a wish, still less to be elevated into a condition of absolute possession of all he seeks, without a want.  And the perfection of prayer is not that it should be the utterance of that impossible emotion, ‘disinterested love’ to God, but that it should be the recognition of our dependence on God, the expression of our many wants, and the frank telling Him, with wills submitted, or rather conformed, to His, what we need.  To pray is to adore; to pray is also to ask.  We have to say Our Father, and we have also to say, Give us, being sure that if we, being evil, know how to give good gifts to our children, much more does He know how to give good things to them that ask Him.

So much for the general considerations applicable to the whole of this second part.

As to the connection of its several petitions with each other, it may be noticed that it is the exact opposite of the former part.  That began with the highest and came downwards; this begins with the lowest and goes upwards.  That began with the inward and worked outwards; this begins with the outward and passes inwards.  That set forth the heavenly order in its gradual self-revelation, working the transformation of earth; this sets forth the earthly order in its gradual appropriation of Heaven’s gifts.  The former declares, that foremost in importance and in God’s order are the spiritual blessings which come from knowledge of His name; the latter, beginning with the prayer for bread, and thence advancing to deeper necessities, reminds us, that in the order of time the least important is still the condition of all the rest.  The loftiest pinnacles looking out to the morning sky must have their foundations rooted in common earth.  ’That was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and afterwards that which is spiritual.’  This order, then, is in symmetrical opposition to that of the previous part.  There is a rhythmical correspondence in inverted movement, like the expansion and contraction of the heart, or the rise and fall of a fountain.

It is worth noticing how these two opposed halves make one whole; and as the former begins with contemplation of the fatherly greatness in the heavens, so the latter part, starting with the cry for bread, climbs slowly up through all the ills of life, and passing from want to trespass, human unkindness and hatred, and again to personal weakness and a tempting world, and the evil of sin and the evil of sorrow, reaches once more after cries and tears the point from which all began, and rises to heaven and God.  The doxology comes circling round to the invocation, and the prayer, which has winged its weary way through all weltering floods of human sorrow and want, comes back like Noah’s dove, with peace born of its flight, to its home in God, and ends where it began.  They whose prayer and whose lives start with ’Our Father which art in Heaven,’ will end with the confidence and the praise, ’Thine is the kingdom and the honour.’