'Give _us_.' The struggle for existence is represented by many as the
very law of human life. The fight for bread is the great antagonist of
brotherly regard for our fellows. Trade is said to be warfare; and then
others starting from that conception that one man's gains are some other
man's losses, proclaim with undoubted truth on these premises 'property
is robbery.' But surely this clause of our prayer teaches us a more
excellent way. We are not to be like stiff-necked men who fight with one
another for the drop of brackish water caught in the corner of a sail,
but we are to be as children bowing down together before a great Father,
all sitting at His table where nothing wants, and where even the pet
dogs below it eat of the crumbs.
The main thing is to note how our Lord teaches us here to identify
ourselves with others, to make common cause with them in our petition
for bread. He who rightly enters into the meaning of this prayer, and
feels the unity which it supposes, can scarcely regard his possessions
as given to himself alone, or to be held without regard to other people.
We are all one in need; high and low, rich and poor, we all hang on God
for the same supplies. We are all one in reception of His gifts. Is it
becoming in one who is a member of such a whole, to clasp his portion in
both his hands and carry it off to a corner where he gnaws it by
himself? That is how wolves feast, with one foot on their bone and a
watchful eye all round for thieves, not how men, brethren, should feast.
I am not here to deal with economical questions, or to apply principles
to details, but surely one may say that this petition contemplates as
possible a better state of things than 'each for himself,' whether God
is for us all or no, and that it does teach that at all events a man is
part of a whole which has a claim on his possessions. 'Neither said any
man that aught which he possessed was his own.'
The Christian doctrine of property does not seem to be communism. You
have your property. It is your own. You have the power, and as far as
law is concerned, the right, to do with it none but selfish acts. You
have it, but you are not an owner--only a steward. You have it, but you
hold it not for your own sake, but as a trustee. You have it as a member
of a family, a great community. You have it that you may dispense to
others, you have it that you may help to multiply the bonds of affection
to benefactors and of love to the great Giver.
And this liberality is founded, according to this petition, in our
common relation to God. We do not want charity--we want justice. The
needy cannot enforce their claims, but their cry enters into the ears of
the Lord, and what is withheld from them is 'kept back by fraud.' The
Bible always puts benevolence and liberality on the ground of their
being a debt. 'Withhold not good from him to whom it is due.'
So how, beside this prayer, does it look to see two men who have united
in it, the one being Dives clothed and faring sumptuously, and the other
Lazarus with scraps for his food and dogs for his doctors? There is many
a contrast like that to-day. All I have to say is--that such contrasts
are not meant as the product of Christianity and civilisation and
commerce for eighteen hundred years, and that one chief way of ending
them is that we shall learn to feel and live the true communism which
traces all a man's possessions to God, and feels that he has received
them as a member of a community for the blessing of all, even as Christ
taught when He bid us say, 'Give us our daily bread.'