Fourth Sunday in Lent, April 2, 1848.
Luke XI. 4.
When a man prays, ‘Lead us not into Temptation,’ he prays against himself; prays that he may not go where he has an inclination to go; prays that neither he nor his brethren may have what they have a false taste for, even though God’s hand seems to offer it them. Such a prayer, till we know something of ourselves, something of His purpose in placing us here, must needs appear strange and perplexing. Is not the one which follows it altogether different; the simplest, most spontaneous utterance of the heart; one which all the world has been pouring forth; which we should certainly have learnt, though no one had taught it us?
It would be idle, indeed, to deny the universality of this prayer. Wherever men are visited by any storm, or fire, or earthquake; wherever they are plagued with any bodily sickness; wherever they are oppressed by their fellow-men; wherever they have a vague sense of being crushed by fortune; wherever they have learnt to look upon custom or law as an incubus; wherever they are stifled by systems; wherever they are conscious of a remorse which stays with them and moves with them; there is a cry ascending to some power, known or unknown, ‘Deliver us from Evil.’ The question what evil is, and whence it comes, is for such sufferers of easy solution; they know well what they mean by it; they know or guess generally what brought it to them; at all events it has overtaken them. They may suppose that some fellow-creature can rescue them from it, or chance, or themselves; they may look to the physician, the priest, the legislator; to alterations in government; to new dispositions of property; to a friendly executioner; to suicide. But a deliverer there must be; something or some person to hope in. If once we believe evil to be omnipotent, or suppose that it was intended for us, and we for it, I do not think it is possible to conceive of human society or human life. Recollect the worship of every country you ever heard of, how many names or characteristics of the different divinities had relation to deliverance of some kind, or to the averting or avenging of wrong. If you took these away from the mythologies, you would find that there remained a mere caput mortuum; all that had held them together and appealed to human trust and sympathies would have escaped.
Now it would surely be a very hard and Stoical doctrine to proclaim that what these different creatures of our flesh and blood have cried to be saved from, were not really evils, but only certain conditions of existence, which they fancied to be such. No one, I should think, can imagine that he served truth by maintaining such a proposition against the sense of mankind, and against the witness of his own heart. That from which men have revolted as utterly unnatural and inconsistent and unreasonable, that which they have felt to be in positive disagreement with their constitution, they have a right to call an evil; and all the theories, political, philosophical, religious, in the world, can never deprive them of the right. Nor can these theories, so far as I see, prove even the most extravagant hopes that our race has indulged to be utterly vain and delusive, or take from any man the right to seek deliverance from human helpers, kings, lawgivers, shepherds of the people; from his own strong arm, from invisible helpers, from some fate that is higher, sterner, more inflexible than all other powers. There was a warrant for all such hopes, even for hope from the last resource of self-destruction. We have no right to take away such refuges until we can provide a better; and it is at least probable that if a better be found, we shall find some explanation of all the rest.
We may readily grant them, not only that the prayer has been offered in all places and in all ages, but that in all places and in all ages a deep truth has been expressed in it. But do we, therefore, say that the prayer had no need to be taught, that it sprang up naturally in the mind of man without any inspiration from above, that it was not like the former, the petition of a man against himself, but altogether one from and for himself? I rather think the evidence, if it is well considered, will lead us just to the opposite conclusion; that the prayer was, in all cases, taught and inspired from above; that what was contributed to it by the natural heart of man in his different circumstances and positions, was just the false, confused element of it, just that which narrowed its scope and divided its object; that in its true sense and purport it is in perfect accordance with the cry against temptation; that He who imparted it to men in the old time, was He who gave it to His disciples in its clearness and purity, in its length and breadth, when He said, ‘After this manner, therefore, pray ye: Our Father—deliver us from evil.’
I. Other portions of the Lord’s Prayer have led me to remark, that there is a fearful tendency in us all, which has infused itself most mischievously into our theology, to look first at our necessity or misery, only afterwards at our relation to God, and at His nature. The last are made dependent upon the former. We are conscious of a derangement in our condition; simply in reference to this derangement do we contemplate Him who we hope may reform it. We have just been tracing this process in heathenism. A mischief is felt; if there is a mischief, there must be a deliverer. Undoubtedly the conscience bears this witness, and it is a right one. But the qualities of the deliverer are determined by the character or locality of that which is to be redressed, or by the habits of those who are suffering from it. From this heathenish habit of mind the Lord’s Prayer is the great preserver. Say first, ‘Our Father.’ This relation is fixed, established, certain. It existed in Christ before all worlds, it was manifested when He came in the flesh.
He is ascended on high, that we may claim it. Let us be certain that we ground all our thoughts upon these opening words; till we know them well by heart, do not let us listen to the rest. Let us go on carefully, step by step, to the Name, the Kingdom, the Will, assuring ourselves of our footing, confident that we are in a region of clear unmixed goodness; of goodness which is to be hallowed by us; which has come and shall come to us, and in us; which is to be done on earth, not merely in heaven. Then we are in a condition to make these petitions, which we are ordinarily in such haste to utter, and which He, in whom all wisdom dwells, commands us to defer. Last of all comes this ‘Deliver us from evil.’ When we are able to look upon evil, not as the regular normal state of the universe, but as absolutely at variance with the character of its Author, with His constitution of it, with the Spirit which He has given to us, that we can pray, attaching some real significance to the language, Deliver us from it. Then we shall understand why men looked with faith to the aid of their fellow-men; to princes, and chieftains, and lawgivers, and sages. They were sent into the world for this end, upon this mission. They were meant to act as deliverers. They were to be witnesses of a real righteous order, and to resist all transgressors of it. We can understand why strong men felt that they had better act for themselves, than depend upon foreign help. For the Father of all put their strength into them, that they might wield it as His servants in His work; it was His Spirit who made them conscious of their strength, and of that purpose for which they were to use it. We can see why these hopes were so continually disappointed, though they had so right a foundation; why they were driven to think of higher aid, of invisible champions, because those upon the earth proved feeble, or deserted the cause, and served themselves. It is true that the hosts of heaven are obeying that Power which the hosts of earth are commanded to obey; that they are doing His service by succoring those who are toiling below; it is true, because He who rules all is not a destiny, but a loving will; not an abstraction, but a Person; not a mere sovereign, but a Father. All creation is ordered upon this law of mutual dependence and charity; but it is only in the knowledge and worship of the Highest, that we can apprehend the places and tasks of the lower; when He is hidden, these are forgotten; society becomes incoherent; nothing understands itself; everything is inverted; the deliverer is one with the tyrant; evil and good ran into each other; we invoke Satan to cast out Satan. See, then, what a restorative, regenerative power lies in this prayer! See what need there was that the Son of God should come from the bosom of the Father, to make men know that they were not orphans, to show how they might be in fact, and not merely in idea, children!
II. For now it is not any longer by this or that man, or unseen power, by this or that subordinate agency, by this or that alteration of events and circumstances, that we are forced to bound our plans and prospects of deliverance. We have not to work our way upwards by stairs winding, broken, endless, to an indefinite shadowy point, which we are afraid to reach, lest it should prove to be nothing. We begin from the summit; we find there the substance of all the hope men have drawn from the promising, but changeable, aspects of the cloud-land below; we see that all the darkness of earth, all its manifold forms of evil, have come from the rays being intercepted, which would have scattered it and shall scatter it altogether. Therefore we pray boldly, ‘Deliver us from evil,’ knowing assuredly that we are praying to be set free from that to which the will of the Creator is opposed, and against which all the powers of the universe are engaged: that which all natural things, doing Him quiet homage, are punishing; that against which all voluntary creatures by the law of their being are pledged to co-operate. We are praying against that which men have not been praying against in vain for six thousand years, but rather which they have been stemming, overcoming continually; each of their prayers, if offered in ever so much dimness and confusion, opening a vision out of the darkness, because each of them derived its first impulse from Him, who through them and in answer to them was preparing the full discovery of Himself, and of that strength whereby all that resists Him shall be broken. I say the prayer offered with this recollection, becomes one full of cheerfulness and confidence. The difficulty is, to offer it in that recollection. God forbid that I should speak lightly of that difficulty! knowing how great it is; how hard, when evil is above, beneath, within, when it faces you in the world, and scares you in the closet, when you hear it saying in your own heart, and saying in every one else, ‘Our name is Legion,’ when sometimes you seem to be carrying the world’s sins upon yourself, and then forget them and yourself altogether,—which is worse and brings a heavier sense of misery afterwards,—when all schemes of redress seem to make the evil under which the earth is groaning more malignant, when our own history, and the history of mankind, seems to be mocking at every effort for life, and to be bidding us rest contented in death; oh, it is hard, most hard, to think that such a prayer as this is not another of the cheats and self-delusions in which we have worn out existence! But, courage! if the evil were less pressing, we might have leisure to doubt the remedy; when all possibilities are exhausted, we begin to understand that here is certainty; we must believe on some ground or other that evil is not absolute, not victorious; we must believe it honestly, and without a trick, not pretending that it is nothing, when we feel inwardly that it is only not all. And we can believe it honestly with our whole hearts, while we say, ‘Our Father—deliver us from the evil.’ Then that which seemed so terrible, because it was so manifold, is condensed into one; it means in all its forms that which is opposed to the mind and will of Him, who so loved the world, as to give His only-begotten Son, that we might be His children, and brethren one of another.
III. This truth, that evil, though by its nature multiform and contradictory, has nevertheless a central root, our Lord teaches us by His temptation in the wilderness, and again by the prayer, ‘Deliver us from the evil.’ He, for the first time, made it fully evident that mankind has not merely enemies, but an enemy; that neither the various external torments which seem to make up evil, nor the desires and appetites of the man himself, upon which we often charge it, create or constitute the mystery of iniquity which is at work. Most blessed was this discovery; it justified the thoughts which had been in a number of hearts; it justified the ways of God. I said that the Stoical denial of external evil is an artificial doctrine, at war with conscience and reason. Our Lord never for a moment yielded to it; he acknowledged palsies, and hunger, and leprosies, to be plagues and curses from which men should seek deliverance. But he did at the same time explain wherein the truth of Stoicism lay. He shewed that these sufferings are not the evils of man; they belong to a wrong condition, but they are not the causes of it; nay, their sting may be taken out of them, they may become instruments for the cure and destruction of evil. He himself underwent them; He felt them as none ever felt them; so He shewed that men are intended to feel them. He exhibited love and mercy in them, and through them; so He shewed that they are not the masters of the will; that they may be its servants. Equally does He prove that the good things of life, the riches and beauty of the universe, are not the origin of its evils, as men have wickedly imagined; and if not, then that the desires and appetites of our heart, which correspond to these, and which they address, are not the origin of evil, and carry in them no necessary corruption. And yet He does bring the sense of evil nearer to us than it was ever brought before; He does explain by His words, by His life, why we must feel that evil to be actually bound up with ourselves, why it is the most difficult of all things, not to identify it with ourselves. For He by bidding us deny ourselves, He by giving up Himself in every thought and act, He by presenting Himself as the one great Sacrifice to the Father, makes us perceive that the setting up of self, the worship of self, is the evil from which all others flow, from which we are to pray, ‘Deliver us.’ Here is the wonderful Gospel mystery which meets all the mysteries of our own hearts and of the world, and expounds them. Here is that which makes that last refuge of man in self-murder intelligible. It is self he wants to get rid of; he has sought evil elsewhere, and not found it; he has it in his own being; that must perish. What a sense of solitude must be in the spirit before it can dream of such an act! what a feeling that all which it has seen without is centered within! And yet what it feels in that hour, all the world is feeling in a measure; this self is the curse of each, as much as it is his. Oh! if he could rise for a moment to that perception, if he could feel ‘It is not I, it is the spirit of self-will, who is counterfeiting me; it is this from which I must be delivered, it is this from which my race must be delivered! That each may be himself, that the universe may be what the Lord of all created it to be; this must be overcome for each, for all.’ With what a new and wonderful feeling would he then turn to the words, ‘Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world!’ ‘Lo, I come, (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God: thy law is within my heart; and to this, ’By the which will we are sanctified, through the offering of the body of Christ once for all.’ Such words may have seemed hitherto quite vague, the fragments of an obsolete theology. Seen in the light of this discovery respecting the nature of Evil, seen in the light of that other more glorious discovery respecting the infinite charity of God, how they harmonise with all that our hearts had prophesied of, with our consciousness that we have capacities of sympathy and fellowship, which are destroyed by self-will; with the conditions of a world, created for brotherhood, destroyed by the same self-will. How little a man, who has learnt this lesson, wishes any more to resolve the evil spirit into the feelings and passions of the individual heart! How he abhors such implicit practical Manicheeism, against which Christ’s temptation, and the history of His redemption, extending as it does to every thought and movement and appetite of our souls and bodies, as well as to the whole outward universe, is the protest! How he must rejoice to think, ‘I can pray, I will pray, Deliver us from the evil. I will pray to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ against myself, against my inclination to make self the object of my existence, of my worship, against every act and thought which involves that inclination. I will pray to Him, whose will is that I should be in submission to Him, that I should be His servant in all the powers and affections of my spirit, soul, and body; who would use all these for the manifestation of His love, for the deliverance of His creatures. I will pray to Him in the confidence that He has accepted the perfect sacrifice of His Son for me, and for all mankind, the sacrifice which He had himself prepared, the sacrifice which was the fruit and perfect setting forth of His own love, the sacrifice which was presented to Him by the Everlasting Spirit. I will pray in the confidence that He will receive the sacrifice of myself and of all to Him in that Name. I will pray in the certainty that He is maintaining a conflict with the self-will which is the curse and dislocation of the world, and that every plague, pestilence, insurrection, revolution, is a step in the history of that conflict, tending towards the final victory. I will pray that we may not be cast down and lose faith, because change after change only seems to bring out the evil more fearfully, to exhibit some darker and more inward form of it. I will pray that we may not acquiesce in any evil about us, or within us, because we fancy that a worse might come from its removal. I will pray to feel that our only safety is in the God of truth and love, to recollect that self-will, as its different veils and bandages and rags of borrowed finery fall off, must be displayed more nakedly and horribly; to give thanks, nevertheless, that its resources are nearly exhausted, that its rage will be fiercest when its hour is shortest; to make, therefore, no truce with it; to wish none for my fellow-men; to act and live in the confidence that if we wait the appointed time, the travail-hour of creation, He who overcame the principalities and powers of evil in the wilderness, in the city, on the cross, in the sepulchre, and who ascended on high, making a show of them openly, will fully deliver us and our race from them, that we may serve without fear Him, the Father, and the Holy Ghost, the one God, world without end.’