Thy kingdom come: ten sermons on the Lord's prayer...

Preface

'T^HESE Sermons were prepared for the Sun- -** day morning services at King's Chapel with no thought of publication, and lack the careful revision which Mr. Foote always deemed necessary before printing.

Preached after a time of deep experience in his own life, they spoke to those who heard them of the spiritual realities in which he himself had been living; and it is hoped that any who, in quietness, seek to enter into near companionship with this little book, will find in it a like help and blessing.

F. E. F.

Boston, October, 1891.

Contents

SERMON PAGE

I. Lord, Teach us to Pray 9

II. Our Father Which Art in Heaven . 35

II. Our Father Which Art In Heaven

After this manner, therefore, pray ye : Our Father which art in heaven. — Matt. vi. 9.

" A FTER this manner ! " When Christ bids -*■ ^ his followers pray thus, he tells us in substance that the few sentences of the Lord's Prayer are the essence of all prayer. Since prayer addresses God, he teaches us first of all how to think of Him; since prayer speaks to Him of our wants, he teaches us how we are to think of ourselves; and since these things are the very things which most concern us to know, he is really teaching us in this prayer the sum of all theology, as well as how to pray.

The first words of this mighty prayer lift us at once to the highest level.

Christianity has well been called "a dispensation of encouragement." The principles of the gospel and the mighty life of Christ answer through and through to our need to be braced and heartened in the religious life. And what is the breath of life of this Christian Gospel, so alive with hope ? Is it not this, that it is possible for men to know and to love God, as children know their father ? From the Sermon on the Mount to the deep words spoken at the Last Supper, from the whole spirit of his Gospel, and from that one solitary Life which includes all this while it is itself more than all, arises the same voice as the key-note : God, our Father.

It was not always so. When Jesus taught his disciples to call God by that name, he gave them not only the greatest thought, but what was a new thought. Their religion, the religion of the Jews, knew Him by noble names, presented Him in sublime and living conceptions. But in all the references to the Supreme One in the Old Testament, " He is mentioned just seven times as a Father, — five times as the Father of the Hebrew people, twice as sustaining that relation to individuals. Of these two intimations that God is the Father of individual men, one is a promise to David that God will be a Father to his son Solomon ; the other is a prediction that by and by men will pray to God, calling him Father, — a prediction fulfilled in this prayer. For there is no record of any prayer in the Old Testament in which God is addressed as Father." 1 So, then, when Christ taught them to know the Mighty, the Eternal One by that name, he opened to them a new world of tender pieties and warm and living faith.

Yet I suppose that there are many persons who, in the theory of what virtuous living is, reduce religion solely to the practice of good morals, from the fear of mixing with it something ecstatic or extravagant or absurd. Just as our American atmosphere has little of soft haze and transfiguring shadows in it, but is hard and clear in outline, a dazzling overflow of pure, dry light, so our religious climate is unfavorable to anything mysterious, or which transcends the senses ; and there is many a man who has a clear insight into the duties which concern living well on this earth, whose horizon has a per- 1 Washington Gladden.

fectly defined, hard outline, beyond which he does not know or care to go, and which shuts down on this side of the whole range of spiritual duties and affections.

And yet, that we need something more, I suppose that the coolest brain and the most clear-sighted mind among us all would be the quickest to admit. For they ought to know most powerfully how many hindrances stand in the way of our acting as if we were moral machines, which needed only to be wound up for every cog and wheel to run in order. Is it so easy, then, for you to keep the little, petty things of life from marring your peace ? Is it so easy to prevent the unworthiness of those whom you trusted, the selfishness of those whom perhaps you have labored for and sacrificed yourself for, from clouding your faith in human goodness ? Is it so easy to keep your own faith in the law T of goodness, when you are tempted to be unjust, unkind, impure ? There is no one who has really lived at all who does not know that we need the most transforming and empowering motives that can be brought into our souls, just to help us do the least, common thiDg that we have to do every day, rightly and well. The way of the world has too often been the contrary, — narrow the minds that have to do with narrow things ; keep the poor ignorant ; exclude the light from the ground-story of our civilization ; let those who have to do drudgeries do them in a menial spirit. But not so Jesus Christ. He recognizes that the mind will only fulfil the lowest possible task when it has been filled full with the greatest possible thought. And so he calls men, all men, to open their whole being to the transforming possession of the thought of God and what follows therefrom, — love to Him and to His children. That is a mighty phrase of Dr. Chalmers, in which he speaks of " the expulsive power of a great affection." Who is he so poor as not to know something of what that means, — how the love of one human soul for another will drive out the baser passions that lurk like creeping things in the dark recesses of the human spirit ? In the presence of that radiant angel shining with the light of God's countenance, in the love of parent and child, of husband and wife, how do selfishness, hardness, uncleanness, shrink away ! Now, religion would not be religion if it did not give us the greatest affection of all, a supreme spirit, of which these finest and purest earthly relations are signs and illustrations, — something which would bring the most spiritual motive to bear on us in the same way as these highest and best motives in our common life are brought to bear on that to ennoble it. There must be, then, even if you do not understand it, — even if this side of religion seems to you mystical and incomprehensible, — still there must be some real and vital sense in which we can speak of God as our Father. If there are common misconceptions of the nature of the love of God, it behooves us the more to ask what is its real character. If there are practical difficulties in the way of our loving Him, we should seek the more to remove them.

This great spiritual affection which Christ names love to God, so far from being ecstatic or extravagant, is the chief safeguard in religion against excess. It i$ : the very foundation on which all true and rational religion must be built. But it must be admitted that the simple and natural understanding of the great commandment has been rendered far more difficult by the erroneous methods of interpreting it pursued by great schools of Christian theology. And one or another of these partial definitions of what the love of God means do to this hour, I believe, profoundly color the ideas on this subject of many persons who belong to the most modern, most rational schools of thought. We are heirs of the past to a greater degree than we are aware. From the Middle Ages we inherit the unconscious tendency to measure spiritual feeling by extravagance of expression ; from two centuries of New England parentage, an inborn zest for theological subtleties; and either way, we hold too narrow an idea of what this spiritual affection is. We need to go back to Jesus Christ, and look at it in his light. And when we thus bring the New Testament spirit to bear upon the interpretation of the great commandment, we at once find that in its genuine and true and Scriptural sense, love to God is not a mere sentiment dependent upon the happy possession of a glowing temperament, nor only a fervid expression of devout feeling called into being, quickened "by supernatural grace ; these are only special manifestations of it in partial forms.

But underlying them and manifesting itself in many other ways also quite as true and as worthy, it exists as a great persuasive principle of life, vitalizing the whole being in the soul which religion has entered as a power. Jesus Christ does not say, " Thou shalt love Him with all thy heart," and stop there, but " with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind and with all thy strength," — that is, with all that is in you of affection, of spiritual aspiration, of understanding, of active service. Why should we suppose for a moment that love to God is any less wide or less real an affection than love in any of our earthly relations ? Interpret its breadth by these fair and dear ties which you know so well. You do not love your parent or your child with a mere sentiment, pleased with pleasant thoughts about them ; you love them with your life, — the whole of what you are at your best. Perhaps you hardly ever put before yourself in set thoughts whether you love them or not. The affection is too deep and thorough to be thought about or talked about ; it simply is. With your heart, yes ; but with your soul too, for it is the immortal part in them which is closest to you ; with the mind, ever busy with thoughtfulness for them ; with the strength, that where you really love is eager to spend itself in doing something for them. Eeason from this to the quality of love for our Father in heaven. Whether its prevailing character will be emotional or moral, intellectual or practical, will depend on the general bent of the individual, — what we call the personal temperament ; but to all alike it belongs to love Him with what they are.

It is true, indeed, that here we reason only from analogy, and dimly. We cannot reduce to nothing the mystery which separates the human from the Divine. He retires before our thought into the awful depths of His infinite nature. How shall man dare to commune with Him who hideth Himself behind the brightness of the firmament, and whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain ? But we carry this fitting sense of awe too far if we account it impossible in any way to hold communion with Him. For there are yearnings within the soul which were created that they might be satisfied; and unless the signs of His lovingkindness which fill the world of every one of us called forth an answering feeling, we should be dull of heart indeed. In whatever other ways the intercourse of the human spirit with the Infinite Spirit differs from that of man with man, it does so not least in this, — that the eye, the voice, the hand, which are so large a part of your friend, are absent when you hold converse with the Father of spirits " in spirit and in truth." But it may be a far closer, more real relation than that which you hold to your friend when absent. Though the farthest seas roll between, and for years you have been parted, you love him, you shape your life with reference to him.

It would be strange if it were impossible to do as much w T hen it is with Him who filleth all things, and reads and knows your most hidden thought, that you have to do,

In one regard, indeed, this spiritual attitude toward the Supreme Euler of our life and Father of our spirits has a manifest advantage over your love for your friend. There is something in the personal visible presence of one you care for, which forbids any analysis of character. You do not half know the person whom you love. Seldom do you appreciate the qualities wrapped up in a beloved person until the stern messenger comes who takes away your companion, though it be with strong crying and tears, and leaves you with what was really your friend, — the character for the first time truly known.

But this personal attitude of love and trust toward God as our Father in heaven must always be largely and may be almost wholly manifested toward the qualities of the Divine nature. It has to do with the affections and principles of our nature in their highest sense.

It is an attitude of the whole being, " heart and soul and mind and strength," toward the qualities which are attributes of God. And so we have a right to say that many a soul, by recognizing and obeying as Divine impulses those noble instincts which God has implanted in every human heart, has been loving Him even though it knew it not. When, for example, men have been loyal to the natural sense of justice which bade them deal honorably with their neighbor, it shows that they love a quality which eternally belongs to the Holy and Just One. Or when they are obedient to that higher hospitality which ministers to the needy, the oppressed, the forsaken, they show their love for that principle of love which is the very heart of God's own nature. You are faithful, perhaps, in the plain tasks of your common domestic cares, bringing with them the spirit of self-surrender, and receiving them as opportunities sent you by your Heavenly Father ; you have learned something of the secret which so transfigures trial and privation as to make them even set off by their dull foil the beauty of faithful character. Is not this some sign of childlike love for His character and of trust in the fatherly dealings of Him who "maketh everything beautiful in His time " ?

Yes ! it is a divine, a blessed decree, that in obeying the best impulse of the heart towards what is holy and good and true, we are led into sympathy with Him in whom all perfections are in their fulness.

The relation of the child with the Father is something more, when it is perfected, when it comes to the knowledge of itself, than loyal affection for the abstract qualities which are in the Divine Being. In order that the religion of our lives may be kindled into a living flame, we need to feel that these qualities exist in a Person whom we can call by the fatherly name, of whom we may dare to think with the filial thought. The affection which we feel for Justice or Truth or Love, as abstract principles, is but cold in comparison with that for One who is just and true and loving.

So we come to see the force of those words of our prayer, " which art." The need of our lives and of our souls is to feel a living conviction of the real and living Being of God, as the One in whom existence is in all its fulness, — not One simply for us to read of or to hear of, but to know as the Person without whom the universe would be empty for us, without whom we could not live, in whom we shall find all beside that we love and long for, — Our Father, the Living God.

If we can but know Him as that, if we can but love Him as that, what a meaning will it not put upon the face of all things !

The cry of the soul is always for the Living God. And what is every breathing forth of our desire for succors from the unseen source of strength, but a witness that He is one who will answer ? Is there nothing which speaks with proof of the attributes and the character of the Father of pity and God of all comfort in these voices of the soul ? The earnest longing of the spirit newly roused to the sense that it is His child, the plaintive supplication of the wounded heart in the freshness of a great sorrow, the upliftings which sometimes visit the soul like a tidal wave and sweep it on their surging crest to spiritual thoughts far beyond its reach at common times, — to deny that these things witness to God is to strike a blow at the truth of human consciousness. Only they who have never felt these experiences can doubt their power of revelation.

The heart that glows with the new love of a regenerated child of God knows Him; the eyes that look upward through tears, see beyond the veil that hides Him from us ; the soul that reaches out after heaven lays hold on that which it seeks. There are moments in such spiritual life when the soul seems to pass beyond the boundaries of space and time, and feels that it touches the Infinite Presence, and can even understand some hint of the meaning of our Saviour when he said, "I and my Father are one."

If you have gone thus far with me, you will feel that each word in this great sentence of our prayer is full of light, which to fully focus for us would ask more time for each word than we have here together. Let us look at them only briefly, then, before I close.

Mr. Maurice has well said that " much of the practical difficulty of the prayer lies in the first word of it. How can we look round on the people whom we habitually feel to be separated from us by almost impassable barriers, . . . and then teach ourselves to think that in the very highest exercise of our lives they are associated with us ; that when we pray w T e are praying for them and with them ; that we cannot speak for ourselves without speaking for them ; that if we do not carry their sins to the throne of God's grace, we do not carry our own ; that all the good we hope to obtain there belongs to them just as much as to us. . . . Yet all this is included in the word 'our;' till we have learned so much we are but spelling at it, we have not learned to pronounce it."

Have we so learned, any one of us, dear friends ? Tor if we have hard thoughts about any in our hearts ; if we find it difficult to hold them graciously and tenderly in our remembrance as we rise to the great thought of God; if we fail to grasp the sublime conception of "the whole family in heaven and earth " which is named of Him, we can hardly pass this portal of our Lord's Prayer into the deeper meaning of the sanctuary within. We do not really pray to Him unless we are willing to kneel, as it were, on the outer step of His temple, beside the publican and the sinner. We can hardly dare to call him Father, unless we will also call them our brethren.

But there is not only a lesson of humility and of charity for us when we begin to say " Our Father, " — there is infinite hope and cheer. For if we all come together before him, we may well feel upborne by the praying might of all who are higher than we on the shining ladder that leads to the foot of His throne, — His saints and faithful children, all that great company who are joined in the praises of the Te Deum.

If our prayers for ourselves form a part of the Divine government of the individual, our prayers for one another surely must form a part of the Divine government of society.

Be not afraid to lift your thought of those you love, your care for them, into the light of God's presence. To pray for them is often the only thing you can do for them. And surely the scope of these opening words of this great prayer does not stop at the horizon-line between earth and heaven. If there be any petition in it which God's angels do not need to utter, it is not these words, "Our Father." Dante represents the great company of the redeemed whom he saw in his vision of Paradise bursting forth in this prayer together. They are the only human words great enough and high enough for us to imagine on those purified lips. But we can think — and we have a right to think — that through that prayer, blending us even with their thought of God, they reach out to us to lift our need into His light. Shall we not also feel that we can blend them too with our deepest prayer, — that our love and our sorrow can reach up after them and find them in His presence, and can ask for them and win for them more of His light, more of His peace?

Our Father Wliich Art in Heaven. 53

" Our Father which art in heaven." The closing words of this name by which we know Him are surely not the least part of our knowledge. " In heaven," — how the clear shining of that thought dissipates like a beam of morning light all the mists of darkness which have gathered about low and unworthy conceptions of what God is ! All the old idols fell from their altars at this word wliich reveals the Living God dwelling in light, inaccessible and full of glory. Is the peril wholly past with any of us ? Do you never set up an* image in your own heart, of wealth or power or success or pleasure, and worship it? For if you do, let your prayer to your Father in heaven tone your soul to a worthier worship. If the real prayer of your soul, if that to which you really bend your life, is less than the loftiest and purest and holiest vision to which you can lift your thought, it is not the Being, awful in height and purity, whom Christ teaches us to name Our Father. "Who art in heaven." We may not know where heaven is ; to figure forth its glories in our poor human speech, or even to shadow them forth in our dim thought, we may not dare. But we know that where God is, heaven is. There is something of it in every pure soul, in every faithful life. The holy ones who have passed from such a life here have "breathed free the blessed air of heaven, and knew their native air." And we are called to rise to this level of desire and hope. " Beloved," says the Apostle, " now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be ; but we know that when He shall appear we shall be like Him ; for we shall see Him as he is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as He is pure."

HALLOWED BE THY NAME.

m.

HALLOWED BE THY NAME.

Hallowed he thy name. — Matt. vi. 9.

TVTAMES have a deeper connection with - " things than we sometimes think. There was a time in the earlier ages of the life of the human family when the name of any object had a living interest attaching to it. It fitted naturally to that thing which it described. The same novelty and beauty which men saw in the universe into which the race was newly born to consciousness and knowledge of itself, sparkled and shone in the speech which described these transcendent wonders. Language has become common now. We use words as counters of convenience. Only when we pause and reflect upon it do we realize that the counters are of pure gold. The science of language, by tracing the mutations of human speech and the laws by which they are governed, has gone far with its students to restore to words their primitive freshness. But in our usual use they are still rusted over with commonness.

With the names of persons the case is very different. Here the instinct of individuality preserves the name as in some sort sacred. A man cannot change his name at will, to suit his own pleasure. He who forges the signature of another is a criminal in the eye of the law. The name is a part of the very self.

Thus we are led to understand the connection of religion with the words which are the expression of its mighty thoughts. What philology does for the phrase of our daily speech, what the strong instinct of individuality does for the personal name, — exactly that, only in a far more eminent degree, religion does for its own great words in the forms of language which it uses. It fills them out with their own true fulness of meaning.

The name of sin expresses the awful power of evil, involving unutterable suffering to those who fall beneath its dominion ; the name of soul expresses all the vast, mysterious endowments which are wrapped up in our spiritual nature ; the name of our Lord Jesus Christ expresses the power of his religion, x the vital spiritual force which renders the truths of religion operative upon the human heart (as the great phrase of the fathers has it), the saving power of the gospel of Christ. You cannot separate these in your thought from him in whom the principles of Christianity were inseparably bound up. And the Supreme Name of all, the Awful Name of God, expresses the souls idea of infinite power and wisdom and love, — all those attributes which inhere in our thought of the Euler of the Universe, allwise, all-powerful, all-holy, and all-good.

We can see, then, why it is that our Saviour, in teaching his disciples to pray, should make them ask, as their very first request, something connected with this Name, — that is to say, with this supreme thought of God. There are other things which are good for us, necessary for us, which, on our usual theory of what prayer is, we should begin by asking for.

60 Halloived he Thy Name.

What can we ask for more urgently than that without which we should starve, — the bread of each day, whose food we must have to keep us in the life of this body ; the bread of the mind, whose sweet and wholesome thoughts we must have to nourish us ; the bread of the heart, to sustain us with love and comfort us with the solace of dear companionships ; the bread of the soul, to be ennobled by high, devout thoughts, and to feel that we are growing purer, better ? This on one side of our need; and then yet deeper, more intense, the cry of the spirit, in its bitter sense of shortcoming and sinfulness, for pardon and reconciliation. Sooner than the very food without which we die, give me, — is the prayer of the soul, — give me some promise that I shall be lifted out of this slough of despond at my own weakness and wanderings from God ; lift a light upon me which shall show me the way I can walk in, and roll off from me the burdens which hinder me therein.

Give me and forgive me ; these two petitions are the substance of liturgies and prayers, — the natural asking of the soul when it passes out from the chambers of self-content and seeks to enter the presence of the All-Giver by the portal of prayer. And Christ recognizes by and by, a little later, in this great prayer of his, that these needs are true, that only God can satisfy them, that their cry to Him is right and fit. Only, he says, not yet, not yet. You must begin on a higher plane even than your own consciousness of your need, if you will save your need from degenerating into a self-absorbed and self-seeking cry. We can be selfish even in our prayers. How many Te Deums have been sung in great cathedrals for victory over one's enemies, in utter forgetfulness of this truth ! How many Christian men have prayed in health and wealth long to live, and have really begun and ended all that was genuine in their prayers with that! How many have even besought forgiveness of their Maker, not so much from love to Him and desire to be in accord with His perfect law of righteousness, as from a sense of personal discomfort, and a desire to have it removed !