sume the object of prayer to be to change the will of God, or to inform him of what he is ignorant of.

Our Lord here teaches us that in the very fact of such an assumption we vitiate at once the quality of prayer. After this manner therefore pray ye, "Our Father."

The first expression of thought in the pattern prayer of the world is a paternal thought: "Our Father."

The first expression of a wish is not an utterance of our wants, but that the name "Our Father" may be hallowed. We are taught to have as our first great wish that, "Our Father's " name may be to us and to all men a holy name. -not lightly used in trivial speech, rash assertion, or bitterness of debate, but rather the object of awe, love, adoration.

As it is in the first three Gospels, so in that of S. John, we find Jesus praying: "Father, glorify thy name." See also note on S. Luke 11:2.

6:12. "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us."

In the very act of prayer we are to remind ourselves that the only condition of our own forgiveness is that we also forgive our debtors.

Even in the free grace of God there is a law of retribution.

The temper that does not forgive cannot be forgiven If we will insist upon the payment of the hundred dollars owed us, we bring back upon us the far heavier debt of the fifty million dollars (Chapt. 18: 23-35).

See also note on S. Mark 11:25, and S. Luke 11:4.

6:19-21. "Do not be laying up for yourselves treasures

on earth."

On the face of them these words teach a doctrine that

is contrary to the whole course of the Christian world. They are directly contrary, not only to miserly hoarding, not only to all miserable stinginess, not only to such hardheartedness as can be laid at the door of those by comparison called rich. They are, thus taken, contrary as well to every species of accumulated wealth. Whether that wealth consists of money or lands or bonds or stocks or anything else beside, these words, on the face of them, are against it.

The same must be said of S. Matthew 5:42; 19:21; S. Luke 12:33, 34; 18:22-30.

Yes, and many sayings of our Lord go further than this. Such are S. Matthew 10:9 and its parallels, S. Luke 9:3, 10:4. These go the length of specific commands to certain persons not to hold any property at all.

Now is this surface meaning the real truth our Lord in these places means to teach ?

If it is, then our Lord forbids the laying up of money except as is needful for the supply of our daily wants. He forbids the accumulation of capital on interest. He declares against its employment on the building and keeping up of mills and shops and factories. He is against the working of mines. He is against the building and operating of our great railway systems. He is against all these things because none of them can be maintained or brought into operation except by the laying up of capital, except by the stimulating of desires which are not bound by the supply of daily wants. In short these words of our Lord, on the face of them, are altogether against the existence of great commercial countries such as England and America.

But we have learned that it is not safe to take any text of scripture without its context. It is not safe to take any series of Bible texts without considering well the circum

stances under which they were uttered and the other portions of scripture that bear upon the same subject.

When we take all these considerations into account we are brought to understand that our Lord is in these words talking not to his disciples in general throughout all time. He is talking to his immediate followers then surrounding him and especially to his twelve Apostles.

The Apostolic life is that of a missionary. It is that of one who depends entirely upon the gifts of the faithful for support. He has no property. No fixed nor settled income is guaranteed him.

The first four Apostles began this life when they forsook their nets and followed Jesus. Saint Matthew did the same when he forsook the lucrative employment of a tax-collector. St. Paul followed in the same heroic career when he gave up all power and position among his kinsmen according to the flesh. Men in all ages of the Church have done the same when they have given up their material things that they might the better serve Christ their Lord and further the cause of nis divine Kingdom.

So we believe individuals are from time to time called to such apostolic abnegation but it is not a law laid on all men alike. See notes on 5:42; 10:9; S. Luke 12:33; 19:17, 19.

6:25.

"Do not be anxious for your life."

"Take no thought," of King James' version, is a phrase used to translate from the Greek what to-day really means: "Be not anxious."

The temper against which our Lord here means to warn us is not that of foresight and the desire to lay up for a rainy day. He rather wishes to tell us not to allow ourselves to be harassed and worried with the uncertainties of this mortal life.

To take thought as we now understand it is often the most effectual safeguard, next to the higher defence of trust in God, against worry and vexation of spirit.

7:1.

"Do not judge, that you may not be judged."

Here as elsewhere our Lord gives principles rather than rules. He embodies the principle in a rule which, because it cannot be kept in the letter, forces us back upon the spirit of it. What Jesus lays down in this law, therefore, is a warning against a censorious temper. Don't be eager to find fault in men and to condemn them. Beware of a continual inclination to suspect men's motives. See also note on S. Luke 6:37.

7:2.

you."

"With the measure you measure it will be measured

The severity which we unjustly mete out to others becomes, by a retributive law, the measure of that which is justly dealt out to us.

See also notes on S. Mark, 4: 24, and S. Luke 6:38.

7:3. "Why do you look at the mote which is in your brother's eye?"

"Oh, wad some Power the giftie gie us,

To see oursels as others see us!"

Our own faults require the most careful scrutiny. How easy for us to turn our gaze upon the faults of others! See also note on S. Luke 6:41.

7:5. "First get the beam out of your own eye."

While we are blind with self-deceit we are but bunglers in the work of dealing with the faults of others. When we have wrestled with our own besetting sins and have overcome them, then, and not till then, shall we be able rightly to aid others in overcoming theirs. See preceding

notes.

7:6.

"Do not give what is holy to the dogs," etc.

Are we then to think of some of our fellow-men as dogs and pigs? Is not this on the contrary a forgetting of all our Lord's previous teaching?

So long as men identify themselves with their passions, we must deal cautiously and wisely with them. Paul did not preach the Good News of Salvation to the howling mob at Ephesus, nor to the "lewd fellows of the baser sort" at Thessalonica. He did not do it at that time because of its being an inopportune time. At any other time he would have told any member of those crowds how he was a redeemed son of God. He would not have hesitated a moment to show him how to claim an inheritance among the blessed.

We need to be on our guard against the brute element in our own natures no less than as we find it in others. We may desecrate the holiest truths by dealing with them in a spirit of irreverence. Alas, for the man that can cynically jest with his truest and noblest impulses !

66

7:7. Keep asking and it will be given you."

In this exhortation, our Lord takes it for granted that in all our petitions we ask only for good things,-for bread, and not for a stone, for a fish, and not for a serpent. He also assumes that we ask in accordance with his teaching, that is, in his name, and according to his will. Otherwise we may ask and receive not, because we ask amiss. Jas. 4:3.

7:11. "If you, then, who are bad," etc.

These words recognize the fact of man's depravity. They at the same time assert that this depravity is not a total depravity.

In the midst of all our evil there still remains that element of naturally pure affection which makes the