Sermons on the Lord's Prayer.

SERMON I.

MATT. vi, 9.

66 AFTER THIS MANNER THEREFORE PRAY YE, OUR FATHER WHICH ART IN HEAVEN."

E who has learned to pray as he ought," said the excellent Bishop Wilson, "has got the secret of a holy life." Nor is it difficult to see how this must be the case. A life is holy when it is according to God's will and word; when the heart and mind are framed in humble imitation of that Saviour, who came into the world not only to die, but to live in all the circumstances of life, for us. We must act up to His pure rule of conduct, but we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves." We must "work out our own salvation with fear

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and trembling; but it is God who worketh in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure."* His grace is sufficient for us; and it will be given, for so has He promised, given in answer to all those who ask it, and thus to the very asking itself He has attached the blessing of obedience.

Our "Father knoweth what things we have need of, before we ask Him." But He hath not therefore made it less incumbent upon us to ask. Ask and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you."+ Such are His promises. And it is not only because He has thus commanded us to approach His presence, that our thoughts, our hopes, our desires, our aspirations must be clothed in words; but also because the very intention of prayer doth calm and purify our hearts, and render them more capable of receiving those divine gifts, which spiritually are poured into them.‡ For God heareth us not for the importunity of our prayers, God, who is ever ready to give to us of His spiritual light, though we are not always ready to receive, when our inclination bends to other things,

Cf. St. Augustin de Serm. Dom. in Monte, ii, 3.

and our souls are darkened by the desire of worldly advantages. In prayer then there is a turning of the heart to Him who is ever ready to give, if we would but receive that which he offers; and in that turning there is also a purifying of the inner eye,the side lights as it were of this earth are shut out,— the heart's own vision becomes gradually inured to the simple, pure effulgence of heaven, and at length the image of God becomes impressed upon the mind, so that it not only is ever before us as the form of perfection which we have to imitate, but His saints in their inmost souls become moulded after His likeness, approaching even on earth the image of the heavenly, which they must wear hereafter, and to prepare for which may form no small portion of our probation here.

Most blessed privilege of prayer, in which the eternal Word found the solace for His weariness, and the strength to resist temptation even while He sojourned in this earthly tabernacle! What marvel that He who knew our wants, our weakness, and our misery, should, when he bade us come unto His Father, have left us a form in which " we may come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain

mercy and find grace to help us in the time of need.*

Nor is it once only that He has done this. Not only in the Sermon on the Mount did He teach the acceptable words, but on another and very different occasion, as St. Luke testifies,t "He was praying in a certain place, and when he had ceased, one of his disciples said unto Him, Lord, teach us how to pray as John also taught his disciples." And as He had before said, “ After this manner therefore pray ye," so now He gave the like injunction, "when ye pray, say, Our Father,

which art in Heaven.”

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It is on this form of address, the introductory invocation to the seven petitions in which is summed all that man can ask, that I wish now to speak. May the Holy Spirit grant us all some portion of the power required to see the deep and pregnant meaning of every clause as in turn it passes beneath our contemplation! Then shall a blessing rest indeed upon this solemn season in which we have to prepare ourselves to commemorate the great mystery of Godliness,-God manifest in the flesh, + Luke xi, 1, 2.

* Heb. iv, 16.

that He might be sacrificed in the flesh, and having been so sacrificed, might rise again for our justification.

OUR FATHER. Such is the name by which the Almighty has encouraged, nay bidden us to address Him. It is not, perhaps, quite true in the broad way that St. Augustin makes the statement that our God did not reveal Himself in this light unto Israel. True, in no slight degree they were in bondage under the law, spoken of as servants rather than as sons. The Evangelical Prophet himself speaking in the Spirit, could generally find no dearer name by which to address his people even when called upon to encourage them. "Thou, Israel, art my servant, fear not."* "Hear, O Jacob my servant, and Israel whom I have chosen : thus saith the Lord that made thee, and formed thee from the womb, which will help thee, fear not, O Jacob, my servant, and thou, Jesurun, whom I have chosen." Similar instances might be almost indefinitely multiplied from the Old Testament.‡ But even the very passage which has been cited,

* Isaiah xli, 8

+ Isaiah xliv, 1, 2. Thus Isaiah xlv, 4.-Jerem. xxx, 10.—Ezek. xxviii, 25.