114. The Lord’s Prayer.

The Lord’s Prayer. The Prayer asrecorded.—Matthew 6:9-13.

There were two occasions on which the Lord delivered this form of prayer. The one before our notice was his sermon on the mount at the time of Pentecost, the other some months after. In our own mind there is no doubt the Lord intended this form of prayer to be used in both our public and private devotions; we infer this from the circumstances connected with its delivery both the first and the second times. The Jews, in their merely petitionary prayers never used the “amen” at the close, but where there were expressions of thanksgiving and benediction always; we will remark this in the prayers of the Psalms, and also of the apostles. We do not for a moment suppose our blessed Lord intended us to confine ourselves solely to this form or any other, but has given it to us as a guide—a high and holy model. It is a ray from the Sun of righteousness to lead us in the right road to the mercy-seat. Coming as it does from lips that spake as never man spake, it bears the seal of heaven the stamp of the Almighty.

We are taught in the verses preceding this prayer what was meant by a high and holy communion with the “hearer and answerer.” On our approach to our Savior in prayer, we are to bid adieu for that hallowed hour to earth with her thousand cares, and to close the door of these wandering hearts; in such a frame we may erect an altar, and here and there and anywhere make known our requests unto God, and to all such secret communion we are promised an open, full reward from the great Giver of all good.

We find expressed in the Lord’s Prayer every desire of the Christian heart, every wish of the spirit struggling for a home on high. One has beautifully remarked of this prayer, “that however, in the fullness of our hearts, we may depart from this model, in the choice of our expressions, into whatever laminae we may expand the pure gold of which it is composed, yet we will find the general principles of our own enlarged application to God substantially contained in this brief compendium.”

We will not now attempt to divide the links of this sacred chain, or comment on its several parts. A circle of bright and shining jewels, each brilliant and full of light in itself, it is a blaze of glory when taken as a whole, and is the richest treasure in the Christian cabinet of sacred relics. Through the long ages that have rolled away since it was first dictated to the ears of the listening multitude, it has been breathed from every Christian heart, and been the “pure incense” from the lips of infancy, and the last prayer from the soul of the aged.