the order and relative worth of all human desires, and with these the order and subordination of our pursuits and life’s aims.  As a prayer it is all comprehensive and intended to be so, holding within the perfect seven of its petitions, all for which we should come to God, and resting them all on His divine name, and closing them all with a chorus of thanksgiving.  As a prophecy it opens the loftiest vision, beyond which none is possible, of the final transformation of this world into the kingdom in which God’s will shall be perfectly done, and of the final deliverance from, all evil of the struggling, sinning, sorrowing souls of His children.

I desire to try in a series of sermons to set forth what little I can see of the depth and comprehensiveness of this model of all prayer, and of its ever fresh applicability to the wants and difficulties of our days as of all days.  But before dealing with that great invocation of the divine name on which all rests, a word or two must be said touching the introductory clause.

‘After this manner pray ye.’  The question which is usually made prominent in thinking of these words is really a very subordinate one.  Did Christ intend to establish a form, or only to give an example?  Churchmen say, a form; Dissenters generally say, an example.  But it would be better for both Churchmen and Dissenters to try to realise for themselves what ‘this manner’ is.

Unquestionably, whether our Lord is giving us a form or not, His chief object was not to prescribe words.  To pray is not to repeat petitions, and His commandment has for its chief meaning a much deeper one than that He was giving us either a form which we are to incorporate verbally with our prayers, or an outline according to which our spoken supplications are to be shaped.  Whether in addition to this we are to regard the very words as to be used by us, will be determined by each man and church according as he regards the use of set forms in prayer as being the true and noblest manner of prayer.  Such use is certainly not inconsistent with the utmost spirituality, but the habitual use of forms, especially their exclusive use, seems to many of us to be dangerous, regard being had to the tendency of human nature to rest in them.  And it is not without significance that this very prayer of our Lord’s, which was given as the corrective of vain repetitions and idle, heathenish chattering of forms of prayer, has itself come to be the saddest instance in all Christendom of these very faults, while the beads slip through the fingers of the mechanical repeater of muttered Paternosters.  Instead of wrangling about this subordinate question, let us try to pray after this manner.  We shall find it hard, but blessed.  Be sure that every prayer not after this manner is after a wrong manner.

This prayer helps to reverse our foolish desire to make earth foremost.  The true end of prayer is to get our wills harmonised with His, not to bend His to ours.  Surely if self-denial and submission be the very heart of Christianity, that should be most expressed in prayer which is the very sanctuary of religion.  The prayers that are to be offered after this manner will not be passionate, petulant pleadings or prescriptions to God to do this or that, but in them God and His glory will be first, I second, and through Him and as He wills.