TJ I am prepared to adopt the following declaration : " The coming of the kingdom would mean the death of flunkeyism and 1 W. R. Richards, A Study of the Lords Prayer, 45.
142 THE LORDS PRAYER
toadyism in the personal life, the death of mammon in the social life, and the death of jingoism in the national life." I venture to think that it would banish from our social life all strife, all envy, all slander. It forbids Christian people to follow unchristian fashions. It makes the pride and stand-offishness of some Christians towards their fellow-members positively ridiculous. It bids us be courteous, kindly affectioned, pitiful, given to hospi- tality, charitable. The same consecrating hand laid upon our commercial life will prevent the fierce competition which chokes the life out of the weak and exalts the strong ; a heartless rejec- tion of a good servant because a few shillings a week can be saved by giving the post to a boy : a recognition of a moral code differ- ing fundamentally from Jesus Christ's moral code. Business men will give a helping hand to fallen brothers who are trying to recover themselves ; they will scorn to ask their young clerks to make untrue statements about goods. Workmen will lose their passion for strikes. Christian people — certainly Christian ministers — will be ashamed to take shares in a brewery " because it pays," or to demand a larger dividend from any company with- out enquiring what the effect may be on the employees. In civic and political life we shall refuse to allow large vested interests to occupy the seat of authority and to shape legislation for their own advantage. When the Kingdom comes, no Parliament would allow the children's charter — a Bill for preventing the sale of intoxicants to young children, a Bill the necessity for which was recognized by everybody — to be flung to the brewers and publi- cans for them to tear and trample upon. Indeed, we might go a step farther back, and say that when the Kingdom comes there will be no liquor traffic on lines that bear any comparison with that which shocks and mocks and murders us to-day. And in our national life when this prayer is prayed earnestly, we shall distinguish between the shoddy patriotism which is only a masked pagan vice, which desires to exalt British interests by any means warlike or not at the expense of other people, and that truer patriotism which is a Christian virtue, which longs to make one's own nation good, that it may be blessed of God and become a means of blessing to the world. You may easily quarrel with my provisional programme of Christian life, but you cannot be a true follower of Christ if you do not pray and labour for the coming of the Kingdom of our Father, through the spread of the Chris- tian religion and the supremacy of the teaching of Jesus.1
Father, let Thy kingdom come, — Let it come with living power;
1 .'. K. Roberts, Studies in the Lord's "Prayer, 29.
ST. MATTHEW vi. 9 143
Speak at length the final word, Usher in the triumph hour.
As it came in days of old, In the deepest hearts of men, When Thy martyrs died for Thee, Let it come, 0 God, again.
Tyrant thrones and idol shrines,
Let them from their place be hurled:
Enter on Thy better reign,
Wear the crown of this poor world.
O what long, sad years have gone, Since Thy Church was taught this prayer ! 0 what eyes have watched and wept For the dawning everywhere.
Break, triumphant day of God ! Break at last, our hearts to cheer; Eager souls and holy songs Wait to hail Thy dawning here.
Empires, temples, sceptres, thrones, May they all for God be won; And, in every human heart, Father, let Thy kingdom come.1
III.
The Will.
"Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven."
In the second petition of this prayer, we have prayed for God's spiritual Kingdom, that it may be set up and established in our hearts ; for His visible Kingdom, or Church, that it may increase and spread, until it fill the whole earth ; and for His heavenly Kingdom, that it may soon drive away and put an end to every kind of sin and sorrow, and leave nothing to be seen in the new heavens and the new earth but a glorious God, filling all things with His presence, and ruling with .1 Father's love over His dutiful and
1 John Page Hupps.
i44 THE LORD'S PRAYER
holy children. Already, therefore, we have desired that those things be fulfilled which are contained in this third petition. We cannot desire that He be King over the earth, without desiring that His will be done on earth. We do not sincerely own Him as King, unless we set His will above our own and every other. For a kingdom where there is not one guiding will is a distracted kingdom, doomed to fall : a king whose will is not done is a mocked and virtually dethroned king. However, to add this petition is not to repeat, though it be to develop and follow out, the preceding. The three petitions are to one another as root, stem, and fruit ; as beginning, middle, and end.