Septuagesima Sunday, February 20, 1848
Matthew VI. 9.
I said last Sunday that in this Prayer our Lord taught us the method, as well as the principle of all prayer. It is, indeed, impossible to separate one from the other. The principle of a prayer which asks first for bread or forgiveness, must be wholly different from the principle of one which begins with ‘Hallowed be thy Name.’ The conceptions of Prayer which you would derive from them are unlike, nay, they are opposed.
I think there can be little doubt which form men would most readily adopt. “Let us have bread enough, bread to satisfy all bodily appetites: bread, if you will, that shall meet our intellectual, our spiritual desires—what other petition can possibly take precedence of this? If an earthly ruler could send us this blessing, should we not implore him for it before all things? If we are hearty in believing that the Heavenly Ruler is willing to send it, shall we not take the same course when we call upon Him? Shall we strain ourselves to introduce needless, artificial preliminaries, when this is what He knows we are craving for?” So men are likely to reason till they painfully discover that there is something they need more than bread, till a certain inward gnawing in lonely hours, on a sick bed, suggests that sin has need to be pardoned, as well as hunger to be appeased. Is it not still more monstrous to interpose any check to the utterance of this cry? What can be so desirable as that it should be poured forth with all the agony and intensity of a spirit which has learnt that such a boon would be cheaply purchased by the sacrifice of all things else?
Language of this kind would seem to be religious as well as natural, proceeding from sympathy with human needs, and a belief that there is a divine provision for them. And yet our Lord says, ‘After this manner pray ye: Our Father which art in Heaven, Hallowed be thy Name.’ He recognizes the desires of which I have spoken as reasonable and true, but he postpones them; and this, too, when he is warning us against babbling in prayer, against all vain, idle, formulas; when he is directing us especially to ask for the things we have need of.
Brethren, in this difference lies, I believe, the great contrast between those systems of theological doctrine and practice, which have been shaped out by the subtlety of divines in accordance with the cravings of disciples, and that teaching which begins from God, which never lowers itself to the base and selfish thoughts of men, and which, therefore, is able to satisfy all that is real in man as nothing else can. Ask the systematizer what that Revelation is which the Bible records: he will tell you, that it is the announcement of the duty which man owes to his Maker for the good things he enjoys upon earth; and of a scheme of redemption by which he may obtain pardon for his sins, and higher blessings hereafter. Ask the Apostles, or our Lord Himself, what that revelation is, and they say it is the revelation of a Father whom men were feeling after and could not find, and who at length declared Himself to them in His well-beloved Son. If the first statement be accepted as the truest and simplest, the prayers, ‘Give us bread,’ ‘Forgive us our sins,’ are all that we have any concern with; we should rush into them at once; by them we grasp all the good which creation and redemption have in store for us. If we are led by any process to feel that the news concerning a father is really the good news, apart from which the promise of food or pardon would signify nothing, we shall feel that ‘Hallowed be thy Name’ is the first and most necessary and most blessed prayer for the whole human race and for every one of its members.
For every gross and cruel superstition has this origin and definition: it springs from ignorance of the name of God; it consists in and by that ignorance. It mixes Him with His creatures; first with what is highest in them, next with what is mean, then with what is basest; finally it identifies Him with the Evil Spirit. What is darkest and most hateful; what a man flies from most and would desire should not exist; this becomes the object of his worship. He has within him a witness that there is a Being whom he ought to love with his heart and soul and strength. That which he conceives of as this Being, that which his fancy and his conscience represent to him is one whom he inwardly hates, and from whom he would be delivered.
But these horrors belong, it will be said, to the ages of priestcraft; civilization puts an end to them. Let us understand ourselves clearly on this point, that we may not deny what is right in the assertion, nor be deluded by mere phrases. The classes which have been brought within the reach and sway of civilization have, no doubt, learnt that the inventions of superstition are false and mischievous; they have seen that a dark notion of the divinity is at the root of them; they have made strenuous efforts to rid themselves of what they believe to be a phantom. In place of it they have substituted a being answering to their own habits of mind, good-natured, indifferent, tolerant of evil. To such a being they have paid a homage which they have almost felt to be fictitious, a homage justifying itself chiefly on the plea that the dependence of inferiors—the general order of society—could hardly be maintained without it. The humbler men, partly perceiving why this decent devotion was thought desirable, partly observing that it only lasted during summer-days, and was often changed for another and more vulgar sort in calamity; but, above all, conscious that it was of a nature altogether unsuited to them, either cherish amid the glare and glitter of civilized life the dark thoughts of another age, or change them for a more resolute and courageous atheism, or, lastly, learn that God is a refuge in time of trouble, a deliverer from the horrors of conscience, not an enemy who must be persuaded to forego his hatred of them, or a mere phantom of benevolence, who leaves His creatures undisturbed in their wickedness and misery. Upon our thoughts of God it will depend, in one time or another, whether we rise higher or sink lower as societies and as individuals.
The civility or intelligence of a people may seem to have grown up, and to be growing, under the influence of a multitude of adventitious circumstances. But if you search well, you will find that whatever there is in it not false, whatever has not the sentence of speedy death written upon it, has had a deeper and more mysterious origin. It has been the fruit of struggles, carried on in solitary chambers by men whom the world has not known, or has despised; struggles which were to decide what power they were meant to obey, and to what power they would yield themselves; struggles to know the name of Him who was wrestling with them; to know whether He was one who cared for them, or who hated them or despised them; whether they had a real or an imaginary Master; whether God is a presence floating in the air, or a Person who can be loved, feared, trusted; whether they and the universe were separated by a thin plank of opinion and sentiment from a bottomless pit of Atheism, into which both must sink at last; or whether they were resting upon a rock which could not pass away, though not earth only should be shaken, but also heaven. But for these questions, which those who were exercised by them knew were not propounded by any human doctor, do not fancy that there could have been any thought or energy or hope in the world.
Luxury and comfort do not confer these; there is no exorcism in them to cast out the demons of indolence and despair. No! men have learnt to say this prayer, ‘Hallowed be Thy Name;’ and to say it before all others. They have found that the prayer for bread might mean anything, from an Eleusinian mystery to the cry of a Genoveva in the desert for milk to nourish her babe; that a prayer for forgiveness might mean anything, from the words, ‘Thou desirest truth in the inward parts; Thou canst wash me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; Thou canst wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow;’ to the sacrifice of a virgin, that the wrath of the gods might be averted, and a favourable breeze granted to a fleet. One petition as much as the other, these sufferers perceived, must derive its worth from that which went before. What is the Name of Him to whom we pray? all the meaning of prayer, of human existence, turns upon the answer which we make to this demand.
II. But is it not quite certain what answer we shall make to it? How can we hallow the Name of God, if by hallowing is meant, keeping it separate from all other names; preserving it as the special treasure of our spirits; not suffering the idea of absolute holiness, purity, goodness, to be soiled by any defilements from without or from within? Suppose I could shut myself out from the world, drawing round me some charmed circle which should exclude not only its direct assaults but its secret plague influences, should I not still have to ask myself whether I was a safe steward of the divine treasure; whether my pride in the trust might not destroy it; whether the Name might not pass into a shadow, while I was thinking of it as most substantial; whether it might not be acquiring from the imaginations of my heart all the same mixtures which it had contracted among the tribes of men?
Experience authorizes these enquiries; it scarcely authorizes us in giving more than one answer to them. Solitude is no security for the hallowing of God’s Name; recluses have dealt as irreverently with it as men in the world’s bustle. For us, however, this point is of no great practical importance, except to preserve us from desiring a state which is evidently not intended for us. We know that our thoughts of God, as well as our other thoughts, are, and will be continually, affected by speech, by books, by the movement and attrition of society. We know how various these thoughts have been: earnest yesterday, indifferent to-day; the Name now so little heeded, that we could trifle with it in the most ordinary conversation, in the most vulgar adjurations; now so terrible, that we dared not entertain the thought of it; now looking so beautiful at a distance, that we were content it should always remain at a distance; now approaching into awful nearness; now making us fear that it would ever be a shadow to us, and nothing more; now inviting us to take refuge in it from a hopeless Atheism. To hallow God’s Name, habitually to hallow it, amidst such countless variations of the external atmosphere, such colds and heats in ourselves—how is it possible? Must not we give up the attempt?
III. Certainly it is better that we should; then we shall begin to pray, ‘Hallowed be thy Name.’ We cannot hallow it; we cannot keep it from contact with our folly, baseness, corruption; the world cannot keep it; the Church cannot. But Thou canst. Thou canst make the darknesses of the world a foil to thy clear untroubled light, a means to its manifestation. Thou canst make the intricacies, falsehoods, contradictions of our hearts into reasons for our seeking and apprehending Thy simplicity and truth. That which would be in us, left to ourselves, terror of Thy power, Thou canst make awe of Thy holiness; what would be presumption of Thy indifference, Thou canst make into hope of Thy mercy; what would be defiance of Thy judgment, Thou canst make trust in Thy righteousness. Thus will Thy image be restored in man, because he will be able to behold Thee the Archetype.
Such a prayer is not one which men could have dreamed of themselves, but it is one which God himself has taught them. He led His saints in the old time to pray that He would declare His great Name; to thank Him for all His past revelations of it; to flee to it as a strong tower, in which they were safe from their enemies. Every new act of His judgment and His mercy was an answer to the cry; in every such act the prophet saw the witness and pledge of a fuller manifestation. The petition then was no new one. The disciples had often heard it before that day when our Lord was alone praying, and when they said, ‘Teach us as John taught his disciples.’ But they knew that He had stamped it with a new impression; for though they understood but imperfectly why He had come, and who He was, their hearts testified that He had certainly come to do that which He bade them ask for. If He brought gifts to men, if He proclaimed forgiveness to men, this was His first gift, this was the ground of His forgiveness, He hallowed the Name of God. He showed forth the Father who dwelt in Him full of grace and truth. Men could see Him after whose likeness they had been created, in a pure untroubled mirror. They were not obliged to measure the Eternal Mind by the partial distorted forms of truth and goodness which they found each in himself. Here was goodness and truth in its primitive form, in its entire fulness. They needed not to reduce goodness and truth into abstractions; here they were exhibited in actual human life; the perfect man reflecting the perfect God. They need not dream of qualities which the shock of the Fall had separated in their minds—mercy and justice, freedom and obedience—as having a corresponding conflict in the Eternal Mind; here they were seen working harmoniously in every word and deed.
Thus God’s Name was hallowed for them, thus it has been hallowed for us. This revelation is for all ages: if one has more need of it than another, ours is the one.
We are in danger alike from the invasion of all old superstitions, and of a fanatical Atheism; for they have a common ground. All superstition, all idolatry, has its root in the belief that God is made in our image, and not we in His; the most prevalent assumption of the modern as of the ancient sophist is, that man is the measure of all things; that there is nothing great or holy which is not his creation. Do not wonder, then, at any combinations you may see in our day between parties seemingly the most hostile—at any apparently sudden transitions from one camp to the other. There is no real inconsistency, no abandonment of principle. Do not let us be hasty in urging that charge or any charge. But let us be very careful in understanding the temptation of the age, because it is certainly our own. Let us not think we escape it by doing just the opposite of those who seem to us to have fallen into it; by cultivating all opinions and notions which they reject; by fearing a truth when they speak it. We may find that their practical conclusions meet us at the point which we thought the furthest from them, and that we have turned away from the very principle with which we might have strengthened ourselves, if not have done some good to them. Still less let us refuse to have our own loose and incoherent notions brought to trial, lest in losing them we should lose the eternal truths of God’s Word. Depend upon it, they are in the greatest peril from every insincere habit of mind we tolerate in ourselves; they will come out with a brightness we have never dreamed of when we are made simple and honest. Therefore let us pray this prayer, ‘Hallowed be Thy Name,’ believing that it has been answered, and being confident that it will be answered. It was answered in the old time by God’s covenant; by the calling of every holy man; by the Divine law; by all the ordinances of family and national life; by every prophet and teacher whom God sent; by every witness which He bore to one people or another, in their consciences, in the discipline of their lives, through nature, through death, of His own character. It was answered by the whole life and death of the only-begotten Son, the firstborn of many brethren, the Prince of all the kings of the earth. It was answered by the gift of the Holy Spirit to abide with the Church for ever, for this end, that He might teach men of the Father and the Son. It is answered by our baptism into the holy and blessed Name, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. It is answered by confirmation and prayers, and holy communions, by individual trials, by visitations to nations, by the gift of new life to churches, by the conversion of sinners, by dying beds. It will be answered when we all yield ourselves up in deed and truth to the Spirit of God, that we like our Lord may glorify His Name upon the earth, and may accomplish the work which He has given us to do.