'Give us this day our daily bread.'--MATT. vi. 11.
What a contrast there is between the two consecutive petitions, Thy will
be done, and Give us this day! The one is so comprehensive, the other so
narrow; the one loses self in the wide prospect of an obedient world,
the other is engrossed with personal wants; the one rises to such a
lofty, ideal height, the other is dragged down to the lowest animal
wants.
And yet this apparent bathos is apparent only, and the fact that so
narrow and earthly a petition has its place in the pattern of all prayer
is full of instruction. No less instructive is the place which it has. A
single word about that place may constitute a fitting introduction to
our remarks now. We have already seen how the former petitions
constitute together a great whole. That first part of the prayer
expresses the desires which should ever be foremost in a good man's
soul--those which have to do with God, and point to the advancement of
His glory. It begins, as I said, with the inward, and advances to the
outward, as must ever be the law of progress in the sanctifying of human
souls and life. It begins with heaven and brings heaven down to earth,
that earth may become like heaven, and both 'according well may make one
music.' Then, in the second part of the prayer we come to individual
wants. These have their legitimate place in our approaches to God.
Prayer is not merely communion with God, not merely reverent
contemplation of His fatherly and holy name, though that should always
be first and chiefest in it. It is not merely the expression of absorbed
contemplation, but of a nature that desires and is dependent. Nor is it
only the utterance of world-wide desires, and the expression of a being
that has conquered self. The perfection of man is not to have no
desires, or to be petrified or absorbed into a state without a will and
without a wish, still less to be elevated into a condition of absolute
possession of all he seeks, without a want. And the perfection of prayer
is not that it should be the utterance of that impossible emotion,
'disinterested love' to God, but that it should be the recognition of
our dependence on God, the expression of our many wants, and the frank
telling Him, with wills submitted, or rather conformed, to His, what we
need. To pray is to adore; to pray is also to ask. We have to say Our
Father, and we have also to say, Give us, being sure that if we, being
evil, know how to give good gifts to our children, much more does He
know how to give good things to them that ask Him.
So much for the general considerations applicable to the whole of this
second part.
As to the connection of its several petitions with each other, it may be
noticed that it is the exact opposite of the former part. That began
with the highest and came downwards; this begins with the lowest and
goes upwards. That began with the inward and worked outwards; this
begins with the outward and passes inwards. That set forth the heavenly
order in its gradual self-revelation, working the transformation of
earth; this sets forth the earthly order in its gradual appropriation of
Heaven's gifts. The former declares, that foremost in importance and in
God's order are the spiritual blessings which come from knowledge of
His name; the latter, beginning with the prayer for bread, and thence
advancing to deeper necessities, reminds us, that in the order of time
the least important is still the condition of all the rest. The loftiest
pinnacles looking out to the morning sky must have their foundations
rooted in common earth. 'That was not first which is spiritual, but that
which is natural, and afterwards that which is spiritual.' This order,
then, is in symmetrical opposition to that of the previous part. There
is a rhythmical correspondence in inverted movement, like the expansion
and contraction of the heart, or the rise and fall of a fountain.
It is worth noticing how these two opposed halves make one whole; and as
the former begins with contemplation of the fatherly greatness in the
heavens, so the latter part, starting with the cry for bread, climbs
slowly up through all the ills of life, and passing from want to
trespass, human unkindness and hatred, and again to personal weakness
and a tempting world, and the evil of sin and the evil of sorrow,
reaches once more after cries and tears the point from which all began,
and rises to heaven and God. The doxology comes circling round to the
invocation, and the prayer, which has winged its weary way through all
weltering floods of human sorrow and want, comes back like Noah's dove,
with peace born of its flight, to its home in God, and ends where it
began. They whose prayer and whose lives start with 'Our Father which
art in Heaven,' will end with the confidence and the praise, 'Thine is
the kingdom and the honour.'