Ah, brethren! this is an awful requirement of Christ’s.  Who dare take such holy words into his lips?  It is a hard matter to pray as Christ taught us.  The prayer seems to move in a height of unapproachable elevation, and the air there is too thin and pure for our gross lungs.  For be it remembered, we are not praying after this manner unless our lives in some sort repeat and confirm our prayers.  Do our hearts seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness?  Are our energies given to this, as their noblest aim, to hallow God’s name; or does the very blood in our hearts throb hot, passionate desires for worldly things, and God’s name and kingdom and will seem dreamy and far-off objects which kindle no desire in our souls and rule no effort of our lives, like suns far away which shed little light upon the earth and sway not its rolling tides, that are obedient to the nearer but borrowed light of the changeful moon?  If so, no matter whether we use this form or not, we are not praying after this manner.

Look, now, at this first clause, which is the basis of all.

I. The divine Name which is the ground and object of all our prayers.  It is not merely a formula of address, like the superscription on a letter, but the reality of His character as revealed before us.  There is inseparable from all prayer the effort to conceive worthily of Him to whom we speak; to raise our souls to that height.

How much of our prayer, even while truest, fails here!  We may be distinctly conscious of our wants; our wishes may be right, and our confidence may be firm that God will give us what we ask; yet how often there is no vivid thought of Him filling the mind!  How often our prayers are offered to a mere name!  How seldom through the cloud-wrack beneath His feet do we see His face!

This absorbed contemplation is the necessary preliminary of all real prayer, and there is a truth in the thought that such losing of self in gazing on God is the highest form of prayer.  We should feel as some peasant come to court who stands on the threshold of the presence-chamber, and forgetting his grievances and his embassy, gazes entranced on the splendour and benignity of his sovereign.

Look, then, at this Name:  what it expresses.  It is not new.  The Jews dimly had it, and even Greek and other paganisms knew of a ’father of Gods and men.’  The name of Father carries with it primarily the idea of the Source of life (’we also are His offspring’), and also, secondarily, that of loving care.

How wonderful, how beautiful, that that earthly relation should find its deepest reality in God!  God be thanked that, ’like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him.’

But the true Christian idea of God’s fatherhood is more than all this.  This is a prayer for disciples, for those who alone can really pray.  All men are God’s children because all draw their life from Him, were made in His image, and are objects of His love.  But there is a fatherhood and a sonship which are not universal, and for which another birth is necessary.  Its conditions are plainly laid down by the Evangelist:  ’To as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become sons of God,’ and by the Apostle, ’Ye are the children of God through faith in Christ Jesus.’