Then in regard to God, we first ask not that His law may be kept, but that His nature may be known.

The place of this petition in the prayer is explained by considerations which suggest very important thoughts for ourselves and all men.

That true knowledge of God is the deepest and fundamental necessity for all men.

That the knowledge will affect their whole scheme of thought and life.

That the most important of all questions is, How does a man think of God?

That the Inward comes before the Outward.

That knowledge is the guide of emotions and of practical life, as set forth here in the order of petitions.

This sequence of petitions corrects many errors into which we are apt to fall.

(a) That religion is chiefly to give us forgiveness.

(b) That accurate knowledge of God and His will matters comparatively little if we have devout emotions and experiences.

(c) That plans for the reformation of men should begin with the exterior, leaving theological subtleties to themselves.

But this is not a theological subtlety.

‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God,’ is a maxim for social reformation as well as for individual life.

IV.  To what practical life this prayer binds us.

Following in our estimates, aims, and practice the sequence which it prescribes.  Desiring for world most of all that it may hallow the Name.

Seeking for ourselves to hallow it.

Seeking for ourselves that we may be the means of others doing so.

The ever-present remembrance, that the name of God is blasphemed or hallowed, that God is glorified or disgraced, by us.

That to be like His name is true way to commend it.  Do you know this name?

‘THY KINGDOM COME’

     ’Thy kingdom come.—­MATT. vi. 10.

‘The Lord reigneth, let the earth be glad’; ’The Lord reigneth, let the people tremble,’ was the burden of Jewish psalmist and prophet from the first to the last.  They have no doubt of His present dominion.  Neither man’s forgetfulness and man’s rebellion, nor all the dark crosses and woes of the world, can disturb their conviction that He is then and for ever the sole Lord.

The kingdom is come, then.  Yet John the Baptist broke the slumbers of that degenerate people with the trumpet-call, ’Repent, for the kingdom is at hand.’  It is not come, then—­but coming.  And the Master said, ’If I by the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.’  It is come, then, in Him.  This prayer throws it forward again into the future, and far down on the stream of prophecy; we hear borne up to us through the darkness the shouts that shall hail a future day when here on earth the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ.  It is a kingdom, then, that has ever been, and yet has stages of progress, a kingdom that was established in Jesus; a kingdom that has a past, a present, and a future on earth.  It is after this world that the words are said, ’Come, ye blessed, enter into the kingdom.’  It is a kingdom, then, manifested on earth, and yet a kingdom into which death, who keeps the keys of all secrets, admits us.