CHAPTER VI
THE MOTIVE OF THE CITIZENS OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN
WHEN we were considering the way in which our Lord deepens the law of love, while abrogating the law of revenge, we were obliged to notice that what He gives us is not literal enactments, but rather principles or motives for action. He expresses Himself indeed proverbially, in the form of particular injunctions or prohibitions. But the proverbial nature of these directions is apparent, in part because they are sometimes mutually contradictory; and they must be taken, like proverbs generally, as embodying in extreme concrete instances general principles or motives for action.
We may truly say that the Sermon on the Mount gives us a social law for Christians. That is true in this sense: the Sermon on the Mount gives us principles of action which every Christian must apply and re-apply in his social conduct. But just because it embodies motives and principles and does not give legal enactments, it must appeal in the first instance to the individual, to his heart and conscience; and it is only as the character thus formed must set itself to remodel social life on a fresh basis, that the Sermon on the Mount can become a social law for Christians. You cannot take any one of its prescriptions, and apply it as a social law at once. You cannot take the maxim “If a man smite thee on the one cheek, turn to him the other also,” or “If a man take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also,” and make it obligatory on Christians as a rule of external conduct, without upsetting the whole basis of society and without ignoring a contrary maxim which our Lord gives us in another connexion.
But each of the maxims can be taken to the heart and conscience of the individual, to become a principle of each man’s own character and conduct, and then to reappear, retranslated into social action, according to the wisdom of the time or the wisdom of the man or the wisdom of the Church.
This truth—that our Lord is giving us principles, not laws—will appear only more conspicuously now, when we pass to the next great section of the Sermon; because it will be obvious that our Lord can only be dealing with motives of action—motives such as belong to the secret heart of the individual. He proceeds to inculcate the abandonment of a worldly temper by prohibiting, literally, such religious actions as other men can see. But His own example, His own institution of a corporate religion, His special promises to common worship, His countermaxim “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works,” force us to recognize the proverbial character of these prohibitions, and to look for the principle rather than the law.
And indeed this sixth chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel has one subject throughout. It teaches us one great principle—that the new righteousness, the righteousness of the citizens of the kingdom, looks throughout towards God. God is its motive, God is its aim, God is its object; God, and nothing lower than God. No man is truly a citizen who is not in all his conduct and life looking directly God-ward.
We will attend first to verses 1–18, omitting the positive directions about prayer. Their theme does not vary: The Christian righteousness, in all its departments, looks for divine praise; never for human praise. Our Lord lays this down first of righteousness generally, then of its different branches. Thus, in the first place, of righteousness generally:
“Take heed that ye do not your righteousness before men, to be seen of them: else ye have no reward with your Father which is in heaven.”
We may observe here, once for all, that our Lord in no way disparages the seeking a reward, only the seeking it in a wrong place. There are “altruists” who regard the seeking of even an eternal reward from God as ignoble; they would find the true religious motive only in such an utterance as that of St. Francis Xavier, “My God, I love Thee, not because I hope for heaven thereby,” and would recall the mediæval story of the man who would quench with water the flames of hell and burn up with fire the joys of heaven, that men might seek God for His own sake. But indeed these philosophers ignore indestructible and necessary instincts in human nature. We cannot separate love for God from a desire to find our own happiness in God. This is inseparable from personality. We must crave for ultimate satisfaction, recognition, approval. The point is that we should seek it in the right place, that is from God. For coming from Him it can never involve any spoiling of our own capacity for usefulness to others, or narrowing of our own selves. Thus there is a true self-love: and a true self-love seeks satisfaction in the fellowship of God in the eternal world. If “other-worldliness” or the seeking of the divine reward has done harm in religion, that is because the character of the God whom we seek, as revealed in the character and teaching of Jesus Christ, has not been attended to. Granted that we seek God as He is, there can be no possible peril of our undervaluing this world or the bodies of men, nor of our tolerating selfishness in religion. He that said “What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own life (soul)?” said also, “He that saveth his life (soul) shall lose it.”
Then our Lord applies the general principle of seeking only God’s approval to the three great branches of human conduct. Christian, and indeed human conduct generally, looks in three directions. There is a duty to God, there is a duty to one’s neighbour, and there is a duty to one’s self. And each of these great departments of human conduct has one typical form of action, one form of action in which it specially expresses itself. Our duty to God expresses itself particularly in prayer. Our duty to man expresses itself in works of mercy, or alms. Our duty towards ourselves expresses itself in self-subdual, self-mastery—that is, fasting. And so our Lord applies the general principle to each of these typical duties. In your prayers, in your alms, in your fastings—in each case you are to look to nothing lower than the praise of God.
And, before we study these passages, let me ask you to notice how simply our Lord does always regard human life as bound to move in these three directions. There is our duty to God. That He puts first, not to be merged in our duty to our neighbour. There is our personal duty to God as a person, and it is the first and chief commandment to love the Lord our God. Then there is our duty towards our neighbour; and then, also, there is our duty towards ourselves. “Thou shalt love thy neighbour—as thyself!” Our duty towards ourselves is, in a word, to make the best of ourselves. Each one is an instrument, divinely created by God, with that sum total of faculties which the Bible calls his life or soul. Well, he is to make the best of himself. Considered as a spiritual being, capable of right spiritual activity, each man is to love himself and his neighbour and God; himself, by bringing his whole being into good order and efficiency, which cannot be without fasting or the subdual of the flesh to the spirit: his neighbour, by considering his true interests like his own, which cannot be without almsgiving or actual gifts out of his substance to supply the other’s needs: and God, which cannot be unless he deal with Him as a person by way of actual personal requests in prayer. And in each direction he is to seek only the praise of God.
ALMSGIVING
“When therefore thou doest alms, sound not a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have received their reward. But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: that thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret shall recompense thee.”
Our Lord is clearly using a metaphor. We cannot suppose that the Jews, when they went to give alms, caused their own trumpet to be blown in a literal sense; and in the same way, when our Lord speaks of the left hand not knowing what the right hand doeth, it is clearly a metaphor; but a metaphor vividly descriptive. For what our Lord is here forbidding is obviously ostentation in doing good.
Here is a matter upon which it is for each man to examine himself. We are to find out what our motive is. We are not to be troubled because, when we are trying to do good, there comes across us the temptation to think that people are looking at us. We shall often be tempted in this way: but the point is, what is our motive? We can find that out. When people are not looking at us, do we stop doing the good action? When we cannot be seen, do we omit it? If not, let us not be worried because we may be tempted with thoughts of vainglory. You know what an old saint said to Satan: “Not for thy sake did I begin this; and not for thy sake shall I leave it off.” But on the other hand, if you give a half-crown in a collection when there is a plate, and a penny when there is a bag and your gift cannot be seen; or if you put yourself down for a larger sum in a subscription list in order to be brought into association with a duchess, then you have the gravest possible reason to doubt your motive.
And let me add this: there are many charitable people who desire to collect money for good objects; let them take care that in order to do so they do not encourage people in bad motives. If they play upon bad motives to get money, assuredly they are partakers of other men’s sins: and the money is not to the glory of God or for the good of His work.
PRAYER
“And when ye pray, ye shall not be as the hypocrites: for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have received their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thine inner chamber, and having shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret shall recompense thee.”
The same principle of seeking only divine praise is here applied to our approach to God. It seems to require no further notice, but we may consider here a subordinate principle which is applied also to almsgiving and fasting—the principle of recompense—“they have their reward.”
Every kind of conduct gets its reward on the plane of its motive. If you look out for human praise, on the whole you get it. If you aim vigorously at getting on and winning a good position, the chances are you will succeed. On the whole, then, you get the reward on the plane of your motive. And our Lord recognizes these lower motives and their proper reward; and you find that in the Old Testament, in many passages, God is represented as being, as it were, careful to distribute rewards on the lower plane. See, for instance, how (in Ezek. xxix. 18–20) God notes that Nebuchadnezzar’s army served against Tyre and got no wages; therefore He will give Egypt for their wages.
So then if your motive is earthly, your reward is earthly. You “have out” your reward to the full, and must not imagine there is anything over and above which still appeals to God. When John Henry Newman was made a Cardinal, he—a devout, religious man, one of those who apparently without vanity have the power of talking about their own state of feeling—said he trembled to take this great honour, lest he should be taking out his reward here on earth; because he could not think that anything he had tried to do in his life was such that it would not have its reward exhausted by his receiving so great a position.
We need not scrutinize such an expression of fear too closely, but only notice that a real Christian, instead of being anxious to obtain recognition, is on the other hand rather alarmed if he always seems to get full credit for all that he tries to do. He believes that he is aiming only at the approval of God, and finds too liberal a reward in this world even disquieting, as though it were a sign that he was mistaken as to his motive.
FASTING
“Moreover when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure66 their faces, that they may be seen of men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have received their reward. But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thy head, and wash thy face; that thou be not seen of men to fast, but of thy Father which is in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret, shall recompense thee.”
Here, under the head of fasting, we may notice again—what applies equally to prayer or almsgiving—that our Lord is passing no slight on “common” or public religious actions. St. Paul tells us (1 Cor. xvi. 2) that we are to have church collections; and our Lord (St. Matt. xviii. 19–20) tells us we are to pray together; and He instituted the Eucharist, which is the Church’s chief social or public act of communion with God and mutual fellowship. So that it is ridiculous to suppose that our Lord is here slighting social religious acts—acts which are performed by the Church as a body, and in the performance of which we have the encouragement which comes of co-operation and the sense of responsibility to the community as well as to God. And most of all it is ridiculous to suppose that our Lord is discouraging common fasts, but not common prayer or almsgiving. In no case is our Lord undervaluing the common religious acts. But He is indicating the new motive of religious action, whether it be prayer or almsgiving or fasting. Its motive is to be God, and not man.
Once more, our Lord is not here saying anything against the manifestation of our religion by outward acts. We cannot pray properly—speaking generally—without adopting a fit attitude in prayer, that is on the regular occasions of public and private prayer. We should pray in an attitude which befits our relation to God, on our knees, humbly, devoutly, because we are creatures of soul and body, and we cannot express the religious feeling of the soul properly without its influencing the gesture of the body also. We are made up of soul and body, and a “spiritual” act of worship is one in which the spirit, that is the will, heart, and intelligence is engaged; not one in which the body takes no part. Then if we learn to pray aright, kneeling upon our knees, we can carry the habit of prayer into our common life. In the same way, if we are to fast, the act must have a definite and methodical outward expression. Do not let us be afraid of outward expressions of religion. Our Lord is emphasizing this, and this only, namely, the motive which we should have in all kinds of righteousness, whether it be worship or charity or self-subdual.
Thirdly, we shall do well to consider, what is the principle and meaning of fasting. Our Lord says less about it in the New Testament than about prayer; and you notice in the Revised Version that the mention of it has vanished from a good many of those passages where in the Authorized Version it stood side by side with prayer.67 It is quite true, then, to say that our Lord says less about fasting than about prayer. It is quite true that fasting may be abused, and was in our Lord’s time abused, more easily than prayer; but it is a great mistake, because you have got a certain truth, therefore to exaggerate it. Our Lord Himself fasted, as He prayed; He fasted forty days and forty nights. Our Lord said the disciples should fast; that it would betoken the time when He was taken from them. St. Paul mentions fasting as part of his own practice—“in fastings often,” and he bids Christians “distress”68 their bodies in order to reduce them to subjection. So again the Church from the first has fasted. And the great authors of religious revivals in our own Church—Simeon, and Pusey, and Maurice alike—practised and encouraged fasting. We may then depend upon it that we are foolish if we neglect it. And the object of it is this: it is the bringing the body under the spirit, whereas without it the body is apt to have the upper hand. It is not because our body is evil that we are to fast; but because our body is, or is meant to be, holy, and the effective instrument of the spirit. People sometimes talk about their body as if it were merely animal, and the spirit were only attached to it. That is not true. Our whole being is meant to be spiritual, as governed by the spirit. Just as when the principle of life takes hold on the inorganic world, it makes the whole nature organic of living; so when the spirit takes hold of the animal body, its work is to make the whole body spiritual.
It is worth while dwelling on this. People often justify sensual sin by saying it is “natural;” and the fallacy in this excuse lies in supposing that our body can be treated apart from our spirit. Nothing is natural to man in which his spiritual nature is not brought into play. This is the reason why Christian marriage is truly natural. It gives to the bodily relation of the sexes a spiritual purpose, and makes it serve high ends of the home and family. Thus in the same way eating and drinking is to serve spiritual ends. Everything that the true Christian does is part of a great spiritual whole; and it is, I say, because our body has grown lawless, and is apt to trample upon the spirit instead of being subordinate to it, that we have, as it were, to take revenges on the body and from time to time to harass it, as St. Paul says, and to hold it as a slave.
For the same reason we are foolish and un-Christian if we fast in such a way, either excessively or unwisely, as to unfit the body for spiritual activities. If you fast so that you cannot work, you are violating your duty. But many people eat and drink and sleep too well; their bodies have the upper hand; and they ought to fast, and to take the opportunity of Lent to fast, that their bodies may be brought under their spirits.
“The Scriptures bid us fast; the Church says, now:
Give to thy Mother what thou wouldst allow
To ev’ry corporation.”
Now we must return to consider the parenthesis about prayer which is to be found in chapter vi. 7–15, and which teaches us something more than that its motive is to be not vainglory, but God.
First, we are taught that prayer is not to be measured by length, but intensity:
“And in praying use not vain repetitions, as the Gentiles do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.”
If you were to go into a Buddhist country at the present time, you would find prayer there reduced to something so formal and mechanical that people do not need to say it themselves, but have prayer wheels and prayer flags to wind or spread out their prayers before the holy one. And I am afraid there has been a good deal of a like mechanical praying in the Christian Church. But the value of prayer, our Lord warns us, is not to be measured by its length, but the amount of will and intention we put into it. There is always need that we should remember this. There is always a danger that in praying dutifully and according to some rule our praying should be becoming mechanical, and that we should find ourselves measuring its value by its length.
Secondly, Christian prayer is not for the sake of informing God:
“Be not therefore like unto them [the Gentiles]: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.”
Why is it, then, that God requires of us to pray? The answer is a quite simple one. It is because God is our Father, and He wishes us to be trained in habits of conscious intercourse with Him. Therefore, just as many blessings which God wishes to give us are made dependent on our working for them, so many other blessings are made dependent on our regular and systematic asking. God wills to give them, but He wills to give them only if we ask Him; and this in order that the very necessity of continually holding intercourse with a personal God and making requests to Him may train us in the habit of realizing that we are sons of our heavenly Father. The wisdom of this provision is best realized if we reflect how easily, when the practice of prayer is abandoned, the sense of a personal relation to God fades out of our human life. We are to pray then not to inform God, but to train ourselves in habits of personal intercourse with our Father who is in heaven.
CHAPTER VII
THE LORD’S PRAYER
OUR Lord is not satisfied with giving us abstract principles of prayer, but teaches us how to pray by giving us an example:
“After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven,” &c.
In regard to this great prayer, I would content myself with calling attention to the points of chief importance, and trying to explain some few difficulties, which lie in the separate clauses, and then very briefly indicating some of the principles which as a whole it enshrines.
“Our Father which art in heaven.”
The spirit of a prayer depends in great measure on whether the worshipper’s thought of God is true or false, adequate or inadequate. The Christian invokes God under the completest of all His titles, the title of Father, for “God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts crying, Abba, Father.”69 And we call Him the Father which is in heaven, not because He is far off us—for in the Kingdom of Christ heavenly and earthly things are mingled and we “are come unto the heavenly Jerusalem,”70—but because He is raised far above all the pollution and wilfulness and ignorance of man “as the heaven is higher than the earth.” So we invoke our Father, infinitely above us yet unspeakably near. And the first prayer we offer is:
“Hallowed be thy name.”
What is the name of God? That is very well worth our consideration. The name of God in the Bible means that whereby He discloses or reveals Himself. You may indeed almost say that the name of God means God Himself as He is manifested. God has shown Himself to man; He has spelt out His great name, letter by letter, syllable by syllable, before the eyes of men or into their hearts, in nature, in conscience, by the voice of His prophets and in Jesus Christ His Son. Thus to hallow or sanctify His name is to set store by His revelation of Himself, as Father, Son and Spirit, one God. To pray that His name may be hallowed, is to pray that His revelation of Himself may be accepted of men, and His religion professed openly and secretly: that He may be acknowledged in conduct and worship, in Church and in State, on Sunday and on week-day.
“Thy kingdom come.”
The kingdom of God meant to the Jews, of course, the kingdom of the Messiah: that is to say that coming age, when heaven and earth shall be fused in one, when God shall be manifested in His glory, when all things shall be seen in their true light, and the reign of Christ in truth and meekness and righteousness shall be not only real but also manifest and indisputable. This is “the end of the world,” the “far off, divine event,” which is still future. At times, indeed, the Church as it already exists among us is called “the kingdom of God,” but at other times (as is implied here) the Church is regarded as a divine institution, representing indeed the kingdom here and now in the world, but also preparing for its arrival in the future. To pray for the coming of the kingdom is therefore to pray for the spread and progress of the Church, and also for the diffusion in every way of all truth and meekness and righteousness and of all that can find its place in the city of God. It is to pray for the overthrow of every form of “lawlessness”—lawless lusts and appetites, lawless ambition and insolence and denial, godless worldliness and lies and vanities, cruelty, oppression and malice in every shape. For all these are forms of rebellion; and we know that they represent only a temporary usurpation. We are looking forward to, and would fain hasten, the coming of the King.
“Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.”
This is a prayer against all wilfulness and also against all sloth: a prayer for the vigorous co-operation of all rational creatures in furthering the divine order of the world. And we should notice that the phrase “as in heaven, so on earth” refers probably to all the three preceding clauses: Hallowed be Thy Name, as in heaven, so on earth; Thy kingdom come, as in heaven, so on earth; Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth. The Church of Rome, in the Catechism put forth by the Council of Trent, specially exhorts her clergy to call the attention of the faithful to this connexion of the clauses of the Lord’s Prayer.
“Give us this day our daily bread.”
Strangely enough, one of the most difficult words in the whole New Testament is this word translated “daily” in the Lord’s Prayer. Nobody can be quite certain what it means, but probably it means “the bread for the coming day.”71 Give us to-day the bread for the coming day, is therefore a prayer that the bodily needs of the immediate future may be supplied for all members of the Christian family. It is a prayer which only those can truly pray who are contented with such satisfaction of their bodily needs as enables them to do the work of God, who will ask nothing for themselves that they do not ask for others, and who are content to wait from day to day upon the hand of God.
“And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”
We cannot do God’s work without the supply of our physical needs: therefore the last prayer was offered. But equally we cannot do God’s work unless we are at peace with Him: therefore this prayer follows. Sin may be regarded from many points of view—as a flaw or mistake in our nature or conduct: as a violation or transgression of a divine law (as in ver. 14): or (as here) as an act by which we have robbed God of His rights and incurred an obligation or debt which we cannot satisfy, and in regard to which we can only appeal to the divine pity. From the first point of view what is needed is nothing else than recovery and correction: from the second point of view we need forgiveness, but forgiveness of such sort as is only morally possible when our will is brought back into harmony with our Father’s will. Only from the third point of view is forgiveness the same as being let off. And the position which the petition to be forgiven holds in this prayer, prevents us from supposing that we can be “forgiven our debts” without having been brought into union with God’s will and into the fellowship of His Kingdom.
On the principle involved in this petition our Lord Himself immediately comments:
“For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
Here is the divine principle which, as we noticed before, is made so plain in the parable (St. Matt. xviii. 31), where the unthankful servant finds that all the debt which had been forgiven him has rolled back upon him because he in his turn has behaved himself unforgivingly, unmercifully, towards his fellow-servant. God deals with us as we deal with our fellow-men; and if we want to know how the face of God looks towards us, we must examine ourselves to see what is the aspect we present towards them.
“And bring us not into temptation.”
Now, this clause is intelligible enough to our hearts, but rather difficult to explain exactly. St. James writes, “My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations.” How can we pray not to be tempted or tried when we know that it is only through temptation that we can become strong? One explanation is to be got from our Lord’s words to His disciples at the time of His agony in the garden: “Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation.” If you fail to be on your guard, if you live carelessly, without watching or praying, God suffers you, as a punishment, to be brought within the scope of temptation, and you find it too strong for you. Therefore the prayer may be interpreted by expansion thus: make us watchful and prayerful, so that we never be suffered to fall into temptation as into a snare. But it seems better to interpret the prayer more generally as the expression of that self-distrust for which we have only too sufficient grounds, as a prayer like that of Christ’s, “Father, if it be possible let the cup of trial pass from me without my drinking it, nevertheless, thy will be done.”72
“But deliver us from the evil one.”
That is “from the devil.” Modern society seems to be very unwilling to believe in the devil or diabolical temptation. It has been cleverly said, “Satan never did a more successful stroke than when he persuaded people to disbelieve in his own existence.” There is truth in that. It is a real hindrance to our spiritual struggle, and an increase of despondency, if we forget that evil solicitations come, not only from our own nature, but from evil spirits. Moreover, if Christ is a true prophet—if He discerned the conditions of our spiritual struggle—certainly diabolical temptation must be real, for He is always talking of it. When He sees evil at work, evil for body or soul, His mind penetrates behind the appearances and detects hostile wills working to pervert the kingdom of God, hostile wills which He knows are to be at last subdued to God and are even now controlled by Him, but which He knows also to be at present active and malevolent. He looks forth upon the disorder of the world and says, “An enemy hath done this.” And He teaches us to pray for deliverance from the evil one.
The familiar doxology “For Thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever, Amen,” which in our Church, though not over the greater part of Christendom, follows here, was not in the original Lord’s Prayer, though it was added to it very early. It was a doxology in use in the early Church, which was added at the end of many of the prayers, and which in very early times came to be attached to the Lord’s Prayer in some of the manuscripts. It was thus given a place which it cannot rightly claim, though it states, grandly enough, the reason why we thankfully worship the Father.
It remains for us to notice some of the great principles which are enshrined in the Lord’s Prayer as a whole.
1. The Lord’s Prayer is not one prayer among many, as you may have a number of collects for a number of different objects, and each particular collect is just one prayer among many. The Lord’s Prayer is rather the type and mould of all Christian prayer: “After this manner pray ye.” Understand the Lord’s Prayer, and you understand altogether how to pray as a Christian should. It is not really an exaggeration to say that the climax of Christian growth is to have thoroughly learned to say the Lord’s Prayer in the spirit of Him who first spoke it.
And this has been clearly recognized in the use which the Church in all ages has made of the Lord’s Prayer. Among human compositions there are hardly any more beautiful than the liturgies in which Christians, at the altar, have approached the Father of their Lord in the pleading of His sacrifice. Now, almost all the ancient liturgies, both Eastern and Western, are so constructed that the point upon which each service converges is the saying of the Lord’s Prayer. That is the point up to which they climb. That is their central act; because the highest thing in the way of worship that the Christian can do is to say Christ’s own prayer in the freedom of that approach to God once won for him by the Son of Man.
So, in our English Communion service, we put ourselves into the right frame of mind by saying the first Lord’s Prayer; and afterwards, in the power of His sacrifice and in the unity of His life communicated to us in His body and blood, we say again the Lord’s Prayer with its doxology as the highest point of our whole service.
Once more, in the daily offices of morning and evening prayer the Lord’s Prayer occurs at the beginning, and again in the prayers after the Creed. It occurs at the beginning to put us into the right frame of mind for praying; and at the end it sums up our petitions—all that we have learned to pray for in the Psalms and lessons. And to leave out the second Lord’s Prayer, as is sometimes done by way of shortening the service, is surely to betray ignorance of the structure of the service and of the use of the Lord’s Prayer.
This is indeed the way in which the Church, catching the spirit of her Lord, has used the Lord’s Prayer; and, as individuals, it is a great happiness and power for us when we have learned to use it freely. Whatever particular object we may want to pray for, we have never prayed for it aright till we have prayed for it in the words and spirit of the Lord’s Prayer. That, I repeat, is not one prayer among many. It covers all legitimate Christian praying, and indeed the saying of it affords the best test whether our wants of the moment can become a prayer offered “in the name of Christ.”
2. I say “in the name of Christ.” The Lord’s Prayer is the great prayer in His name. You know how many people have a very strangely childish notion, that praying in the name of Christ means simply the addition of the words “through Jesus Christ our Lord” at the end of their prayers. But depend upon it they do not by adding these words, or any words, bring it about that their prayers should be in the name of Christ. To pray in the name of Christ means to pray in such a way as represents Christ. The representative always must speak in the spirit and meaning of those for whom he speaks. If Christ is our representative, that must be because He speaks our wishes, or what we ought to make our wishes; and if we are to pray in the name of Christ, that means that we are, however far off, expressing His wishes and intentions.
Therefore, as this Lord’s Prayer represents profoundly and perfectly the spirit of Him who first spoke it, and who taught it to His Church, it follows that it is, beyond all other prayers, the prayer in Christ’s name. Do you then want to know whether this or that thing can be prayed for in Christ’s name? The answer is to be found in another question, Can it be legitimately covered by the clauses of the Lord’s Prayer?
3. The knowing and saying of the Lord’s Prayer, as the prayer in Christ’s name, was in the early Church regarded as being, like the knowing and saying of the Creed, the privilege of those only who were members of the Christian family. It was the prayer of the family because of its first words, “Our Father.” The Christian creed, we know, would teach us to believe that God is the father of all men, and that He wills all men to realize their sonship. They cannot reach true manhood till they have come to know themselves to be, and to realize what is involved in being, sons of God.
But since sin has separated men from God, it is through Christ and by the partaking of His Spirit that they enter or re-enter into the privileges of sonship. Thus the right of calling upon God as “Our Father” was believed to have come with the coming of the gift of the Holy Ghost: “God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.” We are apt to have rather “free and easy” notions of the divine fatherhood. And it is important to be reminded that to call God our Father, we must ourselves be sons, and it is they who are led by the Spirit, they and they only, that are the sons of God.
This Lord’s Prayer then is the prayer of the great Christian family; the prayer of the whole Catholic Church; the prayer which, though it may be spoken by a single member in a quiet corner, yet is instinct with the aspirations and needs and wants of all that great society which represents all nations and kindreds and peoples and tongues in this world and in that which lies beyond the grave.
4. There is a searching lesson which lies in the order of the petitions in the Lord’s Prayer; for in praying much depends on the order in which we rank the objects of prayer.
There is a saying, not recorded in our canonical Gospels, but which yet the very earliest traditions of the Church treasured, and ascribed to our Lord; the saying is this: “Ask for great things, and the small things will be given unto you. Ask for heavenly things, and the earthly things will be given unto you.” Now, that is exactly the spirit of the Lord’s Prayer. It puts our wants in the right order. It puts first the heavenly things, the great things, and not the little things, the earthly things, the things that seem to touch us closest.
We know that it is not easy to adopt this order in our prayers. There are many who have lost altogether the habit of praying and who are won back to it by some anxiety or trouble that touches them nearly. Some son or daughter perhaps lies dying, and the father and mother, who long have been alien to the habit of prayer, are driven back to it by the very stress of their pressing need. Or some calamity is threatening to overwhelm ourselves, and we fall on our knees, after a great interval of prayerlessness, to implore that it may be averted. And, of course, we must bless God that anyhow men should be brought to pray: and God can lead us to higher things through things which touch our flesh and blood, from earth to heaven. But the point is that that is not the right order of prayer. The true Christian does not pray first for the things that most nearly touch himself. That impulsive prayer which springs simply out of our own needs is not the prayer “in the name of Christ.”
We remember what our Lord said to the disciples in those solemn hours in the upper chamber before His passion: “Hitherto ye have asked nothing in my name.” They had presented all kinds of petitions and requests; but in their own name. So it is so often with us. Hitherto have we asked nothing in His name. But that of course is a fault to be altered. We must let our prayers be in Christ’s name: that is to say in the order reflected in the Lord’s Prayer.
Now, let us examine it. The prayer of human instinct runs: My Father, give me to-day what I so sorely require. But the Lord’s Prayer begins with “Our Father”—not “my,” but “our.” I must begin with losing my selfishness, with recollecting that I am only one of the great body of God’s children, of the great mass of humanity. Thus I cannot ask for anything for myself which conflicts with the interests of others. And the invocation proceeds, “which art in heaven.” It places us in a reverent way at the feet of God. “God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore, let thy words be few.”
“Hallowed be Thy name.” It puts God’s revelation of Himself to men above all human needs. We are so apt to think last of the glory and honour of God; but here as we pray we are forced to exalt it into the first place; and next, “Thy kingdom come.” That is—May that divine order which, point by point, in many parts and many manners, through all the great web of history, has gradually to be woven out—may that great purpose of God find at last its fulfilment. Thus we are forced as we pray to merge our own narrow interests and schemes till they are lost in the largeness and wisdom of the divine method.
“Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Here we are forced to bend our stubborn or short-sighted wills to conformity with the divine will and to make the law of heaven the pattern for earth. Only then, when we have exalted God’s glory above man’s need, when we have subordinated our little designs utterly to the great purpose of God, when we have bent our little wills under the great and divine will—only then are we allowed to express our wants for ourselves.
And even so how modestly, how restrictedly. “Give us,” we pray, not anything that we may want, but “to-day the bread for to-morrow:” enough to do God’s work upon in God’s way; and so that our eating may not involve others’ hungering. And then, because we cannot do God’s work unless we are in His peace, “Forgive us our trespasses”—not anyhow; but according to that necessary law by which God deals with us as we deal with others; “as we forgive them that trespass against us.” And, because we are weak and frail, “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”
Is there not then in this prayer the whole philosophy of praying? And when we come to think of it, we shall find that the philosophy or secret of prayer lies in the recognition of the same law of correspondence, which has been the secret of scientific progress in the development of the resources of nature, and which, in that department, Francis Bacon has the credit of teaching men, or of putting into words for them. Before his time men had been trying to get extraordinary good things out of nature in accordance with the whims and fancies of astrologers and alchemists: they had dreamt of making gold, or finding the elixir of life. But all this was profitless because it was done in ignorance of nature’s actual laws. And Bacon spoke a prophetic word when he said “Nature can only be controlled by being obeyed;” that is—in reverent correspondence with nature as it is, is the secret of power. Now, in the higher region, that is what our Lord taught us about prayer. Man had been offering all sorts of prayers, sacrifices, propitiations. That God mercifully regarded such ignorant worship we cannot doubt: but it was ignorant of God’s character and method. Now, so far as is good for us, our Lord has enlightened us about the nature and method of God: and He has shown us that prayer should not be an attempt to impose our own whims and fancies on the wisdom of God, but a constant act of correspondence by which we bring our short-sighted wills and reasons into correspondence, the intelligent correspondence of sons, with the perfect reason and will of God, the all-wise Father of all human souls and of the great universe.
5. Here finally we find an answer to all our manifold questionings as to what we may pray for, and what we may not.
Our Lord gave us that answer also in another way at another time—in the prayers of His passion. In His passion He prayed for the coming of the kingdom, in that great prayer recorded in St. John’s Gospel. He prayed then without qualification. Similarly, He prayed for those rough soldiers who were unwittingly doing Him such awful wrong: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” But when, in the garden, He asked to be Himself delivered from the coming agony, in the true humility of His manhood He prayed conditionally, “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.”
Now, that is exactly the lesson of the Lord’s Prayer. There are many things which God has revealed to us that He intends to give us. He has promised that He will give us all those things which belong to His kingdom and its righteousness. For these things we can pray, not only urgently, but with the certainty of faith that we must win them for ourselves and others by importunate asking. We cannot, of course, force the will of others, but we can with the assurance of faith win for others, as for ourselves, the spiritual opportunities, resources, and advantages of God’s kingdom.
There are also many things God has revealed that He does not mean to give us, and there are laws of His ordering, spiritual and physical, that by revelation or natural investigation He has made known. For these things, then, or against these laws, we must not pray; we must not ask that God will violate His general laws in our private interest.
But there is a great mass of things which lie in between these two regions of certainty. We do not know if it is God’s will that this or that person should recover from sickness, or this or that calamity should be averted. God is wiser than we are. We do not know whether it is God’s will that we should have the rain that is so necessary for our crops. There are things like these that lie in a region of uncertainty into which the intelligence of man cannot penetrate. So then as the object of prayer is not to bring the divine will down to the human, but to lift the human up into correspondence with the divine, for all these uncertain things we can pray indeed, but uncertainly—“If it be possible, let this or that come to pass; nevertheless, not my will, but Thine, be done.”