'After this manner therefore pray ye.'--MATT. vi. 9.
'After this manner' may or may not imply that Christ meant this prayer
to be a form, but He certainly meant it for a model. And they who drink
in its spirit, and pray, seeking God's glory before their own
satisfaction, and, while trustfully asking from His hand their daily
bread, rise quickly to implore the supply of their spiritual hunger, do
pray after this manner,' whether they use these words or no.
All begins with the recognition of the Fatherhood of God. The clear and
fixed contemplation of God is the beginning of all true prayer, and that
contemplation does not fasten on His remote and partially intelligible
attributes, nor strive to climb to behold Him as in Himself, but grasps
Him as related to us. The Fatherhood of God implies His communication of
life, His tenderness, and our kindred. This is the prayer of the
children of the kingdom, and can only be truly offered by those who, by
faith in the Son, have received the adoption of sons. It gathers all
such into a family, so delivering their prayer from selfish absorption
in their own joys or needs. As our Father 'in Heaven,' He is lifted
clear above earth's limitations, changes, and imperfections. So
childlike familiarity is sublimed into reverence, our hearts are drawn
upward, and freed from the oppressive and narrowing attachment to earth
and sense.
The perfect sevenfold petitions of the prayer fall into two halves,
corresponding roughly to the first and second tables of the decalogue.
The first half consists of three petitions, which refer to God and His
kingdom. They are three, in accordance with the symbolism of numbers
which, in the Old Testament, always regards three as the sacred number
of completeness and of divinity. The second half consists of four
petitions, which refer to ourselves. They are four--the number which
symbolises the creature. The lessons taught by the order in which these
two halves occur do not need to be dwelt upon. God first and man second,
His glory before our wants--that is the true order. For how few of us is
it the spontaneous order! Do we first rise to God, and only secondly
descend to ourselves?
Note, too, the sequence in each of these halves. In the first we may say
that we begin from above and come down, or from within and come
outwards. In the second, the process is the opposite. We begin on the
lowest level with our external needs, and go upwards and inwards to
removal of sin, exemption from temptation, and complete deliverance from
evil. The first half gives us the beginning, middle, and end of God's
purposes for the world. The recognition of His name is the basis of His
kingdom, and His kingdom is the sphere in which alone His will is done.
The second half, in like manner, gives us the beginning, middle, and end
of His dealings with the individual, the common mercies of daily bread,
forgiveness, guidance, protection in conflict, and final deliverance.
The 'name' of God is His revealed character. He hallows it when He so
acts as to make His holiness manifest. We hallow it when we regard it as
the holy thing which it is. That petition is first, because the
knowledge of God as He is self-revealed is the deepest want of men, and
the spread of that knowledge and reverence is the way by which His
kingdom comes.
God's kingdom is His rule over men's hearts. Christ began His ministry
by proclaiming its near approach, and in effect brought it to earth. But
it spreads slowly in the individual heart, and in the world. Therefore,
this second petition is ever in place, until the consummation. God's
rule is established through the hallowing of His name; for it is a rule
which works on men through their understandings, and seeks no ignorant
submission.
The sum of this first half is, 'Thy will be done, as in Heaven, so on
earth.' Obedience to that will is the end of God's self-revelation. It
makes all the difference whether we begin with the thought of the name
or of the will. In the latter case, religion will be slavish and
submission sullen. There is no more horrible and paralysing conception
of God than that of mere sovereign will. But if we think of Him as
desiring that we should know His name, and as gathering all its
syllables into the one perfect 'Word of God'; then we are sure that His
will must be intelligible and good. Obedience becomes delight, and the
surrender of our wills to His the glad expression of love. He who begins
with 'Thy will be done' is a slave, and never really does the will at
all; he who begins with 'Our Father, hallowed be Thy name,' is a son,
and his will, gladly yielding, is free in surrender, strong in
self-abnegation, and restful in putting the reins into God's hands.
The two halves make a whole. The second, which deals with our needs,
starts with the cry for bread, and climbs up slowly through the ills of
life, from bodily hunger to trespasses and human unkindness and personal
weakness, and a world of temptation, and the double evil of sin and of
sorrow, and so regains at last the starting-point of the first half,
Heaven and God. The probable meaning of the difficult word rendered
'daily' seems to be 'sufficient for our need.' The lessons of the
petition are that God's children have a claim for the supply of their
wants, since He is bound, as a faithful Creator, not to send mouths
without sending meat to fill them, but that our desires should be
limited to our actual necessities, and our cravings, as well as our
efforts for the bread that perishes, made into prayers. Such a prayer
rightly used would put an end to much wicked luxury among Christians,
and to many questionable ways of getting wealth. 'Bless my cheating, my
sharp practice, my half lies!' If we dare not pray this prayer over what
we do in 'earning our living,' we had better ask ourselves whether we
are not rather earning our death.
Sin is debt Incurred to God. So Christ taught in the previous chapter by
His parable of agreeing with the adversary; and in the other parables
of the two debtors (Luke vii. 41) and of the unmerciful servant (Matt.
xviii. 23). As universal as the need for bread is the need for pardon.
It is the first want of the spiritual nature, but it is a constantly
recurring want, as this petition teaches us. Forgiveness is the
cancelling of a debt; but we must not forget that it is a Father's
forgiveness, and therefore does not merely, or even chiefly, imply the
removal of penalty, but much rather the unimpeded flow of the Father's
love, and consequently the removal of the miserable consciousness of
separation from Him. The appended comparison 'as we have forgiven' does
not mean that our forgiveness is the reason for God's forgiveness of us.
The ground of our pardon is Christ's work, the condition of it our
faith; but, as we saw in considering the Beatitudes, the condition on
which the children of the kingdom can retain the blessing of the divine
pardon is their imitation of it.
The next petition is the expression of conscious weakness. The forgiven
man, though in his deepest soul hating sin, is still surrounded with
sparks which may fire the combustibles in his heart. If we ask not to be
led into temptation, because we want a smooth and easy road, we are
wrong. If we do so from self-distrust and fear lest we fall, then it is
allowable. But perhaps we may draw a distinction between being tempted
and being led into temptation. The former may mean the presentation of
an inducement to do evil which we cannot hope to escape, and which it is
not well that we should escape. The latter may mean the further step of
embracing or being entangled in it by consenting to it. We do not need
to dread the entrance into the Valley of the Shadow of Death, for if the
Lord be with us we shall pass through it. Our prayer may mean, lead us,
not into, but through, the trial. It is the plaint of conscious
weakness, the recognition of God as ordering our path, the cry of a
heart which desires holiness most of all, and which trusts in God's
upholding hand in the hour of trial.
'Deliver us from evil' is a petition which, in its width, fits the close
of the prayer better than does the translation of the Revised Version.
There seems an echo of the words in Paul's noble confidence while the
headsman's axe was so near, 'The Lord will deliver me from every evil
work.' Entire exemption from evil of every sort, whether sin or sorrow,
is the true end of our prayers, as it is the crown of God's purpose.
Nothing less can satisfy our yearnings; nothing less can fulfil the
divine desire for us. Nothing less should be the goal of our faith and
hope. To the height of meek assurance, and the reaching out of our souls
in desire which is the pledge of its own fulfilment, Christ would have
us attain on the wings of prayer. _They_ can have no narrower bonds
to the horizon of their hopes, nor any lesser blessing for the
satisfaction of their longings, whose prayer begins with 'Our Father
which art in heaven'; for where the Father is, the child must wish to
be, and some day will be, to go out no more.
'OUR FATHER'
'Our Father which art in heaven.'--Matt. vi. 9.
The words of Christ, like the works of God, are inexhaustible. Their
depth is concealed beneath an apparent simplicity which the child and
the savage can understand. But as we gaze upon them and try to fathom
all their meaning, they open as the skies above us do when we look
steadily into their blue chambers, or as the sea at our feet does when
we bend over to pierce its clear obscure. The poorest and weakest learns
from them the lesson of divine love and a mighty helper; the reverent,
loving contemplation of the profoundest souls, and the experience of all
the ages discern ever new depths in them and feel that much remains
unlearned. 'They did all eat and were filled, men, women, and
children--and they took up of fragments that were left five baskets
full.'
This is especially true about the Lord's Prayer. We teach it to our
children, and its divine simplicity becomes their lisping tongues and
little folded hands. But the more we ponder it, and try to make it the
model of our prayers, the more wonderful does its fulness of meaning
appear, the more hard does it become to pray 'after this manner.' There
is everything in it: the loftiest revelation of God in His relations to
us and in His purposes with the world; the setting forth of all our
relations to Him, to His purposes, and to one another; the grandest
vision of the future for mankind; the care for the smallest wants of
each day.
As a theology, it smites into fragments all false, unworthy human
thoughts of God. As an exposition of religion, the man who has drunk in
its spirit has ceased from self-will and sin. As a foundation of social
morals it lays deep the only basis for true human brotherhood, and he
who lives in its atmosphere will live in charity and helpfulness with
all mankind. As a guide for personal life, it gives us authoritatively
the order and relative worth of all human desires, and with these the
order and subordination of our pursuits and life's aims. As a prayer it
is all comprehensive and intended to be so, holding within the perfect
seven of its petitions, all for which we should come to God, and resting
them all on His divine name, and closing them all with a chorus of
thanksgiving. As a prophecy it opens the loftiest vision, beyond which
none is possible, of the final transformation of this world into the
kingdom in which God's will shall be perfectly done, and of the final
deliverance from, all evil of the struggling, sinning, sorrowing souls
of His children.
I desire to try in a series of sermons to set forth what little I can
see of the depth and comprehensiveness of this model of all prayer, and
of its ever fresh applicability to the wants and difficulties of our
days as of all days. But before dealing with that great invocation of
the divine name on which all rests, a word or two must be said touching
the introductory clause.
'After this manner pray ye.' The question which is usually made
prominent in thinking of these words is really a very subordinate one.
Did Christ intend to establish a form, or only to give an example?
Churchmen say, a form; Dissenters generally say, an example. But it
would be better for both Churchmen and Dissenters to try to realise for
themselves what 'this manner' is.
Unquestionably, whether our Lord is giving us a form or not, His chief
object was not to prescribe words. To pray is not to repeat petitions,
and His commandment has for its chief meaning a much deeper one than
that He was giving us either a form which we are to incorporate verbally
with our prayers, or an outline according to which our spoken
supplications are to be shaped. Whether in addition to this we are to
regard the very words as to be used by us, will be determined by each
man and church according as he regards the use of set forms in prayer as
being the true and noblest manner of prayer. Such use is certainly not
inconsistent with the utmost spirituality, but the habitual use of
forms, especially their exclusive use, seems to many of us to be
dangerous, regard being had to the tendency of human nature to rest in
them. And it is not without significance that this very prayer of our
Lord's, which was given as the corrective of vain repetitions and idle,
heathenish chattering of forms of prayer, has itself come to be the
saddest instance in all Christendom of these very faults, while the
beads slip through the fingers of the mechanical repeater of muttered
Paternosters. Instead of wrangling about this subordinate question, let
us try to pray after this manner. We shall find it hard, but blessed. Be
sure that every prayer not after this manner is after a wrong manner.
This prayer helps to reverse our foolish desire to make earth foremost.
The true end of prayer is to get our wills harmonised with His, not to
bend His to ours. Surely if self-denial and submission be the very heart
of Christianity, that should be most expressed in prayer which is the
very sanctuary of religion. The prayers that are to be offered after
this manner will not be passionate, petulant pleadings or prescriptions
to God to do this or that, but in them God and His glory will be first,
I second, and through Him and as He wills.
Ah, brethren! this is an awful requirement of Christ's. Who dare take
such holy words into his lips? It is a hard matter to pray as Christ
taught us. The prayer seems to move in a height of unapproachable
elevation, and the air there is too thin and pure for our gross lungs.
For be it remembered, we are not praying after this manner unless our
lives in some sort repeat and confirm our prayers. Do our hearts seek
first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness? Are our energies given
to this, as their noblest aim, to hallow God's name; or does the very
blood in our hearts throb hot, passionate desires for worldly things,
and God's name and kingdom and will seem dreamy and far-off objects
which kindle no desire in our souls and rule no effort of our lives,
like suns far away which shed little light upon the earth and sway not
its rolling tides, that are obedient to the nearer but borrowed light of
the changeful moon? If so, no matter whether we use this form or not, we
are not praying after this manner.
Look, now, at this first clause, which is the basis of all.
I. The divine Name which is the ground and object of all our prayers. It
is not merely a formula of address, like the superscription on a letter,
but the reality of His character as revealed before us. There is
inseparable from all prayer the effort to conceive worthily of Him to
whom we speak; to raise our souls to that height.
How much of our prayer, even while truest, fails here! We may be
distinctly conscious of our wants; our wishes may be right, and our
confidence may be firm that God will give us what we ask; yet how often
there is no vivid thought of Him filling the mind! How often our prayers
are offered to a mere name! How seldom through the cloud-wrack beneath
His feet do we see His face!
This absorbed contemplation is the necessary preliminary of all real
prayer, and there is a truth in the thought that such losing of self in
gazing on God is the highest form of prayer. We should feel as some
peasant come to court who stands on the threshold of the
presence-chamber, and forgetting his grievances and his embassy, gazes
entranced on the splendour and benignity of his sovereign.
Look, then, at this Name: what it expresses. It is not new. The Jews
dimly had it, and even Greek and other paganisms knew of a 'father of
Gods and men.' The name of Father carries with it primarily the idea of
the Source of life ('we also are His offspring'), and also, secondarily,
that of loving care.
How wonderful, how beautiful, that that earthly relation should find its
deepest reality in God! God be thanked that, 'like as a father pitieth
his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him.'
But the true Christian idea of God's fatherhood is more than all this.
This is a prayer for disciples, for those who alone can really pray. All
men are God's children because all draw their life from Him, were made
in His image, and are objects of His love. But there is a fatherhood and
a sonship which are not universal, and for which another birth is
necessary. Its conditions are plainly laid down by the Evangelist: 'To
as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become sons of God,'
and by the Apostle, 'Ye are the children of God through faith in Christ
Jesus.'
We are made sons through Jesus. We are made sons by faith.
And now, how should this Fatherhood affect our prayers? We shall come
with hope and familiar confidence, for 'your heavenly Father knoweth
what things ye have need of.' Does a father love to have his children
about him? Does a child shrink from telling its wishes to a father? Also
we must bend our wills to His--to a Father.
Contrast that conception with the ideas of God which we are all tempted
to cherish, the slavish one which dwells upon the gulf between God and
man, with the cold deity of 'natural religion,' with the Epicurean
notion of Him which divorces Him from all living interest in His
creation.
Contrast it with the ghastly image which our consciences and our fears
frame, the heathen notion of an avenger and cruel. We do not need to
seek to avert His anger. This mighty word shatters all cowering terror
and abject prostration.
And it is a vow as well as an Invocation, binding us to supreme love to
Him, to obedience to Him, to moral conformity with Him. Be ye perfect as
your Father which is in heaven is perfect. The noblest prayer is 'Abba,
Father.'