English
Then, lest human images should mislead us, and we should forget soberness in prayer, we are reminded that God is our Father in heaven. Here might come in all your reasonings about time and place and limit, as inapplicable to that which is above, and beyond, and before them. But in the Hebrew prophets it is also written, Do not I Jill heaven and earth f saith the Lord'\, Nor is any doctrine more fundamental to Christians than that ^God is a spirit : and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.' We therefore transplant the Divine presence into thought, no less than yourselves ; but how could we convey to others an impression of the ineffable majesty, except through words which have images to the senses ? You have spoken of Sioarga, when you meant rather blessedness. So I suppose, our own Master, in teaching us to say, * Our Father, which art in heaven,' meant to invest the great God with every attribute of tenderness and sublimity, bringing Him near to sustain us, but leaving Him far off to understand. Thus if Christian faith has confidence, it has also reverence. " We see this more in the second petition : Hallouoed he thy name. The Law had forbidden to lift up the name of the Lord • Ml. ii. 10. t Jer. xxiii. 24. 326 god's holiness. over falsehood. But the Christian prayer teaches more widely that Grod is in Himself the Holy One, and that what belongs to Him should be hallowed. With such a feeling we become fiiUy aware of His presence ; and since from this and from His govern- ment nothing is excluded, so all things assume in one sense a consecration in so far as they do what He intended them for, and in another sense are subordinated, so that we dare not give them what belongs to Him. In His light we see light, and all things put on their proper forms and bearings. This petition then renders needless both the second commandment of the Jews, and the two next which followed it : for we cannot while we gaze mentally on the Eternal Spirit, and bear His image in ourselves, bow down to idols of wood or stone, nor can we, even though not uttering His name, speak falsely within the illimit- able range of His consciousness, seeing that He is the eternal Truth ; nor can we either think one day in itself holier than another, since all days are the Lord's ; nor yet can we forget those blessed ends of quietness and thoughtfulness and prayer, for which one day was of old consecrated, and for which it may be convenient that pious consent should persuade us still to make fit occasions. But we carry everywhere and always, with the echo of this prayer in our heart, an aversion to whatever worldly thing would blind us to the most Holy Spirit, and a rever- ence for truth, and a consecration of all our time and thought. And as the Jew set some things apart to be called holy by outward consecration, we make all things holy inwardly, and then leave them to be naturally called so. Nor yet is this extension of sanctity a thing of gloom ; for He who loves us, and calls Him- self our Father, and who gives even the kitten its play and the bird its song, leaves to our manhood as well as to our childhood whatever refreshment is innocently wholesome. Only, as inno- cence is but for a short time and imperfectly the lot of men, so they learn to deepen it with watchfulness into holiness. So the Christian prayer fulfils more widely the prophetic tendency of the old Hebrew precept, both having come from one Holy FAITH IN god's KINGDOM AND WILL. 327 Spirit, but the riper growth having a deeper drinking into His meaning. Our life has become a sabbath, and our heart an altar, and the whole world a temple, in which the living God dwells. " Our two next petitions are, Thy kingdom come; thy will he done in earth, as it is in heaven. Here especially comes out that great principle of faith, which is the mainspring of Christianity. For here we are led beyond things visible which surround us with imperfection, into the thought of things intended, and to come. The first petition deals more with morality, or doing right to man, and the second more with religion, or the love of Grod. We cannot pray either of them rightly, so long as violence and fraud and superstition and sin and pain seem to us truly natural, or as having a divinely-appointed place in the world of God. They both imply that the higher and more blessed thought of our Maker is destined to overcome all hinderances, or to vanquish every enemy, by shaping the course of things seen more into the harmony of things eternal. The tyrant must not always oppress; the slave must one day go free; the worship of the Father of our spirits must not for ever be mingled with lies ; ignorance must not cover the nations ; men must not by sin entail suffering and shame, and charge their own short- comings on the design of Him that made them : but freedom and truth and peace must go forth evolving themselves, and conquering, with subordination only to the law of the Highest Being ; and the knowledge of whatsoever things are pure and amiable and of good report, must cover our earth, as the waters cover the sea. Then truly God will reign, not in visible pomp of earthly monarch, but by pervading men's thoughts with a knowledge of truth, and a willing obedience to right. The coming of such a kingdom we pray, and by praying bind our- selves to strive for. Thus by faith we vanquish the imperfec- tions of sight, and become fellow-workers with a most loving Master in bringing about that good of men, which He desires, and which will turn to His glory. In some such hope of faith 328 FAITH IX god's kingdom and will. the Apostles of old went forth preaching, the prophets spoke tmths which the world will not let die, and all holy sufferers for righteousness' sake have fought a good fight Thus they have thrown a fire upon earth which has not been quenched, and their winged thoughts have been seeds in the minds of men. But it is especially in the second of these two petitions that we rise by £Eiith out of the region of sense, into that of pure mind. We here see as it were, though we speak in simple words, those heavenly shapes after which earthly beauty is moulded, of which Plato in his parables spake ; for we conceive of the holiest will of Grod as having thoughts creative of good, and as forecasting happiness with right in His world ; and in whatever degree the largeness of the scale, or the clash of relations, and impedi- ment of circumstance, or, not least, the perversity of evil spirits working in men, may have prevented the good design from coming to perfection — like rugged marble which has not obeyed the shaping hand of the sculptor — we pray to God that all these things may be overcome, and that He would not cease working, until all His thought comes to light in act, and the trial of truth ends in victory. Doubtless, by such prayer we help for- ward the design in at least ourselves ; for we become more con- scious of the fitness of obeying the holiest dominion, and the madness of resisting it even in thought. Those who pray such prayers so as to mould their own mind in like shape, have no need of any of the remaining commandments of the Jews; for they could neither dishonour parents, nor violate life, or marriage, or property, or good name, without sinning against the manifest design of our Maker, and tampering with the play of the better motives, which He has appointed fruitful tendencies to good. Their life has regard to all such sanctities, because it has at heart a seed of living law which compels them by love. "But until the kingdom ftilly come, since things which oppose it are not evil in their own essence, but become so by misapplication, or confrision of relation, so we trust that Grod will overrule even the working of these to good. Thus INDIAN ANALOGIES. 329 of pain, the capacity of which most be coextensive with that of pleasure, we trust that it is often a remedy, or at least a warning. Perhaps even sin*, though it must have remorse before it can be healed, yet is bound up with the knowledge of good as well as of evil, the tree which bears two opposites having one stem ; and at least of all other things, except sin, we hope that their seeming clash will be harmonised, and the play of opposites be a development of what is best.