our daily bread, in which words are included all our earthly wants, these same words may remind us of the bread from heaven, the spiritual food, which we also need and ask to have supplied to us day by day.

Not only are we dependent creatures, resting on God's daily bounty for our support, but as erring, sinful beings we turn to him in penitence, and ask to be forgiven, even as we forgive those who have sinned against us. There has always been danger lest religion should be separated from morality, and men's prayers to God stand apart from their sympathies with one another. But the most difficult and most affecting duty to others is woven into our daily prayer, and made the only condition on which we are permitted so much as to ask that God will forgive us our sins. And to bind this condition still more forcibly upon us, the Saviour adds as a comment to the prayer: "For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." We have no right to ask God's forgiveness, except so far as we are ready to forgive those who have injured us.

Not only have we sinned in times past, but as we call to mind our transgressions, we feel anew and more keenly the sense of our own liability to sin; and we pray therefore with renewed earnestness that our Father, in his great mercy, will so order events as not to lead us into temptation. Full of contrition for our former offences, with a sense of weakness aggravated by our consciousness of guilt, we turn, as helpless, erring children to their father, with the further, heartfelt petition, " And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” From evil, first and most of all, from sin, with the mournful train of griefs and pains which follow after it as its natural attendants. But in this petition we pray also to be delivered from every form of evil. "Here," says the author who has just been quoted from Dr. Hedge's Prose-Writers of Germany, "I still think of temptations, and

that man is so easily seduced and may stray from the strait path. But at the same time I think of all the troubles of life, of consumption and old age, of the pains of childbirth, of gangrene and insanity, and the thousand-fold misery and heart-sorrow that is in the world, and that plagues and tortures poor mortals, and there is none to help. And you will find, if tears have not come before, they will be sure to come here." And from this vast accumulation and variety of evils we pray God to deliver us, and rest in the certain assurance and conviction that he will hear and answer our prayer.

Every element of devotion is here;-praise, confession, supplication, ascription, even without the last clause. There is no want of our spiritual or mortal nature which is not recognized and provided for. "The true Christian," says Luther, "prays an everlasting Lord's Prayer." What else indeed can he pray, either in act or word or thought? To pray the Lord's Prayer is not merely uttering the words. It is lifting the soul up, that it may be touched with love and reverence by the hallowed name of our Father who is in heaven. It is striving to bring heart and life into accordance with all that is divine, so as to realize the true union between human effort and the Divine will. To pray the Lord's Prayer in spirit and in truth is to live it all out as in God's presence and with his aid. This co-working of man with God, this union of earnest effort and earnest prayer, is the life of all that is best within us.

16-34. PERFECT TRUST IN GOD.

Having thus lifted up the souls of his hearers into communion with God, Jesus carries them along on this high plane of thought, and continues to show how the "righteousness " of the first verse is still to be fulfilled by motives which look to God, and not to man. In their fasting, which he does not enjoin as a duty, he directs them so to de

mean themselves as not to attract the notice of men, but appear to their Father in heaven as fasting, hungering and thirsting (v. 6) for his righteousness. But the love of praise is not the only influence that may come in to destroy our singleness of purpose, and weigh down our heavenly affections by its sordid and unworthy motives. The love of earthly gain must be overcome by the love that follows the richer treasures which we lay up for ourselves in heaven. For where the treasure is there the heart also will be; and if the mind is once corrupted by these inferior passions, it is as if the eye of the soul were diseased and clouded, so that the truth of God is shut out or perverted, and the very light that is in us turned into darkness. And if the light within thee be darkness, how great, the Saviour exclaims, "will the darkness be!" We can then, he adds, 24, safely owe no double allegiance to God and the world. If one master is loved and obeyed, the other will be hated, or at least neglected and despised.

But Jesus goes deeper than this into the secret motives of the heart. The same spirit which leads to avarice in the accumulation of wealth, may, by undue anxiety about the provisions necessary for our daily wants, interfere with the purity of our religious motives, and the simplicity of love and faith with which we are to look to God for our support, and to receive our food and raiment day by day as from his hands. Nothing can exceed the poetic beauty of this passage (25-34), the logical force of its reasoning, or the calm and sublime convictions of religious trust in which it rests. Are not the life, the soul, and the body, which God has freely created and bestowed, more than food or raiment? As he has provided these greater gifts, can ye not trust him in those which are the least? "Look at the birds of heaven;" [which may have been flying near them;] "for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; and yet

your Heavenly Father feedeth them." Observe the exquisite tenderness in the mode of expression; not their God or their Father, but your Heavenly Father. "And

are not you far more to him than they?" While the reasoning proves the assertion to the understanding with logical power, these words bring it home with endearing emphasis to the heart. There is then no cause for anxiety; but if there were, of what use could it be? With all his anxiety, who among you could add one cubit to his life? "And as to raiment, why should you be anxious?" They were in the open field, and the flowers probably were near them. "Consider the lilies of the field, how they are growing: they toil not, they spin not; but I say unto you, that not Solomon in all his glory was arrayed like one of these." And if God so clothe these perishing things, the grass of the field which flourishes to-day only that it may be consumed to-morrow, will he not much more clothe you, O ye distrustful ones? Do not put yourselves on a level with the unbelieving Gentiles, who are anxious about these things. And then he adds, in words which bring the paternal providence of God tenderly and warmly home to them, even in the smallest matters, "Your Heavenly Father knoweth that you have need of all these things. But seek ye first his righteousness and his kingdom, and all these things will be given to you in addition." "Wherefore,"

for all these reasons, especially as they are summed up in the last sentence, "be not anxious about the morrow; for," in addition to the reasons already given—" the morrow, like to-day, will have, and will make provision for its own trials." Live faithfully amid the duties of to-day, with a perfect trust in your Heavenly Father for all that lies beyond; for by so doing you will best prepare yourselves for the duties and the trials of to-morrow. The evils of to-morrow will be provided for, and will be enough in themselves when to-morrow comes, without being forestalled now, and adding their weight to the already

sufficient burdens of to-day. The meaning of the passagė, which closes the third division of the Sermon on the Mount, is, That we are to live as God's children in the present, giving ourselves up entirely to the duties which he assigns to us, with that perfect trust in him which leaves. no room for anxiety in regard to the perishing things of time which we may need in the future.

It is impossible to describe the new life and meaning which these words about the birds and flowers throw into nature, whose creatures, perpetually fed and clothed by God, are objects of his care and proofs of his active, allpervading presence, as they are the symbols of his goodThe doctrine implies all that is valuable in pantheism, the all-pervading, efficient presence of God, while over the universe thus pervaded and sustained it throws the kind, intelligent providence of a personal God, and the thoughtful, benignant love of our Heavenly Father.

ness.

While our Saviour would here withdraw us entirely from earthly anxiety, creating in the soul a love and faith which cast out fear and distrust, there is nothing of Asceticism or Stoicism in his instructions. He rec

ognizes the evils of life. He does not ignore or despise its good things. Our Heavenly Father knows that we have need of them. And because he knows our need of them, and will provide for it, we are to place them where they belong, as wholly subordinate to the heavenly treasures, and, without anxiety or care for them, seek first his righteousness and his kingdom.