Expositions of Holy Scripture Volume I Part 40

The reason why any natural substance has properties is by reason of present will of G.o.d; they reside not in itself, but in Him.

All this we say that we believe when we pray this prayer.

How much it conflicts with our modern habit of putting G.o.d as far away from daily life as we can!

The prayer is the consecration of our work for bread.

The indirect way by which it is answered is a great blessing, and it pledges us to labour.

_Orare est laborare._ Not, as it is sometimes quoted, as if toil was to do instead of prayer, but that active life may be consecrated to G.o.d, and all our efforts which terminate in gaining bread for ourselves and for those we love may become prayer, and be offered to G.o.d.

How can we pray for G.o.d to give us our daily bread, and then go to seek it by means which we dare not avow or defend in our prayers? Bless my cheating, bless my sharp practice, bless my half-heartedness. It is no part of my business to apply principles to details of conduct, but it is my business to say--take this prayer for a test, and if you dare not pray it over what you do in earning your living, ask yourself whether you are not rather earning your _death_.

Then the prayer is a pledge of thankful recognition of G.o.d in our blessings.

Ah! dear friends, are we not all guilty in this? How utterly heathenish is our oblivion of G.o.d in our daily life! How far we have come from that temper which recognises Him in all joys, and begins every new day with Him! Daily mercies demand daily songs of praise. His love wakens us morning by morning. It follows us all the day long with its fatherly benefits. It reveals itself anew every time He spreads our table, every time He gives us teaching or joy. And our thanksgiving and consciousness of His presence should be as constant as are His gifts. 'My voice shalt thou hear in the morning.' 'They walk all the day long in the light of Thy countenance.' 'I will both lay me down in peace and sleep.' 'They ate their meat with gladness and singleness of heart.'

II. The union with our brethren in our prayer.

'Give _us_.' The struggle for existence is represented by many as the very law of human life. The fight for bread is the great antagonist of brotherly regard for our fellows. Trade is said to be warfare; and then others starting from that conception that one man's gains are some other man's losses, proclaim with undoubted truth on these premises 'property is robbery.' But surely this clause of our prayer teaches us a more excellent way. We are not to be like stiff-necked men who fight with one another for the drop of brackish water caught in the corner of a sail, but we are to be as children bowing down together before a great Father, all sitting at His table where nothing wants, and where even the pet dogs below it eat of the crumbs.

The main thing is to note how our Lord teaches us here to identify ourselves with others, to make common cause with them in our pet.i.tion for bread. He who rightly enters into the meaning of this prayer, and feels the unity which it supposes, can scarcely regard his possessions as given to himself alone, or to be held without regard to other people.

We are all one in need; high and low, rich and poor, we all hang on G.o.d for the same supplies. We are all one in reception of His gifts. Is it becoming in one who is a member of such a whole, to clasp his portion in both his hands and carry it off to a corner where he gnaws it by himself? That is how wolves feast, with one foot on their bone and a watchful eye all round for thieves, not how men, brethren, should feast.

I am not here to deal with economical questions, or to apply principles to details, but surely one may say that this pet.i.tion contemplates as possible a better state of things than 'each for himself,' whether G.o.d is for us all or no, and that it does teach that at all events a man is part of a whole which has a claim on his possessions. 'Neither said any man that aught which he possessed was his own.'

The Christian doctrine of property does not seem to be communism. You have your property. It is your own. You have the power, and as far as law is concerned, the right, to do with it none but selfish acts. You have it, but you are not an owner--only a steward. You have it, but you hold it not for your own sake, but as a trustee. You have it as a member of a family, a great community. You have it that you may dispense to others, you have it that you may help to multiply the bonds of affection to benefactors and of love to the great Giver.

And this liberality is founded, according to this pet.i.tion, in our common relation to G.o.d. We do not want charity--we want justice. The needy cannot enforce their claims, but their cry enters into the ears of the Lord, and what is withheld from them is 'kept back by fraud.' The Bible always puts benevolence and liberality on the ground of their being a debt. 'Withhold not good from him to whom it is due.'

So how, beside this prayer, does it look to see two men who have united in it, the one being Dives clothed and faring sumptuously, and the other Lazarus with sc.r.a.ps for his food and dogs for his doctors? There is many a contrast like that to-day. All I have to say is--that such contrasts are not meant as the product of Christianity and civilisation and commerce for eighteen hundred years, and that one chief way of ending them is that we shall learn to feel and live the true communism which traces all a man's possessions to G.o.d, and feels that he has received them as a member of a community for the blessing of all, even as Christ taught when He bid us say, 'Give us our daily bread.'

III. The prayer for bread for to-day.

This carries with it precious truths as to the manner of the divine gifts and the limit of our cares and anxieties.

G.o.d gives not all at once, but continuously, and in portions sufficient for the day.

As with the manna fresh gathered every morning, so all our gifts from Him are given according to the present exigencies.

Note the beauty and blessedness of this method of supplying our wants.

It gives to each moment its own special character, it gives to each the glory of having in it a fresh gift of G.o.d. It binds all together in one long line of brightness made up of an infinite number of points, each a separate act of divine love, each a glittering sign of His presence. It brings G.o.d very near to all life. It draws us closer to Him, by giving us at each moment opportunity and need for feeling our dependence upon Him, by bringing us once again to His throne that our wants may be supplied. And as each moment, so each day, comes with its new duties and its new wants. Yesterday's food nourishes us not to-day. To-day's strength must come from this day's G.o.d and His new supplies. And thus the monotony of life is somewhat broken, and there come to us all the fresh vigour and the new hope of each returning day, and the merciful wall of the night's slumber is built up between us and yesterday with its tasks and its weariness. And fresh elastic hopes, along with renewed dependence on G.o.d, should waken us morning by morning, as we look into the unknown hours and say, 'Give us this day our daily bread.'

Then, again, let us learn not to try to abrogate this wise ordinance by onward-looking anxieties. We have to exercise forethought, and not to possess it is to be a poor creature, below the ant and the bee. No man is in a favourable position for intellectual or moral growth who has not some certainty in his life, and a reasonable prospect of such perpetuity as is compatible with this changeful state. But that is a very different thing from the careful, anxious forebodings in which we are all so p.r.o.ne to indulge. These are profitless and harmful, robbing us of strength and contributing nothing to our wisdom or to our security. They are contrary to this law of the divine dealings that we shall get our rations as we need them, no sooner; that the path will be opened when we come to it, not till then. G.o.d knows the line of march, and will issue our route each morning. G.o.d looks after the commissariat and saves us the trouble of carrying it.

Let us try not to be 'over-inquisitive to cast the fashion of uncertain evils,' nor magnify trouble in the fog of our own thoughts, but limit our cares to to-day, and let to-morrow alone, for our G.o.d will be in it as He has been in the past. He will never take us where He will not go with us. Each day will have its own brightness, as each place its own rainbow. If we are led into dry lands, there will be a fountain opened in the desert, and He will feed us by His ravens ere we shall want.

Bread shall be given and water made sure. To-morrow shall be as this day. Then let the veil still hang, nor try to lift it with the hand of forecasting thought, nor be over-careful to make the future sure by earthly means, but let present blessings be parents of bright hopes.

Remember Him who is the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever. In Him the past is unwept for and the future sure. Accept the merciful limitations on His gifts, and let them be the limitations which you set to your own desires while you pray, 'Give us this day our daily bread.'

IV. The prayer for bread suited to our needs.

'_Daily_ bread' clearly cannot be the right rendering, for after 'this day' that would be weak repet.i.tion.

The word is difficult, for it only occurs here and there in Luke.

It may be rendered 'for the coming (day),' but that can scarcely be supposed to be our Lord's meaning, when His precept to take no thought for the morrow is remembered. A more satisfactory rendering is, 'sufficient for our subsistence,' the bread which we need to sustain us.

Such a pet.i.tion points to desires limited by our necessities. What we should wish, and what we have a right to ask from G.o.d, is what we _need_--no more and no less.

This does not reduce us all to one level, but leaves Him to settle what we do want. How different this prayer in the mouth of a king and of a pauper! But it does rebuke immoderate and unbridled desires. G.o.d does not limit us to mere naked necessaries--He giveth liberally, and means life to be beautiful and adorned. That which is over and above bread is to a large extent that which makes life graceful and refined, and I have no wish to preach a crusade against it; but I have just as little hesitation in declaring what it is not left to pulpit moralists to say, that the falsely luxurious style of living among us looks very strange by the side of this pet.i.tion. So much luxury which does not mean refinement; so much ostentatious expenditure which does not represent increased culture or pleasure or anything but a resolve to be on a level with somebody else; so much which is so ludicrously unlike the poor little shrimp of a man or woman that sits in the centre of it all!

'Plain living and high thinking are no more.'

'My riches consist not in the abundance of my possessions, but in the fewness of my wants.'

'The less a man needs, the nearer is he to the G.o.ds.'

So, what a lesson for us all in this age, where everyone of us is tempted to adopt a scale of what is necessary very far beyond the truth.

Young and old--dare, if need be, to be poor. 'Having food and raiment, let us therewith be content.'

We cannot all become rich, but let us learn to bring down our desires to, and bound them by, our true wants.

Christ has taught us here to put this pet.i.tion after these loftier ones, and He has taught us to pa.s.s quickly by it to the more n.o.ble and higher needs of the soul. Do we treat it thus, making it a secondary element in our wishes? If so, then our days will be blessed, each filled with fresh gifts from G.o.d, and each leading us to Him who is the true Bread that came down from Heaven.

'FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS'

'Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.'--MATT. vi. 12.

The sequence of the pet.i.tions in the second half of the Lord's Prayer suggests that every man who needs to pray for daily bread needs also to pray for daily forgiveness. The supplication for the supply of our bodily needs precedes the others, because it deals with a need which is fundamental indeed, but of less importance than those which prompt the subsequent pet.i.tions. G.o.d made us to need bread, we have made ourselves to need pardon. The answer to the later pet.i.tion is as certain as that to the earlier. He who gives meat will not withhold forgiveness. _Give_ and _forgive_ refer to our deepest wants, but how many who feel the one are all unconscious of the other!

I. The consciousness of sin, of which this pet.i.tion is the expression.

'Debt' and 'duty' are one word. 'Owe' and 'ought' are one word. Duty is what is due. Ought is what we owe--to some one or other. We are under obligations all round, which conscience tells us that we have not fulfilled. The unfulfilled obligation or duty becomes a debt. We divide our obligations into duties to G.o.d, our neighbours, and ourselves; but the division is superficial, for whatever we owe to ourselves or to men, we owe also to G.o.d, and the non-fulfilment of our obligations to Him is sin. 'No man liveth to himself, ... we live unto G.o.d.' Our consciences accuse us of undone duties to ourselves, the indulgence of evil tempers, a slack hand over ourselves, a careless husbandry which leaves furrows full of weeds, failure to bend the bow to the uttermost, to keep the mirror bright. It accuses us of undone duties to our neighbours, unkindness, neglect of opportunities of service, and many another ugly fault. Duties undone are debts not only to ourselves or to our fellows, but to G.o.d. The great Over-lord reckons offences against His va.s.sals as crimes against Himself.

That graver aspect of our faults as being sins may seem a gloomy thought, but it is really one full of blessing, for it lodges the true power of remission of our burdensome debts in the hands of the one true creditor, whom the prayer has taught us to call 'Our Father.'

That consciousness of sin should be as universal as the sense of bodily hunger; but, alas! it is too often dormant. It is especially needful to try to awake it in this generation, when the natural tendency of the heart to ignore it is strengthened by talk of heredity and environment, and by the disposition to think of sin with pity rather than reprobation. Men are apt to regard a consciousness of sin as morbid.

They will acknowledge failure or imperfection, but there is little realisation of sin, and therefore little sense of the need for a deliverer. If men are ever to be brought to a saving grip of Jesus Christ, they must have learned a far more heart-piercing consciousness of their sin than this morally relaxed age possesses.

II. The cry to which that consciousness gives voice.

We often ask for forgiveness; have we any definite notion of what we are asking for? When we forgive one another, he who forgives puts away alienation of heart, every cloud of suspicion from his mind, and his feeling and his conduct are as if there had never been a jar or an offence, or are more tender and loving because of the offence that is now forgiven. He who is forgiven has, on his part, a deeper shame for the offence, which looks far darker now, when it is blotted out, than it did before forgiveness. Both are eager to show love, not in order to erase the past, but because the past is erased.

When a father forgives his child, does that merely or chiefly mean that he spares the rod; or does it not much rather mean that he lets his love flow out to the little culprit, undammed back by the child's fault? And when G.o.d forgives He does so, not so much as a judge but rather as the Father. It is the father's heart that the child craves when it cries for pardon. The remission of punishment is an element, but by no means the chief element, in man's forgiveness, and that is still more true as to G.o.d's. There are present, and for the most part outward, consequences of a forgiven man's sin which are not averted by forgiveness, and which it is for his good that he should not escape. But when the a.s.surance of G.o.d's unhindered love rests on a pardoned soul, those consequences of its sins which it has to reap cease to be penal and become educative, cease to be the expressions only of G.o.d's hatred of evil, and become expressions of His love to the forgiven evil-doer. 'I will be his Father, and he shall be My son. If he commit iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men ... but My mercy shall not depart from him.'

III. The startling addition to the cry.