tion. Its simple words contain within them the germs of an endless development. It was never meant to be formally repeated, or slavishly imitated, but simply to supply, in matter and manner, an example of true and acceptable prayer. Moreover, its contextual setting clearly shows that it was primarily meant to assist in the practice of private prayer.

Taking this prayer as Christ's first lesson on the subject of prayer and looking at it broadly, we find that

1. It Strikes the Note of Universality.

Although limited in its original application to Christ's disciples, it is a prayer in which all devout souls of every creed can join. Hence one of the titles suggested for it is, "The Universal Prayer." At the World's Parliament of Religion in Chicago the representatives of the leading faiths of the world repeated it in unison, at the opening of every session. Voicing, as it does, the world-wide and essential wants of the common heart of man, by it The whole round world is every way

Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.

2. It is an Organic Whole.

It is not a series of detached and unrelated utterances. "In its seven petitions," says De Wette, “it expresses the whole course of human experience; in the first three the unhindered flight of the Spirit of God; in the next three, the hindrances opposed

to this experience in earthly circumstances, and by the conflict with sin; while the last petition expresses the solution which harmonizes the conflict." If the number of separate petitions be reduced to sixwhich is evidently the right division-the unity of the whole is no less apparent. All the petitions blend together like the hues of the rainbow, and harmonize the out-breathed desires of man's eternal soul with the eternal order, and with the eternal God.

3. It Expresses a New Conception of God.

Out of this conception a new life of prayer was to spring. In answering the request of his disciples, "Lord, teach us to pray," the first thing that Jesus did was to give them a right conception of the One to whom they were to pray. He turned their thoughts from the act of praying to the object of prayer. He said to them, "When ye pray, say, Our Father"-not "Our Creator," or "Our King," but, "Our Father"-our own Father, and the Father of all. Jesus himself always addressed God as Father. He lived in filial relationship with him, and exercised toward him filial trust. In this experience he sought to have all men share. He taught them that his Father was their Father, and that their true life as sons of God could be realized only in the knowledge and recognition of his fatherly interest and love. This is the basic truth upon which all his teaching rests.

The idea of God as a Father, wise and loving

and tender-a Father holding personal relations with every man-was something entirely new. The Jewish people, among whom the highest water mark of religious thought had been reached, conceived of God as Father in a national sense, as in the words of Jehovah to Pharaoh, "Israel is my son, my first-born" (Exod. 4. 22), but never once did they rise to the conception of God as a Father in a personal, vital, and affectional sense. It was left to Jesus to give the world this higher view of divine Fatherhood, and to teach the children of men that they are to begin to pray by recognizing their filial relationship to God. He teaches that the highest prayer is not the address of the creature to the Creator, nor the appeal of the subject to the King, but the cry of the child to the Father, and that the essential thing in true prayer is not creature dependence but filial dependence, not creature confidence but filial confidence.

The first thing, then, to consider in reference to prayer is not, Am I praying in the right way? but Am I praying to the right person? Is my thought directed to the Father? Have I taken my place of privilege in God's house as a child? Is my intercourse with the Great God, whose presence fills the universe, the intercourse of a child with his father? Alas! there are many who resemble the priest of whom Fogazzaro says, in his posthumous novel Leila: "Divine paternity was to him rather a formula in which he believed than a truth which he felt, and which was precious to him. With his lips he

called him Father, while in his heart he felt him to be a monarch." No one really occupies the Christian ground who does not plant his feet unfalteringly upon the reality and centrality of the divine Fatherhood.

This new conception of God which Jesus has furnished not only gives a new significance to prayer, it is creative of prayer itself. It generates the spirit of prayer; it awakens the desire to pray; it provides a new incentive to pray; it affords a new ground for confidence in prayer; it determines the very nature of man's approach to God and of his intercourse with him, for what is more natural than that a child should go to his father in his trouble and need? A true father will delight to give; he will give without a grudge; and, if he is wise as well as kind, he will give only what is for his children's good. In the hands of such a father the praying soul can confidently rest his case.

As our Father God yearns for our fellowship. He wants us to speak to him. If we have wandered far from him, he welcomes us back. He does not become our Father when we return to him; we return to him because he is our Father. In revealing himself as Father he acknowledges his responsibility to us as his children and our interest in all that he possesses. When out of our hearts comes the cry of need his response ever is, "Son, all that I have is thine."

To strengthen the assurance that the Father to whom we pray is able to meet every demand, Jesus

represents him as in heaven, and hence possessed of heavenly power. Heaven is his dwelling place. When we pray to him we look heavenward. Heaven is above, not in a geographical but in a spiritual sense. From the upper sphere God looketh down; he bends a listening ear to the cry of his children and meets their heavenward gaze with the vision of his presence. When they call he "answers out of his holy heaven, with the saving strength of his right hand," bringing the riches of the heavenly realm into the possession of their uplifted hearts.

4. It Places God's Glory Before Our Personal Good.

How natural it is to think of ourselves first, and to ask first of all for the supply of our personal wants! But the Master teaches us to keep these in abeyance, to put God first in our thoughts, and to seek first in our prayer his kingdom and his righteousness. Hence the first three petitions have reference to God's honor, and the advancement of his kingdom, which are the things which the objects of absorbing interest among the inhabitants of heaven, in this regard contrasting with the other three petitions, which are earth-prayers, and which have exclusive reference to earthly conditions and needs.

(1) The first thing prayed for is the hallowing of the Father's name. "Our Father who art in heaven. Hallowed be thy name"; that is, "May thy name as Father, thy name as the archetypal