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“After this manner, therefore, pray ye.” —
Matthew vi. 9
Divine truth is revealed to us in the Sacred Scriptures in a
perfectly logical manner, and this order exists in the Divine nature,
and in all the Lord’s works. It is the form in which the human mind is
organized, and according to which all its developments proceed. The
relations of one truth to another are those of cause and effect. This
logical sequence exists not only in the lowest plane of truth, where one
event is followed by another, but it is a progression by distinct steps
from inmost principles to outward effects. The first truth revealed is
the cause, the germ, and all the particulars are evolved from that in
orderly succession, as we see in every act of creation around us. There
is, “first, the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear.” The
prayer which our Lord taught His disciples is not a collection of
unrelated petitions, like a book of maxims. Their order could not be
changed without breaking up the coherence and weakening the spiritual
force and life of the prayer. There is very little evidence of this
essential coherence between one part and another in the letter of the
Word. Regarded from without, from a natural point of view, there does
not appear to be any essential connection between the parts and the
whole. Subjects are often introduced which, in their natural meaning,
have no relation to what precedes or follows them. But this is owing to
the Divine manner in which the Word is written. The natural acts and
objects mentioned are signs of spiritual truths which are revealed by
them. The connection exists in the spiritual laws revealed, and the
natural expressions are connected by means of the spiritual laws
embodied in them, and not directly with one another. We find a perfect
illustration of this fact in every plant. The leaves, blossoms, and
fruit are not connected with one another by outward contact, but by
inward paths which originated in the germ.
Such being the manner in which the Word is written, we must try to get
the central point of view and regard every particular from that; then we
can see the relation of the parts to the whole and the whole to the
parts. We have considered the various petitions of the Lord’s Prayer
separately; let us, in conclusion, regard them in their connections and
relations, and get, as far as possible, a comprehensive view, collecting
the rays of each particular truth into a focus, and pouring the
concentrated light upon all.
“Our Father.” These are the first words, and they reveal the central
truth. They direct the mind to the Divine Person to whom we must direct
our prayers, and in one word teach us how to regard Him. He is our
Father. The idea is so familiar and simple that the little child can
gain some true conception of it, and so comprehensive and profound that
the highest angel cannot fully fathom and exhaust it. It includes all
parental qualities. It comprises fatherhood and motherhood both. It
teaches us that all wise and provident care, all gentle and tender
ministries, originate in Him. It implies the deepest sympathy with us in
all our sufferings and sorrows, help in our needs, forgiveness for our
sins, and a love which changes not, and which desires to give itself
with all its infinite riches to every human being. It is a conception of
the Lord which commands respect, wins our confidence, and tends to draw
out our affections to Him. He is our Father, not an almighty and
inaccessible sovereign. The little child can go to Him with confidence
and filial affection, ask its little blessings, and pour its little,
transient sorrows into His patient ear; the ignorant can seek wisdom,
the forsaken and lonely can find companionship, the widow and the
fatherless protection and help.
This idea of the kind, tender, loving, wise fatherhood of the Lord must
enter into our conceptions of all His relations to us. Is He in every
principle of His nature opposed to evil and error? It is our Father who
runs to meet and opens His infinite arms to the returning prodigal. Is
He our Judge? A father's love enters into every decision and every
sentence He pronounces. It is our Father whose name we must hallow, for
the coming of whose kingdom we pray, whose will we seek to have done on
earth as it is in heaven. It is our Father, and not some cold and
heartless dispenser of public charity, from whom we ask our daily bread.
It is our Father, loving, patient, forbearing, tender, and true, and not
some inexorable tyrant, whose forgiveness we implore. It is a Father
whom we beseech to stand by us in temptation, and deliver us from evil.
It is a Father, our Father, to whom we ascribe all honor, power, and
glory, in all states and conditions of life. Could we keep this loving,
tender conception of the Lord in our minds, so distinct and powerful
that it dominated every other, how delightful it would be to go to Him,
to trust, to obey, to love Him!
But we are taught to think of Him not only as our Father, but as “our
Father in the heavens,” where we hope to find our eternal home. We are
not to try to think of Him as some inconceivable essence above the
heavens, but as “our Father in the heavens.” There is something more
important in this idea than merely locating Him in some place. He is in
every truth and affection which constitutes heaven. He is in every pure
affection, in every true thought, in every good deed; He is in every
genuine good we enjoy. He makes heaven. He is the soul and life of all
the sweet and lovely relations of the angels, of all their glowing
activities, their glorious conceptions of the Divine nature, and the
deep peace which fills their souls. Yes, He is our Father in the
heavens, and will be forever.
With this idea of God clear in our minds, and the love which gives birth
to it glowing in our hearts, we are prepared to say, “Hallowed be Thy
name.” It is not a dead formula; it is the spontaneous expression of our
hearts. But what is the name of our Father in the heavens? It is the
Lord Jesus Christ, the Divine Humanity which Jehovah assumed and by
which He came into the world and redeemed His children from the hand of
their enemies and saved them. Our Lord Himself declared, “I and my
Father are one;” “I am in the Father and the Father in me;” “He that
hath seen me hath seen the Father.” And addressing the Father, He says,
“All mine are thine, and thine are mine.” By these words is expressed
that reciprocal relation and personal unity which exists between the
soul and the body. In another place He declares, “The Father dwelleth in
me;” “No man cometh to the Father but by the Son;” “No man knoweth the
Father save the Son and he to whom the Son revealeth Him.” The Father
and Son are one person, as man’s soul and body are one person. The
Father and Son are one God, as man’s soul and body are one man. The
human nature assumed and glorified, or made Divine, made one with the
Divine, became the embodiment of all the Divine qualities in a form
adapted to human comprehension. The Divine as it is in itself is above
all finite consciousness. In the Humanity it is brought down to human
conception. This truth is perfectly illustrated in man himself. His
unclothed spirit is above the power of the senses. The spirit must be
clothed with a material body before it can reveal itself to other human
beings in this world. The material body is the man on the material plane
of being. The spirit dwells in it, and it dwells in the spirit. It can
say to the spirit, all mine are thine, and thine are mine; no man can
gain access to you but by me; my name is your name and your name is
mine.
But name implies much more than an epithet applied to the Lord; it
comprises all the Divine qualities, all the love and wisdom of Jehovah,
and the infinite variety of forms in which they are embodied and
manifested. To hallow our Father’s name, then, is to regard as holy and
sacred all the Divine attributes as they are revealed to us in Jesus
Christ. It is to revere His person, to cherish His spirit, to obey His
commandments, to follow His example. In doing this we hallow our
Father’s name; we open our hearts to the reception of His love; we
receive His truth into our understandings, and we become more fully His
children.
In the degree we hallow our Father’s name His kingdom will come, and we
shall desire to have it come with increasing power and glory. We regard
as sacred the principles which constitute His kingdom; we love and adore
the Being who is establishing His kingdom in the world and in human
minds. In the degree we hallow our Father’s name we place ourselves in
such relations to Him that He can establish His kingdom in us; we open
our understandings to the reception of the truths which constitute His
kingdom. Whenever we regard a truth as supremely precious, every faculty
of our nature seeks it, welcomes it and cherishes it when gained. If it
is a truth relating to our business, which teaches us how to succeed,
with what joy we welcome it! How reverently we hallow it! How
scrupulously we obey it! Suppose your father was sovereign of a rich and
powerful kingdom which you were certain to inherit if you complied with
some specified conditions. How eagerly you would seek to know the
conditions! and when you had learned them, how faithfully you would
preserve and obey them! They are your charter, your guide to power; they
are the paths by which the kingdom comes to you. We can see how this
principle operates in natural things, and how prompt the natural man is
to hallow the name of every truth which will lead him to wealth and
power. The same law governs in the spiritual realm. Our Father is a
King; He is King of kings and Lord of lords. There are immutable
conditions on which His kingdom will come to us, and we shall be endowed
with its riches, power, and glory. The kingdom will come to us in the
exact degree we hallow the name of our Father. The coming of the kingdom
is the logical sequence and effect of hallowing the Lord’s name.
“Thy will be done on the earth as it is in heaven.” The Lord’s will
cannot be done until we know what it is. This is revealed to us in the
truths which constitute His kingdom. We must, therefore, first learn the
principles of His kingdom before we can do His will. This petition,
therefore, follows in logical order from the preceding one. The Lord’s
will is His Divine love which is the purpose or end He constantly seeks.
His kingdom is the government and order, and methods of His Divine
wisdom. He seeks to establish His kingdom that it may become the
embodiment of His love and the means of communicating it. He seeks to
have His will done on the earth as it is in heaven. The Lord is in the
constant effort to establish a heavenly kingdom on the earth. Heaven is
heaven from the fact that the Lord's will is done in it. The societies
of heaven are organized according to the Lord’s will. Perfect order,
subordination, and harmony reign there. It is the Lord’s will that we
should love Him supremely and our neighbor as ourselves. That is the law
which reigns in heavenly societies. He teaches us to pray that it may be
done in the earth.
This law of the Divine order has a personal application. The Lord
teaches us to pray that His will may be done in the natural mind and on
the earth of the material body as it is in the heaven of the spiritual
mind. The Lord teaches us to pray that heavenly love may imbue all our
natural affections, and purify and exalt them; that heavenly wisdom may
guide our thoughts and control our actions in our business, in our
social relations, and in all the activities of natural life. We are to
pray to have the natural mind and our material actions dominated by
heavenly principles. The practical and effective way to offer this
petition is to apply it to ourselves, and to begin to do our part of the
work in establishing the Lord’s kingdom on the earth of our own natural
minds. As men and women do this, the Lord’s will will be done on the
earth as it is in heaven. Civil governments will be organized in a
heavenly form and public affairs will be conducted on heavenly
principles; domestic and social life will be reduced to heavenly order,
pervaded by a heavenly spirit, and arranged in heavenly forms; and
grimy, servile, exhausting, ill-requited labor, will be animated by
heavenly motives and become a form of heavenly use.
So far the petitions have looked directly to the Lord. We have asked
nothing specially for ourselves. We are first raised to the highest, the
inmost, the centre of all being, and from that point we begin to descend
by means of the Divine Humanity, and according to the laws of the Divine
order, to the earth. We return from the Lord to man, but, so far as we
have offered the prayer with intelligence and sincerity, we bring with
us the fatherhood of the Lord, and a reverent feeling for His holy name;
we have learned what that name is, and we have gained a distinct idea of
our Father as a Divine man in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. So
far as we have gained any true knowledge of His Divine character and
purposes, we are prepared and incited to ask that His kingdom may come
and His will be done on the earth as it is in heaven. If we have any
just conceptions of what this implies, of the immense changes which must
take place in ourselves and in human society before His will can be
done, and our agency in effecting it, we shall feel the need of Divine
aid.
This leads us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” As the Lord’s
will is done, we begin to see our dependence upon Him, and our need of
help. There is an immense and difficult work put into our hands. It is
the establishment of a kingdom among a hostile people, against the power
of marshaled hosts, in the face of the most wily enemies; it is to be
done with labor, and conflict, and pain; with the surrender of what we
have held most precious; we are to take up the cross and even lay down
our life. We have occasion then to ask our Father to give us our daily
bread. As we begin to do our work in the establishment of His kingdom,
we shall gain a wider and higher idea of what is meant by bread. The
little child and the natural man may regard it as food for the body
only. But we shall soon discover that we need meat of a different kind
of which the body knows nothing, meat that will feed our souls, nourish
our affections and support us in our conflicts and labors in preparing
the way for the coming of our Father’s kingdom. As we begin to hunger
and thirst after righteousness we shall ask for the means of supplying
our wants. As we gain a truer knowledge of the Lord’s kingdom and of our
relations to Him, we shall see that our life, and the means of
sustaining it, are a constant gift from Him, and we shall go to Him with
filial trust that He will supply our daily needs according to their
nature and degree.
The Lord’s kingdom is to the natural mind as the sun to the material
world. As its organization advances and it becomes established in our
minds, its light dispels the darkness which has brooded over them, and
reveals the diseased and disorderly conditions of our affections and the
distorted forms of our intellectual faculties. “The light shineth in
darkness.” Our true condition and relations to the Lord are revealed. We
are confronted with the terrible fact that, before we can really become
the children of our heavenly Father, bear His image and likeness and
become heirs of His power and glory, before we can hallow His name,
before His kingdom can really come to us and His will be done on the
earth of the natural mind as it is in heaven, there is a difficult and
painful work to be done. This light reveals to us powerful enemies to be
combated, evil and false principles to be eradicated, habits of thought
and feeling and action which have become organized in our nature to be
broken up. We awake to the fact that, instead of being children of our
heavenly Father, and legal heirs of His kingdom, we are hopelessly
insolvent debtors. Instead of claiming rights and enjoying possession,
we must humbly supplicate for the forgiveness of our debts. Instead of
being raised to heaven and taking our places in the Father’s kingdom, of
being clothed with princely apparel, and entering with shining faces
into its noble activities, we must humble ourselves in the dust, we must
confess our poverty, our indebtedness, our absolute dependence. Before
the light for which we prayed came, we thought we were rich; now we find
ourselves utterly destitute. Elated with the love of self and the world,
we gloried in our independence; now we begin to see that we have no
power of our own; every faculty and the ability to exercise it is a
constant gift from the Lord. Where can we turn? What can we do? What
else can we say than utter the Divine words which our Lord puts to our
lips, “Forgive us our debts”? We are led to it by a logic of cause and
effect from which there is no escape.
Suppose we have offered this petition with a sincere desire to have it
granted. The Lord begins to answer it; He begins to forgive us. But how?
In the way we have asked Him; in the only way it can be done, and that
is, “as we forgive our debtors.” Now all our selfish and worldly loves
are aroused. The mind becomes the arena of fierce conflicts. Wars are
waged in it; earthquakes shake it; tempests of passion sweep over it;
our hearts are rent with conflicting emotions; the mind is filled with
confusion and pain and despair. This was not what we prayed for. We
asked for forgiveness. We prayed to have our debts cancelled, and to
become a member of the Lord’s kingdom. We prayed for freedom and peace.
Now we cry, O Lord, “lead us not into temptation.” Save us from this
conflict and pain. “Deliver us from evil.”
Could we hear His answer it would be, “I am forgiving your debts; I am
delivering you from evil. I am doing it in the only way in which it can
be done. Your evil affections stand between you and heaven, and they
must be subdued; they are enemies which must be driven out of the
promised land before you can gain possession of it. The principles you
have adopted as the rule of life are false; they are contrary to every
law of my kingdom and they must be rejected. ‘You cannot serve God and
mammon.’ Sins cannot be uprooted, and the hard ground of the natural
mind prepared for the seeds of heavenly principles without commotion and
pain. You are a captive; you are in the hands of your enemies; you are a
miserable slave, though they charm you by their illusions and persuade
you that you are free. They promise you the kingdoms of the world, and
the glory of them, and you have yielded to their enchantments. These
illusions must be dispelled, and you must be rescued from their power
before you can be delivered from evil. So long as you are wholly in evil
you do not come into conflict. But when you seek deliverance from these
enemies, then comes the conflict. My hand is in the struggle though you
see it not. The pain which rends your soul is caused by the strain of
heavenly forces withdrawing your affections from the grasp of your
enemies. I am answering your prayer. Yield to me, and I will deliver
from all evil; I will forgive every debt; I will create you into my
likeness and image; I will make you my child and heir to all my riches.
The forgiveness of sin is not a remission of its penalties. It is the
uprooting of its principles and the recreation of the human soul.”
Suppose this work to have advanced so far that you can see its
principles and necessary conditions. You see that the Lord’s kingdom
cannot be established in the human mind and His will be done on the
earth of your own natural mind, or in human society, until the kingdom
of evil and falsity is destroyed, and you begin to feel and to
understand your utter helplessness to do this work alone. You see that
you are a part of it; you are enslaved by its illusions, and subject to
its dominion, and you can no more extricate yourself from its bondage by
your own unaided power than you can change the organization of the
material body, or the nature of the human mind. You are helpless in the
toils of merciless enemies, and your Heavenly Father is the only being
who can save you.
What would be the spontaneous utterance of one who understood the danger
of his condition; the impossibility of escape from hopeless bondage by
any power of his own, and who saw his bonds gradually loosening, the
illusions disappearing, light breaking forth from the darkness, the hope
of freedom and joy dawning, and who knew the Source from whence came his
help? Would it not be: “Thine is the kingdom and the power and the
glory”? I owe my deliverance, I owe all I have and am to my Heavenly
Father.
But the order and logical sequence of its parts is only one of the
wonderful qualities of this Divine Prayer. It is a golden key which
unlocks the doors of the inmost closets of the mind and admits light and
love from heaven. Swedenborg’s experience of the wonderful power of this
prayer is worthy of our attention, for his mind was consciously open to
heavenly influences and a knowledge of the means by which they operate.
The processes which go on in the secret chambers of the mind may be the
same with others as with him, though we are not conscious of them.
“While I was reading the Lord’s prayer, morning and evening,” he says,
“the ideas of my thought were constantly open towards heaven, and
innumerable things flowed in, so that I perceived clearly that the ideas
of thought conceived from the contents of the prayer were filled from
heaven. And such things were also infused, as it is impossible to utter,
and also impossible for me to comprehend, only I was sensible of the
general affection thence resulting. And what is wonderful, the things
which flowed in were varied every day. Hence it was given me to know
that in the contents of this prayer there are more things than the
universal heaven is capable of comprehending; and that with man more
things are in it in proportion as his thought is open towards heaven.”
Does not this give us a glimpse of the profound activities which may be
going on in the secret chambers of the soul when we enter the closet and
shut the door against selfish and worldly influences, and open it to the
Lord? We pray to our Father in secret. We use the words He has given us,
and we make them the vehicle of the desires of our heart. We perceive no
powerful effects; the soul is not filled with exalted and glowing
affections, the understanding is not flooded with light, because the
operations are in secret. And yet the ideas of thought may be opened
towards heaven, and innumerable things may flow in; influences may be
exerted upon us which will have a controlling power in this life to
protect us from evil and lead us to good. The highest forms of the will
and the understanding, which are the most sensitive to the Divine
forces, which give us our life, and which contain within them the
promise and potency of every human endowment and attainment, are
penetrated and imbued with life, the germs of heavenly affections are
implanted in the will, and the power of perception, understanding, and
thought is deposited in the intellect. The Lord draws nearer to us, gets
a firmer hold upon the primary motives of life by means of which He can
exert a more powerful control over our actions. We may have no conscious
knowledge of these operations which are set in motion by a humble and
reverent utterance of this prayer; but the germs of every good received
in this act of communion with the Lord will come out into distinct
consciousness when we pass into the spiritual world, and will give us
new and larger capacities for the reception of the Divine life, create
new forms, and add new charms to every relation and possession through
the endless cycles of the ages.
We teach this prayer to our little children as soon as they are able to
lisp it. It may not seem to us to be of much use. They can have only
natural ideas of its meaning. But if we could see its real influence as
revealed in the writings of the New Church, we should regard it of
supreme importance. Speaking of the nature of an infant's mind in the
other life, Swedenborg says, “At several different times, by the Divine
mercy of the Lord, there were sent to me infants in choruses, and it was
also granted to me to read to them the Lord’s prayer, and at the same
time it was given to perceive on such occasions how the angels in whose
consort they were insinuated into their tender and novitiate ideas the
sense of the things contained in that prayer, and filled their ideas
according to their capacity of reception; and afterwards how it was
given to the infants to think the same things as of themselves.” Again
he says, “While I was praying, the Lord’s prayer and infants at the same
time flowed into the ideas of my thought from their intellectual
faculty, which was so tender that they scarce received anything but the
sense of the words; nevertheless, it was manifest that their ideas in
that state of tenderness were open even to the Lord,—that is, from the
Lord; for the Lord flows into the ideas of infants in a more especial
manner from the inmost plane of their being, inasmuch as nothing has as
yet closed their ideas, as with the adult.”
Do not these disclosures concerning the nature of the infant mind
withdraw the veil and show us the power of this prayer, and the
incalculable importance of teaching it to our children? While the mother
with reverent and loving care is teaching it to her child and hearing it
repeated by its innocent lips, angels are present who insinuate into its
tender and sensitive mind the sense of the things contained in that
prayer. A sphere of pure and heavenly influences flow from them which
tend to mould the child’s spiritual nature into heavenly forms, and to
awaken in all its faculties heavenly activities. There is a power in
this prayer of which we have no adequate conception. It is composed of
living truths in a heavenly order. These truths are vessels for the
reception of the Divine life, and when incorporated into the mind and
cherished by the affections they are open to the Lord. Life from Him
constantly broods over them and according to their capacity flows into
them, moulding them into the Divine image and likeness, arranging them
into a heavenly order, and moving them to heavenly harmonies. It
comprises all we need, all we can ask for, from the least to the
greatest. It contains infinite things, because it is the embodiment of
all the Lord desires to give us and all that any created being can
receive. Let us, therefore, teach it to our children; let us study it in
its particular and related meanings; let us try to understand it, and to
fill its ideas with genuine affection; let us repeat it with reverent
hearts; let us ask the Lord to teach us how to pray it in an
intelligent, fervent, and efficacious manner, that our affections may be
penetrated and purified and exalted by its spirit, our understanding
enlightened by its truth, and our actions guided by its wisdom.
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