, but when Augustine and Calvin
talked about little infants being damned, they
were dishonouring God’s name, casting a slur
upon His character, and sinning against His
Fatherhood. There is an old painting in one
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.pn +1
of the Italian galleries which pictures God as
shooting arrows at men, and Jesus catching
them before they reached their mark. That
picture represents the spirit of much of the old
theology. Christ is represented as kind and
pitiful, but God is represented as cruel, vengeful,
vindictive. Brethren, that is a libel upon God.
It is a cruel slander upon God’s character.
“God is love.” “God was in Christ, reconciling
the world unto Himself.” God so loved the
world that He gave His only begotten Son.
That is the true picture. Refuse to believe in
anything that contradicts that. Refuse to
believe that God can ever be guilty of what
would be accounted base in man. Believe with
Whittier, that

.pm verse-start
“Nothing can be good in Him, which evil is in me.”
.pm verse-end

Say with Browning, “Thou, God, art Love.
I build my faith on that.” You must cherish
lofty, beautiful, gracious thoughts of God if you
are to hallow His name. And go on to know
the Lord. There are depths of love in God,
unrealised as yet by the best of us. I know a
valley in South Wales, which outwardly is not
much to look at, but in its bosom are buried
vast treasures, and men who have digged
beneath the surface have found there boundless
// File: 056.png
.pn +1
wealth. The deeper we penetrate into the
nature of God, the more loving, the more
gracious we shall find Him to be. Therefore,
press on to know Him, until you come to feel
that God is your passion and your joy, that in
earth, in heaven, you want none but Him. By
so doing, you will be hallowing God’s name.

But God’s name must be hallowed not only
in thought, but in life. So I pass on to say
that not only can you hallow God’s name by
cherishing worthy thoughts of God, but you can
hallow God’s name also—

(2) By the <i>trustfulness of your life</i>. Jesus has
told us God’s name of “Father” by quietly
trusting Him. You cannot dishonour a friend
more than by refusing to trust him, can you?
Distrust, suspicion, is an insult to friendship.
A child cannot dishonour a father more than
by fearing him, being suspicious about him,
doubting his love. Fear, suspicion, distrust—these
things are an insult to fatherhood. Are
we never guilty of insulting the Fatherhood of
God? I have heard people sometimes complain
of God, of God’s dealing with them in Providence.
They have spoken as if God used them
hardly. They have spoken as if God had His
favourites. They have spoken as if God had
lost His love for them. What were they doing?
// File: 057.png
.pn +1
Dishonouring God’s name, casting a slur upon
His character, forgetting that His nature is
love and His name is Father. Men who, in
spite of Calvary, think God can be unkind, are
doing insult to His love. If you want to
hallow God’s name, trust Him to the uttermost;
“rest in the Lord, and wait patiently
for Him.” Job hallowed God’s name, when,
amid the wreck of all his earthly fortunes, he
said, “Even though He slay me, yet will I
trust Him.” Paul hallowed God’s name when,
looking at the cross, he said, “All things work
together for good to them that love God.”
Samuel Rutherford honoured God’s name when,
writing from his prison in Aberdeen, he said,
“I have nothing to say of my Lord’s cross but
much good.” I have read of a child who in
the midst of a storm at sea remained quiet,
calm, and fearless, and who, on being asked
how it was she was not afraid, answered, with
the simplicity of childhood, “My father is the
captain.” She honoured the name father by
her perfect trustfulness. We find ourselves in
storms sometimes—storms of trouble, storms
of doubt, storms of bereavement and grief.
It is in such storms we have the most glorious
opportunities of hallowing God’s name. Let
us ask Him for grace to honour His Fatherhood
// File: 058.png
.pn +1
by trusting Him in the dark and cloudy
day. Man, the child, cannot hallow God’s
name of “Father” better than by a quiet,
simple trustfulness.

(3) We can hallow God’s name of “Father”
by <i>our obedience</i>. The Italian brigand will
repeat the Pater Noster and then go on with his
robbery. The Mussulman will interlard his
filthiest talk with appeals to Allah. But
nothing is so dishonouring to God as profession
without practice. God will have obedience and
not sacrifice. God was weary of the outward
marks of respect the Jews paid Him, because all
these outward marks of reverence were accompanied
by gross and persistent disobedience of
life. Does a child want to honour his father?
He cannot do it better than by being an obedient
child, by giving prompt and willing obedience
to his father’s commands. Do you want to
honour your Father in heaven? Obey Him.
Obey Him in the home; obey Him in society;
obey Him in your business; obey Him in your
public and political life. Obey Him promptly,
absolutely, willingly. That was how Jesus
hallowed His Father’s name. From the earliest
dawn of life He was about His Father’s business.
It was His meat and drink to do God’s will. He
was born at Bethlehem, He laboured in Galilee,
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.pn +1
He drank the bitter cup in the garden, He died
upon the Cross—all because it was God’s will.
He gave to His Father full, absolute, glad
obedience, so that in His prayer He could say
to God, “I have glorified Thy name,” and God
could look upon Him and say, “Thou art My
beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” If
you want to honour your Heavenly Father, <i>obey
Him</i>! We try to put God off with a little
outward respect, we bow at His name, we bend
in prayer before Him, we sing hymns to His
praise; but better than all your bowing and
hymn singing and multiplied prayers is the daily
obedience of the life. “If ye love Me,” says
God, “keep My commandments.” To-morrow,
in the shop and the office and the school and
the home, make it your meat and drink to do
the Father’s will and to finish His work; so will
you, too, like your great Elder Brother, glorify
God’s name, and like Him you, too, will one
day hear God say, “Thou art My beloved Son,
in whom I am well pleased.”
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.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2 id=chap4
<abbr=four>IV</abbr> | The Second Petition
.sp 2
“Thy Kingdom come.”—<sc>Matt.</sc> <abbr=six>vi.</abbr> 10; <sc>Luke</sc> <abbr=eleven>xi.</abbr> 2.
.sp 2
The Bible is a book of hope. It looks, not
backward, but forward. It has its face turned
towards the light. It always speaks of “a best
that is still to be.” We open its pages and we
read of Eden; of a time when the world was
free from pain and sorrow and sadness, because
man was free from sin. While man was
innocent his home was a garden, all nature
served him, a sky that was always blue smiled
down upon him, and God was his familiar friend.
But we read on a chapter or two and a change
comes over the aspect of things. Eden disappears,
and has never been found since. Joy,
harmony, peace vanish, and leave behind them
discord, sorrow, hate. When man sinned, pain
and grief and death entered the world, man’s sky
grew black with clouds; God no longer spoke
// File: 061.png
.pn +1
with him in the cool of the evening, and he was
driven out of the garden, at the gates of which
the cherubim were posted with swords of flame
which pointed every way, as if to say, “No
return, no return.”

But even in the story of that bitter loss I
detect the note of “hope.” You perhaps
remember the old Greek legend which says that
when Pandora was married to Epimetheus the
gods gave her a box, which was full of winged
blessings, as a wedding present. As long as
Pandora kept the box locked, so long life was
like a summer’s day. She and her husband
enjoyed every blessing. But one day, tempted
by curiosity, she opened the box, and on the
instant the little winged creatures who were
locked inside took flight and left her for ever.
All? did I say. No, not quite all. <i>Hope</i>
remained at the bottom of the box, the only
blessing left to Pandora and her husband! And
so exactly man lost everything by sin except
<i>hope</i>. When God made man He gave him every
blessing. But when man unmade himself, these
blessings took flight. He lost his innocence,
he lost his peace, he lost his happiness, he lost
his home, he lost everything but <i>hope</i>. God
left him <i>hope</i> to comfort him in his bitter grief.
God left him <i>hope</i> to save him from despair.
// File: 062.png
.pn +1
When man’s night was blackest, God sent into
his sky a star, a star that was the promise of
a day to come. In pronouncing doom upon
disobedient man, God also gave him a promise as
if to say, “It shall not always be midnight and
deep despair with thee. Thy dayspring shall
again arise.” That note of hope, struck even in
the story of the tragedy of the fall, is the key-note
of the Bible. The Bible is a book of the
future, and the spring-time, and the dawn. You
will not find its pages taken up with regrets for
the Eden which has been lost; it looks forward
to a better Eden still to come. It does not spend
its time in bewailing the sunshine that has
disappeared from the earth; it rather bids men
wake and watch that they may be ready to greet
the still more glorious day which is about to
break. For as you read the Bible, what do you
discover? You discover one glowing promise
after another given by God; you find hope ever
waxing stronger; you find the assurance that
the night is departing, ever waxing more confident,
until at last some prophet, of keener
vision than the rest, catches on the peaks of
distant hills the foregleam of the dawn, beholds
the vision of the light, not of moon or stars, but
of the sun, and announces to a world sick with
longing for the day, that “the light is come,
// File: 063.png
.pn +1
and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.”
It is to the future the Bible looks. From its
first page to the last it preaches the glad gospel
of <i>hope</i>. The old Eden which has been lost is a
prophecy of the better Eden to be gained. The
“golden age” of the Bible is before, not behind.
Paganism could only look back wistfully to the
past and sigh for the reign of Saturn, when the
earth had peace and plenty and joy—those glad
days which had been, but could return no more.
But the Bible teaches us to look forward. Our
good time is still to come. Our golden age is
still in the womb of the future. We are still
looking for that glorious “last for which the
first was made.” It is of the golden age to
which the Christian looks forward that this
second petition speaks. “Thy Kingdom come”
is a prayer for the good time coming, a prayer
for the golden age, a prayer for the better Eden.
For the earth’s golden age will come when God
is King. I say the <i>earth’s</i> golden age advisedly.
Let me emphasise it—<i>the earth’s</i> golden age!
For many have misinterpreted the reference of
this petition. Tertullian, the old Latin father,
would have made this petition the third, not the
second. He would have read the prayer thus,
“Hallowed be Thy name, Thy will be done,
Thy Kingdom come,” because he thought this
// File: 064.png
.pn +1
prayer for God’s kingdom referred to the
end of the world and the second advent. But
when Jesus teaches us to pray that God’s
kingdom may come, He means that we are
to pray that God may reign <i>here</i> upon the
earth, that men <i>here</i> may acknowledge Him as
King, that life <i>here</i> may be regulated by His
commands. This is not a prayer that we
may be taken out of earth into heaven, but it
is a prayer that heaven may come down to earth,
so that earth itself may become heavenly. It
is a prayer for the “new earth wherein dwelleth
righteousness.” It is a prayer for the world’s
golden age—a golden age which shall come
when there is established here on earth that
kingdom of God which is righteousness, peace,
and joy in the Holy Ghost. Have you noticed
how in most men’s minds the idea of a “golden
age” is associated with the name of some king?
The Israelites associated it with the name of
David; the Germans associated it with the
name of Frederick Barbarossa; for us British
folk a special halo of romance gathers round
the time of Arthur and his Knights of the
Round Table. And as a matter of fact, the
world’s good time is inseparably connected
with the coming of a King and the establishment
of a kingdom. But the kingdom is no
// File: 065.png
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earthly royalty, and the King is no David or
Barbarossa or Arthur come back to life again.
The kingdom is the kingdom of God, and the
name of the King is Jesus. When that Kingdom
is established, when that King is enthroned,
a better Eden shall be here than the Eden we
have lost. It is the world’s evil time just now.
Earth is full of misery and grief and pain.
Many are the schemes propounded for mending
matters, and God knows they need mending.
Each man has his own nostrum, every quack
his own panacea; but if we leave God and
Christ out of account every plan is doomed to
fail. We shall mend matters only by making
God a reality, and the final establishment of
right and justice, and joy will come only when
<i>He</i> is enthroned as King. But you may say
to me, “Is not God King now? Is not the
world His? Are not all men in His hands?”
That is perfectly true! I do not forget that
the earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof,
the world and they that dwell therein. It is
my joy and strength to remember that in spite
of all the bluster and brave show made by
the forces of evil, the Lord God omnipotent
reigneth! But if you will examine the basis
of <i>that</i> Kingship you will find it rests on God’s
<i>Creatorship</i>. He is Lord of the world and of
// File: 066.png
.pn +1
men because He has created them—because in
Him they live and move and have their being.
But God wants to be King in Jesus Christ—that
is to say, He wants to be King in virtue
not of His power, but of His <i>love</i>. He wants
men to obey Him not because they are afraid
of Him, but because they love Him. Look at
the prayer: “<i>Thy</i> kingdom come.” Whose
kingdom is it? Well, it is “our <i>Father’s</i>”
kingdom. Oh, this is a kingdom of love!
God wants to be King not because He is Creator,
but because He is <i>Father</i>. He wants men
to be obedient to Him not under the pressure
of force, but under the sweet constraint of
love. God has been King by the title of
Creator since the world began; but He is
not even yet King by the title of “Father.”
He is not even yet King in Jesus Christ. It is
for <i>this</i> kingdom we are to pray; for the time
when men shall realise what God’s Fatherhood
means, for the time when men’s hearts shall be
so touched by God’s love to them in Jesus Christ,
that out of pure and grateful affection they will
render Him a willing and glad obedience.

“Thy kingdom come.” The prayer, you
will notice, regards the “kingdom” as something
still to be realised. As yet it is in the
future. In other places in the New Testament
// File: 067.png
.pn +1
it is talked of as actually existent. Both views
are true—the kingdom is both <i>present</i> and
<i>future</i>. You remember that when the Pharisees
asked Jesus when the kingdom of God should
come, he observed, “The kingdom of God
cometh not with observation, for lo, the kingdom
of God <i>is in your midst</i>.” The Pharisees
were treating as future what was already
present. The kingdom of God was already in
their midst. But it was not surprising that the
Pharisees failed to discover the presence of
the kingdom. It was a very tiny affair at
the time. Its subjects were only a handful
of Galilean peasants. Our Lord Himself,
speaking of the tiny, unnoticed beginning of
the kingdom, said it was like unto leaven which
a woman took and <i>hid</i> in three measures of
meal! The kingdom is not hidden to-day.
The leaven has been working through the
centuries. The presence of the <i>kingdom</i> is the
most noticeable fact in the world’s life to-day.
We talk about the great empires of the world!
We talk about the British Empire embracing
one-fifth part of the habitable globe: and the
great Russian Empire claiming a sixth part of
the world; and the German Empire and the
French Empire, and the rest of them. But
there is one Empire greater, vaster than any
// File: 068.png
.pn +1
other—the Empire of King Jesus. It is <i>in our
midst</i>, the mightiest kingdom, the most potent
force on earth.

And yet, while the kingdom of God is thus
<i>present</i> and potent, it is still <i>future</i>. Its full
realisation has yet to come. So long as there
is in this world one man who has not yielded
his heart to Christ, so long as there is a single
department of life which is not brought into
subjection to the law of Christ, so long will
the kingdom be <i>unrealised</i>, so long shall we need
to pray this prayer, “Thy kingdom come.”
All the misery of this world is due to the fact
that there are multitudes of men still in rebellion,
that there are whole departments of
human activity which are not regulated by the
spirit of Christ. The kingdom is still imperfect,
incomplete. Its full establishment lies in the
future somewhere. Until that full establishment
takes place, until God is King everywhere
and over everybody and everything, the world’s
golden age will never come.

<i>What kind of kingdom is this?</i> It is worth
while noticing that the “kingdom” occupied
a large place in the thought and speech of
Christ. His gospel was a gospel of the kingdom.
He announced that He had come to found a
kingdom; He claimed the title “King” for
// File: 069.png
.pn +1
Himself; and in what is known as the Sermon
on the Mount, He gave us, shall I say, the laws
and rules of the kingdom. Christ was not
the first to picture an “Ideal State,” Plato
had already done it in his “Republic.” But
Plato’s picture would not satisfy you or me.
It is an impossible, fantastic dream. Plato’s
state, with its philosopher king and its destruction
of the family, repels instead of attracting
us. But the kingdom of God which Christ has
pictured for us, that gleaming vision of a new
earth in which love shall rule, fascinates and
enthrals us, and the hope of its realisation
becomes the mainspring of all human progress
and attainment. Well what kind of a kingdom
is it? Let me answer in the words of the great
Apostle Paul, and say, “The kingdom of God is
righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy
Ghost.” There you have in one brief sentence
the characteristics of the kingdom. The
kingdom of God is <i>righteousness</i>, or, in other
words, the kingdom of God is <i>justice</i>. There
is cruel wrong in this world of ours, wrong
that daily cries up to God for vengeance.
Man wrongs man, brother oppresses brother.
The dark places of the earth are full of cruelty,
and places that are usually supposed to be
“light,” like this favoured England of ours,
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.pn +1
are full of cruelty also. Oh, brethren, to
see the wrong, the oppression, the wickedness
of life, is a maddening sight! I can understand
how men are sometimes driven by it into
the blasphemy of despair! But the kingdom
of God is justice—strict, level, even-handed
justice. When <i>His</i> kingdom comes, tyranny,
oppression, wrong shall cease; men shall do
right out of love for their righteous King.

The kingdom of God is <i>peace</i>. Peace between
men, peace between nations. All strife and
mutual distrust shall be for ever buried, and the
noise of war shall be heard no more, but men
shall beat their swords into plough-shares and
their spears into pruning hooks. Hate and
enmity shall die. “The wolf and the lamb
shall lie down together, and the lion shall
eat straw like the ox. They shall not hurt nor
destroy in all my holy mountain,” saith the
Lord.

The kingdom of God is <i>joy</i>. We are in the
winter of our discontent just now. Life is full
of tears and grief and pain. The tears and the
grief and pain spring from the hate and the
oppressions and the injustices of life. But
when God is King there shall be justice and
peace, and joy will follow as a natural consequence.
Justice, peace, happiness those are
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the characteristics of the kingdom of God! Is
not this a kingdom worth praying for?

Now let me go on to ask the question, <i>What
is the sphere of the kingdom?</i> First let me
say, the sphere of the kingdom is the <i>individual
heart</i>. When I pray, “Thy kingdom come”
I do not feel that I am praying solely for the
work of foreign missions. I do not think
only of the millions of heathen in China or
India or Africa. When I pray “Thy kingdom
come,” I am not satisfied with adding to
the thought of the heathen abroad remembrance
of the heathen at home. No! when I utter
that prayer I feel I am praying for myself. I
am praying that God’s kingdom may come
in my own heart. Oh, yes, this prayer has
reference to ourselves. When we pray “Thy
kingdom come,” we pray “Lord, come into our
own hearts; rule <i>there</i>; take the throne <i>there</i>:
make us completely thine.” “Thy kingdom
come!” Brethren, do we mean it? Do we
honestly desire it? For see what it means. It
means that we are asking that every cherished
sin and passion may be cast out of our hearts;
it means that we desire that neither money nor
pleasure nor fame should have any power over
us or draw away our love from God. It means
that God’s will and not our own may rule.
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Oh, that is a great prayer! Do we honestly
and sincerely mean what we say? I have known
men who loved their sins too much, their
pleasures, their money, themselves too much,
ever to be able to pray sincerely “Thy kingdom
come!” May God give us grace honestly
to pray this prayer! May He make us able and
willing to give to His commands a glad and
complete obedience! God’s kingdom must
come in our own hearts before it can come in
the world at large! It is only true and loyal
subjects of the kingdom who can extend its
boundaries and further its interests. Men
will not enter the kingdom, though we preach
to them till Doomsday, if we ourselves remain
without. But if God truly reigns in our hearts,
and His kingdom begets in us righteousness,
peace, and joy, we shall then be able to go forth
and win others as loyal subjects to our King.

But in offering this prayer, we must not stop
at ourselves. The prayer embraces <i>the wide
world in its sweep</i>. Thy kingdom come!
Where? Everywhere. All nations are to bow
down before Him, all people are to serve Him.
Men discuss the question sometimes as to which
race is likely to become the dominant race in the
earth. We people who live in this little island
are inclined to believe that this splendid destiny
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is reserved for the Anglo-Saxon race. We
stand among the nations for the principles of
liberty and truth and justice; and as I heard
Dr. Clifford say some months ago, we believe
that “the momentum of these ideas will carry
us to the government of the earth.” And so
far as England does stand for those great ideas,
I am not ashamed to confess I am an English
Imperialist. But there is something I am more
anxious about even than the dominion of England,
and that is the dominion of Christ. Above
everything else I am a Christian Imperialist. I
want to see the banner of the Cross floating over
every land. I want to see every nation acknowledging
one and the same King—even Jesus. I
want to see the crown of the world on the brow
which bears still the scars of the crown of
thorns! And, brethren, I know that all this
shall come to pass! The place of England in
the future of the world is, after all, a matter
of conjecture. But there is no conjecture, no
doubt, no perhaps about the place of Christ.
He is destined for the throne! He shall reign
till He hath put all enemies under His feet,
“Thy kingdom come” in my own heart, over
all the world, and let me add <i>in every department
of life</i>. When we pray this prayer, we are
praying that God may rule in our business
// File: 074.png
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life, and our social life, and our political life.
We are asking Him to preside in our Parliaments
and our Council Chambers. We are
asking Him to take the government of our
markets and our offices and our exchanges.
We are asking Him to be Lord in the realms of
art and literature. What an enormous sweep
this prayer has! And we must not only pray
this form of words, but if our prayer is not to
be a sham and a pretence, we must <i>toil</i> to realise
the kingdom. “Laborare est orare,” says the
old Latin proverb: “To labour is to pray.” At
any rate, no one has truly prayed this prayer
who does not bend all his energies to the task
of seeking to establish this kingdom on earth.
England keeps in every important foreign town
consuls to look after the interests of English
people. Let me use that to illustrate the duties
of Christian people. We are in this world to
look after the interests of God and of His kingdom.
We are His consuls. You business men,
you are in business to look after God’s interests
and to promote His kingdom! You professional
men—doctors, lawyers, schoolmasters—you
are in your professions to look after God’s
interests and to promote His kingdom! You
politicians, you are in politics to look after God’s
interests and to promote His kingdom! You
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fathers and mothers in the homes, you are there
to look after God’s interests and to promote His
kingdom. You must be Christian business men,
Christian lawyers, Christian doctors, Christian
teachers, Christian politicians, Christian parents.
Be faithful to your trust! <i>So</i> live, <i>so</i> labour,
that God’s kingdom may come! No wish or
prayer of ours can make the summer come an
hour before its time, or stave off by one hour
the approach of grim winter, but it <i>does depend</i>
upon our prayers and labours whether it shall
be soon or late that summer gladness shall come
into the souls of men; whether it shall be soon
or late that Christ shall see of the travail of His
soul and be satisfied.

Let me now proceed to the question, “<i>How
is this kingdom to be established?</i>” Let me first
say how it <i>cannot</i>. It cannot be established by
force. Alexander, Cæsar, Napoleon built up
their empires with the sword, and cemented
them with blood, but not so is the kingdom of
God to be established. Men have tried that
method; they have used fire and sword to make
God’s kingdom come. Peter had that spirit
when he pointed to the two swords the disciples
possessed. Mahomet followed this plan when
he gave to men the alternative, either Islam or
death. The Crusaders, spurred on by the
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burning eloquence of Peter the Hermit, committed
the same blunder. The old Saxon and
Gothic kings, who when they accepted Christianity
themselves compelled their people to be
baptised as well, followed the same mistaken
method. But these people did not advance
the kingdom of God one whit. You do not
make a man a member of this kingdom by
baptising him, or enrolling him among the
adherents of a church, or by <i>calling</i> him a
Christian. Men must have their hearts changed,
they must be born again. They must be willing
to render glad obedience to their <i>Father</i> King
before they become members of this kingdom.
Force may increase the numbers of a sect, it
cannot add one to the membership of the kingdom.
The sword may compel a man to change
his name; it can never compel him to change
his heart! Oh no; it is not by the sword that
God’s kingdom will come. To all ecclesiastical
persecutors Christ says, “Put the sword up
into its sheath.” Not by the sword is the
kingdom to come, but by the Cross! Constantine
of old, when on the eve of a critical
battle, dreamed he saw a cross in the sky,
and around it this legend, Σὑ τουτῷ vῖκᾳ, “by
this conquer.” That is the weapon we have to
use in our warfare. That is the weapon whereby
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God’s kingdom is to be established. We are
to conquer “by the Cross.” We are to conquer
by the power of love. For the Cross means love—love
at its best, love in the glory of sacrifice.
The Cross is the power of God. It is by the
story of the Cross that men’s hearts are to be
broken, and their affection and allegiance won.
“By this conquer” is the charge given to us.
Preach the Cross! Exalt the dying Redeemer
of men! When we lift Him up He will draw
all men unto Him.

“Thy kingdom come.” It is a prayer to-day;
but the time will come when the prayer shall
be changed into praise, and we shall be able to
say, “Thy kingdom has come!” It has been
coming for eighteen hundred years, and it is not
here yet; but doubt not, despair not, faint not,
it <sc>SHALL</sc> come. Men have called the visions
such men as Plato and Sir Thomas More have
given us of the “Ideal State,” “Utopias,”
“Nowheres,” to mark their idea of those visions
as fantastic, impractical, impossible. But let no
one dare to call the kingdom of God a Utopia.
Let no one dare to say of the new earth which
Christ foretold that it is a vain, an impossible
dream. To say that is to deny the faith, and
to be guilty of the great Apostasy. Do you
say that the establishment of a kingdom of
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justice and peace and joy is impossible? I
will tell you nay. God is pledged to it, and
He shall not fail nor be discouraged. The
time is coming when our evil hearts shall be
made pure and clean; the time is coming when
our life day by day shall be sweet and holy and
happy; the time is coming when lying, deceit,
and greed and strife, and distrust and shame
shall be banished from the earth; the time is
coming when asylums and penitentiaries and
gaols shall no longer openly proclaim our shame;
the time is coming when the drunkard and the
profligate and the criminal and the harlot
shall be no more, but the people shall be all
righteous—a branch of God’s planting, that He
may be glorified! The time is coming when
trade and politics and pleasure shall be carried
on to the glory of God. The time is coming
when literature and art shall be cleansed of all
impure taint, and shall speak of God as the
Bible speaks of Him to-day. The time is
coming when China and India and the Dark
Continent and the isles of the sea shall place
their crowns on the head of Christ. The time
is coming when every idol shall be broken and
every superstition destroyed, and the knowledge
of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters
cover the sea. The time is coming when
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righteousness, peace, and joy shall everywhere
prevail, and sin and wrong shall be words whose
meaning men no longer understand. <i>Sursum
corda.</i> Lift up your hearts! That glorious
time is coming! That glorious day is about
to break. “The world is grey with morning
light.” Thy Kingdom come! It <i>must</i> come;
it <i>will</i> come. Its coming does not depend
upon you or me, but upon the risen and
exalted Christ. “The pleasure of the Lord
shall prosper in His hands.”

.pm verse-start
Break, triumphant day of God,
  Break at last, our hearts to cheer;
Throbbing souls and holy songs
  Wait to hail thy dawning here.

Empires, temples, sceptres, thrones,
  May they all for God be won;
And, in every human heart,
  Father, let Thy kingdom come.
.pm verse-end
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.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2 id=chap5
<abbr=five>V</abbr> | The Third Petition
.sp 2
“Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.”—<sc>Matt.</sc>
<abbr=six>vi.</abbr> 10
.sp 2
The third petition, which is omitted from
Luke’s version of the Prayer, springs directly
and naturally out of the second petition, and is
really explanatory of it. We have been taught
to pray, “Thy kingdom come.” God’s kingdom
<i>will</i> come, when His will is done on earth,
as it is done in heaven.

The central idea of kingship is that of <i>rule</i>,
<i>authority</i>, <i>power</i>. Kingship is only real and
effective when the King commands and the
people obey. In heaven God’s kingship is a
reality. The eyes of all the inhabitants of the
better land wait upon God. Cherubim and
Seraphim, saints and angels, delight to do His
will. In heaven, God speaks and it is done.
This third petition is a prayer that men may
learn to obey God as the angels do, so that His
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kingship may be as real and as effective here on
earth as it is now in heaven.

Jurists draw a distinction between kings <i>de
jure</i>—kings by legal right, and kings <i>de facto</i>—in
actual possession and exercise of the
royal power. Now God, if I may be allowed
to say so, is the world’s King <i>de jure</i>. He is
the world’s lawful Sovereign and rightful Lord.
“The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness
thereof, the world and they that dwell therein.”
But God is not King <i>de facto</i>. His kingship is
not effective. His people do not obey. There
are large sections of the world, whole departments
of human activity, where His rule is not
recognised. Ireland is part of the Queen’s
dominions; but there have been times when
the Queen could scarcely be said to <i>reign</i> in
Ireland. At the time when the Irish troubles
were at their height, it was a common saying
that in certain districts of Ireland it was not
the Queen who ruled, but the Land League.
Cuba was until last year part of the dominions
of the King of Spain. The Spanish flag floated
over its arsenals and forts. It was with the
ministers of the King of Spain that all negotiations
with reference to Cuba had to be carried
on. Cuban coins and Cuban postage stamps
bore the image and superscription of the Spanish
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sovereign. But for all that, for the past ten
years or so the kingship of Alphonso over
Cuba was merely nominal. Outside Havanna
and Santiago Alphonso could not be said to
<i>reign</i>. Not all the armies of Spain could make
his kingship real and effective over the rebellious
interior. In much the same way God
is the King of the world. He is its lawful
Sovereign. No one else has a shred of title
or claim to an inch of its territory or to the
allegiance of one of its inhabitants. “The
kingdom is the Lord’s, and He is Governor
among the nations.” But while God is King of
the world <i>de jure</i>, He is not King <i>de facto</i>. His
kingship is nominal—not real and effective;
for there are parts of the world over which
God cannot be said to <i>rule</i>. There are multitudes
of men who are in rebellion against Him,
and who refuse to acknowledge His authority.
God’s writs do not run. His law is not obeyed.
His will is not done.

And here we come across that solemn and
awful power which is the prerogative of manhood—the
<i>power of resisting the will of God</i>.
Nature obeys God’s will. The flower that
blooms in hedge-side or meadow; the lark
that sings its way up to heaven’s gate in the
spring sunshine; the rivers that roll towards
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the sea; the ocean with its regular ebb and
flow; the sun and moon and stars observing
their seasons and travelling along their appointed
orbits—all these are what they are,
and do what they do in obedience to God’s will.
The wind is God’s messenger; the thunder
His voice; the lightning His sword. Nature
obeys God. And above, in heaven, the angels
and the blest do God’s pleasure. “Thousands
at His bidding speed, and post o’er land and
ocean without rest.” Is there any one then who
resists God’s will? Yes, there is one, just one,
and that one is <i>man</i>. In all God’s universe he
is the only one who is disobedient. He is the
only one who clenches his fist and says “No”
to God. He is the only one invested with the
terrible power of resisting, thwarting, opposing
the will of God. And that awful power he
possesses because he possesses a free and independent
will of his own. God made man,
we are told, in His own likeness. The special
feature that marks man off from the brute
creation and links him on to the Divine, is his
possession of <i>moral freedom</i>. God is a moral
Being. Man, too, is a moral being. But in
order to make man a moral being, God had to
limit Himself and make man <i>free</i>. For there
can be no moral quality where there is no
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freedom. Nature is un-moral because nature
acts under necessity. Man is <i>not</i> under necessity.
He can either obey or disobey. He is
a moral being because he is <i>free</i>.

Now all the misery of the world is due to the
fact that man abused his freedom, that he chose
not to obey, but to <i>dis</i>-obey. What was the
first sin? An act of disobedience; and that act
of disobedience brought in its train a multitude
of woes. I want you to remember that vice is
not here by God’s will; lust is not here by God’s
will; strife and malice and envy are not here
by God’s will; war and bloodshed and slaughter
are not here by God’s will; misery and poverty
and shame are not here by God’s will. They
are here by <i>man’s</i> will, because man set up his
own will in opposition to that of God. The
secret of the world’s unhappiness and sorrow
and pain you will find in these familiar words
of the General Confession, “We have followed
too much the devices and desires of our own
hearts.” “Selfishness,” as Bishop Westcott says,
“lies at the root of all sin.” Here is the fountain
of the world’s woe, that man preferred his
own will rather than the will of God. While
man was obedient there was happiness and
joy, happiness that lasted. As John Milton
says—
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.pn +1

.pm verse-start
                  —till disproportioned Sin
Jarr’d against nature’s chime, and with harsh din
Broke the fair music that all creatures made
To their great Lord, whose love their motion sway’d
In perfect diapason, whilst they stood
In first obedience and their state of good.
.pm verse-end

But from that day, that day of disobedience, the
whole creation has been groaning and travailing
together in pain until now. But to discover the
fountain of the disease is also to discover the
secret of the remedy. If the world owes its
present misery to the fact that man has followed
his own will, the world will see its perfect day
when man submits his own will to the will of
God. “Come and let us <i>return</i>” is the prophet’s
cry, “let us get back to the old allegiance.”
“Come and let us return” is the preacher’s
call to-day. The way to the millennium
is along the path of obedience. When God’s
kingship is real and effective, because men
everywhere are obedient, the Golden Age
will have dawned. The new earth wherein
dwelleth righteousness will be a blessed fact
when—

.pm verse-start
We learn with God to will one will,
To do and to endure.
.pm verse-end

<i>Thy Will be done!</i> This petition teaches us
that it must be our supreme desire that God
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.pn +1
may have His way with us. You will notice,
as I pointed out a Saturday or two ago, that this
petition comes before the petitions for personal
blessing. It is infinitely more important that
God’s will should be done than that we should
have the things upon which we have set our
hearts. “<i>Thy</i> will be done!” Do you not feel
humbled and reproached by this petition? I
will speak for myself, and say that this petition
and its place in the prayer put me to utter
shame. Why, our very prayers are selfish!
A secularist once said with a sneer that “prayer
was a machine warranted by theologians to
make God do whatsoever His clients want.”
Have not our prayers given some ground for the
sneer? Have not our wants and interests
occupied too large a place in our petition?
This is the true order in prayer—God first.
This is the petition that must dominate every
other, “Thy will be done.”

Let me not be misunderstood. I am far from
saying it is wrong to tell God about our personal
wishes and desires. No! Tell Him
everything. There ought to be no reserve in
the conversation between a child and his Father.
I am not afraid or ashamed to tell God about
my personal affairs. I ask Him to preserve me
from trouble and loss. I ask Him to keep me
// File: 087.png
.pn +1
safe from harm and danger. I ask Him to
ward off from me sickness and suffering. I ask
Him to watch over those I love. But there
is another prayer I must learn to pray, another
prayer I must learn to pray <i>first</i>—and oh! what
a lot of learning it takes—and that prayer is this,
“Thy will be done.” For it may be God’s will
to send me the very things I shrink from. He
may see that it is the discipline of trouble and
loss and sickness that I need. I am but as a
little child, blind and ignorant as a little child,
and when I pray for temporal gifts, I may be
only praying to my own hurt. This is the only
prayer for me, for you, for all men, “Father,
Thy will be done.” We wish for success in
life, but because such a success might prove a
curse and not a blessing, we must add, “Nevertheless,
not my will but Thine be done.” We
pray for freedom from bereavement and sorrow,
but because such discipline may result in truest
blessedness, we add, “Nevertheless, not my will
but Thine be done.” We pray for peace and
comfort and quietness, but because struggle and
conflict may be necessary, in order to make us
strong, we add, “Nevertheless, not my will but
Thine be done.” We have not learned to pray
truly at all, until every petition in our prayers
is made subject to this one; until it becomes
// File: 088.png
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our chief and supreme desire that God’s will
may be done.

<i>Will it be hard?</i> Hard? I know of nothing
harder. This is the great feat of life. You
can only learn to say “Thy will be done”
through struggle and agony and heartbreak.
This old Book compares the agony through
which men must pass before they learn sincerely
to pray this prayer, to the agony inflicted by the
plucking out of an eye or the cutting off of a
limb. Obedience to God leads to the land of
blessedness and peace, but the gate by which
we enter—the gate of self-denial—is a narrow
gate, and we have to <i>agonise</i> to enter in. God
has a will for each of us, and His will concerning
us often clashes with our own. The
desires of the flesh and of the mind hanker after
earthly comfort and wealth and ease. God’s
will concerning us is, that whatever the cost
and the pain, we should be clean and honest
and true. Scarcely a day passes but our desires
and the will of God for us come into violent
conflict. To surrender our own wills, to make
God’s will ours, means pain. It is a dying. It
is a crucifixion. But there are one or two
considerations of which I would like to remind
you, which ought to make this surrender easier
for us. This is the first:—
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(1) The will we are asked to make our own
is <i>our Father’s</i> will. “Thy will be done!”
Whose will? <i>Our Father’s will!</i> After all, it
ought not to be very difficult to obey a father’s
will, to fulfil a father’s desire, even when that
will runs counter to our own, for we know there
is <i>love</i> in the case. Remember, you are not
asked to obey a despot; you are not asked to
obey a tyrant; you are not asked to obey a
slave-driver; you are asked to do the will of
<i>your Father</i>—your Father, whose love is only to
be measured by the Cross of Jesus Christ. It
was the remembrance that the will He was called
upon to obey was His Father’s will, that helped
Jesus in the Garden. It was a hard thing for
our Lord to say “Thy will be done,” when
He knew that involved the Cross and the Grave;
for Jesus, let me say it with all reverence, had
all a man’s feelings, and He shrank from the
bitter agony and shame. He would gladly have
escaped the Cross and the Tomb. “If it be
possible, let this cup pass.” Then he remembered
it was His Father who was bidding Him
drink that bitter cup. That thought steadied
Him, gave Him courage, made Him strong,
He was ready for anything and everything that
His Father appointed. “The cup which the
Father hath given me to drink shall I not drink
// File: 090.png
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it?” We, too, shall be strong to make God’s
will our own, when we remember it is our
<i>Father’s</i> will. For our Father is love—love at
its best and highest. Mr. Spurgeon tells a story
about a man who had in his garden a weather-cock
which had on it this inscription, “God
is Love.” A friend seeing it asked if it was
meant to imply that God’s love was as fickle
as the wind. “No,” was the reply, “I mean
that from whatever quarter the wind may
happen to blow, God is still love.” Bear that
in mind—God is love; the will you are asked
to obey is your Father’s will. Then, though
that will ordain for us sorrow, sickness, pain, loss,
we shall have grace to say, “Thy will be done.”

The second consideration which I would
impress upon you is this:—

(2) God’s will <i>ever seeks our highest good</i>. What
else could any one expect, seeing that it is <i>our
Father’s</i> will? How we who are parents plan
and scheme and contrive in order to secure a
happy and prosperous future for our children!
In exactly the same way God plans and purposes
for us. He is always thinking upon
us for our good. His will, says the Apostle,
is our sanctification. It is a good and perfect
and acceptable will. The very discipline
through which He sometimes calls upon us to
// File: 091.png
.pn +1
pass is meant to build us up in patience and
purity and faith. The boy in school is apt to
regard his lessons as a hardship. He would
prefer the field and the sunshine to the school-room
and the desk. But in after years he will be
thankful he did not get his own way in the days
of his youth, for he will recognise <i>then</i> that the
hours he spent over his Algebraic problems and
his Latin declensions enriched his life by contributing
to the culture of his mind. We are
scholars in God’s schools. The discipline of
the school is painful sometimes; but in later
years we shall be thankful even for our sorrows
and losses and bereavements, when we see how
they have enriched our lives by contributing to
the culture of our souls. Yes, it will be easier
to embrace God’s will when we realise with the
Apostle that all things work together for good
to them that love God.

<i>Thy will be done!</i> Notice, God’s will is not
simply to be endured or suffered—it is to be
done. In our every-day speech we have unduly
narrowed the scope and meaning of this petition.
We talk about this petition as if it were a
prayer that God would give us the grace of
<i>resignation</i>. It is in times of bereavement that
this phrase leaps to the lips of men. It is upon
tombstones that it is inscribed by sorrowing
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relatives. Again do not let me be misunderstood.
Suffering God’s will is embraced in the
scope of this prayer. To many of us the hardest
part of all is patient submission to the will of
God. The man bereft of wealth, stripped of
all his possessions, flung back again into the
poverty from which by hard and persistent
effort he had emerged, needs grace to say, “Thy
will be done.” The man who languishes upon
a bed of sickness, who lies there helpless while
perhaps wife and children look up to him for
bread—he needs grace to say, “Thy will be
done.” Those who have parted with some
loved one, who have seen father or mother, or
husband or wife or child, hidden from them in
the dark cold grave, and who come home again
to miss the well-loved face and familiar voice—they
need grace to say, while their hearts are
aching and their eyes are full of tears, “Thy
will be done.” Some of you know how hard
it is. You find it impossible almost to say, as
Job said, “The Lord gave and the Lord hath
taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Yes, it is hard to be submissive and resigned,
and it is out of a broken heart the prayer often
ascends, “Thy will be done.”

But this prayer is much more than a prayer
for the grace of resignation and patient submission.
// File: 093.png
.pn +1
The petition is not “Help us to <i>suffer</i>
thy will,” but “Help us to do it.” This is not
a prayer simply for the invalid and the mourner
and the bereaved; it is a prayer also for those
who are happy and well and strong. This is
not a prayer simply for our times of trouble and
our days of deep distress; it is a prayer for all
times and every day. It is not every day, nor
every month, nor even every year, that we are
called upon to <i>suffer</i> God’s will, but not a day,
not an hour passes, but <i>we are</i> called upon to do
it. Do not narrow the scope of this prayer.
You prayed this morning, “Thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven”? What did you
mean by it? I will tell you what you ought to
have meant by it: “Help me, O God, to do what
Thou wouldest have me do, to be what Thou
wouldest have me.” That is what the prayer
means. It means that we accept God’s plans
and purposes as our own, and resolve to realise
them. You can pray no nobler prayer than
this, for in the doing of God’s will lies the
secret of the perfect life. We look at the life
of Jesus—so beautiful, so pure, so perfect—and
we are lost in wonder and rapture. But the
secret of that life is here: Jesus from the
beginning to the close of life was intent on
doing God’s will. He Himself let us into the
// File: 094.png
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secret. “I am come,” He said, “not to do My
own will, but the will of the Father who sent Me.”
“My meat and drink,” He said, on another
occasion, “is to do the will of Him that sent Me,
and to accomplish His work.” When a boy of
twelve He had come to the sublime decision that
every moment of His life should be spent in
doing His Father’s business. Do not commit
the mistake of thinking that it was only in
Gethsemane and the Judgement Hall and on
Calvary that Christ was doing the will of God.
He was doing it during those silent years at
Nazareth. He was doing it when at school, He
was doing it when He was in the carpenter’s
shop, mending the tables and chairs and ploughs
of the dwellers in Nazareth. He was doing it
when He preached the Gospel of the Kingdom
in Galilee. He was doing it when sharing in the
festivities at Cana, and taking part in Matthew’s
farewell dinner. He was doing it when healing
the sick and comforting the lonely and lifting
up the outcast. In fact, He was never doing
anything else. Every day, every moment,
Jesus was doing the Father’s will, and the result
is the only perfect life the world has ever seen.
And so, in our case, the doing of God’s will is
not something confined to our times of darkness
and sorrow; the doing of God’s will is a daily
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and hourly endeavour. God’s will is really
<i>done</i> by us only when, to use the Apostle’s words,
“whether we eat or drink, or whatsoever we do,
we do all to the glory of God.” “Thy will be
done on earth,” so runs the petition; the sphere
in which God’s will is to be put into effect is this
earth of ours—its business life, its public life,
its social life, its family life. The employer is
doing God’s will when He treats those in his
employment justly and generously. The tradesman
is doing God’s will when he buys and sells
honestly. The shop assistant is doing God’s will
by being diligent and courteous, and yet withal
scrupulously straightforward and true. The
artizan is doing God’s will when he respects his
employer’s time, and does every bit of work as
well as it can be done. Fathers and mothers,
brothers and sisters in the home are doing God’s
will when they strive to make home happy by
their self-forgetfulness and ready helpfulness.
“Doing God’s will” means doing everything
as we know God would have us do it, making
God supreme over every detail of human life.
It means buying and selling, keeping ledgers,
serving at the counter, teaching at the desk,
toiling in the fields, sitting in the council
chamber, casting a vote, taking our pleasure,
sharing in social joys, and doing all this for God.
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.pn +1
This is what we pray for when we say, “Thy
will be done.”

Look at the qualifying words that follow:
“as in heaven so on earth.” Heaven supplies
the pattern for earth. I have just two words to
say about the way in which God’s will is done
in heaven—(1) It is done <i>cheerfully</i>. Saints and
angels find their highest joy in doing God’s will.
If earth is to be like heaven in this respect,
we must obey God cheerfully. God wants no
grudging service. Our obedience must be glad,
willing, free. God’s will can not be done by
us as it is done in heaven, until we can say
sincerely, “I delight to do Thy will, O my God,
yea, Thy law is within my heart.” (2) It
is done by <sc>ALL</sc>. You will look in vain in the
heavenly land for the disobedient and the
refractory and the rebellious. Heaven is perfectly
happy, because all its people are perfect
in their obedience. Before earth can be like
heaven, God’s will must be done by <sc>ALL</sc>. It is
done to-day only by a <sc>FEW</sc>. There are multitudes
who rebel against Him. When these
return to their allegiance, the day of God will
break.

<i>Thy will be done!</i> This petition calls our
attention to the most crying and urgent need of
our day, the need of a simpler and more implicit
// File: 097.png
.pn +1
obedience. It is not more knowledge of God’s
will that we want, but grace to put in practice
what we know. What is the use of coming
here to-day to hear God’s will declared, if
to-morrow in our business life, we deliberately
flout and reject it? I venture to say this,
that if to-morrow and the following days we
only did what we know our Lord desires us to
do, we should revolutionise the life of this town.
And will you suffer me to remind you that it is
not to those who make a profession and parade
of religion that heaven is promised, but to those
who faithfully and loyally obey. “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.”
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.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2 id=chap6
<abbr=six>VI</abbr> | “Daily Bread”
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
“Give us this day our daily bread.”—<sc>Matt.</sc> <abbr=six>vi.</abbr> 11

“Give us day by day our daily bread.”—<sc>Luke</sc> <abbr=eleven>xi.</abbr> 3.
.pm letter-end
.sp 2
The petition which we are to study together
this morning opens the second part of the Lord’s
Prayer. Up to this point our petitions have all
been concerned with God’s glory and praise.
We have prayed “Hallowed be Thy name, Thy
kingdom come, Thy will be done.” Having
thus observed the rule, “first things first,”
having sought first the kingdom of God and
His righteousness, we are now at liberty to pass
on to secondary things, and to offer up to God
petitions for personal blessings. And the first
petition we are taught to offer is this, “Give
us this day our daily bread.” We begin at the
very bottom. We start the list of personal
petitions with a prayer for “daily bread.”
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.pn +1

Will you notice what a gracious light this
petition throws upon the <i>condescension of God</i>?
Our Lord is the high and Holy One, who
inhabits eternity, and yet He stoops to lowly
folk and lowly things. “The Lord thinketh
upon <i>me</i>.” Whatsoever concerns me is of concern
to Him. “Give me bread” is not too
humble a petition to bring into the presence of
the great White Throne. A one-sided notion of
the majesty of God has led men oftentimes to
feel that the ordinary little cares of a human life
are quite too insignificant and trifling for Him to
notice. “God is so busy,” they say; “He has
so many things to think about, that we ought
not to trouble Him with our little anxieties and
worries. Such petty things are quite beneath
the dignity of His attention.” That was exactly
how the disciples felt long ago, when they were
for driving away those mothers who had
brought their little children for Christ to bless.
They felt that the great Preacher, on whose lips
vast crowds hung, ought not to be bothered
about babies. They thought that Christ had so
many things of importance to think about, that
it was absurd to expect Him to take notice
of little children. The same kind of feeling has
possessed many of the men who have commented
on this petition. Many of the old
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church fathers, and indeed many modern
commentators, refuse to believe that this is a
prayer for ordinary food, for mere bread. They
cannot persuade themselves that a petition for
so commonplace a thing as <i>bread</i> could possibly
find a place for itself in the Model Prayer.
This is too trifling a request to trouble God
about. So they cast about for some other than
the obvious and literal meaning of the sentence,
something which they imagine is more <i>dignified</i>,
and satisfy themselves at last by saying that
bread here means <i>spiritual bread</i>, food for the
soul, the Bread of Life. But the simple and
obvious meaning of the phrase is, after all, the
true one. Erasmus, the great sixteenth century
Grecian, thought a reference to physical food
would be incongruous “in so heavenly a prayer.”
But far from being incongruous, the prayer
becomes more gracious and beautiful because
this petition for bread is in it! The picture of
Christ, which is given us in the Gospels, is all
the more winsome for the story which tells us
that He took the little children in His arms and
blessed them; and the character of God becomes
all the more beautiful when we see His
love stooping even to caring for our commonest
wants. “Give us bread.” This petition asks
God to supply our primary physical wants. It
// File: 101.png
.pn +1
is not an unworthy petition. It is not too
trivial a request to bring to God; for God is
not a God simply for great crises, supreme
emergencies, tremendous catastrophes: He is a
God for every day, and for the common events of
every day. Our God is, shall I say, a Master
of detail. He cares not simply for the movements
of worlds and the policies of nations. He
notes the fall of a sparrow, and He counts the
very hairs of our head. Nothing is too small
for God to notice; the commonest affairs
of the commonest life are matters of concern
to Him.

“Give us this day our daily bread.” Will
you notice!—

(1) That this prayer proclaims the fact of
<i>our dependence</i> upon God <i>for the very simplest of
boons</i>. “Give us <i>bread</i>.” At first glance we
might be tempted to think this was a poor man’s
prayer; a prayer for the man who is face to face
with hunger; a prayer for the man who does not
know to-day how he is going to live through
to-morrow; a prayer for the man whose balance
at the bank has been exhausted, and whose last
shilling has been spent; a prayer for the man
whose cupboard is empty, and who has nothing
in basket or store. “But,” we say, “this is not
a prayer for a rich man; this is not a prayer
// File: 102.png
.pn +1
for a man whose barns and storehouses are
full; this is not a prayer for those who are
nursed in the lap of luxury—the well-to-do,
the affluent, the millionaire.” This is a prayer
for Lazarus, not for Dives. But, as a matter
of fact, I do not read that Jesus anywhere says
that this is a petition the rich men need not
offer. In the Anglican Book of Common
Prayer, you will find that some of the prayers,
<i>e.g.</i>, the general thanksgiving and the prayer
for all sorts and conditions of men—contain
petitions which may be inserted or omitted
according to the circumstances of the congregation.
Such petitions you will find printed
in italics and enclosed in brackets, and the
instruction is given at the side, that such a
petition is only to be used when any members of
the congregation specially desire it. But this
petition is not printed in italics. It is not
enclosed in brackets. There is no instruction at
the side to say, “This petition is to be offered
by a congregation of the poor, but may be
omitted by a congregation of the rich.” Oh no!
there it stands in the body of the prayer. Before
it you will find the command of Christ “When
ye pray, say, Give us this day our daily bread.”
There are no exceptions made. This is a
prayer for all men, for the prince as well as the
// File: 103.png
.pn +1
pauper, for the rich as well as the poor—“Give
us this day our daily bread.”

And it is thus a prayer for all, because all
are absolutely <i>dependent</i> upon God. We have
nothing which we have not received. Every
good and perfect gift cometh from above from
the Father of Light, with whom is no variableness
neither shadow cast by turning. In God
we live and move and have our being. All
men depend upon God, and they depend upon
him for everything. For life, for breath, for
vigour of mind, for strength of body, we all
depend on Him. And nowhere is this utter
dependence of man upon God more clearly seen
than in the matter of <sc>DAILY BREAD</sc>. The
possession of wealth is apt to blind us to the
fact of our <i>dependence</i>. Men who are rich and
increased with goods are always in danger of
thinking they have need of nothing. Men
whose affairs have prospered, like the rich fool
in the parable, are always prone to think themselves
secure and safe for future years, and say
to their souls as he said, “Soul, thou hast much
goods laid up for many years, take thine ease,
eat, drink, and be merry.” Why, we talk ourselves
about a man who has private property
which brings him in a few hundreds a year
being “independent.” Independent of what?
// File: 104.png
.pn +1
Independent of whom? It is not simply that
wealth has a curious trick sometimes of taking
to itself wings and flying away; it is not simply
that life is full of instances of tragic vicissitudes
of fortune; it is not simply that we see the
supposed possessor of millions the friend of
titled lords one day, figuring in the Bankruptcy
Court the next. Even assuming that riches
when made can be kept, of whom is a man
“independent”? Why, though you had the
wealth of the Rothschilds, you would still
be as dependent upon God for mere <i>bread</i> as
the meanest pauper in Christchurch workhouse.
For consider for a moment the facts of the
case. All wealth in the last resort <i>depends
upon the produce of the soil</i>. In these days, when
civilisation is so complicated, this is a fact we
are always in danger of overlooking and forgetting;
but it is a fact, nevertheless, all
wealth in the last resort depends upon the
produce of the soil—the simple necessaries of
life. Gold is only valuable for what it can buy—its
power of purchasing what is needful for
the support of life. But supposing for one
moment that the earth did not yield her increase;
supposing a summer should pass without a
crop; supposing there should be no harvest of
corn or fruit; supposing the world suddenly
// File: 105.png
.pn +1
found itself without food, of what use would
your glittering sovereigns be to you? Of what
use would your railway shares and bank shares
be to you? Of what use would your costly
diamonds and precious stones be to you? You
could not live upon them! They would be
as worthless as the very dust of the street if
there was nothing to buy! Yes, that is the
simple truth; if the world should wake up
in the morning to find itself absolutely without
food, the man whose safe is stuffed with share
scrip and whose plate-chest is crammed with
gold and precious stones, would be in just as
sad a plight as the poorest beggar in Bournemouth.
In the last resort all men depend upon
the produce of the fields; and the produce of
the fields <i>is the gift of God</i>. Man cannot make
food. He cannot create bread. With all his
knowledge of chemistry he cannot command a
harvest. God must <sc>GIVE</sc> it. And He gives
the harvest <i>year by year</i>. Some things, as Dr.
Dods remarks, God gives us once for all—our
supply of coal and the various minerals and
metals. But corn, food, and bread He gives us
year by year, as if to emphasise the fact of
our dependence upon him. I have read somewhere
that when the month of August comes
round the world is each year within two months
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.pn +1
of famine. The world’s granaries at that time
contain only eight weeks’ supply of corn.
How forcibly such a fact preaches the truth
of our dependence upon God! Rich and poor
alike depend for very life upon the harvest
God shall give. “Give us this day our daily
bread” is a prayer for us all. It is a prayer
for Job in his prosperity quite as much as for
Job in his adversity. It is a prayer for Joseph
amid the well-stocked granaries of Egypt quite
as much as for Jacob face to face with starvation
in Caanan. It is a prayer for rich and
poor, for the man who has his thousands as
well as the man who has not a shilling; for
we are all pensioners upon the bounty of God;
what He gives us we gather, and it is only
when He opens His hands that we are filled
with good.

Now, let me pass on to speak, in the second
place, of:

(2) The <i>modesty and simplicity</i> of the request
made in this prayer, “Give us this day our
daily <sc>BREAD</sc>.” “Bread” that is what is asked
for—the bare necessities of life. As <abbr rend=spell>T. T.</abbr>
Lynch quaintly puts it, “This is a prayer for
daily <i>bread</i>, not for daily cake.” And as if to
emphasise the modesty of the request, it is not
for the necessities of a lifetime, but for the
// File: 107.png
.pn +1
necessities of <i>to-day</i> that we are to ask. “Give
us <i>this day</i> our daily bread.” The adjective
which is translated “daily” is a word that has
caused scholars no end of trouble. It is found
nowhere else in literature, either sacred or
profane, and there have been at least thirty
different meanings assigned to it. But only
two interpretations need be considered. One is
that which we have in our familiar version of the
prayer, “daily bread”; the other would make
the word to mean “sufficient for my sustenance.”
The old Syriac version translates it
“bread for my need.” So that you will notice
that whichever interpretation is adopted
“human wants,” as Godet says, “are here
reduced to the minimum.” We are to pray for
<i>bread;</i> we are to pray for only as much of that
as will suffice for the day, or meet our present
needs. The spirit of this petition is that of the
prayer of Agur of old, “Feed me with food
convenient for me.”

I cannot help feeling that our modern life,
with its insatiable appetite for wealth and its
love of luxury, stands rebuked by this prayer.
Men in these days desire not simply enough for
their wants; they desire more than enough—more
even than they can use. They struggle
and strain that they may get a superfluity; and
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.pn +1
the result is poverty at one end of the social
scale, and luxury, extravagance and waste at
the other. Now, I am not prepared to say that
to acquire wealth is wrong. But I am prepared
to say this, and in saying it I base myself on
our Lord’s own words, wealth and the luxury
it buys are perilous to the best interests of
the soul. Rome was strong and vigorous and
happy while her people lived simply, and her
noblest sons thought it no shame to share in
humble manual labour. But when wealth and
luxury entered in, when her populace, despising
honest toil, lived on the doles of the Emperor,
and her nobles wasted tens of thousands of
pounds upon a single banquet, Rome became
weak, rotten, wretched.

.pm verse-start
On that hard, Roman world, disgust
  And secret loathing fell;
Deep weariness and sated lust
  Made human life a hell.
.pm verse-end

Wealth is as perilous as ever it was. Luxury
still corrupts the soul. Plain living is most
conducive to high thinking. It is easier always
to be a Christian in a peasant’s hut than in
Cæsar’s household. For the Christian life is
a simple, spare—may I not say a severe life.
Therefore Christ warned us against riches
when he said, “How hardly shall they that
// File: 109.png
.pn +1
have riches enter into the kingdom of God.”
Therefore here He teaches us to ask for
simplest, barest necessaries—“Give us this
day our daily bread.”

Let me go on to notice further that in offering
this prayer:—

(3) <i>We pray for others as well as ourselves.</i>
How does the petition read? “Give us this
day our daily bread.” The prayer is in the
plural, not the singular. It is not “Give <sc>ME</sc>,”
but “Give us” our daily bread. Christ will
not let us forget the fact of brotherhood. He
will not let us forget that we are members
of a great family. He will not let us forget
what moderns call “the solidarity of the race.”
We must pray <i>for others</i> as well as ourselves.
Christ when He was on earth gave us an
improved edition of the commandments. Moses
had ten commandments in his code. Jesus
reduced them to two. And the two commands
in the code of Christ were—“Thou shalt love
the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with
all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with
all thy strength,” and second, “Thou shalt
love thy neighbour as thyself.” Now this
petition illustrates that second commandment,
and embodies its spirit. We are “loving our
neighbours as ourselves” when we say “Give
// File: 110.png
.pn +1
us!” This is a prayer for our brother’s need,
for our brother’s want. We are remembering
him, bearing his burden when we pray, “Give
us this day our daily bread.” When we
uttered that prayer this morning we were
praying for the poor and needy everywhere—the
poor in Bournemouth, the poor in vast
London yonder, the poor the wide world
over. But, do you not see, you cannot pray
for the poor and needy and then turn a deaf
ear to their cry. The genuineness of this
prayer must be proved in action. I often
ask God to bless the work of this Church, but
I should simply be mocking God if I left it
there and did not at once proceed to put whatever
power and energy I possess into the work
for which I have been praying. And so I should
consider I had prayed a sham prayer if, after
saying “Give us this day our daily bread,” I
was not ready even at cost of sacrifice to help
to provide bread for those who lack. The
gospel of charity and mutual helpfulness is in
the verse. At this blessed season appeals come
to us from all quarters on behalf of the orphan,
the widow, the friendless, and the poor. There
are multitudes of our brothers and sisters in
bitter need. We have prayed “Give us this
day our daily bread,” making their cause our
// File: 111.png
.pn +1
own. May not the true answer to that prayer
be, that God will bid us contribute to their need
out of our abundance and plenty? The best
proof of the sincerity of our prayer would be
that we should go forth during this week and
carry into some desolate homes a little Christmas
gladness and joy.

Yet again notice that in offering this prayer
we pray:

(4) For what is <i>legitimately and honestly our
own</i>. “Give us,” so runs the petition, “our
daily bread.” I do not think it is at all fanciful
to interpret this pronoun <sc>OUR</sc>, as Dr. Dods does,
to mean that the bread we pray for must be <i>our
own</i> and not another’s; that is to say, it must
be fairly earned and honestly come by. “Except
a man work,” so says the Scripture, “neither
shall he eat.” The divine law is that the bread
a man eats should be bread won by his own
labour. But there are plenty of people in this
world who try to live out of the labour of other
people. They are busy, as the saying is, “taking
the bread out of other people’s mouths.” They
do this not simply by deception and theft and
robbery—they do it also by unfair competition,
by false dealing, by bogus company promoting,
by stock-exchange gambling, by oppression,
injustice and wrong. There are those among us
// File: 112.png
.pn +1
who devote their talents to the task of drawing
hard-earned money out of the pockets of English
people without giving value in return. They
want to live and grow fat on the bread of others,
not on bread of their own earning. But what we
have to pray for is <i>our own</i> bread, bread honestly
and fairly earned. That little word “our”
stands there to warn us against all dishonesty,
trickery, fraud, injustice. The man of business
must be able to say that every sovereign of
his profits has been gained by fair and honest
trading. The artisan must be able to say that
every penny in his week’s wage has been earned
by good and faithful labour. The master who
pays his men less than their due, the man who
wastes his master’s time, the shopkeeper who
resorts to sharp practices—in fact, any one who
strives to get hold of money otherwise than by
fairly and squarely earning it, are all sinning
against the spirit of this prayer which teaches
us to say, “Give us this day <i>our</i> daily bread.”

Just one word more before I close. I have
said that the primary and essential reference
of this petition is to bread, this material bread
that nourishes the life of our bodies. But we
need not exclude altogether from our thoughts
that spiritual bread, that Bread of Life, to which
the old Fathers saw reference here. Man does
// File: 113.png
.pn +1
not live by bread alone. Man is not a mere
animal. God breathed into man the breath of
life, and he became a living soul. And the soul
needs fit nourishment even as the body does,
and that fit nourishment the soul finds in Jesus
Christ. He is the “Bread of Life.” This
petition is also the right prayer for the hungering
soul, “Give us this day our daily bread,” for
our souls need a daily supply. The supply
of yesterday will not do for to-day, any more
than yesterday’s dinner will suffice us for to-day’s
work. You cannot live on the memory
of past spiritual experiences. You cannot live
on the remembrance of blessed fellowship with
your Lord held long ago. You cannot live on
the recollection of mercies received months or
years back. For every day you need a fresh
gift of grace. The manna of old only held good
for one day. It had to be gathered fresh
every morning. The manna of one day grew
corrupt and worthless before the next. So it is
with the bread of our souls. You must get it
fresh every day. For every day you must get
new stores of grace. This is the prayer for you
and me, “Give us this day our daily bread.”
<sc>Give!</sc> yes, this also is a gift. You cannot
buy “the Bread of Life.” Its price has never
been quoted in the markets. No money could
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.pn +1
purchase it. But what no money could
purchase is offered to you and me for nothing.
God never sells. God is a king, He gives.
Buy? No, you cannot buy, Can you buy
pardon? Can you buy peace? Can you
buy redemption? Can you buy heaven? No,
you cannot buy; but what you cannot buy God
will <i>give</i>. Listen, “Ho, every one that thirsteth,
come ye to the waters, and he that hath no
money, come ye, buy and eat, yea, come, buy
wine and milk without money and without
price.” Listen again, “Everyone that thirsteth
let him come and take of the water of life
freely.” Listen yet again, “The gift of God
is eternal life.” Giving! This is royal giving.
Hungering souls come to God—come to God
for the Bread of Life. There is in the Father’s
house enough and to spare; why hunger ye any
more? Why spend your money for that which
is not bread, and your labour for that which
satisfieth not? Your father is waiting to give
you all you need. He is only waiting to hear
you say, “Evermore give us this bread.”
// File: 115.png
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2 id=chap7
<abbr=seven>VII</abbr> | “Forgiveness”
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
“And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven
our debtors.”—<sc>Matt.</sc> <abbr=six>vi.</abbr> 12.

“And forgive us our sins; for we ourselves also
forgive every one that is indebted to us.”—<sc>Luke</sc> <abbr=eleven>xi.</abbr> 4.
.pm letter-end
.sp 2
My exposition of the Lord’s Prayer brings me
this morning to speak a few simple words upon
the two great fundamental facts of the Gospel—man’s
need of forgiveness, and God’s willingness
to bestow it.

The petition immediately preceding this one
is the prayer for daily bread. We are absolutely
dependent upon God for our very existence;
so our Lord teaches us to ask God for the food—the
material bread that is to sustain our physical
life from day to day. But “man shall not live
by bread alone.” There is another hunger
than hunger of the body—there is a hunger
of the soul; and what the soul hungers for
// File: 116.png
.pn +1
is pardon, forgiveness, and the peace forgiveness
always brings. So when we have prayed
for bread we have not come to an end. We
have another prayer to offer. We have a
larger request to make. We have a greater
boon to ask—“Give us this day our daily
bread, <sc>AND</sc> forgive us our sins.”

The question has often been asked, “Is life
worth living?” By some the question is
answered without reservation in the affirmative,
by others in the negative. For myself, I am
not prepared to answer either “Yes” or “No.”
My reply would be, “It all depends.” Life,
it seems to me, is not worth having if it be not
lived in the sunshine of God’s smile. Life is
not worth having if God’s face is turned away
from us. Life is not worth having if our sins
interpose themselves like a black frowning
cloud between us and the Eternal Light. To
make life worth living, life must be made
happy and blessed and peaceful, and before life
can be made happy that barrier of sin must be
removed, and we must walk in the light of God’s
countenance. The prayer for bread is a prayer
for <i>life</i>—for mere <i>existence</i>. But mere existence
may be a doubtful boon. To some the prolongation
of life simply means the prolongation of
misery. Why should men pray for the continuance
// File: 117.png
.pn +1
of a life which is radically wretched?
There are multitudes in our world more inclined
to pray for swift death than for long life. They
say, with Charles Kingsley, “The sooner it’s
over, the sooner to sleep.” No, it is not mere
life, it is not life at any price, but it is the
blessed, the peaceful life we want. So we go on
to pray for a gift greater far than the gift of
bread; we go on to pray for that which alone
can make life tolerable, welcome, really worth
living; we go on to pray for mercy, pardon,
reconciliation, peace. “Father, forgive us our
sins.”

“Sin” is an ugly word, a word that stands
for the ugliest, most terrible fact in the universe
of God. The world was fair and bright till sin
entered it; all its wretchedness is the result of
sin. Man was pure and happy till sin entered;
his foulness and broken-heartedness are the
result of sin. The Bible looks at this terrible
fact of sin, and fails to find a single word large
enough to describe it in all its many aspects
of horror. It employs various words for this
one terrible thing according as it views it from
different standpoints. Looking at it from the
standpoint of the true end of human life, sin
is a “missing of the mark.” The chief end
of man is to glorify God. The sinner fails in
// File: 118.png
.pn +1
that. He misses the mark. Sin from this
point of view means <i>failure</i>, <i>defeat</i>, <i>disaster</i>.
The Bible looks at sin from the standpoint of
Law, the Divine Law written in the nature and
on the conscience of man, and brands sin as
<i>lawlessness</i>. Every single sin is a <i>trespass</i>, a
transgression, and overstepping of the bounds.
The Bible looks at sin from the standpoint of
prudence, and stigmatises sin as <i>folly</i>—the
most stupendous and senseless of all follies. The
sinner is a man who, for a few moments
of delirious excitement, barters away his
immortal soul. The Bible looks at sin from the
standpoint of God, and sin then becomes
disobedience, or, as in the text quoted from
Matthew, it becomes “<i>debt</i>.”

Perhaps we are too apt to think of sin only in
its effect upon ourselves. We think of the
blight it brings upon human character and the
ruin it makes in human lives. It is terrible
to us because it always brings a curse with it.
We fear and dread sin, not always because
of its own intrinsic horror, but because of the
penalties it inevitably entails; so that all too
often our very fear of sin has its roots in
selfishness, and springs out of self-love. I want
to say to you that we shall never see sin in its
naked horror, we shall never see it in its awful
// File: 119.png
.pn +1
hatefulness, until we look at it from another
standpoint. We sin not against ourselves
alone, but <i>against</i> God. David, in the great
crime of his life, had sinned against Uriah,
whose blood he had caused to be shed, and
against Bathsheba, the partner of his sin, and
against his own soul; but when under the
faithful speech of Nathan he was brought to
see that awful sin of his in its true light, he
lost sight of himself, and Bathsheba and Uriah;
he could only think of the God he had flouted
and outraged and grieved, and this was the
agonised cry that broke from his lips, “Against
<i>Thee</i>, Thee only have I sinned and done this
evil in <i>Thy</i> sight.” Then comes in the enormity
of sin. It is sin <i>against God</i>! Let me illustrate
what I mean from our ordinary human life.
Say that a son who has been loved at home
and has been the pride of his mother’s heart,
falls into disgrace and is brought up in the
police courts charged with some shameful
deed. If such a son has any sensibility at all,
his sin will appear hateful to him, not so much
because it has brought disgrace and loss of
liberty to himself, but because away at his
home a mother’s heart is well nigh broken with
shame and grief. That will be the keenest stab
of pain such a lad will suffer. It is the picture
// File: 120.png
.pn +1
of his heart-broken mother that will make him
loathe and despise and hate his sin. It is then
we shall see the hatefulness of sin, when we
occupy David’s standpoint, and say, “Against
Thee, Thee only have I sinned.” Even though
sin entailed no loss to the sinner, involved no
penalty, brought with it no curse, it would
remain still utterly loathsome and hateful if
we only realised that every sin of ours caused
grief and pain to the heart of the eternal God,
our loving Father in heaven.

Now that is the point of view from which sin
is regarded in this prayer. It is <i>against God</i>!
Matthew uses the word “<i>debt</i>.” As Dr. Morison
says, “When we sin there is something in our
act for which we become <i>liable</i> to God. Formerly
He had a claim upon us; now He has a claim
<i>against</i> us.” The sins of our past history are
included in this word “debt.” They have not
done with us, though we try to persuade ourselves
that we have done with them! Ah!
what a relief it would be if we could only be
sure that sin when once committed was over
and done with for ever! But it is not so!
These sins of ours enrol themselves in a great
book of accounts; not one is omitted; not one
is overlooked; not one is forgotten. Do we
try to persuade ourselves that somehow or other
// File: 121.png
.pn +1
the sins of the past have been lost sight of?
Do we try to flatter ourselves that they have
been buried in the dust of the years? That is
a vain hope. There are no mistakes, no
omissions in the eternal account books. The
ink of those books never fades. There every sin
is enrolled. There you see them—a long, black,
damning list. That is your <sc>DEBT</sc>. Sins of
commission—the evil words we have spoken,
the evil deeds we have done, they are all there.
Sins of <i>omission</i> are there as well. In fact, I
fancy that it is to sins of this class that the
word “debt” specially points. “Debt” is
something we <sc>OWE</sc>. In relation to God it is
something we owed to Him and failed to pay.
So it stands here for the many things we ought
to have done, which we have left undone.

There are some of us who perhaps flatter
ourselves that we have never committed any
flagrant sin. We are not blasphemers; we are
not drunkards; we are not profligates; we
have never committed theft or adultery or
murder; we have never been guilty of any
crime that has brought us to public shame;
and on the strength of that we are half inclined
to think that the name “sinner” is not applicable
to us. But notice how this word “debt”
lays hold of even the most respectable of us.
// File: 122.png
.pn +1
There are certain things we <i>owe</i> to God. We
owe Him reverence. Have we given it to Him?
We owe Him obedience. Have we given it to
Him? We owe Him service. Have we given
it to Him? We owe Him our heart’s best
love. Have we given it to Him? We owe
Him the first place in our thoughts and
affections. Have we given it to Him? We owe
Him complete self-surrender. Have we given
it to Him? Ask yourselves these questions.
Probe your hearts with them. Face them
frankly and honestly. Have you given God
perfect obedience, the best love of your hearts,
the first place in your lives? Oh, how such
questions humble us! How they cover us with
shame and confusion! Looking back over my
own life, I can see how my years have been
marred and disfigured by my failure to give to
God what He has a right to expect. I can see
that I have not reverenced Him as I ought; that
I have not obeyed Him as I ought; that I have
not placed Him first, as I ought. When I begin
to ask myself if I have done what God expects
from me, my pride all disappears, my heart is
pierced as with sharp swords, my self-satisfaction
is torn to shreds, and I am humbled to the dust;
for as I look back every day tells its tale of
things left undone which I ought to have done,
// File: 123.png
.pn +1
and these sins of omission rise up before me—a
mountain load of debt which I owe to God.

<sc>Debt!</sc> what a terrible word that is to every
true and honest man! There are multitudes
who would prefer to bear privation and poverty
rather than run into debt. The workhouse is
bad enough, but better the workhouse than
“debt.” But will you suffer me to say that
“debtors” we all of us are? “We have all
sinned, and come short of the glory of God.”
We have come short—we have given God less
than His due; He has a claim against us; we
are “in debt” to Him. And the debt is one
that cannot be expressed in the figures and
coinage of earth. It is a debt that money can
never pay. I have heard sometimes of men
who, when they have found themselves in
financial difficulties, have called their creditors
together, and have said to them, “If you will
but give me time, I will pay you all in full”;
and from time to time we read in our newspapers
of honourable men discharging with interest
debts they had incurred years before. Can we
do something like that with this debt we
owe to God? Can we work it off in the days
and years that are to come? I cannot hold
out to you any hope of doing that. Work as
hard as you like to please God to-day, when
// File: 124.png
.pn +1
the day is done, what will you have to say?
Just this, “We have been unprofitable servants—we
have only done what we ought.” Only
what we ought—there is no margin, nothing
over, which you can apply to the reduction
of the old debt. The arrears of obligation
are untouched. May I venture to say that,
before night comes, by some sin or other,
you will have added to the debt? It would
be as easy to bale the ocean dry as to hope
by your own efforts to pay this debt. It
would be as easy—nay, it would be infinitely
easier—to count the sands of the seashore than
to remove this mountain load of obligation.
Try your best, and you will fail as Paul failed,
as Luther failed. Spite of your best efforts the
debt—that crushing debt—goes on increasing.
Well, what can you do? <i>You</i> can do nothing!
<i>Sin</i> past and present, <i>sin</i> of commission and
omission, <i>sin</i>—that long, black, damning record
that stands against your name in the eternal
account book—what can you do with it?
How can you remove it? How can you blot
it out? How can you bury it out of sight
and mind? How can you erase out of the
book that fatal story? You say you must
have something done, or that debt will strangle
you. What can you do to be delivered from
// File: 125.png
.pn +1
this body of death? My brother, you can do
nothing; you cannot pay the debt, you cannot
blot out the sin, you cannot erase the record
from the book. Do your best, and at the end
you will be “in debt.” But you say, “Can
nothing be done? Am I, then, doomed to ruin
and to death? Is there no way of paying this
debt?” Here is the gospel in a nutshell.
Here is the good news, old as the centuries, but
new in your ears and mine to-day. Something
<i>can</i> be done! <i>You</i> can do nothing, <i>I</i> can do
nothing, but God, the God against whom we
have sinned, He can do everything. He can
remove that mountain load of debt. He can
blot out that fatal record in the book. He
can erase every entry. He can bury our sins
out of sight for ever. We can never pay that
overwhelming debt; but <sc>He</sc>, He can give us
our account back with “Settled” written at
the bottom of it. Oh yes, here is the Gospel:
Sin in man, but forgiveness in God; debt in
man, but mercy in God. “Where sin doth
abound there grace doth much more abound.”

Listen, as to what God will do with your
sins and mine! He will cancel the debt! He
will blot out the handwriting that was against
us and put it out of the way, nailing it to the
Cross of Christ! He will erase that fatal
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.pn +1
record in the book! He will remember our
sins against us no more. As far as the east is
from the west, so far will He remove our
transgressions from us. Listen to His invitation
and His gracious promise, “Come now and let us
reason together, saith the Lord. Though your
sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow,
though they be red like crimson they shall be
as wool.” This is the Gospel—this is the good
news. There is something greater, stronger
even than the sin of man, and that is the grace
of God. I can see a limit to human sin. I
can see no limit to the Divine mercy.

.pm verse-start
Plenteous grace with Thee is found,
Grace to pardon all my sin.
.pm verse-end

Yes, there is mercy with God! There is forgiveness
with Him! The wonder of the world
still is that the God against whom we have
sinned is the One who will take our sin away.

.pm verse-start
All souls that were, were forfeit once,
And He that might the vantage best have took
Found out the remedy.
.pm verse-end

That remedy was the Cross of Christ. It is
He, the sinless Jesus, who has cancelled the
debt. “He died for us according to the
Scriptures.” It is His pierced hand that shall
// File: 127.png
.pn +1
blot out the record of our sins. It is in His
life-blood that we are to be washed free from
every stain. It is at the foot of His Cross our
sins are to be buried. Christ the sinless one
is the Lamb of God. He hath borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows, and the Lord hath laid
on Him the iniquity of us all. This is the
Gospel. There is a debt against us we can
never hope to pay. But God for Christ’s sake
will cancel it. There are sins which crush us
with their weight and burden, but God for
Christ’s sake will take them all away. There
are stains upon us—black and deep and foul;
but the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth
us from all sin. Just as the snow descends
from heaven and hides all the grime and filth
of earth underneath its mantle until the whole
surface is one pure glistening white, so God
will let His mercy cover us; He will clothe us
in righteousness until every stain is covered
and we stand forth whiter than snow. God
was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself,
not reckoning unto them their trespasses.
The Cross proclaims that there is forgiveness
with God. And I want to preach the free glad
Gospel of the Cross to you this morning. I
want to say to you sin-stricken, perishing,
dying men and women, there is forgiveness
// File: 128.png
.pn +1
with God. There is nothing which His mercy
cannot do. There is no sin too great, no guilt
too black for Him to pardon. A poor criminal
in Scotland, as he went forth to his place of
execution kept crying out, “He is a great
Forgiver. He is a great Forgiver.” Yes, He
is a great Forgiver! Let us men and women,
ruined and undone by sin, praise God, for He
is a great Forgiver. His tender mercy is ever
upon us. In God’s mercy is our hope. And
the Cross is the pledge of pardon which stoops
to the lowest and most vile. The Cross, the
Cross—the bitter, shameful Cross; the glorious,
radiant Cross; our most jubilant songs arise
from the Cross—

.pm verse-start
E’er since by faith I saw the stream
  His flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme,
  And shall be till I die.
.pm verse-end

Well! and what was the <i>price of pardon</i>? I
can tell you what it cost God. It cost God the
death of His own, His only Son. The Cross
was necessary to make pardon possible. “Without
shedding of blood there is no remission.”
That is what your forgiveness and mine cost
God, it cost Him the blood of His Son. But
what will it cost us? What will it cost?
It will cost us <i>nothing</i>. As I said, when speaking
// File: 129.png
.pn +1
of the previous petition, God does not sell,
God <i>gives</i>. Some have tried to buy forgiveness
by fasts and vigils and penances and rigid
self-discipline. That is how Luther, when he
was a monk at Erfurt, and Thomas Bilney,
when he was a student at Cambridge, tried to
obtain pardon and peace. Some have even
believed that pardon was to be bought with
money, so the boxes of the Indulgence sellers
in Germany were filled with the coins of men
and women who wanted forgiveness. But
pardon is not to be bought, neither with money
nor with penances nor vigils nor fasts. Forgiveness
is to be had for nothing. Pardon is
given without money and without price. All
that is required is that you should <i>ask</i> for it.
“Ask and ye shall receive.” Zacchæus asked,
and he received it. Mary of Magdala asked,
and she received it. The thief on the cross
asked, and he received it. Come and ask, and
you too shall receive it. Why will ye be
stricken any more? Why will ye die, O house
of Israel. Come and ask, and you shall hear
the answer fall on your ears like sweetest music,
“Son, daughter, thy sins are forgiven thee, go
in peace.” That is what this petition teaches
us to do. It bids us come and ask. For
Jesus recognizes that we are all of us “debtors.”
// File: 130.png
.pn +1
But the debt will be remitted for the asking.
Therefore He teaches us to pray “Forgive us
our trespasses.” The ground of forgiveness
is not in ourselves. It is not because of our
own merit that the debt is cancelled. We are
saved not by works, but by grace. We are
forgiven because of the boundless love that fills
the heart of God, the love that found expression
in the Cross of Christ. Our confidence lies
in the fact that God is our Father. Let us
trust the Father! Let us believe the message
of the Cross! Let us not hang back through
doubt or fear! Let us go with boldness to the
throne of grace just as we are—guilty, sin-stained,
and vile. He will cast none of us out,
but He will forgive us freely; His anger will be
turned away and He will comfort us, and peace
like a river shall flood our troubled souls!

Let me now go on to ask you to notice for a
moment the qualifying clause: “As we also
have forgiven our debtors,” says Matthew.
“For we ourselves also forgive every one that
is indebted to us,” says Luke. I think these
words are meant to be in the first place <i>words
of encouragement</i>. If man can forgive, much
more can God. They remind us of that splendid
verse, “If ye being evil know how to give good
gifts unto your children, how much more shall
// File: 131.png
.pn +1
your Father who is in heaven give good things
unto them that ask Him.” We have known
men who have generously and freely forgiven
great wrongs committed against them. We
are here told to think of the way in which even
men can forgive in order that we may have
faith to believe that God, who is infinitely
more loving and pitiful than the best of men,
can and will forgive to the uttermost. But
these words are also words of <i>solemn warning</i>.
Sometimes they make the prayer die upon our
lips, for they require the forgiving spirit to be
in us before we ask forgiveness from God. Do
you notice how this prayer, which soars to the
heights, enforces also the simple everyday
moralities? Look at this petition, “Forgive
us our sins, <i>for we ourselves also forgive every one
that is indebted to us</i>.” “For we ourselves also
forgive every one.” Is that true? Have you
forgiven every one? Are there no grudges that
you cherish? Are there no enmities in your
heart? Is there no one against whom you
cherish malice or ill-will? If there is ill-will
against anyone in your heart, can you pray
this prayer? Can you say to God, “Forgive
us our sins, for we also forgive every one?”
You remember how, in the striking story of the
two debtors, our Lord condemned the man who
// File: 132.png
.pn +1
could ask God to forgive him that awful debt
of sin, and yet cherish an unforgiving spirit
against his neighbour. Oh what a warning, a
solemn warning, there is in this petition, “If
ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will
your Father forgive your trespasses.” Or look
at the way Matthew puts it, “Forgive us our
debts as we also forgive our debtors.” I want
to ask you a plain question: “Would you really
like God to forgive just in exactly the same way
as you forgive your enemies?” Do you think
you would? Why, is not our forgiveness all
too often grudging and half-hearted? Do we
not often cherish the remembrance of the
offences? Do we not say, “I will forgive, but
I cannot forget?” Would you like God to
forgive you like that? I can never forget the
words which Augustus Hare writes on this
passage. He pictures an unforgiving man
praying this prayer, and this is what he says:
“O God, I have sinned against Thee many
times from my youth up till now. I have often
been forgetful of Thy goodness. I have neglected
Thy service. I have broken Thy laws.
I have done many things utterly wrong against
Thee. Such is my guiltiness, O Lord, in Thy
sight; deal with me, I beseech Thee, even as
I deal with my neighbour. He has not offended
// File: 133.png
.pn +1
me one-tenth, one-hundredth part as much as
I have offended Thee. But I cannot forgive
Him. Deal with me, I beseech Thee, O Lord
as I deal with him. He has been very ungrateful
to me, though not a tenth, not a hundredth
part as ungrateful as I have been to Thee.
Yet I cannot overlook his ingratitude. Deal
with me, O Lord, I beseech Thee, as I deal with
him. I remember and treasure up every
trifle which shows how ill he has behaved
to me. Deal with me, I beseech Thee, O Lord,
as I deal with him. I am determined to take
the very first opportunity of doing him an
ill turn. Deal with me, I beseech Thee, O
Lord, as I deal with him.” Oh, what a terrible
curse such a prayer is! But, brethren, may
it not be that, if we cherish unkind feelings in
our hearts, if we hug secret hates and enmities,
when we ask God to forgive us, in exactly
the same way as we forgive others, we too
may be invoking not blessing, but doom upon
our own heads. Before we can pray this
prayer we need the spirit of forgiveness in our
own hearts. Emerson says of Abraham Lincoln,
that “his heart was as big as the world, but
there was no room in it for the memory of a
wrong.” Such must be our spirit also, the
spirit that Jesus showed when on the Cross
// File: 134.png
.pn +1
he prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they
know not what they do.” May God help us
even now to forgive from our hearts our brothers
their trespasses, then can we draw near with
boldness to the throne of grace and pray,
“Father, forgive us our sins, for we ourselves
also forgive every one that is indebted
to us.”
// File: 135.png
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2 id=chap8
<abbr=eight>VIII</abbr> | “Temptation”
.sp 2
.pm letter-start
“And bring us not into temptation but deliver us
from the evil one.”—<sc>Matt.</sc> <abbr=six>vi.</abbr> 13.

“And bring us not into temptation.”—<sc>Luke</sc> <abbr=eleven>xi.</abbr> 5.
.pm letter-end
.sp 2
Forgiveness is the beginning not the end, the
first step not the last in the Christian life. In
the Gospel according to John, we read a story
about a poor woman who was dragged half dead
with shame into the presence of Christ, and
charged before Him with a nameless crime.
Her enemies crowded round clamouring for her
instant punishment. But Jesus, just because
He was so pure and good, was infinitely tender
and pitiful. He had no harsh judgment to
pronounce upon this poor, shame-stricken
woman.

When her brutal accusers, made cowards
by their own consciences, slunk away one
by one, leaving the sinner alone with her
// File: 136.png
.pn +1
Saviour, His word to her was one of pure compassion,
“Neither do I condemn thee.” There
was pardon for her black sin, forgiveness for her
shameful past. But having forgiven her, Christ
did not let her go without laying a command
upon her. This forgiven woman was not at
liberty to return to her old life of folly and
shame. “Go,” said Jesus, dismissing her,
“sin no more.” That is an illustration of
Christ’s unvarying methods with sinners. Forgiveness—full,
free forgiveness—is to be had for
the asking. Bring your sinful, shameful past
before Him; you will hear no bitter, angry
words of reproach from His lips. The words you
will hear will be words of tenderest compassion.
Bring your terrible debt before Him and tell
Him of your dire, your abject, your utter
poverty. Say to Him, “Lord, I have nothing
to pay,” and He will say to you, “All this thy
debt, I freely forgive.” Bring your burden of
guilt and shame to Him. He will not spurn
you from Him though He is so pure and you
so unclean, but with words of pity and love
He will welcome you, and take the burden of
your guilt and shame clean away. Yes, Christ
will freely forgive you. He will have mercy
upon you. He will abundantly pardon. But
forgiveness of the past is not all. What of
// File: 137.png
.pn +1
the future? Well, as to that future the Master
will lay upon you also the old injunction, “Go,
sin no more.” For the forgiven man cannot
return to his old life of sin. After forgiveness
comes the life of struggle and conflict against
the world, the flesh and the devil. After
the blotting out of the shameful past comes
the earnest striving to keep the record of the
future clean. Forgiveness is not the end, but
the beginning. After forgiveness comes all that
our fathers meant by the old term, “sanctification.”
After forgiveness comes all that John
means when he tells us to purify ourselves even
as He is pure; all that Paul means when he
tells us “to work out our own salvation.” The
struggle, the conflict, the battle comes after
pardon has been bestowed. For when Jesus
whispers into our ears the gladsome message,
“Thy sins are forgiven thee,” He lays upon us
also the command, “Go, sin no more.”

What I have been saying up to this point
illustrates the connection between this petition
and the one we studied together last Sunday
morning. “Forgive us our debts” is a prayer
that God will blot out the record of <i>past</i> sin.
“Lead us not into temptation” is a prayer for
protection in the <i>future</i>. For I want you to
notice that the man who has truly repented of
// File: 138.png
.pn +1
his sin wants not simply the past to be blotted
out, but he wants grace to shun sin in the days
to come. He wants not only to be delivered
from the <i>penalty</i> of sin, but he also longs to
be emancipated from its <i>power</i>. Let not the
freeness of forgiveness ever lead you to think
lightly of sin. There were some in the very
early days of the Church who interpreted this
freeness of forgiveness as a licence to sin. They
said, “What matters it? God will forgive.”
Nay, they even thought, or at any rate they
tried to persuade themselves, they were doing
a favour to God by continuing their old wicked
practices, as the greater their sin was, the finer
the opportunity for the display of God’s forgiving
love. They sinned, so they said, that
grace might abound. The Church has been
troubled and harassed by many a heresy in the
course of the centuries, but the most damnable,
the most soul-destroying that ever assailed it,
was this Antinomian heresy, which bade men
sin on because God was ready to forgive, which
taught that sin was light, trivial, cheap, because
pardon was free. Sin light? Sin cheap? Sin
trivial? Brethren, look at the Cross of Jesus
Christ! Measure the enormity of the sin by
the sacrifice of the Cross! It cost God the
life of His own Son to deliver us from it.
// File: 139.png
.pn +1

.pm verse-start
There was no other good enough
  To pay the price of sin,
He only could unlock the gate
  Of heaven and let us in.
.pm verse-end

Shall we continue in sin, that grace may
abound? God forbid! for by every sin of ours
we crucify the Lord afresh, and put Him to an
open shame. The programme of the Christian
life is not sin and pardon, sin and pardon, sin
and pardon, day after day, month after month,
year after year. The programme of the
Christian life is pardon, sanctification, holiness.
After pardon comes the daily struggle with sin,
until its power in our souls is broken, and we
come off more than conquerors, through Him
who loved us. Not that I would imply that
any one on this side the grave attains to a state
of sinless perfection, or that the time will ever
come on earth when the prayer, “Forgive us
our sins,” will be out of place on our lips. But
the goal set before us is the perfect life;
towards that goal we must daily press, and
though on earth we may never attain to it, yet
to-day ought to see us nearer to it than yesterday,
and to-morrow ought to find us nearer than
to-day. There is something radically wrong
with us if sin has as great a power over us
to-day as it had, say, ten years ago. Repentance
// File: 140.png
.pn +1
is never genuine and sincere unless it creates
within us a hatred and loathing of sin. We
have never been truly forgiven if we can go
on sinning the old sins day after day; for we
never hear Christ say to us, “Thy sins are
forgiven thee,” without hearing Him add this
charge, “From henceforth sin no more.”

But the command <i>is a hard one to obey</i>. In a
world so full of trial and temptation, so full of
seductions and enticements to evil, how hard it
is for poor, weak, frail men to obey the command,
“Go, sin no more.” In a world that
presses in upon us on every side, that spreads
its glittering prizes before our eyes to tempt
us, how hard it is to be unworldly, to hold earth’s
best gifts cheap, while we set our affections
on things above! In a world so full of uncleanness
and impurity, how hard it is to keep
one’s garments clean and unspotted! Hard,
did I say? Nay, impossible. With the world
as it is, and man as he is, the task is impossible.
To obey that command, we need help and
strength. The task is too difficult for us. It
is more than we can do in our own native
strength. So we cast the burden back again
upon our Lord and say to Him, “Master we
would fain obey Thee: we would fain live
without sin; but we are weak, and the world
// File: 141.png
.pn +1
is strong—too strong for us. Lord, undertake
Thou for us. Have pity on our weakness, and
bring us not into temptation.” There it stands,
a prayer for the <i>future</i>; a cry to God that He
will not suffer the world to overcome us, and
drag us down again to sin.

Now you will notice that this prayer recognises
the fact that—

(1) The <i>world is full of peril to the Christian,
because it is full of temptation</i>. The word
translated “temptation” in my text really
means “testing, trial.” Never a day passes but
something happens which puts our moral
strength to the test. God does not “tempt”
in the sense of inciting to evil; God <sc>TESTS</sc>.
The presence of evil in our world, the incitements
to evil that abound, looked at from God’s
standpoint, are tests—tests of character, tests
of moral strength. But these incitements to
evil appeal to weakness and evil in our own
hearts, and so to us they become “temptations.”
And of such “temptations” our world is full.
Bunyan described the Christian life as a journey,
but it is a journey through a very dangerous
country. There are snares and pit-falls around
us on every side. The path leads between a
ditch on one side and a quagmire on the other,
and along the route are the Slough of Despond,
// File: 142.png
.pn +1
and By-Path Meadow, and Doubting Castle, and
the Mount of Error, Broad Way Gate, and
Dead Man’s Lane, and Vanity Fair. Yes, the
path is one that is surrounded with peril, and to
stray from it is a very easy matter. That path
is the path of life, and these pitfalls and snares
and by-paths that endanger the unwary traveller
on every hand, are the temptations that beset a
man in life, and lure him to his ruin and death.
The old story of the fight between the English
and the Scotch at Bannockburn says that Bruce,
on the night before the battle, honeycombed
the ground in front of his army with pit-falls,
each of which contained a hidden stake, and
then covered them up again with the green turf.
In the morning the English cavalry, when it
charged upon the Scottish troops, found that
the ground, which looked so firm and solid was
deceitful and treacherous, and, falling into these
hidden pitfalls, horse and rider met their fate.
Does life to you look in prospect like a firm,
safe, solid road? I tell you that at every step
you take you need to beware of some secret
pitfall. Does life appear in prospect to any of
you like the still, glassy sea of a summer’s noon?
I tell you that beneath that shimmering, smiling
surface lie hidden the dark and treacherous rocks
which have meant wreck and death to many
// File: 143.png
.pn +1
a voyager. Oh, yes, human life is beset with
temptation. No one is exempt from it. No
moment of the day is free from it. Incitements
to sin abound. Invitations to enter the broad
way meet us at every turn. Why is it parents
are so anxious, when their children are sent
for the first time to fight life’s battles for
themselves in a large town? I will tell you. It
is because they know that temptations abound.
There is temptation in the glare and false gaiety
of the public-house. There is temptation in
every painted shameless face seen upon our
streets. There is temptation in the companionship
of foolish and godless friends. There is
temptation in the coarse and filthy speech of
associates. There is temptation in unclean
literature. There is temptation in business, in
the home, at work, at play. Nay, where is it
temptation does not lurk? It penetrates everywhere.
It found its way into Paradise of old,
and Adam yielded to its power. Who is free
from it? Not one. Wherever man is, there
temptation is. There is no escape from it.
Men try to avoid infection, in case of an outbreak
of disease, by removing from the infected
district. So men of old tried to escape the
assaults of temptation by leaving the busy
world and fleeing into solitude. But it was
// File: 144.png
.pn +1
all in vain. Temptation followed them to their
retreats, and many were the fierce struggles
an old saint like St. Anthony had to wage in
the secret of his cell. Oh, the world is full of
temptation. Every lot has its own fierce tests
for character. Business life has its temptations;
home life has its temptations. The life of
hard grinding toil has its temptations; the life
of ease and leisure has its temptations also.
Never a day passes but in some way or other
an appeal is made to our lower, baser nature,
and we are urged to yield. The old Greek
legends speak of the syrens—creatures half
women, half fish—who lived upon the rocks
and could sing the most ravishing songs. So
entrancing was the music that who ever heard
it was irresistibly drawn to the singers. But
it was woe to them; for the rocks whereon the
syrens lived were strewn with the bones of
dead men who had listened to their song and
yielded to its fascination. That syren’s song
is still being sung, and every mariner on life’s
main hears it. The world, the flesh, and the
devil are the syrens of to-day. Who has not heard
their song? Wherever we are, whatever we are
doing, we hear its luring, tempting strains. God
grant, brethren, we may not yield—for yielding
still means destruction and death.
// File: 145.png
.pn +1

(2) This verse implies the <sc>WEAKNESS</sc> of man.
“Bring us not into temptation,” into trial, into
testing, because we are so prone to break down
under the trial. The fact that temptations
abound would not matter very much if we
were proof against them. It is because we
ourselves are so prone to yield that temptation
is terrible. To take a spark to green wood
would not do very much harm. But to bring
temptation upon us is like applying flame
to dry shavings or a match to gunpowder. The
attack of temptation from without is made
formidable by the weakness and treachery
within. It is because we know our own weakness,
it is because we know how liable we are
to break down under any severe test, that we
pray, “Bring us not into temptation.” I am
simply stating a matter of fact and observation
when I say that there is in all of us a bias
toward sin, an inclination toward evil. We
talk lightly sometimes of the old doctrine of
“original sin.” But surely it expressed a truth
that we dare not ignore. There is a bias in
the human heart toward sin. It is easier for
us to do wrong than to do right. That was
the truth our Lord meant to convey when He
said the path of evil was a broad way, while the
road to life was a narrow path. To do evil
// File: 146.png
.pn +1
is easy; you have only to shout with the crowd
and swim with the stream. But to do right
is hard; you must swim against the current,
you must dare to stand alone. And it is just
this that gives temptation its power and
makes it terrible. It accords with our own
inclinations. The passions and desires of the
flesh second its efforts. The devil finds his
best ally in the lusts and weaknesses of a man’s
own heart. There is no man safe from temptation.
There is no one who can boast that he
is strong enough to resist every allurement.
There is in all of us some weakness of the soul,
and temptation will assail us just at the weakest
point; it will find the unfortified place and
concentrate its attack upon that; it will find
the joints in our harness and point the poisoned
arrow there. The old Greek story says that
Achilles, the great hero of the Trojan war,
was dipped while he was yet a child in the
waters of the Styx by his mother, Thetis, in
order to make him invulnerable. And the
result of that plunge was that every part
of Achilles’ body was proof against wounds
with the exception of the heel by which his
mother held him, and which had not been
submerged in the waters. For many years,
as a result, Achilles escaped unhurt, but at
// File: 147.png
.pn +1
last the poisoned arrow of the Trojan Paris
found the weak spot and inflicted the death
wound there. So sin and temptation attack
us where we are weakest. They appeal to
our inclinations, our passions, our lusts; they
find out the weak spot. I can only discover
One Man in the history of the whole world
who was proof against temptation, and that
was the Perfect Man, Christ Jesus Himself.
But as for everyone else, the best, the bravest,
the noblest, surprised by some temptation,
betrayed by some weakness, have fallen into
sin. Do not say, brethren, that this petition
is a prayer for the weak! Do not say it is a
prayer for the timid and the cowardly! It is
a prayer for us all. Peter very likely thought
that there was no need for him to pray this
prayer. Perhaps in his heart he longed for an
opportunity to be given him of showing how
strong and brave he was. Deny his Lord?
No! not though all the world forsook Him!
No! not though it meant death to be faithful!
Well, the night did not pass without bringing
an opportunity of putting his boasted strength
to the test. But how badly Peter came out
of the trial! Would you recognise the proud
boaster of a few hours before in the swearing,
blaspheming denier at cock-crow? And we
// File: 148.png
.pn +1
have many an example in the old Book, beside
that of Peter, to warn us against over-confidence.
Abraham, whose faith is commended in Scripture,
lost all his faith in Egypt. Moses, the
man who was renowned for his meekness,
lost his temper when the children of Israel
murmured. David, the sweet singer of Israel,
the man after God’s own heart, was swept by
his lust into an act of foulest wickedness. And
these examples are enshrined in the pages of
this old Book, to bid us beware of over-confidence,
and not to boast ourselves in our
strength. Pride ever cometh before a fall.
There is weakness in all of us. To the strongest
of you here this morning, to you who perhaps
think yourselves beyond the reach of temptation,
let me repeat the old Bible warning, “Let him
that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he
fall.” It is the knowledge of our own weakness
that makes temptation terrible. We distrust
ourselves. We look back over past years and
see the number of times we have fallen, the
number of times we have yielded to the fascination
of the world’s syren song. We remember,
too, that when we did escape it was so as by fire;
it was through pain and agony. We remember
how hard the struggle was, and how near we
were to yielding. And the remembrance both
// File: 149.png
.pn +1
of our falls and our escapes makes us afraid.
We feel that our safety lies in never hearing
those fatal strains again. So, conscious of our
own weakness, and yet desiring not to offend
our heavenly Father again by our sin, we make
this our prayer, “Bring us not into temptation.”

(3) Let me ask you to notice that this petition
illustrates <i>the spirit of true Christian courage</i>. It
is not courage, but foolhardiness that courts
danger. It is not courage that risks life and
limb in an utterly stupid, needless, bootless
task; it is folly. It was not courage that
made that mad youth climb the sheer face of
the cliff at Folkestone the other day, it was
mere senseless bravado. True courage will
keep away from danger; true courage will only
incur risk and peril when duty demands. Let
us learn this lesson. You young men learn
this lesson. It is not courage to venture into
doubtful places; it is not courage to unite with
questionable companions; it is not courage to
peer into unclean books; it is not courage
to spend your evenings in the public-house;
it is not courage to dally with the intoxicating
cup; it is not courage to frequent the theatre,
with its evil associations, to accustom yourselves
to gaze upon the indecencies and to
listen to the pruriencies too often heard upon
// File: 150.png
.pn +1
the stage. It is not courage to court company
where the filthy jest and the coarse laugh
and the brutal blasphemy are common; it
is not courage to see how near you can go
to the edge of the precipice without falling
over. No, this is not courage, unless you are
prepared to say that it is courage that makes
the silly moth flutter round the flame until at
last it flutters into it. Courage? No! it is
not courage—it is wicked, mad bravado! Your
safety, brethren, against sin lies in being shocked
at it. True courage looks at the incitements
to evil with which life abounds and confesses,
“I am afraid of them,” and then makes this
petition its prayer, “Father, bring us not into
temptation.”

But it may be that in spite of our fears, and
in spite of our prayers, God may see fit to
bring us into temptation, into some fierce
trial that shall test our moral strength. “God,”
we read in Genesis, “did tempt, <i>i.e.</i> did test,
Abraham.” He put Abraham’s faith and
obedience to a searching trial. Jesus, we read,
was driven <i>by the Spirit</i> into the wilderness, to
undergo those forty days of fierce testing. We
shrink from these fierce trials, but they are
good for us, for if resisted they knit thews and
sinews of strength in our souls. We are better
// File: 151.png
.pn +1
for temptation resisted and overcome than we
should have been if we had never been tempted
at all. It is in conflict with temptation that
God’s Victoria Cross—the Cross “for valour”—is
to be won. Let us ever remember this—there
is nothing sinful in being tempted. We
sin only when <i>we yield to temptation</i>. Well,
supposing that God does see fit to let us enter
into temptation, to let our strength and courage
be tested in fierce, grim, deadly conflict with
sin and evil, what shall we pray for? We
will pray then, “Deliver us from the evil one.”
We will pray to Him to help us, that we may
not sin against Him by yielding. We will ask
Him to clothe us with the whole armour of
God, and to put in our hands the sword of
the Spirit, and so enable us to withstand the
assaults of the evil one, and having done all
things to stand. There shall be on our part no
foolish rushing into temptation; nay, remembering
our own weakness we will pray, “Father,
lead us not into it.” But if temptation
comes upon us when we are in the path of duty,
then we can look up to him, claim His presence
with us in the battle, and say, “Deliver us from
the evil one.” We say “Let us not be overcome
in the struggle. Let us not be beaten in the
fight. Suffer us not to fall away from Thee.
// File: 152.png
.pn +1
Deliver us, by Thy mercy deliver us, good
Lord.” And God will deliver us. I say
nothing about the man who rushes into temptation
of his own free will; but of the man
upon whom temptation comes when he is in
the line of duty I am bold to say, “God will
deliver him.” His promises are here in this
book. Here they are—“God is faithful, who
will not suffer you to be tempted above that
ye are able, but will with the temptations make
also the way of escape, that ye may be able
to endure it.” “The Lord knoweth how to
deliver the godly out of temptation.” “I
will keep you also in the hour of temptation.”
Christian had a fierce, long, and stubborn fight
with Apollyon, but he won the victory at last,
and was able to shout exultingly, “Now, in
all these things we are more than conquerors
through Him that loved us.” Oh, take comfort,
you who feel the force and keenness of
temptation. No conflict need end in defeat.
No struggle need end in disaster. Pray to
your Father, “Deliver us from the evil one.”
By prayer link yourself to God’s Almightiness,
take Him with you into the conflict, and every
fight shall end in victory, and every struggle
in triumph, and these very temptations when
vanquished and overcome shall help to make
// File: 153.png
.pn +1
you a strong man in Christ, and you will be
able then to realise the truth of that word
of the Apostle James, “Blessed is the man
that endureth temptation, for when he hath
been approved he shall receive the crown of
life which the Lord promised to them that
loved Him.”

“Deliver us from the evil one,” that must
be our prayer. Do you remember that sentence
in Christ’s great intercessory prayer? “I
pray, not that Thou shouldest take them out of
the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them
from the evil.” We are in the world, and we
have no right even to wish to leave it. It is
the coward who runs away, locks himself up in
some monastic cell, and leaves the world to
perish. Our place is <sc>IN</sc> the world. But the
world is full of evil, evil which presses itself,
forces itself upon us at every turn. From that
evil we must ask God to keep us. “Deliver
us from evil.” We have been forgiven. We
want now complete deliverance from sin. We
want to be emancipated from its power. We
want to be rid of its foul stains. We want to
grow in purity, truth and grace, and to become
daily more like our Lord. Oh, this is the
prayer of the Christian life “Deliver us from
evil!” When shall this deliverance come?
// File: 154.png
.pn +1
Perhaps not completely here—though the chains
shall be loosened. But absolute deliverance
shall come in the beautiful homeland.

.pm verse-start
Where we shall see His face,
  And never, never sin,
And from the rivers of His grace
  Drink endless pleasures in.
.pm verse-end
// File: 155.png
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2 id=chap9
<abbr=nine>IX</abbr> | <sc>The Model Prayer</sc>
.sp 2
“After this manner therefore pray ye.”—<sc>Matt.</sc> <abbr=six>vi.</abbr> 9.
.sp 2
A fortnight ago we completed our study of
the petitions that make up the Lord’s Prayer.
For the prayer as it fell from the lips of Christ
ended with that petition, “Lead us not into
temptation, but deliver us from evil.” The
great doxology, which in the Authorised Version
you will find at the close of Matthew’s
account of the prayer, and which has become so
familiar to us by its constant repetition in the
public use of the prayer, formed no part of the
original prayer at all, but must be regarded as a
liturgical addition made by the Church in later
years. It is wanting in the great Greek MSS.,
and in some important versions, and has been
quite properly omitted from our revised English
Bible. The probability is that the words
“For Thine is the kingdom, the power, and
// File: 156.png
.pn +1
the glory, for ever, Amen,” were added to the
prayer in its public recitations, much in the
same way as we to-day sing, “Glory be to
the Father,” at the end of the Psalms.

It is not my intention, therefore, to make
any comment upon that doxology with which,
in our daily use, we end the prayer, but rather
to call your attention to some thoughts on
prayer in general suggested by the study of
this prayer which Jesus gave to His disciples
in answer to their request that He would teach
them how to pray. First of all, let me say
that I believe Jesus gave this prayer to His
disciples <i>for use</i>, that is to say, He contemplated
their using <i>this very form of words</i>. The circumstances
of its origin seem to place this beyond
dispute. This is the record Luke gives, “And
it came to pass, as He was praying in a certain
place, that when He ceased, one of His disciples
said unto Him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, even
as John also taught his disciples.’ And He
said unto them, ‘When ye pray, say Father.’”
In face of those words, “When ye pray, say,”
there is, as Dr. Dods puts it, “no getting past
the evident precept here delivered, that we
ought habitually to use these words.” “Then
our Lord,” some one will remark, “sanctions
the use of forms of prayer.” I am here, I
// File: 157.png
.pn +1
know, on the very edge of a question which
is one of the most difficult to deal with, and
one on which Free Churchmen differ strongly
among themselves. Discussions upon the use
of liturgical forms in worship crop up periodically
at various assemblies, but my experience
of them is, that they generate a good deal of
heat without giving much light. In our Congregational
Churches free prayer is the general,
almost the invariable practice. Our forefathers
were so shocked at the formalism of the liturgical
worship of the Established Church, that
in the interest of true spiritual worship they
rejected forms altogether; some even going
to the length of objecting to the use of the
Lord’s Prayer in the public services of the
sanctuary. Their dislike and distrust of forms
we have to a large extent inherited. But the
fact that many people are asking the question
to-day whether our services would not be all
the more helpful if a little of the liturgical
element were imported into them, is proof
that there are those amongst us who think
that our fathers in their revolt against formalism
went to the opposite extreme, and by their
complete rejection of forms injured themselves
and impoverished the public worship of the
sanctuary. Of course formalism is fatal to true
// File: 158.png
.pn +1
worship. But the use of forms is not formalism.
Formalism is the abuse of forms. But the fact
that forms get abused is no reason for discarding
them altogether, any more than the fact
that liberty sometimes, and with some people,
degenerates into licence is a reason why we
should all abjure our freedom. In fact, a
certain amount of form is absolutely necessary.
As some one has put it, “there may be occasionally
form without life, but there can never be
life without form.” No one, of course, proposes
to do away with free prayer. The
abolition of free prayer from our services
would, I am convinced, do irreparable injury
to the spiritual life of our Free Churches.
Our freedom in prayer has been our glory
and our proud privilege, and that freedom we
must jealously guard. But there are in our
congregations men and women of differing
temperaments. There are those amongst us—and
I am speaking now out of the experience I
have gathered during my ten years’ ministry—who
would find simple forms a help to them,
and the question is whether the interests of a
congregation <i>as a whole</i> would not be better met
by an order of service which should combine
free and liturgical prayer, rather than by an
order which should confine itself rigidly to the
// File: 159.png
.pn +1
one, to the utter exclusion of the other. Further
into the question I do not mean to enter. I
shall have achieved my object if I have brought
you to see that the question is really one of
<i>Christian expediency</i>. There is no question here
of right or wrong. About our perfect right
to introduce forms if we choose there can be
no doubt. But a thing may be lawful and yet
not expedient. And that is the point we have
to settle with reference to liturgical forms.
Is it expedient to introduce them? Would
they enrich our worship. Would they edify
the worshipper? Would they help us to come
with boldness to the throne of grace? If they
would, then adopt them. But if they would
tend to formalism, if their effect would be to
make us <i>say our prayers</i> instead of <i>praying</i>, or if
their introduction would create bitterness or
breed dissension in the Church, then better
for ever remain without them.

This form of prayer, however, stands quite
apart from every other. It has a sacredness all
its own. It is <i>the Lord’s</i> prayer. With perfect
appropriateness this form finds a place in all our
services. I welcome the public use of the Lord’s
Prayer for various reasons. First of all, it is
the <i>one perfect prayer</i>. In its six brief petitions
it seems to include everybody and everything.
// File: 160.png
.pn +1
Men are always partial and one-sided and our
human prayers are partial and one-sided also.
They express the needs of some and not of
others. But this brief prayer is like its Author,
it is complete. Jesus was the Son of Man, the
Universal Man. Everybody finds his counterpart
in Jesus. And the prayer He gave is an
universal prayer. It voices the cry of every
heart, the need of every soul. Then I welcome
the use of this prayer <i>for its associations</i>. What
sacred associations cluster around it! It is
sacred to us because of Him who first gave it.
This is <i>our Lord’s</i> prayer, His gift to the world.
Then it is sacred to us because of the Saints,
Apostles, Prophets, Martyrs, who have used it.
This prayer is a link that binds all the Christian
centuries together. Peter and John and Paul
and James used to kneel down and say, “Our
Father.” Those early Christian assemblies in
the upper room in Jerusalem, Lydia’s house in
Philippi, and the Catacombs at Rome, used the
very words we repeated together just now.
This prayer is an heirloom in the Christian
family, handed down from one generation to
another, and binding the “whole world by
chains of gold about the feet of God.”

Then for many of us it has associations of a
still tenderer kind. It comes to us burdened
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with memories of the past. Dr. Guthrie, when
lying on his dying bed, used often to ask the
members of his family to sing him a bairn’s
hymn. Those childish hymns used to carry
him back to the old home and the long ago.
Vanished days came back again as he listened
to the songs he learned first at his mother’s
knee. What those “bairn’s hymns” were to
Dr. Guthrie, that, this prayer is to most of us.
It is the prayer in which we learned our first
lessons of Christian truth. The first words we
were taught to lisp were the words “Our
Father.” When we pray this prayer we are back
again in the far-off days of childhood. We
remember our fathers and mothers, some of them
in glory now, who would have given their lives
for our souls. And as we think of those happy
days, we become children once again, and
becoming children we become fit to receive the
blessing; for except we turn and become as
little children we shall in no wise enter the
kingdom of heaven. So this form of prayer
becomes a vehicle of grace. Tender, sacred,
universal, it lifts us near to God and rightly
finds a place in all the public services of the
sanctuary.

But this prayer is much more than a form to
be used—<i>it is also a model for all our prayers</i>.
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The disciples came to Jesus asking Him to teach
them how to pray. This prayer is the answer
to that request. Instead of giving the disciples
a string of rules and principles, instead of
delivering a long discourse on the <i>theory</i> of
prayer, Jesus did what was infinitely more
helpful, He gave them a pattern prayer. He
taught them this exquisite prayer of six petitions,
and said to them, “After this manner,
therefore, pray ye.” This prayer is a model
prayer, both as to manner, and order, and spirit.

(1) It is a model as to manner. I will note
here only three characteristics of the prayer.
First, will you notice its <i>brevity</i>! The prayer
that teaches to pray contains only six short
petitions. The measure of a prayer is not its
length, but its sincerity and earnestness. One
good friend reminded a minister who was
accustomed to take full time in his preaching,
that there was all the difference in the world
between the <i>length</i> of a sermon and the <i>strength</i>
of a sermon. So there is all the difference
between the length of a prayer and the strength
of a prayer. We are not heard for our much
speaking. The priests of Baal cut themselves
with knives and cried from morn until the dusk
of evening, “Baal, hear us.” The mob at
Ephesus shouted out for the space of two hours,
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“Great is Diana of the Ephesians.” But the
command is laid upon us, “Be not ye like unto
them.” We are to avoid all vain repetitions. If
prayers were valued according to their length,
then there would be no prayers to compete with
the prayers of the Pharisee. But the publican,
who could only stammer out that one heart-broken
petition, “God be merciful to me a
sinner,” went to his home justified rather than
the Pharisee, in spite of his long prayers. We
have not yet got rid of the notion that there is
some kind of merit in “long prayers.” We need
to learn the truth Augustine wishes to enforce
when he says that much speaking is one thing
and much praying quite another. There can be
much prayer in very little speech. In fact, the
shortest prayers are always the most eloquent.
Need abbreviates prayer. Want will make
prayer direct and pointed. Two of the most
moving prayers I know of in the whole range
of Bible literature are, the prayer of the poor
Canaanitish woman who had a sick daughter,
and whose prayer consisted of three simple
words, “Lord, help me”; and the prayer of
that dying thief on the cross, who, in the agony
of mortal pain, cried, “Lord remember me when
Thou comest in Thy kingdom.” Brethren, it
does not require many words to pray. No one
// File: 164.png
.pn +1
need restrain himself from prayer because, like
Moses, he is slow of tongue. You can compress
a great prayer into the compass of a brief sentence.
As Thomas Binney used to say, “A little
prayer may bring a large answer, and bring
it soon, if sincerity and faith give it wings. A
short word may be made long enough to span
the distance between earth and heaven if it be
struck off from the living heart.”

Secondly, notice the <i>directness</i> of the prayer.
How pointed the petitions are! There are no
waste words! Here are a number of distinct
and definite requests, each of which is stated
clearly and plainly in a few simple words.
There is no need for a cloud of words in prayer;
there is no need of elaborate and highflown
language; there is no need to beat about the
bush. Let us be direct in our prayers! I
am afraid we have got into the habit of using
a kind of conventional language in prayer,
as if God did not understand our common talk!
The ideal prayer, however, is that which makes
our request known to God with the same
frankness and directness with which a child
makes known his wants to his parents. Look
at these petitions! Each of them is a prayer
for a distinct and definite object. We want
the same directness in our prayers to-day. As
// File: 165.png
.pn +1
Matthew Henry quaintly puts it, “We should
always strike at the white.”

Then notice the <i>simplicity</i> of the prayer. It
is a prayer so simple that a little child can
understand it! This is not a prayer reserved
for the use of the learned, the cultured, the
highly educated. This is a prayer everybody
can understand. Wayfaring men, though fools,
need not err therein. But its simplicity is not
shallowness. People are apt to make mistakes.
They think that profound which is simply
turbid and muddy. They think, on the other
hand, that which is pellucid and clear must of
necessity be shallow. But the turbid pool is
often very shallow, while those waters of crystal
clearness contain depths no plummet can
fathom. It is so with this prayer. It is simple,
exquisitely simple, so simple that even a child
can grasp its meaning. But what depths
these simple sentences hide! Have we not
been learning Sabbath by Sabbath something
of the grandeur and sweep of the prayer?
We have been trying during these past Sabbaths
to explore the length and breadth, the
height and depth of this prayer, but have you
not felt, as the preacher has felt, that after
all our exploring, there are yet undiscovered
regions in this prayer?
// File: 166.png
.pn +1

.pm verse-start
There’s a deep below the deep, and a height beyond the height,
And our hearing is not hearing, and our seeing is not sight.
.pm verse-end

Profundity is always a matter of idea, not of
language. A man is not profound because
he revels in polysyllables. The profoundest
thought can be clothed in the simplest language.
Shall I tell you the profoundest truth ever
uttered by mortal man? Here it is, “God
is love.” Yet the words are the simplest that
language could afford. It is so exactly with
this prayer. Beneath these simple sentences
there are depths we have never fathomed.
That is why this prayer will never be among
the childish things which we can put away.
Added years will only increase our sense of
its sweep and depth and beauty.

(2) Now let me pass on to say that this prayer
is a model <i>as to Order</i>. I need not dwell
long upon this, for I have already drawn attention
to it in the course of my exposition. But
let me repeat again that this Model Prayer
teaches us that in all true prayer God’s glory
will occupy the first place. Before ever a
word is said about personal needs our Lord
teaches His disciples to pray that God’s name
may be hallowed, that His kingdom may come,
// File: 167.png
.pn +1
and that His will may be done on earth as it is
done in heaven. It is “after this manner”
we are to pray always. That is the order
we must observe in all prayers, “First
things first.” First God’s glory, then our
personal wants. This is the hardest lesson of all
to learn. The great feat of life is accomplished
when we have learned to prefer God’s will to
our own, and when we honestly seek first
His kingdom and His righteousness. And yet
this hard lesson we must all learn if we are
to find strength and comfort in prayer. People
talk about “unanswered prayers!” There
ought to be no unanswered prayers. I make
bold to say that to the man who has learned
the true secret of prayer there are no
unanswered prayers. It is the man who
has forgotten the true order who complains of
unanswered prayers. It is the man who has
thought more of his own personal desires than
of the glory of God who complains that Heaven
is deaf to his cry. The man who has learned
to seek first the kingdom of God, who sincerely
desires that God’s will may be done, that man
never talks about unanswered prayers. All his
prayers are richly and graciously answered.
He asks and receives, he seeks and finds, he
knocks and the door is always opened. If you
// File: 168.png
.pn +1
put the emphasis in the wrong place by laying
stress on your own desires, you will be troubled
by “unanswered prayers”; but if you put God
first, if you desire His will may be done, what-e’er
betide, you will never miss the blessings,
but you will find in your own experience the
old promise still true, “If we ask anything
according to His will, He heareth us.”

(3) Let me ask you to notice that this prayer
is a <i>model as to Spirit</i>. After all, the power of a
prayer depends not upon the words we use, but
upon the spirit in which we offer it. “According
to your faith it shall be unto you.” Our
prayers may be beautiful in their language,
correct in their theology, brief, simple, direct;
and yet they may rise no higher than the ceiling
of the room in which they are uttered. Yes!
even this Pearl of Prayers, as uttered by some of
us, may be nothing but a barren form. Before
prayer becomes living, throbbing, vital, before
it can take to itself wings, before it can reach the
ear of God, we must pray in the spirit. And
the spirit which alone gives prayer its efficacy
and power, is the spirit of childlike confidence
and trust. This Model Prayer is full of that
spirit. Notice how it begins, “<i>Our Father</i>”
That implies that we come to God as His
children, believing He is readier to give good
// File: 169.png
.pn +1
things to us than we are to give good things to
our children. It is “after that manner”—in
childlike faith in God’s love—that we are always
to pray. The measure of our trust in God will
be the measure of our power in prayer. “According
to our faith it shall be unto us.” Christ’s
prayers were prevailing prayers, because He
had a perfect faith. He called God “Father,”
and He honoured God’s Fatherhood by placing
an absolute and utter trust in Him. We want
the Christ spirit to make our prayers effectual.
It is not the words that are wrong, it is not the
order that is amiss, it is the faith that is lacking.
If only Christ’s spirit of loving confidence in
God were breathed into our prayers, how
irresistible they would be. Dr. Stanford, in his
little volume on the Lord’s Prayer, quotes those
exquisite lines, in which George Macdonald
applies the legend of how the boy Jesus once
made some clay birds fly to the prayers men
offer—

.pm verse-start
My prayer-bird was cold—would not away,
Although I set it on the edge of the nest,
Then I bethought me of the story old,
Love-fact, or loving fable, thou knowest best,
How, when the children had made sparrows of clay,
Thou mad’st them birds, with wings to flutter and fold;
Take, Lord my prayer in Thy hand, and make it pray.
.pm verse-end
// File: 170.png
.pn +1

Our prayers are often like those clay-birds.
They do not rise. They are lifeless and dead.
But how they would soar if only the spirit of
Jesus, the spirit of childlike faith in God, were
breathed into them! “Our Father,” the first
words of the prayer, teach us the spirit in
which we should pray. Is there anything we
want more than faith, confidence, trust in God?
If we are straitened at all, we are straitened not
in Him, but in ourselves. If no mighty works
are being done in our midst, it is not because
God’s arm is shortened, it is because of our
unbelief. We have not yet realised the meaning
and the power of that word “Father.” We
have not yet realised that He loves us with an
everlasting love. We have not yet realised that
He is willing to do for us exceeding abundantly
above all we can ask or think. So we are
hungering when there is abundance within reach.
We are weak when we might be strong. We
are feeble when we might be resistless. We live
at a poor, dying rate, when there is abundant
life to be had for the asking. What do we need
more than faith? A simpler trust in the power
and love of God would make us irresistible.
If we had faith as a grain of mustard-seed,
we might say to the greatest mountain of
difficulty, “Remove hence,” and it should
// File: 171.png
.pn +1
remove, and nothing would be impossible unto
us.

This prayer is the Model Prayer. It is a
pattern which we are to imitate. And the
pattern Man of Prayer was Jesus Himself.
Prayer was His vital breath. After the labours
of the day were over, Jesus was accustomed to
steal away to some lonely hill, where He would
spend the night in quiet, loving fellowship
with God. Days of toil were followed by nights
of communion, nights of communion prepared
Him for days of toil. The example of Jesus
enforces the Apostolic precept, “Pray without
ceasing.” And Jesus illustrates also the blessing
of prayer. What great answers were given to
His petitions. As He was praying at His
baptism, the heavens opened. As He was praying
on the Mount, His countenance was altered,
and His raiment became white and glistening,
and there came to Him Moses and Elijah, to
converse with Him and speak of His departure,
which He should accomplish at Jerusalem.
As He was praying in the garden that last
bitter night, there came an angel from heaven,
strengthening Him. Yes; Jesus knew the
comfort, the strength, the calm that only
prayer can give! We may know them too.
Let us be instant in prayer, and we, too, shall
// File: 172.png
.pn +1
be brave and peaceful and strong, for it is as
true to-day as it was when Isaiah penned the
words, that they who wait upon the Lord renew
their strength; they mount up with wings, as
eagles, they run and are not weary, they walk
and are not faint.


HEADLEY BROTHERS, PRINTERS, LONDON; AND ASHFORD, KENT.
// File: 173.png
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<b>The Common Life.</b> By <sc>J. Brierley</sc>, B.A., Author of “Problems
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<b>Ourselves and the Universe: Studies in Life and Religion.</b>
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<b>Studies of the Soul.</b> By <sc>J. Brierley</sc>, B.A. Seventh Edition.
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<i>For other books by J. Brierley see page 5.</i>
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<b>A Gamble with Life.</b> By <sc>Silas K. Hocking</sc>, Author of “To
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<b>Burning Questions.</b> By <sc>Washington Gladden</sc>. Fourth
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<b>Changing Creeds and Social Struggles.</b> By <sc>C. F. Aked</sc>.
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<b>Gloria Patri; or, Our Talks About the Trinity.</b> By <sc>J. M.
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<b>The Christ that is To Be: A Latter-Day Romance.</b> By <sc>J.
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<b>Paxton Hood: Poet and Preacher.</b> With Photographic
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<b>New Points to Old Texts.</b> By <sc>J. M. Whiton</sc>. Crown 8vo,
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<b>Nineteen Hundred? A Forecast and a Story.</b> By
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Crown 8vo, uniformly bound in cloth, 3s. 6d. each.

.pm verse-start
<b>St. Beetha’s.</b>
<b>Violet Vaughan.</b>
<b>Singlehurst Manor.</b>
<b>Overdale.</b>
<b>Grey and Gold.</b>
<b>Mr. Montmorency’s Money.</b>
<b>Nobly Born.</b>
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<b>Millicent Kendrick.</b>
<b>Robert Wreford’s Daughter.</b>
<b>Joan Carisbroke.</b>
<b>Sissie.</b>
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.pm verse-start
<b>The Beads of Tasmar.</b>
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<b>The Last of the MacAllisters.</b>
<b>Woven of Love and Glory.</b>
<b>Feet of Clay.</b>
<b>The Household of McNeil.</b>
<b>A Border Shepherdess.</b>
<b>Paul and Christina.</b>
<b>The Squire of Sandal Side.</b>
<b>The Bow of Orange Ribbon.</b>
<b>Between Two Loves.</b>
<b>A Daughter of Fife.</b>
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
<i>For other books by this Author see pages 4 and 17.</i>
// File: 185.png
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3/6

THE MESSAGES OF THE BIBLE

Edited by <sc>Frank Knight Sanders</sc>, Ph.D., Woolsey Professor
of Biblical Literature in Yale University, and <sc>Charles
Foster Kent</sc>, Ph.D., Professor of Biblical Literature and
History in Brown University. Super royal 16mo, cloth, red
top, 3s. 6d. a vol. (To be completed in 12 Volumes.)

.pm verse-start
   I. <sc>The Messages of the Earlier Prophets.</sc>
  II. <sc>The Messages of the Later Prophets.</sc>
 III. <sc>The Messages of Israel’s Law Givers.</sc>
  IV. <sc>The Messages of the Prophetical and Priestly Historians.</sc>
   V. <sc>The Messages of the Psalmists.</sc>
VIII. <sc>The Messages of the Apocalyptical Writers.</sc>
  IX. <sc>The Messages of Jesus According to the Synoptists.</sc>
   X. <sc>The Messages of Jesus According to the Gospel of John.</sc>
  XI. <sc>The Messages of Paul.</sc>
 XII. <sc>The Messages of the Apostles.</sc>
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
Volumes VI. and VII. will appear at intervals.

.pm letter-start
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<b>The Personality of Jesus.</b> By <sc>Charles H. Barrows</sc>. Large
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<b>Poems.</b> By <sc>Madame Guyon</sc>. Translated from the French by
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<b>Quiet Hints to Growing Preachers in My Study.</b> By
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<b>Episcopacy.</b> Historically, Doctrinally, and Legally Considered.
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New: <b>The Rosebud Annual for 1909.</b> The Ideal Book for the Nursery.
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<b>School Hymns, for Schools and Missions.</b> With Music.
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<i>EMMA JANE WORBOISE’S NOVELS.</i>

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 3s. each.

.pm verse-start
<b>Heartsease in the Family</b>
<b>Maud Bolingbroke</b>
<b>Helen Bury</b>
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<i>For other books by this Author see pages 10 and 17.</i>
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// File: 187.png
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New: <b>Ungilded Gold; or, Nuggets from the King’s Treasury.</b>
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<b>Stories of Old. Bible Stories Retold.</b> By <sc>C. D. Michael</sc>,
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<b>Practical Lay-Preaching and Speaking to Men.</b> By <sc>H. Jeffs</sc>
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<b>The Challenge, and Other Stories for Boys and Girls.</b>
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.pm letter-end

<b>Short Devotional Services.</b> By <sc>George Aitchison</sc>. Limp
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Thirteen services, compiled chiefly from the Bible and the Book of
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<b>The Children’s Pace</b>; and Other Addresses to Children. By
Rev. <sc>J. S. Maver</sc>, M.A., of Paisley. Fcap. 8vo, cloth, 1s. 6d.

.pm letter-start
“Mr. Maver has produced one of the best books of the kind published
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<b>The Garrisoned Soul.</b> Meditations on “Peace, Perfect
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.pm letter-start
“A sweet little book, full of soothing comfort to the weary wayfarer.”—<i>Western
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“It is just the sort of book, chaste and beautiful, contents and binding
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its cheering chapters would to many such, we are sure, act like a tonic,
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<b>Do We Need a New Theology?</b> By <sc>Harold E. Brierley</sc>.
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.pm letter-start
“Well adapted to arouse the attention and to guide the thought of
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<b>Women and their Saviour.</b> Thoughts of a Minute for a
Month. By <sc>Marianne Farningham</sc>, Author of “Harvest
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.pm letter-start
“These ‘thoughts of a minute for a month of mornings’ are the outpourings
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“A very touching little book of devotional reflections.”—<i>Christian Life.</i>
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<b>Reasons Why for Free Churchmen.</b> By Rev. <sc>J. D. Jones</sc>,
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<b>The Price of Priestcraft.</b> By <sc>Howard Evans</sc>. Crown 8vo,
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.pm letter-start
“We wish for it a very large circulation. No one has served the cause
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<b>Gain or Loss?</b> An Appreciation of the Results of Recent
Biblical Criticism. Five Lectures delivered at Brixton Independent
Church, London. By <sc>Bernard J. Snell</sc>, M.A.,
B.Sc. Cheap Edition. Fcap. 8vo, cloth, 1s. net.

.pm letter-start
“Many students who are unable to follow all the lines and results of
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.pm letter-end

<b>A Manual for Free Church Ministers.</b> Cloth, 1s. net; leather,
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New: <b>Animal Playtime.</b> Pictures by <sc>J. A. Shepherd</sc>, <sc>Louis Wain</sc>,
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<b>Animal Gambols.</b> Comical Pictures of Animals drawn by
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<b>Fireside Fairy Tales.</b> Full of Appropriate Pictures. Crown 4to,
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<b>Animal Fun.</b> Humorous Pictures of Animals drawn by <sc>Louis
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.pm letter-start
A delightful book for the young.
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<b>Louis Wain’s Animal Show.</b> Full of Pictures specially drawn
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.pm letter-start
“‘Louis Wain’s Animal Show’ will cause endless amusement in the
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.pm letter-end

<b>Outline Text Lessons for Junior Classes.</b> By <sc>Gladys
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.pm letter-start
“The book is simple and practical, and will be found suggestive and
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<b>Golden Truths for Young Folk.</b> By <sc>J. Ellis</sc>, Author of
“The Seed Basket,” “Tool Basket,” “By Way of Illustration,”
&c. Crown 8vo, cloth boards, 1s.

.pm letter-start
“Useful, direct and easily understood set of talks to children.”—<i>British
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.pm letter-end

<b>How to Read the Bible.</b> Hints for Sunday-school Teachers
and Other Bible Students. By <sc>W. F. Adeney</sc>, M.A., Principal
of Lancashire College, Manchester, Author of “The Bible Story
Retold,” &c. New and Revised Edition. Nineteenth
Thousand. Cloth boards, 1s.

.pm letter-start
“A most admirable little work. We know of no book which deals with
this subject so clearly and adequately within so small a compass. It speaks
of itself modestly as ‘Hints for Sunday-school Teachers and other Bible
Students,’ but it is one of the very few manuals which are well worth the
study of the clergy.”—<i>The Guardian.</i>
.pm letter-end

<b>Health and Home Nursing.</b> By Mrs. <sc>Lessels Mather</sc>, Health
Lecturer to the Northumberland County Council. Fcap. 8vo,
cloth, 1s.

.pm letter-start
A book that should be in every household. Contains
chapters on The Care of the Invalid, Homely Local Applications,
Feeding the Invalid, Infection and Disinfection, Care of
the Teeth, The Value of Foods, Influenza, its Causes and
Prevention, Consumption, its Causes and Prevention, Digestion
and Indigestion, Headaches, Home Nursing of Sick Children,
What to do till the Doctor Comes, Habits in Relation to
Health, The Health of the Town Dweller.
.pm letter-end

<b>A Religion that will Wear.</b> A Layman’s Confession of Faith.
Addressed to Agnostics by a <sc>Scottish Presbyterian</sc>. Crown
8vo, cloth boards, 1s.

.pm letter-start
“It is remarkable for its breadth of thought and catholicity of quotation,
and will be found helpful to many who are doubtful as to the practical
value of religion.”—<i>Church Gazette.</i>
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<b>Helps to Health and Beauty.</b> Two Hundred Practical Prescriptions
by a Pharmaceutical Chemist.

.pm letter-start
“This little book contains two hundred practical prescriptions or formulæ
for preparations for the hair, hands, nails, feet, skin, teeth, and bath, in
addition to perfumes, insecticides, and medicaments for various ailments.
As far as possible technical language is avoided, and the directions are clear
and concise.”—<i>Pharmaceutical Journal.</i>
.pm letter-end

<b>Morning, Noon and Night.</b> By <sc>R. F. Horton</sc>, M.A., D.D.
Fcap. 8vo, parchment cover with gold lettering, 1s.

.pm letter-start
“Deeply suggestive, and as earnest as its fancies are pleasing and quaint.”—<i>Dundee
Advertiser.</i>
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<b>Wayside Angels, and Other Sermons.</b> By <sc>W. K. Burford</sc>,
Minister of the Wicker Congregational Church, Sheffield.
Pott 8vo, cloth, 1s.

<b>Tasty Dishes.</b> A Choice Selection of Tested Recipes, showing
what we can have for Breakfast, Dinner, Tea and Supper.
It is designed for people of moderate means who desire
to have pleasant and varied entertainment for themselves
and their friends. It is a book of genuine and tested information.
New Edition. Thoroughly revised and brought up to
date. 130th Thousand. Crown 8vo, 1s.

.pm letter-start
“No home ought to be without this timely, useful, and practical family
friend.”—<i>Brighton Gazette.</i>
.pm letter-end

<b>More Tasty Dishes.</b> A Book of Tasty, Economical, and Tested
Recipes. Including a Section on Invalid Cookery. A Supplement
to “Tasty Dishes.” New Edition. Price 1s.

.pm letter-start
“Every recipe is so clearly stated that the most inexperienced cook could
follow them and make dainty dishes at a small cost.”—<i>Pearson’s Weekly.</i>

“The recipes given have been carefully tried and not been found wanting.”—<i>The
Star.</i>
.pm letter-end

<b>Talks to Little Folks.</b> A Series of Short Addresses. By Rev.
<sc>J. C. Carlile</sc>. Crown 8vo, art vellum, 1s.

.pm letter-start
“No one who reads this book can reasonably doubt that Mr. Carlile is
master of the difficult art of catching and sustaining the interest of young
people. He is wise enough to dispense with the preacher’s framework, texts,
introductions, &c., and at once he arrests attention by a direct question or a
brief story.”—<i>Literary World.</i>
.pm letter-end

<b>Oliver Cromwell.</b> By <sc>R. F. Horton</sc>, D.D., Author of “John
Howe,” “The Teaching of Jesus,” &c., &c. Sixth Edition.
Nineteenth Thousand. 1s.

.pm letter-start
“Worthy a place in the library of every Christian student.”—<i>Methodist
Recorder.</i>
.pm letter-end

<b>Rome from the Inside; or, The Priests’ Revolt.</b> Translated
and Compiled by “J. B.” of <i>The Christian World</i>. Third
Thousand. Fcap. 8vo, price 1s.

.pm letter-start
This pamphlet may be described in brief as a record of the
new revolt in the French priesthood. Its contents are chiefly
letters and addresses from priests and ex-priests. These, it
will be recognised at once, are a testimony of the very first
order as to what modern Rome really stands for in relation
to spiritual life, to morality, and to intellectual progress.
.pm letter-end
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<b>The Bible Definition of Religion.</b> By <sc>George Matheson</sc>,
M.A., D.D. Printed on deckle-edged paper, with red border
lines and decorated wrapper, in envelope. Price 1s.

.pm letter-start
“Each of Dr. Matheson’s chapters is a prose-poem, a sonata. This is a
book to be read and re-read. It is in every sense ‘a thing of beauty’; it
is a veritable ‘necklace of pearls.’”—<i>C. Silvester Horne.</i>
.pm letter-end

<b>The Awe of the New Century.</b> By <sc>R. F. Horton</sc>, M.A.,
D.D. Fcap. 8vo, 1s. Decorated parchment cover and decorated
margins to each page printed in colours. Gilt top.
Each copy in envelope. Second Edition.

.pm letter-start
“A most impressive and delightful little book, displaying all the best
qualities of the popular pastor of Hampstead.”—<i>The Western Mercury.</i>
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<b>The Sceptre Without a Sword.</b> By Dr. <sc>George Matheson</sc>.
In envelope. Pott 8vo, 1s.

.pm letter-start
“‘The Sceptre Without a Sword,’ by Dr. George Matheson, is worth
reading, and that is more than one can say for the vast majority of booklets
now turned out to order. The subject is more important than ever to-day,
when it is the fashion to ignore the root principles of Christianity.”—<i>The
Echo.</i>

“This is a very charming little book—both externally and internally.”—<i>Ardrossan
and Saltcoats Herald.</i>
.pm letter-end

<b>Our Girls’ Cookery.</b> By the Author of “Tasty Dishes.”
Crown 8vo, linen, 1s.

.pm letter-start
“A most artistic-looking little volume, filled with excellent recipes, that
are given so clearly and sensibly that the veriest tyro in the culinary art
will be able to follow them as easily as possible.”—<i>The Lady.</i>

“The contents are varied and comprehensive.... The directions
given are clear and reliable, each recipe having been specially tested.”—<i>Dundee
Advertiser</i>.
.pm letter-end

<b>The Divine Satisfaction.</b> A Review of what should and what
should not be thought about the Atonement. By <sc>J. M.
Whiton</sc>. Crown 8vo, paper, 1s.
.sp 2
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Crown 8vo, Linen Covers, 1s. each.

<b>A Tale of a Telephone</b>, and Other Pieces.

.pm letter-start
“Narrative pieces, suitable for recitation.”—<i>Outlook.</i>

“Facile and effective pieces in verse of the sort that tells well on the recitation
platform. They have a pleasant light humour and a lilt often like
that of the Ingoldsby Legends, and should not fail to entertain any reader
in a jocular mood.”—<i>Scotsman.</i>
.pm letter-end

<b>The Bishop and the Caterpillar</b> (as recited by the late Mr.
Brandram), and Other Pieces. Dedicated by permission to
Lewis Carroll. Fourth Edition.

.pm letter-start
“The first two pieces are quite worthy of Ingoldsby, and that reverend
gentleman would not have been ashamed to own them. The pieces are
admirably suited for recitation.”—<i>Dramatic Review.</i>
.pm letter-end
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<b>Aunt Agatha Ann</b>; and Other Ballads. Illustrations by
<sc>Ernold A. Mason</sc> and <sc>Louis Wain</sc>.

.pm letter-start
“Excellent pieces for recitation from a popular pen.”—<i>Lady’s Pictorial.</i>
.pm letter-end

<b>Sunday Afternoon Song Book, with Tunes.</b> Compiled by
<sc>H. A. Kennedy</sc> and <sc>R. D. Metcalfe</sc>. 1s. net. Words only,
12s. 6d. per hundred net.

.pm letter-start
“The airs have been selected and arranged under the editorship of Mr.
R. D. Metcalfe, and add so much to the value of the collection that this
edition will easily supersede all others and give the work a new popularity
with choral societies and others interested in church music.”—<i>The
Scotsman.</i>
.pm letter-end

<b>Christianity in Common Speech</b>: Suggestions for an Everyday
Belief. By <sc>J. Compton Rickett</sc>. Demy 8vo, 1s.
.sp 2
SMALL BOOKS ON GREAT SUBJECTS

(<sc>Cheap Edition</sc>)

Bound in red cloth, 1s. each.

<b>Social Worship an Everlasting
Necessity.</b> By <sc>John
Clifford</sc>, D.D.

<b>The Taste of Death and the
Life of Grace.</b> By <sc>P. T.
Forsyth</sc>, M.A., D.D.

<b>The Conquered World.</b> By
<sc>R. F. Horton</sc>, M.A., D.D.

<b>The Christian Life.</b> By
Archdeacon <sc>Sinclair</sc>.

<b>The Ship of the Soul.</b> By
<sc>Stopford A. Brooke</sc>, M.A.

<b>Faith and Self-Surrender.</b> By
<sc>James Martineau</sc>, D.D., D.C.L.

<b>Martineau’s Study of Religion.</b>
By <sc>Richard A.
Armstrong</sc>.

<b>The Kingdom of the Lord
Jesus.</b> By <sc>Alexander A.
Mackennal</sc>, D.D.
.sp 2
6d.

<b>England’s Danger.</b> By <sc>R. F. Horton</sc>, M.A., D.D. Price 6d.
Contents: <sc>Romanism and National Decay</sc>; <sc>St. Peter and
the Rock</sc>; <sc>Truth</sc>; <sc>Protestantism</sc>; <sc>Holy Scripture</sc>;
<sc>Purgatory</sc>.

.pm letter-start
“Good fighting discourses. They contend that Roman Catholicism has
ruined every country in which it prevails, and controvert the leading
positions taken by Roman theologians.”—<i>Scotsman.</i>
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<b>The Ship’s Engines. A Parable.</b> By the late <sc>T. Campbell
Finlayson</sc>, D.D. In vellum cover, 6d. net.

.pm letter-start
<sc>Rev. J. H. Jowett</sc> says:—“I am so glad you are issuing the article in the
shape of the little booklet. I am sure it will be very helpful to many people,
and will bring light and leading to many bewildered souls.”
.pm letter-end
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.sp 2
6d.

<i>CLARKE’S SIXPENNY SERIES</i>

Demy 8vo, Paper Covers.

.pm verse-start
<b>Violet Vaughan.</b> By <sc>Emma Jane Worboise</sc>.
<b>The Bow of Orange Ribbon.</b> By <sc>Amelia E. Barr</sc>.
<b>The Fortunes of Cyril Denham.</b> By <sc>Emma Jane Worboise</sc>.
<b>Thornycroft Hall.</b> By <sc>Emma Jane Worboise</sc>.
<b>Jan Vedder’s Wife.</b> By <sc>Amelia E. Barr</sc>.
<b>St. Beetha’s.</b> By <sc>Emma Jane Worboise</sc>.
<b>A Daughter of Fife.</b> By <sc>Amelia E. Barr</sc>.
<b>Ourselves and the Universe.</b> By <sc>J. Brierley</sc>.
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
<b>4d.</b> Net

<b>Holy Christian Empire.</b> By Rev. <sc>Principal Forsyth</sc>, M.A., D.D.,
of Hackney College, Hampstead. Crown 8vo, paper cover,
4d. net.

.pm letter-start
“Rich in noble thought, in high purpose, in faith and in courage. Every
sentence tells, and the whole argument moves onward to its great conclusion.
Dr. Forsyth has put the argument for missions in a way that will nerve
and inspire the Church’s workers at home and abroad for fresh sacrifice.”—<i>London
Quarterly Review.</i>
.pm letter-end

<b>The Unique Class Chart and Register.</b> By Rev. <sc>J. H.
Ridette</sc>. Specially arranged and absolutely indispensable
for keeping a complete record of the scholars according to
the requirements of the Meggitt Scheme of Sunday-school
Reform. Linen cover, 4d. net.
.sp 2
<b>3d.</b> Net

<b>School Hymns, for Schools and Missions.</b> Words only.
Compiled by <sc>E. H. Mayo Gunn</sc>. Cloth limp, 3d.; cloth
boards, 6d.; music, 3s.
.sp 2
<b>2d.</b> Net

<b>The Sunday Afternoon Song Book.</b> Containing 137 Hymns.
For use at “Pleasant Sunday Afternoons,” and Other
Gatherings. Compiled by <sc>H. A. Kennedy</sc>, of the Men’s
Sunday Union, Stepney Meeting House. Twentieth Thousand,
2d.; music, 1s.

.pm letter-start
“Contains 137 hymns, the catholic character of which, in the best sense
of the term, may be gathered from the names of the authors, which include
Tennyson, Ebenezer Elliott, Whittier, G. Herbert, C. Wesley, Thomas
Hughes, J. H. Newman, Longfellow, Bonar, and others. While the purely
dogmatic element is largely absent, the Christian life, in its forms of aspiration,
struggle against sin and love for the true and the good, is well illustrated.”—<i>Literary
World.</i>
.pm letter-end
.if t
.sp 4
.dv class='tnotes’
.ul
.it Transcriber’s Notes:
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.it Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (<i>italics</i>). Text that was\
in bold print is enclosed by equals signs (<b>bold</b>).
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