Expositions of Holy Scripture Volume I Part 39

3. That its scope and direction are to be determined by His name. All these thoughts are included in this, that it is the will of a loving, good G.o.d, the will of a Father.

How that destroys all harsh, awful ideas such as those of a stony fate, or a cold necessity, or an omnipotent tyrant, or an inscrutable sovereign.

How Christianity has been affected by these ideas--extreme Calvinism, for instance; but it is more profitable to think how the tendency to them lies in us all.

II. Obedience is the issue of all religion.

The knowledge of the name, and the hallowing of it must go first. Note--

1. How inward the nature of obedience is. This sequence of pet.i.tions s.h.i.+fts the centre from without to within, from actions to dispositions.

2. How nothing is obedience that is not cheerful and loving. Not constrained, not sullen, not task-work.

3. How naturally dominant over all life the principles of G.o.d's truth are. Let them be known, and all the rest will follow. They have power to control all acts, great and small.

4. How impossible practical righteousness is without religion. The Name is the true basis of morality. We hear a great deal about life rather than creed; the Gospel is both. The one foundation of theoretical and practical morals is the will of G.o.d.

5. How maimed and spurious is religion without practical obedience.

Religion in the form of thought and of emotion is intended to influence life.

The ultimate result of G.o.d's revelation of Himself and of G.o.d's kingdom among men is the conformity of our life and actions with the Will of G.o.d. That is the test of our religion. Character and conduct are all important. Here is a lesson for us all as to what the final issue of religious profession ought to be. Knowledge of G.o.d, true reverent thoughts of Him, submission in spirit to His kingdom--all these have for their final sphere the full sanctification of the nature and the free, spontaneous obedience of the life. We are all tempted to separate between our consciousness and emotions of a religious nature, and our daily life. Many a man is a good Christian in his heart, with real religious feeling, but when you get him into the field of the world he is full of sins. There must always be a disproportion in this world between convictions, resolutions, and actions; we imperfectly live out our principles; the force of gravity pulls down the arrow, and however true the bow and careful the aim and strong the hand, its course will be a curve, not a straight line.

Our machinery does not work in vacuo, and the force of friction and atmosphere opposes it and brings it to a standstill. This must be; but the discrepancy may be indefinitely lessened, and this prayer is a prophecy and kindles a hope.

III. Obedience is the sum of all Christ's desires for the world.

This is the last loftiest pet.i.tion, beyond that there is nothing, for if our wills are conformed to G.o.d's, then we are perfect and blessed.

1. The loftiest dignity of man is to obey. We have will: G.o.d has will.

Ours is evidently meant to submit, His to rule. He only is what he ought to be whose whole soul bows to the divine command.

2. The will submitted to G.o.d is free, strong, restful. He does not desire that it should be crushed or absorbed, but freely acting in obedience. That will is truly free which is delivered from bondage, and the burden of sin and evil. Submission to G.o.d strengthens the will. Sin overbears it, as we all know. Obedience braces and nerves it. Submission to G.o.d makes it restful. It is the conflict of self-will which troubles us. Peace is to will as G.o.d does; so He flows through us, and He is 'the living will that shall endure.'

3. The results of obedience will be perfect blessedness.

G.o.d'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 inst.i.tutions. 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 pet.i.tion 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 G.o.d. 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 G.o.d 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 pet.i.tion, then, is a revelation as well. For the doing of G.o.d'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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d and with one another, and one purpose, and one will, and one love fills the whole creation!

The pet.i.tion 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.

THE CRY FOR BREAD

'Give us this day our daily bread.'--MATT. vi. 11.

What a contrast there is between the two consecutive pet.i.tions, 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 pet.i.tion 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 const.i.tute a fitting introduction to our remarks now. We have already seen how the former pet.i.tions const.i.tute 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d.

Prayer is not merely communion with G.o.d, 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 G.o.d, but that it should be the recognition of our dependence on G.o.d, 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 pet.i.tions 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 pa.s.ses 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 G.o.d'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 pa.s.sing from want to trespa.s.s, 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 G.o.d. 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 G.o.d, 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.'

Now looking at this pet.i.tion in itself, I note--

I. The prayer for Bread.

This contains first an important lesson as to what may be legitimately the subject of our prayers.

The Lord by this juxtaposition condemns the overstrained and fantastic spiritualism which tramples down earthly wants and condemns desires rooted in our physical nature as sin. It is a wonderful testimony from Jesus of the worth of common gifts, that the desire for them should here stand beside that great one for the doing of G.o.d's will. There is nothing here of the false asceticism which undervalues the life which now is, nothing of the morbid tone of feeling which despises and condemns as sinful the due appreciation of and desire for the blessings of this life. To give predominance to material wants and earthly good is heathen and unchristian, therefore the pet.i.tion for these follows the others. But to despise them and pretend to be indifferent to them is heathen and unchristian too; therefore the prayer for them finds its place among the others. So the right understanding of this prayer is a barrier against the opposite evils of a false sensuousness which forgets the spirit that is in the flesh, and of a false spirituality which forgets the flesh that is around the spirit. He who made us desire truth in the inward parts, made us also to desire our daily bread, and we observe His order when we do both, and seek the Kingdom of G.o.d, not exclusively, but first.

And not only is this pet.i.tion the vindication of a healthy naturalism, but it also shows us that we may rightly make prayers of our desires for earthly things.

We sometimes hear it said that we have only a right to ask G.o.d for such gifts as holiness and conformity to His will. This has a truth, a great truth, in it. But it may be overstrained. We are to subdue our wishes, we are to be more anxious for our soul's health than for our bodily wants. We are to present our desires concerning all things in this life, with an implied 'if it be Thy will,' but while all that is true, we are also to ask Him for these lower blessings. Our prayers should include all which we desire, all which we need. Our desires should be such as we can turn into prayers. If we dare not ask G.o.d for a thing, do not let us seek for it. But whatever we do want, let us go to Him for it, and be sure that He does not wish lip homage and fine-sounding pet.i.tions for things for which we do not really care, but that He does desire that we should be frank with Him, making a prayer of every wish, and seeing that we have neither wishes which we dare not make prayers, nor prayers which are not really wishes. Let our supplications cover all the ground of our daily wants, and be true to our own souls. If any man lack anything, let him ask of G.o.d, who giveth to all men life and breath and all things.

Then still further--the prayer is the recognition of G.o.d as the Giver of daily bread.

'Thou openest Thine hand,' says the old psalm, 'and satisfiest the desire of every living thing.' There is no part of the divine dealings of which the Bible speaks more frequently and more lovingly than His supply of all creatures' wants. It is a grand thought, 'Who feedeth the young ravens when they cry, who maketh the gra.s.s to grow on the mountains. The eyes of all wait upon Thee.' There is a magnificent verse in the 104th Psalm, which regards even the roar of the lion prowling for its prey in midnight forests as a cry to G.o.d--'The young lions seek their meat from G.o.d.' As Luther says somewhere in his rough prose--'Even to feed the sparrows G.o.d spends more than the revenues of the French king would buy.' And that universal bounty applies truly to those whose lot is 'In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread.' For us it is true. G.o.d feeds _us_. 'Thou givest meat to them that fear Thee, Thou wilt ever be mindful of Thy covenant.' In giving us our daily bread, His hand is hid under second causes, but these should not mask the truth from us.

G.o.d is the life of nature. His will is the power whose orderly working we call nature's laws. Force is the sign manual of G.o.d. There would be no harvest, no growth, unless to each seed G.o.d gave a body as it hath pleased Him. The existence of bread is the effect of His work. 'He hath not left Himself without witness in that He giveth rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.' as Paul said to the rough farmer folk of Lycaonia.

The distribution of the bread is of G.o.d.

By second causes, our work and other means.

Be it so. Here is a steam engine, in one room away at one end of your mill; here is a spindle whirring five hundred yards off. What then? Who thinks that that bit of belting moves the drum round which it turns, or that the cog-wheel that carries the motion originates it? The motion here has force at the other end, the effect here has its cause in G.o.d.

The nourishment by bread is of G.o.d.

'Man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of G.o.d.'