Dare we rise from our knees to plan and plot for ourselves? How we are
tempted to forget our brotherhood in personal animosities, vanity, and
self-interest, competing with others! Our differences of ideas arising
from differences of race, training, occupation, country, fling us apart.
Our differences of wealth and position alienate us. Our differences of
conception of Christianity often separate and embitter us. But do these
not crumble when we say '_Our_ Father'?
Think of the generations who have gone to the grave saying this prayer.
What a prophecy of the heaven, where all shall be gathered and each feel
his sense of Fatherhood increased by his brethren!
And this is the only possible basis for true fraternity among men.
Opinion? Men are not thinking machines.
Interest? Men are not ruled by calculations, and such union is the
destruction of true unity.
Common aims?--shallow.
Nation or race?--artificial and not capable of universality.
There is no brotherhood but that which rests on God's Fatherhood,
Christ's Sonship. For the world Christ has come, therefore we are no
more 'strangers and foreigners.'
Therefore, listening to His voice, and trusting in Him who has made us
heirs together with Him, let us lift up our voices, 'Our Father,' and
therein proclaim that God who loves every soul of man, who knows each
man's wants, who bends over him in pitying tenderness, who can neither
die nor change, and who will gather into His eternal home all His
prodigal children and keep them blessed by His side for evermore.
'HALLOWED BE THY NAME'
'Hallowed be Thy name.'--Matt. vi. 9.
Name is character so far as revealed.