SERMON IV. ST MATTH. vi. 11. "Give us this day our daily bread." We have now, my brethren, arrived at a portion of the Lord's Prayer, which, unlike the preceding petition, offers no difficulties whose solution might be important for the settling of vexed questions of Theology. On the nature and essence of that kingdom for whose coming we are taught to pray in the second clause, there have been the greatest differences of opinion: nor can we wonder at this, since different passages of holy writ speak of it in very different ways; and Christians, instead of comparing them together and gathering from them their united result, have generally insisted with exclusive preference on those which favoured their own particular views; either explaining away or entirely disregarding those which opposed them. In contravention to this partial system of interpretation, I endeavoured, when I last addressed you, to shew that, as neither of these two sets of texts can be supposed to say anything that is false, so neither of them can be supposed to say all that is true: that they are each of them the necessary complement of the other: and that the right way of interpreting them is not to separate them, and then take one set for our exclusive guide, neglecting or perverting the other, but to combine them into one joint and plenary authority. The light of divine truth, like the light of day, is composed of variously colored rays, and these rays may perhaps seem each individually more beautiful than their united product; but he only obtains its full illumination who unites these scattered tints, at whatever sacrifice of individual beauty, into one colorless transparent beam. We now proceed to the second part of the Lord's Prayer, in which the soul of the petitioner descends from the contemplation of his wants, as their satisfaction is contained by implication in the furtherance of God's general designs, to contemplating them as they are more individually felt by himself. For every thing that is promotive of our happiness may be looked at in two different ways; either in reference to the divine purposes in general, or in reference to our individual wants in particular: and our Saviour displays his perfect knowledge of our nature, and his willingness to accommodate thereto, as in other things, so also in this, that he requires us not to confine our prayers to the petitioning that God's general purposes may be accomplished, (although these purposes do really comprise all our wants,) but authorizes us to seek directly the satisfaction of our individual necessities. The petitions "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven," do in reality comprise all that follows, even as they, in their turn, are really comprised in the opening clause "Hallowed be thy Name:" but though they really imply, they do not plainly express our wants. And therefore, in order that nothing may be lacking to the satisfaction of the suppliant, Jesus subjoins three petitions which palpably express his individual needs: thus sanctioning, by his own example, the precept of his Apostle, that in every thing, no matter how personal or trivial, our requests be made known to God by prayer and supplication1 and exhibiting himself at the very outset of his ministry on earth, as fully qualified by his sympathy to act hereafter as our Advocate in heaven. To the first of these three petitions we confine our present attention. : "Give us this day our daily bread." Of the meaning of this petition there can be, as I before observed, but little doubt. As it stands in the English version, which is consecrated by constant use from the lispings of childhood at its mother's knee to the last faint low murmurs of expiring age, it represents the intention of the original with sufficient accuracy, though the epithet translated "daily" might perhaps be more correctly rendered "for the following day2;" the sense being, "Give us this day bread that may suffice also for the next:" so that we may live not from hand to mouth, but relieved from the pressure of immediate anxiety. Nor 1 Phil. iv. 6. 2 According to what seems the most probable derivation of the word ἐπιούσιος—that from ἐπιών, should I have noticed this unless to shew you, that a prudent forethought for the wants of immediate futurity is not opposed to the spirit of our religion, but in perfect unison therewith, since the prayer dictated by its founder expresses and consequently sanctions it. When therefore, in this same Sermon on the Mount, we are told not to take thought for the morrow1, because the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself, we are not enjoined to be reckless about the future, but dissuaded from being anxious2: it is not improvidence, but reliance on God's care that is inculcated. The Saviour forbids our yielding to a lurking distrust about the morrow, as though our future well-being, or even our existence, depended altogether on the jealous accuracy of our present provision for its unforeseen contingencies, and not mainly on the good providence of our heavenly Father, who will not suffer those who trust in him to lack aught which may conduce to their real good. Improvidence and recklessness indeed, so far from being in any wise sanctioned, are frequently and explicitly condemned in Holy Writ: as arising not from faith but from presumption, and leading unto ruin. Need I quote the description of the sluggard in the book of Proverbs3, in which the poverty that comes upon him with the swiftness of a traveller, and the want that seizes him with the resistless murderous violence of an armed man, are attributed to the laziness which courts "a little 1 Matt. vi. 34. 2 The word μepipv expresses anxious thought. more sleep, a little more slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep," instead of bracing them to work and where he is rebuked by the example of the ant1, one of the smallest and most insignificant of insects, which, without 66 guide or overseer or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest?" This, and many other like passages in the sacred books, which eulogize a prudent industry, and declare improvident idleness to be nothing less than wilful and presumptuous sin, may convince us that all the censures on care for the morrow we meet with in the Sermon on the Mount, are to be understood as applying to such care only as would rely exclusively on its own right arm and hand, distrusting or denying the ever-watchful love of God. And viewed in connexion with these passages the prayer, "Give us this day bread that may suffice us for the next," at once sanctions a wise forethought, and forbids all anxious and therefore unbelieving care for the morrow: since, on the one hand, it cannot be wrong to labour for that for which we are authorized to pray, nor, on the other, can it be right so to labor as though God would not heed our prayers, and as though all depended on ourselves. He who offers up this prayer aright will be equally removed from the presumption that tempts the most High, by refusing to recognize the appointed instrumentality of human industry in the operation of his Almighty hands, and from the unbelief that will not recognize the operation of his hands at all. 1 Prov. vi. 6. |