God's will is only for our good. His will for men and nations observed
would change the face of the world.
Then this prayer includes everything that ardent lovers of their kind
would desire.
How Christianity reforms from within, giving new life and letting that
work on laws and institutions. Here is a lesson for all social reformers
and for Christian men to see to it that they, for the world, try to
spread the knowledge of His name, and for themselves, seek to be
harmonised with His will.
But this petition sets forth an apparently unattainable example as our
pattern of obedience. 'As in heaven,' refers perhaps to the visible
universe, which has always left on thoughtful minds the impression of
beauty and order, and is the great revelation in nature of the
omnipotent will of God. There clouds float on in peacefulness obeying
Him, there stars burn and planets roll on their mighty revolutions.
'These all continue this day, according to Thine ordinance.'
But that is by no means the exhaustive idea of this clause. We should
not desire, were it possible, that men should be lowered to the level of
the stars, doing a will which they know not, and swayed by a force which
they have no eyes to discern. The obedience, the only true obedience, is
that of spiritual beings who know God and can turn themselves to
contemplate the will which rules their currents, as the sea looks up to
the moon that sways its tides. So the reference is obviously to higher
orders of beings, either higher by creation as angels, or higher because
they have died, and are glorious saints before the Throne.
This petition, then, is a revelation as well. For the doing of God's
will there must be spiritual beings, like ourselves. If our doing it
like them is the highest last desire which He who came to do that will
can form for us, and is the ultimate goal which, if reached, the world's
history would be crowned, then these spiritual beings must do it
perfectly. Their obedience must be complete. There can be no
interruption to it from sin, no effort in it because of weakness, no
resistance because of temptation, no flaw because of ignorance, no pause
because of weariness, no pain because of rebellious will. Their
obedience must be free, constant, spontaneous, happy. It must cover all
their lives. Their whole being must be a sacrifice and service to the
God whom they behold, and their life must be a life of activity. It is
not the knowledge that floods the perfect spirits in heaven that is
proposed for our example, nor their blessedness, but their service. So
the thoughts of those who regard that heavenly existence only as
idleness are corrected, and we are taught that, while we know little as
to that future life, the conformity to the will of God, which in its
present partial attainment is the secret of the purest blessedness, in
its perfection will be the heaven of heaven.
Then again, there is here the grand idea that the whole creation will be
bound into a unity by obedience to one will. We and they now form one
whole, because now we serve the one Lord. And there comes a time when
there shall be one Lord and His name one; when the omnipresent energy of
His will in the physical universe shall be but a faint shadow of the
universal dominion of His loving will in all His creatures. Then indeed
it will be true, 'Thou doest according to Thy will in the armies of
heaven and the inhabitants of earth.'
What glorious harmonies will sound then, when all co-operate with God
and with one another, and one purpose, and one will, and one love fills
the whole creation!
The petition has a bearing of this upon the dreams of moralists and
reformers. They were true, they shall be more than fulfilled. Earth will
be no longer separated from heaven, but united with it, and from one
extremity of creation to another will be no creature which does not obey
and rejoice.