04 - Meditation 4
MEDITATION IV.
“THY WILL BE DONE IN EARTH, AS IT is IN HEAVEN.”
Matthew 6:10. HAD the prayer upon which we are meditating been composed by one of the sages of this world, assuredly we should not have found in it the petition which we have just read. In a certain sense he would have regarded it as absurd.
What! (would he have thought) ask God that his will may be done! Shall a feeble creature, a worm of the earth, ask of Him who summoned all things into existence out of nothing by a mere act of his sovereign will, to which it is impossible to oppose the smallest obstacle; shall he ask of that Being that his will may be done! It is as if we were to ask time to wing its flight, the sun to fulfil its course, or the night to succeed the day. And if we told that man that he did not understand this petition, that the question is not respecting God but ourselves, that we do not ask God to accomplish his will, which shall eternally be accomplished, because it is his will; that we ask him to give us the desire and strength to do that will; even then would not the man have framed this petition; he would have found in his heart another objection against it. Enamored of his own will, of his own proud independence, of the desire to walk according to the inclinations of his own heart; fearing, above all things, whatsoever might interfere with, contradict, or break down his own will, he would have said, in addressing God (supposing that such a man could ever address God), not “ Thy will be done /” but much rather, My will be done!
It was just for this reason that it was necessary for Jesus to teach us to offer such a petition to God. And the place which it occupies in this model of prayer which he dictates to his disciples is- admirably chosen. It is the last of the three petitions which regard the work of God generally, for the deliverance of fallen man. The commencement, and, as it were, the foundation-stone of this edifice, erected for the salvation of the world, is the knowledge and the hallowing of God’s Name, as the expression of his sublime and holy perfections: “ Hallowed be thy Name!” The form under which God has clothed the knowledge of his Name, the means by which he leads men to hallow and to love it, to receive it into their hearts, and submit to its ruling influence, is that admirable institution prepared in the people of Israel, established in its power by the work of the Redeemer, propagated to our times and to the end of the world by his servants, the kingdom of God: “ Thy kingdom come!” The final end of the work of God, the destruction of that culpable dissonance which sin has introduced into the world by alienating the will of the creature from that of the Creator, the consummation of this ultimate end of every moral being, God all in all, is the subject of the third petition, “ Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven!” Such then, is the principle, the means, and the end of all that is, or ever has been most sublime and most worthy of our prayers: the deliverance and salvation of fallen humanity.
We shall devote a few moments to the explanation of this petition, and we shall consider the will of God under the two points of view in which it is manifested to us.
God manifests his will by his Word; he commands, we must obey.
God manifests his will by the dispensations of his providence. He acts; it is for us to submit. In a word, the will of God, by us and in us, is the subject of this petition, and the subject of our meditation.
There cannot be two masters in the universe. The Supreme Intelligence that created all things for his own glory, will have all things to obey Him. The inanimate creation itself gives us the example of this; all the worlds that fill immensity obey that Almighty Word which created them, fulfilling with a rigid exactness the course which it has assigned them. But let us pass over the inanimate creation, which can render but a passive obedience to the Creator, and let us raise our thoughts (for our text invites us to do so) to those intelligent and moral beings, in whose voluntary obedience God takes pleasure, to the heavenly hosts, those millions of angels, upon whom the Almighty has lavished with such rich abundance, life, and happiness holy and pure natures, worthy of being held up as models to other thinking and responsible creatures beings happy in their very obedience, the thought of whom ought to fill us with consolation and encouragement, when, in the midst of a world, in which the sovereign will of God is so often trampled under foot, we send up to him this aspiration of our souls, “ Thy will be done on earth, AS IT is IN HEAVEN!” beings so prompt in their obedience, that they are represented to us as having wings, to fly wherever the Divine voice summons them; beings so full of veneration for the Sovereign Majesty, that they cast at the foot of God’s throne the crowns of glory which adorn their brows; beings so happy in the unchangeable accordance of their wills with the will of God, that they receive a new accession to their felicity every time a straying and rebellious creature is brought back to that same harmony: “ There is joy.” our Lord tells us, “ in the presence of the angels of God, over one sinner that repenteth;” beings, the thought of whom filled the Psalmist with a holy enthusiasm, long before Jesus had held them up as models for our imitation: “ Bless the Lord, ye his angels that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his Word.” And think you, my brethren, that man, to whom these pure intelligences are presented for his imitation, was created for any other end than that of uniting his will to that sublime unison of all created wills with the Supreme will? No; his destination was to mingle his voice and his whole life in that unanimous concert of the creatures to the glory of the Creator. Ah! had he remained faithful to the end of his being, never had the Son of God come upon this earth to “endure the contradiction of sinners against himself,” to die, that he might reconcile our rebellious will with the Divine will, to teach a fallen creature the prayer which we are considering; never would we have been compelled to struggle painfully against our rebellious will, and, in the midst of the conflict, to send up that cry, “ Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven /” But, alas! you know from the Bible, from the whole history of mankind, and by a melancholy daily experience, that sin has broken the unison of our will with the will of God. Man foolishly aspired to be God, aspired to withdraw himself from under that Eternal will which governs all things, and to become a law unto himself, his own rule, his own idol. Awful revolt, fatal independence! Look what the world has become under such a domination. Contemplate all the generations of men which have succeeded one another upon the earth, each contributing its quota of iniquity and crime to the universal anarchy of sin, and sweeping away, like a torrent, all the barriers which legislators, philosopliers, and moralists had set up to oppose them; impotent means to restrain a rebellious will, which bears away every obstacle, like swollen waters escaped from the channel which God had dug out for them! The harmony once broken, it was not only against God that the depraved will of man opposed disorder and crime, but that will without order, without restraint, without unison with a superior will, brought forth hatred, jealousy, oppression, enmity, and wars which converted into a field of blood the abode of man, where peace and happiness ought to have reigned. But this is not all; harmony being once broken, man brought into his own heart, as well as against God and his fellow-men, strife and disorder. Yes, where is the man. without God, who enjoys peace who feels not in himself discord, conflict, and bitterness? insomuch that even when he wishes sincerely to escape from the anarchy of his passions, and to return into the eternal and Divine order, he has to endure the struggles which St. Paul so well describes in the seventh chapter of his Epistle to the Romans, and which extort from him that exclamation of anguish, “ O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” 0, my brethren, you who have any acquaintance with your own hearts, confirm here the testimony expressed by a man of God in these energetic words: “ A grating discord runs through the whole concert of life, and none but a madman can take it for harmony.”
Ah how necessary, then, is the petition which Jesus Christ gives us to meditate on. This petition must be offered by us to God, and answered in our experience, or we shall be eternally miserable! Moral disorder is a crime which God will visit with all the severity of his justice. The being separated from God, at war with God, who is the only source of life and happiness, is like a branch severed from its parent stock, “which withers, and men take it, and cast it into the fire, and it is burned.” I repeat it, and may you lay it to heart, immortal sinners! In this alternative there is no medium the will of God by us and in us, or misery! unison with God’s will, or woe! But as it is requisite, in order to conform to a will, that we must know it what is the will of God with regard to us? Has he condescended to manifest it to us? and, in this case, where has he expressed it? You know it, my brethren; it is in his “Word, which is an expression of his will with regard to us, so necessary, that to reveal it to us he “spared not his own Son.”
Jesus Christ came to communicate to us the Word of God, and to give us, in his whole life, a living commentary on that Word, even that Jesus, whose “ meat and whose drink it was to do the will of his heavenly Father;” who from the manger to the cross, where he “learned obedience” through suffering, had but one thought, one desire, one object the will of the Father! With such a model before our eyes, and with his Word in our hands, which of us can remain in ignorance of the will of God? But if I am mistaken, or if any of us remain in ignorance of that will, it is evident that it is a wilful ignorance, and consequently, a culpable ignorance, which will afford such a one no excuse in the great day of retribution. Judge your own selves, if, possessing the Word of God, the manifestation of his will, which, in his great mercy he has been pleased to give us, you neglect it; if you read it not, if you study it not, “line after line, precept after precept” with what sincerity, with what uprightness, with what desire to be heard, can you present yourselves before God, and say to him, “ Thy will be done /” What! solemnly to ask God to enable us to do his will, and yet take no trouble to become acquainted with it, but neglect and despise it! I leave it to yourselves to find a name for such conduct, or rather hear the name which Jesus Christ himself applies to it, in these severe words, addressed to characters of a similar stamp: “ Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoreth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me!” But it is not enough to read and study the Word of God. in order to know the Lord and his will, or to come into the house of God, where that Word is preached; we must believe and do it I say, believe and do it, for before God, these two things are but one and the same act of submission and obedience; submission of our will and understanding; obedience of our heart and of our life. Yes, my brethren, we believe in obeying: “ If any man will do my will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak it of myself:” and we also obey in believing; for we remember the word of our Master, “ Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father, which is in heaven.”
Thus, to let the Word of God decide upon our convictions and upon our life, to reduce our will to a subserviency to God’s will, to bow the head with adoration to every declaration of the will of God in his Word, instead of continually putting forward, as objections, our erroneous persuasions, our prejudices, and our opinions, which, without the light of God, are but darkness, to give to our conduct, our desires, our projects, our undertakings, and our whole life, a direction in all things conformed to the revealed will of God; such is the blessing which we ask in the petition under our consideration, the first duty which it imposes on us, the first step which we must take in order to escape from the moral anarchy of our wills, and return into that eternal and divine harmony, without which, we repeat, we can have nothing but misery.
You will think, perhaps, my brethren, that it is a hard bondage which God imposes on us, and which we call down upon ourselves when we pray, “ Thy will be done!” Far from it. To be the servant of God is the highest liberty; it is the sweet and voluntary bondage of love. No man can submit to it without receiving from Him “ a new heart and a right spirit,” the source of all liberty and of all strength to do the will of God. Without this liberty there is no liberty, and in vain do the worldly-minded deify and follow after, under this beautiful name, a chimera which can never he realized. Be assured that neither in the moral nor the social world, can there be liberty where there is anarchy and disorder. You will not do the will of God. that you may be free to do what will? Your own?
Impossible! the most powerful wills, those wills of iron, which seem at first sight to give an impulse to everything around them, and sometimes even to an entire age, sooner or later are shivered against the decrees of the will which ruled the world, and which “will not give its glory to another.” O, worm of the dust! thou that wouldest accomplish thine own will, tremble!
Behold, the first event that arrives will lay its foot of brass upon thy rebellious will, and crush it with thine existence! But further, we have already said there is no longer harmony in man; his will, which he would set up as sovereign of his life, is a deposed sovereign; it is but a slave in bondage to the passions. You, then, who reject the will of God, and refuse to do it, behold the will to which you are subject the abject will of flesh and blood, the will of the least of your impure desires, or of the weakest and most contemptible lust that rises up within your breasts; the will of your earthly inclinations, of your vile appetites, the will of avarice, ambition, pride, anger, and jealousy. And when each of your passions has enslaved you in its turn, you will then do the will of the world, of its errors, and its prejudices; the will of the despotic opinion of men, the will of sin, the will of Satan! “ Know ye not,” saith the Bible, “ that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey?” And is this the liberty which ye seek in shaking off the will of God?
Ah, from such liberty may the all-powerful and merciful God preserve us!
No, my brethren, no, it is not a hard bondage for which the Christian prays, when he says to his heavenly Father, “ Thy will be done!” To be made free from sin, and to become the servants of righteousness, is our primitive destination, is the end of our existence, and the liberty of an immortal spirit. The will of God does not crush, extinguish, or annihilate the will of man, which is a gift of the Creator’s hand; on the contrary, it emancipates it from the slavery of sin, and from the bondage of the world; it imparts to it a new direction towards happiness, elevates it, sanctifies it, places it again in eternal harmony with God, and thus delivers it from the conflicts, agonies, and miseries of a being in arms against the Divine order, which can never he disturbed with impunity.
Then the Christian, in pronouncing our petition, asks of God what perhaps you still fear as a bondage. Yes; his will thus sanctified, desires, above all things, what God desires; and if he sometimes feels within himself the corrupt will of the old man rising up in opposition against some painful duty, it is with love and with a sincere desire to be heard, it is as demanding liberty and deliverance that he cries to his God, - Thy -will be done /” Then he feels that ’-’love is the fulfilling of the law:” that the Lord’s - yoke is easy, and his burden light. 5 ’’ And since there is so much pleasure in conforming to the will of one we love, of one between whom and us there exists a sweet harmony of thought and feeling, what happiness does the child of God experience, even in the performance of duties which cost him much self-denial and sacrifice, when he hears his Saviour telling him with affection, “Whosoever shall do the will of my Father, the same is my brother, my sister, and my mother!” Thus, not only do those sacrifices and acts of self-denial, with which our life is replete, offered to God, lose their bitterness and become acts of filial love, but the least and most insignificant duties of ordinary life, of domestic life, and of the obscurest condition, performed for the Lord’s sake, assume a high importance in our eyes; they are sacred, they have a powerful and sweet motive in the conscience and the heart, instead of being objects of dislike and annoyance. It was by such a motive that St. Paul sought to elevate to the noblest and the holiest feelings of Christianity, those that move in the humblest ranks of human society; it was on this principle that he could say to poor slaves, ’’Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as unto Christ, not with eye-service, as men-pleasers, but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, with good will, doing service, as to the Lord and not to men.” But if, in our present life, we ought thus to do the will of God by an active obedience, we ought to ask him, with no less fervor, to enable us to do that will by an obedient submission.
God, indeed, does not manifest his will merely by his Word, but also by ways beyond the reach of our will, and which our resistance can in no wise change: these are what we usually call the dispensations of Providence.
Here especially is manifested, in the most conspicuous manner, the immense difference which exists between the man whose will is brought back to a unison with that of his God, and him who neither knows nor loves that will.
What will the man who has not learned in the school of Jesus Christ the petition on which we are meditating, what will he do in the presence of that sovereign will? Doubtless, if we could live on earth in a state of continual repose; if all our desires, all our wishes, and all our affections were satisfied and filled up, like the canvass of a vessel, which a favorable breeze wafts to the port, and which encounters neither the roughness of the storm nor the dangers of the quicksands; if what the world calls happiness, and pursues as such, fell to our lot without any mixture of bitterness, and without disappointments, then we might, for a time at least, live in that delusive independence of the will of God, of which I have spoken in the commencement of my discourse. We might persuade ourselves that submission to his will is of little importance; that we can do without being in harmony with him; that we have little need to say to him.
“ Thy will be done /” Such at least is the foolish error of multitudes who are falsely called the fortunate of the earth, who place their happiness, and tne sum of their hopes, in the fleeting years which they pass in this world. But where is the man whose life flows on as we have just supposed? Where is he? I seek for him everywhere, I find him nowhere. I find everywhere passions which consume themselves, after they have consumed their object, which dispute the heart of man, rule it with a rod of iron, and torment it; I see everywhere disappointed hopes, unsatisfied desires, the will wounded by the concussion of events; moral and physical sufferings, sickness, death, tears, and sorrows. And, my brethren, if there be among us any who think they can oppose the example of their life to this sad picture, who have not yet drunk this cup, or have not found it bitter, we would say to them, Wait, your hour will come, and will not tarry!
What, then, is it that you expect to make of such a life, O you who have never learned of Jesus Christ, to say from the heart to God, “ Thy will be done?” and who, on the contrary, see in the various events by which that will is expressed to you, so many enemies of your peace, enemies always at hand, enemies which you encounter at every step? Say if there could be any peace, any happiness between two beings called to live together in the closest and most intimate relations, who found in one another nothing but the most perfect opposition of opinions, feelings, tastes, desires, and characters, nothing but violent passions, which afforded a continual source of mutual vexations and annoyance? And in a life such as sin has made ours, what peace, what happiness can there be to the tempest-tossed soul which is driven continually against the inflexible course of events which it has no power to control? What will it do under the repeated strokes inflicted by the burning mortifications of pride, cruel heart-breakings, and contradictions of the will 1 Say what you can make of such a life? What can you make of it? Alas! what so many others have made of it, who, without communion of the soul with God, without inward peace, without harmony with their fellow-men, live in a perpetual and overwhelming struggle with life, and the incidents of every day. The struggle lasts while any remains of natural strength, delusions, false hopes, and insensibility, yield a support to their constancy; but there conies a time when these factitious means of life are exhausted; and then it is that the world without God gives utterance to murmurs and complaints against Providence, heathenish lamentations, Pagan expressions, such as cruel destiny, frightful lot, and adverse fortune! Then are left to the hapless soul nothing but distraction and despair; then are formed those desperate projects by which men seek, at any price, to put an end to the conflict; then, in these hours of darkness, rises up like a spectre, which yet they eagerly embrace, the thought of those self-murders, which from time to time horrify society, and teach it that there was there a sou! that had never learned to say to God, “ Thy will be done!” or at least it is then that they seek to take refuge in a stoical insensibility which they lay hold of with a strength of mind borrowed for the moment, that they may not appear cast clown; and it is then that men are reduced to these poor and miserable consolations which we so often hear repeated: “We cannot alter it; it. is the course of nature; we must submit!”
O sweet and precious harmony of the mind and heart with the will of a kind and gracious Father! hope of the Christian! living faith of the Gospel! love of God! Spirit which supports us in all our weaknesses! come produce in such souls this aspiration of resignation, of child-like confidence, “ Thy will be done /” Blessed be thou, O compassionate Saviour, because thou hast had pity on our misery! Blessed be thou, because thou hast taught us to pray, by assuring us that “ all things,” yea. ’’ all things work together for good to them that love God!”
Brethren, be assured that when we view life by the light of the Gospel, when with the assistance of Him who hath led us to Gethsemane and Calvary, we study and hear it reveal to us its gloomy depths; when the cross has become to us the key of all its mysteries; when our broken heart has been healed and renewed by grace: when love has subdued our rebellious will, when it has surrendered, at discretion, to the mercy of a sovereign and compassionate God; when the new-born child has lisped the endearing name of Father; when it has learned to say, “ Our Father, which art in heaven! thy will be done T’ then everything here below changes its aspect; prosperity and adversity, joys and sufferings, life and death are explained; this is the highest philosophy; it. is a soft light that penetrate? into the bosom of darkness. No doubt, trial.-- are still trials; sufferings are still sufferings; it cannot be otherwise in this world; it is not good that it should be otherwise. But if the will, bent and subdued, unites itself to the will of God in eternal harmony; if the heart embraces that will, and lovingly adores it then can the soul taste peace even in the midst of sorrow. There is then no longer the obstinate struggle, the wearying conflict, the will broken down without submission, the heart lacerated without a balm and without a remedy. But further; we are in this world exclusively for the purpose of attaining an end. And what end? precisely that which the petition we are considering brings before us, the union of our sanctified will with God’s will; a union which constitutes our supreme happiness. Now if we know from the Word of God, if the Christian knows by experience, that there is nothing more calculated to carry him on quickly and surely towards that end than the very sufferings to which God subjects him; if he knows that these alone will bend his rebellious will and make it renounce its idols, die to itself, and to every creature, that it may live to God alone; if he knows that they will promote his sanctification, that they are the crucible in which the Divine Artificer purifies his soul, and renders it capable of enjoying heaven, the abode of holiness and love; then he will never be induced to consider suffering as the result of a blind chance, or as the strokes of a terrible justice that would plunge him in hopeless despair. Oh no! he feels the hand of a tender Father, who is carrying on the education of his child, and who. for this purpose, employs a rigorous discipline, painful to his paternal heart, but employs it because he sees, in his wisdom, that this is the best means for attaining the end which his tender mercy has in view, the salvation of an immortal soul for which Jesus died, and which he desires to save at any cost!
God himself has condescended to teach us, in his Word, the secret of his love; “ As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten/’ Hear this, my brethren, “As many as I love.” Hence the child of God can love his Father’s will, whatever it be, as a certain mark of his love.
Oh! had we in our hearts a living; conviction of this, with what cheerfulness would we offer to God the petition upon which we are meditating! What an inexhaustible source of consolation would it open to us even in the midst of our severest trials! A man thus prepared by the grace of God, seized with a malady which may prove mortal, is laid upon a bed of languishing; but behold, instead of the rebellion of his will, which would only pour venom into his wounds, and bitterness into his heart; instead of trouble and anguish, moral pain, worse than that which he suffers in his body, he is enabled to cast himself into the arms of his heavenly Father, whether for life or for death, saying, with faith and love, “ Thy will be done!” Ah! think ye not that his trial is thus already softened, even before he knows the full extent of it? The child of God has the happiness of hearing those who are dear to him repeat around him, with tears, no doubt, but yet with submission, (he same prayer. And thus, along with affliction and mourning-, there enters into the dwelling of such a one a peace which the world never tastes, even in the midst of its joys? A mother weeps over the cradle of her infant which has suspended between life and death; but she hag been enabled to make to God in her heart the sacrifice which he demands; she has been enabled to sanctify that sacrifice by this prayer, “ Thy will be done!” Think ye not that she feels at that moment the flowing of a balm beneath the wound which soothes its smarting pain? O ray brother! you whom a long and trying infirmity cuts off from all the enjoyments of this world, if each successive morning, as you open your eyes to the light, you are enabled to look up to God while you take up your heavy cross for another day, to say to him, without casting an anxious glance into the future, “ Thy will be done!” 1 do you not think that your cross will be lightened, and will bring with it rich blessings 1 What evils will such an unreserved confidence in the will of God leave without a remedy? what sacrifices will it not make easy? what acts of self-denial will it leave without a compensation! Is your fortune taken away from you, are your dearest hopes in this world frustrated, are you robbed of the most cherished objects of your affections, is your reputation wounded by calumny, your conduct blackened by malevolence? in all these things, the Christian will never rest in men as the agents, never in second causes.
You know the hand that inflicts these strokes, and if you can imitate your Saviour in Gethsemane, and, like him, renounce your will, and say with him, ’’ O 3 my Father! not my will, but thine be done!” then ah 1 your afflictions shall be sanctified, and each new day of suffering, each new act of self-denial, by making you die to yourselves, will unite you more closely to God, and will increase and multiply in your hearts true peace and true happiness.
But, that the will of God may have in us its full accomplishment, let us endeavor to discern in the trial the special end of the trial. God has assured us in his Word that he doth not “ afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men,” that chastisement is “ his strange work,” and his love alone ought to be a guarantee of this to us.
Hence we ought to suppose, that in general (I will not say that it is so in every case,) God seeks to accomplish a particular design of mercy with regard to each of his children whom he afflicts. The duty, then, of such is not only to see in the trial the will of God, as we have already intimated, but to seek in it a special end, which it is designed to attain. He will not satisfy himself with merely saying to God, with a child-like confidence, “ Thy will be done /” but he will add, “ Lord, since thou smitest me with the rod, what wilt thou have me to do? Since thou easiest me into the crucible, from what defilement dost thou intend to purify me? What new lesson wouldst thou teach me in this severe school of adversity? What secret or known sin dost thou desire me to abandon? What evil habit must I sacrifice? What idol have I to cast away! Wherein must I renounce my will?
Wherein must I crucify the flesh, with its affections and lusts?” And oh! if we have then the happiness to see the will of God, that we may do it; if our heart, humbled by affliction, weaned from visible things, more easily makes to God the sacrifice which he demands not only will the trial be explained, but our soul, conscious that it has cast off one of its chains of bondage, and taken a step towards “the glorious liberty of the children of God,” will bless the Lord even for the painful means by which he has brought the accomplishment of this end. Then shall we be able to repeat with understanding the words of the Psalmist, “ It was good for me to be afflicted;” then shall we be enabled to attach a meaning to these words, so strange and incomprehensible to the natural man, “Count it all joy when ye shall fall into divers temptations;” then, in fine, having once more found by experience that the will of God is ’ good, and acceptable, and perfect.” we shall be able to. say to him, with a more lively faith, and a more entire confidence than ever, “ Thy will be done!” My brethren, if we find ourselves far, very far from such an end, let us not be discouraged. We cannot too often repeat it, let us remember that the Words upon which we are meditating are a prayer, a prayer which we may offer up to the Author “ of all grace, and of every good and perfect gift,” to Him who seeks only “ to open his hand, and to pour out upon us the riches of his mercy;” to Him who, “ as a father pitieth his children,” hath mercy upon them that fear him. to Him who came down from heaven to earth to teach us to pray, and to restore us to communion with “his God and our God, with his Father, and our Father!” But take heed, my brethren! Who among us can apply to themselves these encouragements? Is it those who have never sincerely addressed this prayer to God? No, certainly! To such we would rather say, Beware how you pronounce with your lips, words in which your hearts have no part yea, words which condemn you, and which would impress upon your worship a character of hypocrisy! What! can you say to God, “ Thy will be done /” while you love not that will, while you have no desire to know it, while you brave it, and while you are determined not to submit to it your own will, your heart, and your life? How can you say to God, “ Thy will be done /” at the close of a clay which has been filled with violations of that will, or at the commencement of a day in which you are fully decided to have no other guide or master than your own will? In fine, how can you offer up this petition so long as the manifestations of the will of God in providence find you unsubmissive; so long as they give birth to impatience, bitterness, and irritation in your heart; so long as they bring murmurings and complainings upon your lips; so long as you have other gods, whose will you wish to do; so long as you are yourself your own divinity 1 Ah! beware that this petition upon your lips be not a lie; for you already know, or you shall know it hereafter, that “ God is not mocked!”
But, whether you do the will of God or not, whether you address this prayer to God, or whether you neglect it because it does not suit you, God’s will shall be accomplished. Nothing shall oppose it; it shall be accomplished upon earth; it shall be accomplished in the day of judgment; it shall be accomplished in eternity; it shall be accomplished in you and in spite of you. Oh! hasten, then, cordially to embrace his will, before you run foul of it; for to this inflexible will may be applied those alarming words of our Lord, “ Whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken; but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.” We say in this petition, “ Thy will be done in earth, AS IT is IN HEAVEN!” That will, then, is done in heaven; it reigns there alone, and you hope, do you not, to be admitted into that place? but how are you preparing for it? What would you do in heaven, if you brought there a rebellious will, exercised until the moment you entered there in opposing the sovereign will of God? I ask you, what would you do there?
Oh! may you yet this day say from your heart, Thy will be done!”