CHRISTIAN MEDITATIONS by Dr W R Matthews. A Daily Telegraph Publication. First issued May 1974 © The Daily Telegraph. Prepared for katapi by Paul Ingram 2018.
Walter Robert Matthews (1881-1973), educated at the Universary of London, was ordained to the ministry of the Church of England 1907. He was Dean of King's College London and Professor of the Philosophy of Religion 19218-32. Dean of Exeter 1931-34 and Dean of St Paul's 1934-67.
|| CHRISTIAN MEDITATIONS | background—matthew ch.6 (NEB) || the lord's prayer | who art in heaven | the hallowed name | thy kingdom come | thy will be done | as it is in heaven | our eternal bread | forgive us our debts | as we forgive | into temptation | deliver us from evil | the power and the glory |
Our Father which art in heaven St Matthew's Gospel Ch. 6, 9-13 Authorised Version. |
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"OUR Father who art in heaven," we pray, and the words run trippingly off our tongues, but when we think about them they raise questions in our minds.
Only the very simple could take the words quite literally as if they were the address of the Being to whom we are speaking.
No doubt there was a time when men thought of God as dwelling in a palace above the sky, but when the idea of God has become refined and deepened such conceptions are inadequate.
The phrase in the Lord's prayer gives us a symbol.
It is indeed a necessary symbol and one which we cannot safely discard.
However sophisticated we may be, we all think in pictures when our emotions, or our will, are engaged, and it seems natural to the human mind to represent in imagination all that has value as "higher" than that which has no value.
We speak of "lofty" thoughts and "elevated principles," so that it is logical to describe the Being to whom we attribute the greatest value and goodness as the "Most High," the "Supreme Being."
The New Testament indicates that we should be aware of the limitations of this symbolic manner of addressing the Father, for it plainly asserts the incomprehensible nature of God who dwells "in light inaccessible."
St. Paul quotes with agreement the words of a Greek philosopher.
"In Him we live and move and have our being."
Space cannot contain Him, and its dimensions have no meaning when applied to Him.
When we think, as we must, in our human way of God in heaven we should also think that it would be more true to say that heaven is in God.
WHY THEN are the words "who art in the heaven" important; why would it be a mistake to omit them ?
The answer is that, in a pictorial manner, they bring before us an essential aspect of the Christian belief in God—His transcendence.
The child-like imagery of the Creator seated on tin- throne of heaven from which He surveys His creation brings out the idea that the Creator is distinct from the creation.
And this is important, for there are religions and philosophies which obscure or deny the distinction.
"Pantheism" is the name for all systems which confuse Creator and created.
When the great Spinoza writes, "Natura sive Deus," Nature or God, he is departing from his ancestral Jewish faith, and at the same time from the Christian view that nature is neither divine nor self-explanatory, but depends upon God.
But we may go to the opposite extreme and think of God as wholly separate from and outside the world, resembling a man who makes a clock and sets it going and then lets it run on by itself.
The name for this type of error is "Deism" and it is even more unfortunate in its consequence than Pantheism, for it leads to the notion of an absentee God.
THE SUBSEQUENT petitions of the Lord's prayer show that the aloof Deity of Deism is very far from the mind of its author.
If He thinks of the Father as distinct from the world he also thinks of Him as caring for it and at work within it.
We worship a God who is transcendent
so that nothing in our experience,
or within the range of our understanding,
can be more than a faint approximation to His glory and majesty,
and we pray also to one who is very near to us, around us and within us always.
To use the language of the learned, the God whom Christians worship is both "transcendent" and "immanent."
"HALLOWED be thy name"; the phrase is more than an honorific expression, a kind of compliment which we pay to God before we address our petitions to Him;
it is itself a petition that He will sanctify His name by causing His will to be done on earth and that we, in our thoughts and acts, may have part in that sanctification.
To understand this clause in the Lord's Prayer we have to shift our view of the nature of names from the commonplace modern idea that proper names are simply arbitrary labels to the Biblical idea that the real name of anyone or anything would convey the nature of the person or thing.
This is not so difficult when we reflect that most of our surnames originally told something about the individuals who bore them.
"Smith" indicated a man's trade, "Matthews" that he was the son of Matthew.
Thus the "name" of God in the Bible stands for the nature and being of God, and to be baptised "into the name of Christ" means to be incorporated into His body and to be an organ of His activity.
Obviously if, in our modern way, we regard a name as nothing more than a label it does not matter very much what personal appellation we assign to God—"Jehovah, Jove or Lord"—but it matters profoundly what we believe the nature of the Divine to be.
IT IS noteworthy that in the New Testament we find a more expressive manner of naming God coming into use.
He has, as it were, a "new name" in the light of the revelation in Christ.
St. Paul can think of no higher title than "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ";
St. John says, quite simply, "God is love and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God."
From this standpoint we can see that the "hallowing of the name" has a genuine relevance to our spiritual life.
In Charles Wesley's great poem, "Wrestling Jacob," the object of Jacob's struggle is to discover the secret name of the divine being who contends with him, but in the final stanza the poet goes beyond his Old Testament text and the secret is revealed in the cry, "Thy nature and thy name is love."
To hallow God's name is to think of Him always in the terms of our highest experience and noblest concepts.
We dis-hallow Him when we represent Him as an unreasonable tyrant, or a cruel taskmaster;
we "sanctify His holy Name" when we contemplate Him as eternal truth, justice, beauty and, most difficult of all, eternal Love.
BUT THE hallowing of the name does not consist only in having right ideas about God; it spreads out from idea to being and to action.
We are to become, in the bold New Testament phrase, "partakers of the divine nature," reflecting in ourselves and in our lives the being of the God whom we revere in our minds.
Nor again does the hallowing end with the obedience of the individual.
"Hallowed be thy name" is closely connected with the following petition: "Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done."
When we really follow out the consequences of the prayer that our Father's name may be sanctified we cannot rest with the cultivation of our own spiritual garden, even though it be a garden of the Lord; we must be actively engaged, committed to the service of the Kingdom of God in the world, so that, in the words of an ancient Jewish prayer, "His great name may be magnified and sanctified in the world which He has created."
"THY Kingdom come" is the central petition in the Lord's
Prayer, the theme on which all else centres.
It is the prayer of those who have been, as it were, already enlisted that the Kingdom may come in power "as it is in heaven."
We may note what the prayer does not say.
We are not taught to ask that we may be enabled to bring in God's reign.
We often hear petitions of this kind and I do not suggest that they are wrong, for
after all St. Paul asserts that we may be "workers together with God,"
but in the New Testament the emphasis is always on what God is doing and will do, and this the note of the Lord's prayer— only God can bring in the Kingdom.
To modern men this is a hard saying.
The triumphs of human reason and inventiveness have induced in us an intoxicating sense of man's power and we begin to think that soon he will be master of his fate and able to create such a wonderful Kingdom of Man that we need not concern ourselves with the Kingdom of God.
From the standpoint of the Bible and of the Christian understanding of the human predicament, this is a delusion which could lead to disaster, for man without God is powerless to create any good that will endure.
I AM writing these words at a time when many are praying for the United Nations and no doubt they will, quite rightly, connect this with the petition that God's reign may come on earth, but do we take seriously enough the belief, which we all hold, that without God we can do nothing?
The general opinion seems to be that the United Nations will prosper if enough "men of good will" can be persuaded to take an interest in it, whether they believe in God or not.
No one ought to despise such hopes or doubt that many who do not profess any religious creed are in fact trying to serve God, but there is only too much reason to fear that vague good will is not enough.
So few seem to be able to continue to be of good will all the time.
What Christians call man's sinfulness is a fact to be reckoned with.
High ideals, rational and just plans for co-operation, are relatively easy to conceive, but the steady and unfaltering execution of them lags behind.
How often in the past have movements which began with high and unselfish aims degenerated into "rackets" or tyrannies!
Pride, narrow self-interest, laziness, cowardice and pessimism have corroded them until they were not a deliverance but an offence.
GENUINE RELIGIOUS faith is the only creative power that can redeem humanity from confusion and fear.
And this is a bitter truth in our present situation, for who would look with confidence to a disunited Church for the spiritual power to give life to the United Nations?
It is not that we need agreement in doctrine or organic unity;
we can do without these, though they are much to be desired;
but what we cannot do without, if the Christian Church is to help humanity to move towards peace and security, is the unity of the
Spirit, a common and fervent prayer that God's Kingdom may come.
But even this would be insufficient unless we were agreed on what we meant and thus we are led to the fundamental question: What is the Kingdom of God ?
THIS petition in the Lord's Prayer is really a continuation of the previous one:
it is the answer to the question, what is the Kingdom of God ?
The Kingdom exists where God reigns.
Prof. Heiler, in his massive study of Prayer, distinguishes two kinds of spiritual prayer, the Mystical and the Prophetic.
The Lord's Prayer belongs to the latter class and we must turn to the Prophets for light on the background of its words.
The Prophets were always concerned with will and purpose— with the purpose of God and the obedient, or disobedient, wills of men.
Though they sometimes allow themselves to draw pictures of "the good time coming" when the will of God is done upon earth, for the most part they are concerned with the present and the near future.
Their task is to know and proclaim what the will of God is for the particular time in which they are called to exercise their ministry.
But in this prophetic labour of producing "tracts for the times" they learned some eternal truths which are valid for all times.
There are some things which God always demands.
He is righteous and requires righteousness in His worshippers.
Justice is perhaps a more explicit word for the quality intended.
HIS WILL is that there should be a fair deal for all His people and a society in which oppression and selfish greed are rife is abhorrent to Him.
Mercy, too, is pleasing to Him and a nation in which the burden of suffering is felt and shared is in accordance with His purpose.
Truth is among the demands which the Prophets recognised as being divinely sanctioned.
It has two forms:
first, the obvious and practical virtue of truthfulness in word and deed;
second, the deeper thirst for truth which seeks for reality and is not satisfied with comforting illusions or popular prejudices, and thus, in seeking God, is not content until He is known in His true being.
In the insight which we gain from the revelation in Christ we must add love, which is indeed already present in the prophetic teaching, but now has become for us the crowning word which, properly understood, includes all the others.
Do we really want the Kingdom of God to come?
An absurd question perhaps when we pray for it every day, but we may pray quite sincerely without understanding all that is implied in oui prayer.
We may discover that what we really mean is: may it come, but not yet, or not in all its consequences.
Do I want justice for all, even if it would seriously diminish my comfort and my privileges ?
Do I want it for those whom I dislike as well as for my friends ?
Well, perhaps not yet.
DO I truly want to be merciful in thought, deed and word, laying aside the censorious judgment of my fellows and the horrible pleasure in the misfortune of my enemies ?
Do I long for the loving disposition and the sympathy which expresses itself in action that costs me something?
Do I genuinely want to be "of the truth," seeking it, speaking it and living it?
Alas, when I test myself in this way, I have to confess that my aspirations are not unqualified.
To all these questions, if I know myself, I have an unspoken reservation:
not just yet, not in any drastic manner, not so as to disturb the tenor of my life;
let the Kingdom come by imperceptible degrees.
Yet until I can answer all these questions, without qualification, with a whole-hearted "yes" I cannot pray with full meaning and perfect sincerity, "Thy Kingdom come."
WE pray that God's will may be done "on earth as it is in heaven."
Some students have suggested that this clause is unnecessary and may not be an original part of the prayer.
I think they are mistaken and that the reference to "heaven" is not only original but has important implications.
The word "heaven" of course, could lead us to ask many questions, most of which are unanswerable.
Does heaven mean a realm of space and is it in any sense subject to the conditions of time ?
How far are the poetical descriptions to be found in the Bible to be taken literally?
So we might go on in endless speculations.
We shall be well advised to concentrate attention on the religious value of the clause.
When we say "as it is in heaven" what are we affirming about God and His relation to the world ?
Plainly however we may interpret it in detail, the prayer means that within the realm of being there is a sphere or a condition of existence in which the divine will is perfectly fulfilled and that, in this essential respect, it differs from existence on earth, where the will of God is hindered and partly frustrated.
We cannot escape from the fact that the Lord's Prayer envisages a duality, though a temporary one, between heaven and earth.
Not yet is the Will achieved here, and though a heavenly light is not denied us, we live in a milieu which is alienated from God.
AND THIS provisional contrast and dualism is most relevant to our Christian apprehension of God.
One of the most attractive of modern heresies is the doctrine of a limited Deity, which has been held by both H. G. Wells and Bernard Shaw in slightly different
forms.
In one of the phases of Wells's long and inconclusive grapple with religion he invited us to think of God the Invisible King.
According to this view God is very far from being the Almighty.
He is engaged in a desperate conflict with evil in which we may enlist under His leadership.
The conflict is so real that the result may be utter failure; God may be defeated, but it is nobler to be defeated with Him than to triumph with His adversaries.
The appeal of this kind of teaching is partly that it seems to solve some of the problems which trouble any considering believer and harmonises with one aspect of our experience but perhaps even more, that it offers to vigorous men of goodwill the challenge of a crusade and even of a forlorn hope.
There is truth in this way of looking at the matter.
We are summoned to take our part in a real conflict in which God takes sides.
But it is only one aspect of the truth.
The Christian faith is that, in the end, the will of God must prevail.
Though the battle may indeed be a forlorn hope when judged from a standpoint in history, it is not so when viewed in the light of the patient Providence of God.
The victory is already won; in heaven it has always been secure.
SO THEN our prayer that God's Kingdom may come on earth is more than an aspiration towards some wonderful transformation of the world; it is an act of faith which links earth and heaven.
In the words of St. Bonaventura, we look for the assimilation of earth with heaven, so that our life in via, on the way, may be like life in a suburb of the heavenly city.
The Lord's Prayer is indeed the prayer of a soldier and a pilgrim, but it is also the prayer of one who rests with confidence in the Almighty Father.
THE word translated "daily" in the petition "Give us this day our daily bread" is of doubtful meaning.
St. Jerome, when he translated Matthew into Latin, used a strange word, "supersubstantial."
He seems to have intended by this very much what we should understand by "supernatural."
If so, he was expressing a thought which must occur to any reader of the New Testament—that the daily bread for the body is not enough to sustain a truly human life. "Man does not live by bread alone"; he needs nourishment for the spirit as well.
Doubtless, too, his thoughts included the striking passage in St. John's Gospel in which Jesus speaks of Himself as "The Bread of Life which comes down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die." (Jno vi.)
We may reflect on this, as it were, at two levels—the common sense and the mystical.
Every reflective person attaches some meaning to the word "spiritual."
At least he distinguishes between his body and his mind, and among the things which he would say belong to his mental life he regards some as higher than others, or as having a distinctive quality which, in a broad sense, could be called "spiritual."
THAT THIS aspect of our life needs nourishment as well as the bodily organism is plain enough, though it is far easier to forget to feed the spirit's hunger than that of the body.
The starved spirit does not make its demands known through physical sensations, and we may neglect them without incurring immediate and obvious penalties.
The nemesis is gradual, but terrible; "He sent leanness withal into their souls"; the world is full of well-fed persons who have shockingly lean souls.
"Give us this day our daily bread" means then, on this level: Provide us with the means of refreshment for our spirits and help us to make use of them.
Let us not pass by indifferently those experiences of beauty, truth and love which have in them some touch of eternity.
For the Christian they mean also: May we lift up our hearts day by day and may God meet us with His grace.
ON THE mystical level which we enter when we ponder on the Bread of heaven, we come to an experience which even the greatest saints knew only in part.
That Christ may be the living bread which sustains our spiritual life is one of the symbolic ways of expressing a profound and central thought of New Testament religion—that by faith the believer is incorporated in Christ, so that we can pray, as we do in the Holy Communion, "that we may evermore dwell in Him and He in us."
As I understand it, this incorporation is not something that we achieve by our faith; it is a condition which has been wrought by Christ for us, and we have only to appropriate and act upon this wonderful benefit; only to eat the bread, not to bring it down from heaven.
In his sonnet "East London," Matthew Arnold tells of a conversation.
I met a preacher there I knew, and said: Ill and o'erworked, how fare you in this scene?—
Bravely! said he; for I of late have been
Much cheered with thoughts of Christ, the living bread.
If day by day we could be given one morsel of this eternal bread we too might fare bravely through life's shadows.
IN Matthew's version of the Lord's Prayer, which is probably nearer to the original than Luke's, the petition "forgive us our trespasses" should be "forgive us our debts."
Luke has the more general word "sins."
Sin as an unpaid, and unpayable, debt is perhaps the simplest of all the conceptions of sin and was familiar to the Jews of our Lord's time.
It is based on the idea that we owe obedience and reverence to the Creator and every act of disobedience is a failure to discharge an obligation.
We must notice that in the Prayer there is no explicit reference to any doctrine of the Atonement; and no suggestion that anyone will pay our debt for us.
Such thoughts arose out of, and centred upon, the Crucifixion, which was in the future when Jesus taught His disciples to pray.
Here we are invited to approach our heavenly Father with the simple request that He will wipe out the debts that we have incurred.
Though the idea that we owe a debt to the Creator is clear enough, it is by no means acceptable to many of our contemporaries.
The notion that we as individuals are under an obligation even to the nation or society in which we live seems to be less powerful than it was,
while the notion that society owes us almost anything we regard as desirable gains in force.
VERY MUCH less does the belief that we arc under obligation to the Creator seem to the "modern" man obvious or attractive.
Here, too, we are inclined rather to reverse the terms and argue that the Creator owes us a life of ease and happiness.
The reasons for this change of attitude are numerous and some of them are deeply hidden.
One of the most important, I think, is that we no longer assume without question that existence is good and that it is better to be than not to be.
Though, of course, there were pessimists in other ages, on the whole the overwhelming majority of human beings until quite recently would have joined without question in the thanksgiving "for our creation and preservation."
Now, however, a large minority might agree with Byron, "'Tis something better not to be."
An astonishing aspect of this negative approach to life is that it has developed among generations who have the advantages of scientific civilisation and are free from many of the hardships of their optimistic forefathers.
Is it not surprising too that most of the literary denigrators of existence have been, like Byron, men whose circumstances were exceptionally fortunate?
WHATEVER ITS causes, this defeatist state of mind is a bar to any religious experience.
No doubt it is a symptom of decadence which will be overcome.
When we revert to the affirmation, which normal human beings instinctively make, that existence is good and life a boon we are able to say with conviction, "Forgive us our debts."
We owe service and obedience to the Author of our beings.
The purpose of our creation was that, in our day, we should further the ends of the Father in heaven, and when we fail in this, or hinder the divine will for mankind, we need His forgiveness, that the breach may be healed and our fellowship with Him may be restored.
THE Lord's Prayer comments in a most intimate way God's forgiveness of us with our forgiveness of those who have injured us.
This is certain, and it is the one essential idea.
But some questions arise when we consider the relation between the two forgivenesses, God's and man's.
In Matthew's text the Revised Version rightly translates the Greek, "Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors," implying that our forgiveness precedes the divine pardon, and this is definitely dated in the verses that follow (Mat. vi. 14, 15).
In Luke's text of the Prayer we read, "For we ourselves also forgive everyone that is indebted to us."
There are differences between the two phrases, but both Matthew and Luke seem to assign the initiative to the sinner who is praying.
He forgives his "debtors" and then he may hope that the heavenly Father in return will forgive him.
A moment's reflection will convince us that this is at variance with what we learn elsewhere in the New Testament and indeed with the central teaching of the gospel.
IN THE parables of Jesus concerning the Lost Sheep and the Lost Son the point is that the Father seeks the sinner and goes out to meet him.
In St. Paul's preaching it was fundamental that the redeeming love of God was shown in the sacrifice of Christ for us "while we were yet sinners."
We must be careful, therefore, not to interpret the meaning of the Lord's Prayer so as to contradict the initiative of God in the forgiveness of sins.
I think we may be able to do this if we distinguish between forgiveness and reconciliation. In one sense forgiveness is a one-sided affair.
I may forgive wrongs done to me by laying aside all resentment and holding fast to sincere good will towards the doer of the wrong.
But reconciliation is a two-sided affair, and my forgiveness will be ineffective unless there is some response; we shall remain estranged, though not by my wish or fault.
The word "forgiveness" is often used in a wide sense to include reconciliation, and so I think it is here.
If this is accepted, the difficulty vanishes. God's forgiveness of me cannot issue in my reconciliation with Him unless I respond, and I cannot respond so long as my heart is full of hatred and malice.
When I forgive those whom, perhaps justly, I regard as enemies and ill-wishers, I have appropriated the divine forgiveness and show that I am reconciled with God by doing to others what He has done to me.
We may remember that this is precisely the ground on which St. Paul urges the duty of forgiveness—the example of God revealed in Christ.
"Be ye kind one to another, tender hearted, forgiving each other even as God in Christ forgave you."
WE RETURN to the idea which is quite certainly forced upon us by the familiar words of the Lord's Prayer.
The forgiveness of our sins is linked with our readiness to forgive, and the test of our reconciliation with God is our own unfailing good will even to those who have done nothing to deserve it.
And people sometimes say that it is easy to be a Christian!
"LEAD us not into temptation": these words in the Lord's Prayer often cause perplexity in devout minds.
First, we
must ask why the words should raise difficulties.
The answer is clear:
they imply that God could lead us into temptation and thus indirectly be partly responsible for our sins.
St. James plainly says, "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted with evil and he himself tempts no man" (Jas. i. 13) and it is repugnant to our faith in the fatherhood of God to imagine that He may cause His children to suffer temptation.
So strongly has this feeling prevailed that attempts have been made to show that the translation is wrong, or that there has been some error in the transmission of the text.
If the translation could be amended to some such phrase as "let us not be led into temptation" much of the difficulty would disappear, for that God should sometimes permit us to be tempted is less shocking than the thought that He may cause us to be tempted.
The Greek words, as they stand, mean "lead us not," but our Lord gave the prayer to His disciples presumably in Aramaic, and it is possible that the original words meant "let us not be led."
No one can be sure that he knows the Aramaic words which our Lord used, but there seems to be no evidence to justify a suspicion that the Greek words misrepresented them.
We must be careful how we amend a text simply because its meaning preplexes or offends us.
THE IDEA that temptation may not only be permitted but, indirectly, willed by God is implied in St. Matthew's Gospel where we read, "Then was Jesus let up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil" (Mat. iv. 1)
In St. Mark's Gospel the words are even stronger.
After the "voice from the heavens" "Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I am well pleased," the narrative proceeds, "And straightway the Spirit drives him out into the wilderness to be tempted."
We will draw no conclusions from these texts except to note that, in the faith of the Evangelists, temptation, in the providence of God, was a necessary part of the experience of the Son of Man.
And we can feel the force of the argument that a life which was free from all temptation would not be truly human.
The narratives of the temptation of Christ in the wilderness indicate that the temptation, or "testing," which He endured was concerned with the nature and purpose of His life work and that the choice which He made was decisive.
He is, we are told, "the firstborn of many brethren."
We may next enquire whether there is a place in our experience for a similar choice.
THE final petition in the Lord's Prayer can be translated "from the evil one" or "from evil."
The commonly accepted
form "deliver us from evil" in its widest sense is no doubt the more suitable for general use, but I think there is a slight probability that the original meaning was "the evil one."
So at least those who added in early times the "doxology" to the text of Matthew appear to have understood it.
"For thine is the Kingdom" makes very good sense as a corollary to a prayer to be delivered from the "prince of this world," from the Satan who claims to dispose of "all the Kingdoms of the world and the glory of them."
The Satan is a usurper and a fraud; he cannot carry out his promises, for the Kingdom and the power and the glory belong to God.
THIS QUESTION of the proper translation reminds us that, in any case the idea of the Kingdom of God dominates the whole prayer from beginning to end;
it is a prayer for those who are looking for the Kingdom and are by faith already members of it.
And this makes a difference in the spirit of our petition to be delivered from evil.
Many of us remember from the war years the times when we were perforce passive under dangers and could do no more than hope and pray that they would pass, and, in contrast, those other times when we were actively engaged with others in combating the threatening evils.
Then too we prayed and hoped, but we were too busy to be afraid.
So it is with the Christian who says the Lord's Prayer from within the Kingdom.
He is not a solitary individual in terror of what may come upon him;
he is in an outpost of the heavenly realm which is making head against the forces of evil.
He is not passive but active, not detached but engaged.
We should not take a narrow view of the meaning of "evil" in this petition.
Of course sin and moral imperfection are included, but we are right when we pray to be delivered from the two other forms of evil, suffering and error.
The example of Jesus is our authority.
He certainly believed that disease and pain were foreign to the Kingdom and He pointed to His works of healing of body and mind as signs that it had begun to come on earth.
So to-day every kind of conquest over suffering is a part of the Kingdom's advance.
NOR DID Jesus fail to recognise the evil of error. He came as a witness to the truth of God and He lamented the blindness of the leaders of his own people who failed to see that He fulfilled the noblest hopes and insights of their prophets. So to-day we must pray that we and all men may be saved from error and grow in the knowledge of the truth.
"Deliver us from evil" is not a bad prayer for the threshold of a new year.
But it can be too negative and too individualistic if we neglect its context.
Deliver us: we pray as members of a fellowship, out of the Kingdom and for the Kingdom.
We pray too as those who are committed to the service of the Kingdom and are playing our part in its earthly conflict with every form of evil.
"FOR thine is the Kingdom, the power and the glory":
these words were probably added to the Lord's Prayer when it became a constant element in the corporate worship of the Church.
The phrase rounds off the prayer; it begins by "hallowing the name" of God and it rightly ends on the note of praise and worship.
Power and glory are two of the most powerful motives; after the instinctive needs of the physical nature they come next in order of influence on human conduct.
They may be described as "spiritual" in the sense that they arise from the nature of personality and are connected with the relation of persons with one another.
Though perhaps their germs may be detected in the lower animals, power and glory as desirable ends to be pursued emerge only when we reach the level of self-conscious personal existence.
The satisfaction which they premise is an expansion of the person and a successful assertion of the self; the discomforts from which they seem to offer release are frustration and self-distrust.
THE PART which this motive has played in history needs no proof; it lies on every page; but it is evident too in all groups and societies and one could scarcely find any collection of human beings where the thirst for power and glory is not at work.
Every normal person desires to have some sphere where his will counts and his word is respected, and everyone feels that his existence is enriched when his fellows praise or admire him.
In spite of the fact that the drive for power and glory has often been of demonic character and the source of terrific destruction, we cannot dismiss it as evil in itself, for it is an element in the nature of man and a nation or society in which it was killed would be stagnant.
The desire for power is not necessarily wrong.
Political and economic life could not continue unless there were some individuals who had the power to make decisions, and we should certainly not gain if we refrained from giving deserved honour and glory to great men of our race.
HOW SHALL this inherent tendency in man be directed so that it is creative and not destructive?
The Christian answer is—by recognising that all power and glory come from God and are to be dedicated to Him.
The achievements and splendours of humanity are faint gleams of the Majesty and Glory of the Creator, who is the author of "every good and perfect gift."
But a further and far-reaching idea pervades the New Testament —that we may show forth the glory of God.
To do everything, even to eat and drink, to the glory of God is St. Paul's description of the truly Christian life.
Strange and wonderful privilege that, in some sense, we should be able to add to the power and glory of the Eternal God!
And how hard to fulfil in practice!
We might begin by referring all our successes to Him and when we have some new responsibility of leadership say in our hearts, "Thine is the power," or when some honour comes to us, "Thine is the glory."