_Theocracies_, State Churches, and the like.
3. We pray for a kingdom that will be external. If spirit, then body; if
individuals, then communities.
It is to be all-comprehensive governing:--institutions, arts, sciences.
All spheres of human life are capable of sanctification and will receive
it. A prophet had a vision of a day when the very bells of the horses
should bear the same inscription of 'holiness to the Lord' as was
engraved on the High Priest's mitre, and when every pot and pan in the
kitchens of Jerusalem should be sacred as the vessels of the Temple.
The fault of Christians in losing sight of this--how all the aspects are
reconciled--and how this must be the completion--the point to which all
tends; how clearly maimed the gospel would be if such were not the goal.
So much, then, the prayer assumes:--the certainty that the world is
wrong; the certainty that the kingdom is the only thing to set it right;
the certainty that it can set it all right; the certainty that it will.
4. We pray for a kingdom to come which cannot be fully realised on this
side the grave. Large as are the capabilities of this scene, they are
not large enough for the full display of all the blessedness that lies
in that kingdom. And so it is not all a mistake when men say, 'Ah, this
world can never do for us'; it is not all an unhealthy dream that says,
'I am weary of this; let me die.'
Think of the chorus of voices that present this prayer--the unconscious
cries that have gone up; the voices of sorrow and want. The cry hath
entered into the ears of the Lord God of Sabaoth; the creature groaneth
and travaileth; all men unconsciously pray this prayer when they weep
and when they hope. Christian men pray it when they mourn their
rebellious wilfulness and when they feel the weight of all this anarchic
world, or when their work in bringing it back to its King seems almost
vain, the souls underneath the altar pray it when they cry, 'How long, O
Lord, how long?'
And ah, dear friends--there should come a sadder, humbler cry from us,
each feeling his own sinful heart. To me the glory of that coming, and
the life from the dead which it shall be to the world, will be as
nothing unless I know the King and trust Him. Let us each re-echo the
cry of that dying thief, which He cannot refuse to answer, 'Lord,
remember me when Thou comest in Thy kingdom.'
'THY WILL BE DONE'
'Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.'--MATT. vi. 10.
It makes all the difference whether the thought of the name, or that of
the will, of God be the prominent one. If men begin with the will, then
their religion will be slavish, a dull, sullen resignation, or a
painful, weary round of unwelcome duties and reluctant abstainings. The
will of an unknown God will be in their thoughts a dark and tyrannous
necessity, a mysterious, inscrutable force, which rules by virtue of
being stronger, and demands only obedience. There is no more horrible
conception of God than that which makes Him merely or mainly sovereign
will.
But when we think first of God as desiring that His name should be
known, and to that end mirroring Himself in all the great and beautiful,
the ordered whole of creation, and energising through all the
complexities of human affairs, and gathering the scattered syllables of
His name into one full and articulate utterance in the Word of God, then
our thoughts of His will become reverent and loving; we are sure that
the will of the self-revealing God must be intelligible, we are sure
that the will of the loving God must be good. Then our obedience becomes
different, and instead of being slavish is filial; instead of being
reluctant submission to a mightier force, is glad conformity to the
fountain of love and goodness; instead of being sullen resignation, is
trustful reliance; instead of being painful execution of unwelcome
duties, is spontaneous expression in acts which are easy of the
indwelling 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,' is a son, and obeys from the heart.
This, then, is one reason for the order in which the clauses of the
prayer follow each other, perhaps the chief reason.