01 - Meditation 1
MEDITATION I.
“OUR FATHER, WHICH ART IN HEAVEN.”
How different must prayer have been iu Eden from what it is now on earth! Happy in intimate communion with his God, deriving life from its source, and breathing into the bosom of his heavenly Father the feelings of his heart, man “ prayed without ceasing;” to him to live was to pray, and to pray was to live. But, alas! how far otherwise has it been, since sin separated between man and his God, and rendered the Creator a stranger to his creature! Since that time, some have lived altogether without prayer; they have neither known God nor desired to pray to him; others have repeated a set of phrases to accomplish what they felt to be a slavish and burdensome task; and if there have been some who have learned to pray in the school of Jesus Christ, ah! how forcibly do their prayers, yea even their most. fervent prayers, admonish us of our fall and of our deep degradation! Hear those chosen servants of the Lord? those men after God’s own heart. With one, prayer is the sighing- of a soul bowed down under the pressure of innumerable evils: “ Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord. Who can stand before thee? “ With another, it is a cry of anguish and of fear: “ Lord, save us, we perish!” With a third, it is the humiliating confession of a conscience tormented with remorse: “ O Lord, great and terrible God, we have sinned, we have committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled! “ Happy, still happy, for the sinner, when he can send up from his heart this lamentation to the throne of God! Happy, when reduced to this melancholy avowal of his ignorance: “ We know not what to pray for as we ought,” he is taught to add: “ But the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered!” For, my beloved brethren, you know that there are times (and they are the most painful moments of our existence,) when you cannot pray; there are times when it appears to you as if you had forgotten the way to the throne of grace; when there is, as it were, a weight upon your heart, which makes you a slave to visible things, and prevents you from rising on the wings of faith, above the miseries of this present world; when consumed by a burning dryness within, you have not even the sad consolation of weeping over your deplorable condition; when you would give every thing you possess for a tear to shed upon the bosom of your Saviour, or a sigh to breathe forth towards your God; and yet that tear, that sigh, is denied you.
It was thus, doubtless, that one of the disciples of Jesus felt on a certain occasion, when seeing his divine Master pour out his soul, in powerful prayer before his heavenly Father, and being desirous to partake of the same precious privilege, moved with a holy emulation, he said, “ Lord, teach us also to pray!” Then the Saviour, the compassionate Mediator between God and man, ever ready to meet the wants of his redeemed, put into the heart and upon the lips of his disciples, that divine prayer, the first words of which we have just read; and for more than eighteen hundred years, has this prayer been the consolation of all those who have enjoyed the blessed privilege of being able to call God by the name of “Father!" But do we understand this deep, this comprehensive prayer? Do we know how, and are we able to offer it up to God in the spirit that dictated it, so that it is to us a source of comfort and of refreshment in those trying hours of which we have spoken’/ Or because we have learned it by heart from our childhood, because a pious mother taught us to lisp it from our cradle, because we are in the habit of using it every clay in our private devotions, because we begin and end with it, our religious exercises in the house of God, have we come to see in it nothing but words without meaning, and to repeat it without obtaining any of the inestimable blessings which our Lord thus permits us to ask in terms of his own dictating? My brethren, it is this painful doubt, it is the fear lest we should repeat this prayer in your hearing from Sabbath to Sabbath, without your entering into its spirit, and joining in it with your hearts, that has impressed me with the conviction that it might be useful to us all to make it the subject of our meditation in a series of discourses, upon which we entreat you to unite with us in asking a blessing from on high.
We are far, very far indeed, front thinking that we can exhaust a subject so comprehensive. But if ’we can only draw a few drops of living water from this majestic stream of prayer, for the refreshment of some, and to convince others that they are not in a state to use it, and inspire them with a desire to become so, we shall bless God even for this, and our labor shall not be in vain. For the present, let us fix our thoughts on the words which I have read “Our Father, which art in heaven.” Who can thus address God? What meaning do these words convey to the heart of the Christian 1 Such are the two questions which we shall endeavor to answer.
O merciful Saviour! we also would entreat thee, saying, “ Teach us to pray!” Without prayer our souls are dead; breathe into them this breath of life! and when thou hast taught us to pray, hear and answer us! Amen.
Father! such is the endearing name under which Jesus directs us to address God. But who can do so with sincerity and uprightness of heart? Who can repeat this encouraging name of Father, and experience at the same time, with a thrill of joy, all the feelings which it supposes to exist in the heart of him who pronounces it? But what need of this question? some one perhaps will say, to whom it may appear to circumscribe so magnificent a subject; is not God the Father of all men? is not every child of Adam, that bears within his breast a human heart, member of the great family of man, placed under the paternal safeguard of that God who “hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face of the earth?” Is it not to God we owe our existence? Are we not all his creatures, the work of his hands? Is it not in him “we live, and move, and have our being 7” “Doth he not make his sun to rise on the evil and on the good?” and the rain “ to descend upon the just and the unjust?” Why then should not all say to him with confidence “ Our Father! Our Father, which art in heaven!”
Why, my brethren!... Ask man himself; ask, perhaps, your own hearts, but not God.
Ah! doubtless he who created the heavens to declare his glory, the earth to produce its fruits, the bird to sing his praises, and the blade of grass to fulfil, after its manner, the end for which it was created, made man also to be his child and to call him Father; he gave him an understanding to know him, a heart to love him, and a mouth to praise him by telling of his paternal benefits! But if God be their Father, then ought men to be his children, and to cherish towards him the feelings which a father has a right to expect from those who owe to him their existence and all things. And when we cast a glance at the world, we ought to see all the members of that great family, bearing upon their front and in their hearts, the pure and holy image of their heavenly Father, finding their most exalted happiness in knowing, loving, and being near him, in communion with him, in thinking of him, in imitating him in all their actions, in rendering him a willing, cheerful, and loving obedience; we ought to see them referring every thing to him and to his glory, making him the centre of their affections, of all their pursuits, and of their whole life; we ought to see these children of one and the same Father loving one another with sincerity and tenderness, and manifesting towards their brethren the same kindness, justice, and love, which their heavenly Father continually displays towards them. But is this the spectacle which the family of mankind presents? Look around you, and look at a distance from you; is it with the actions of such children of an Almighty Father that the pages of history are filled? Is it such children of an Almighty Father that cover our earth from pole to pole, that crowd our cities and our villages, that dwell upon our mountains and in our valleys? Alas! my brethren, in drawing the picture of which the human family ought to be the reality, we seem to write a sad and bitter irony!
Ah! “doubtless God is a Father, even in this universal sense; the Father of all; doubtless he spreads out over all his paternal hands which create, preserve, protect, and bless, scattering upon each a thousand, thousand benefits. But his children what, children! Can beings claim that title, who have denied their Father, and, like the prodigal son, have gone as far as they could from their paternal home, who love that separation from him, live thus distant without remorse, shut their ears to the calls by which their merciful Father would bring them back to himself, and, after having cast off the. yoke of his paternal authority, and broken the bonds of their obligations as children, despise the Word of their Father, violate his laws, and seem to take pleasure in offending him? Can beings pretend to this title, who take occasion, from the very benefits of their Father, to indulge in a daring ingratitude; beings who have polluted and effaced the image of his divinity which he impressed upon their souls; who endeavor to forget him, that they may escape from the thought of his righteous indignation; or who are even ashamed of him, yea, ashamed of him and of his name, when he is presented face to face to their recollection and to their conscience? Say, can such beings, who bear in their hearts a secret enmity against God, or at least entertain for him no more than a cold respect, an insulting indifference which freezes the life in their souls, while they are all fire for the world, its earthly goods, its impure joys; can such beings pretend to the title of children of God 1 can they lift up to heaven those hearts, full of covetousness; those looks, full of pride, and say, “ Our Father! Our Father, which art in heaven 1” No, my brethren, no! It would be an insult to the Divine Majesty; it would be a mockery of God! it would be to suppose that the holy and merciful God should be satisfied with feelings and with a conduct in his children, which you, fathers and mothers, whom I am addressing, would be indignant at finding in the children to whom you have given life, and whom you have brought up. And shall not God feel that which you would feel, in virtue of the rights which nature gives you over your children? Hear his Word. “ A son honoreth his father, and a servant his master: if I be a Father, where is mine honor? and if I be a Master, where is my fear?” He demands, then, this honor, he requires this fear, before he confers on us the privileges of children, and the right of calling him Father. And here observe that mankind, though in general they do not like to be told these humiliating truths, have, by their conduct, avowed this truth, without, perhaps, in so many words admitting it. Indeed, so strong is the conviction in man that he does not stand in such a relative position towards his Creator, as to be able to look upon himself as his child, and regard God as his Father, that all human religions have seen in the Deity an offended Being, whom it was necessary to appease by every imaginable sacrifice: and neither their priests nor their worshippers have ever addressed to God, in the sense of the words of our Lord, this name of Father, which supposes, in the heart and in the life, something quite different from what they have felt. Further; this remarkable testimony, extorted from man by his own conscience, is confirmed in the most striking manner by the Word of God. Can any thing be more surprising, and at the same time more instructive, than to hear that same Jesus, who taught his disciples to say to God “ Our Father, which art in heaven!” addressing to those who were not and would not become his disciples, these startling words, “ Ye are of your father the devil, and the works of your father ye will do.” And when these men say to him, “We have one Father, even God,” he answers them, “ If God were your Father, ye would love me.” The Apostle Paul.also inculcates the same doctrine, when in one and the same Epistle, reminding the Christians to whom he was writing of their past life, he says to them, “ We were children of wrath, even as others;” and in another place addresses to them these words of eternal consolation, “ He hath made us accepted in the Beloved, to the praise of the glory of his grace.” The sum, my brethren, of what the Bible teaches us on this subject is, that in the truest and most important sense, of the words, we are not children of God by nature, but we become so by grace; man is not born a child of God, but may become one.
Yes, he may become one; and, my beloved brethren, we all are likewise called to become children of God; we all are called to partake of the happy and glorious privilege of addressing God as “ Our Father, which art in heaven! “ It was for this that Jesus Christ came upon earth; it was for this he wrought out a new creation by his redeeming work. He alone could teach us thus to pray, because he alone has acquired for us, if we belong to him, the privilege of calling God our Father. Here, again, let us come back to the declarations of the word of him who cannot lie; and that none of us may deceive ourselves, let us learn what must take place within us ere we become children of God, “ He came unto his own,” St. John tells us speaking of the object of Christ’s coming, “ and his own received him not; but as many as received him,” received him as a Saviour with the grace and pardon, the new love and new life which he bestows, “ to them gave he power to become the sons of God, which were born” (mark attentively these words) “ not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh. nor of the will of man, but of God.” That is to say, as we have just observed, it is not by a natural birth of flesh and blood that we have “ power to become children of God,” but by being “ born of God,” of his Spirit; by being begotten of him, as really as a child is begotten of his father to be his son. Again the Bible declares, “ we are born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible by the word of God,” “ and this is the word which by the Gospel is preached unto us.” And elsewhere: “If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his; but as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again unto fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father!” May you be enabled, my brethren, to enter into the meaning of these words, for they confain the whole secret of the divine life. This birth by the Spirit of God, produces an entire change in the inmost affections, thoughts, desires, and volitions of the inner man. The man that is born of God is literally a child of God; he bears his features; the divine image, in which our nature was originally created, is restored to him, and with it all the feelings which should characterize a son love, gratitude, respect, and devotedness; there is a new life, a new creation; a new relation is established between the soul and God; and henceforward the words “ Our Father,” express a fact as real, as they are inexhaustible in consolation. My brethren! is nor. this also an idea, or rather a reality, which would never have “ entered into the heart of man?” What! shall the creature of a day, a worm of the dust, be permitted to give the name of Father to him who fills heaven and earth with his immensity and with his power? What! shall man, sinful, guilty, and condemned, but accepted through grace, be permitted to give the title of Father to the Holy One and the Just, and to consider himself as his child? Here is a miracle of mercy and of love such as our Divine Saviour alone could achieve; it is the triumph of his work; the result of his infinite sacrifice; it was this that made his heart leap with joy, seeing that it was the fruit of his sufferings: for scarcely had he risen triumphant from the tomb, when, contemplating a lost and sinful world transformed by him into a willing and obedient people; beholding, by anticipation, a family of children of God rising up upon a rebellious and accursed earth; he says to a weeping woman ’whom he wished to comfort; “ Go to my brethren, ancl say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, afcd your Father; and to my God, and your God! “It was under this endearing name of Father that Jesus generally chose to address God in the most solemn moments 9f his terrestrial life. Does he speak of the filial obedience which he had vowed to him from his earliest childhood, “ Wist ye not,” he says, “ that I mast be about my Father’s business?” Does he wish to express the ineffable love which his Father had for him: “ The Father loveth the Son, and hath committed all things into his hands.” Is he desirous, in the dark hours of Gethsemane, to call down assistance from on high, and to testify his entire resignation to the divine will: “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt! “ Would he give from the cross the most striking evidence of his charity, by praying for the authors of his sufferings 1 “ Father, forgive them!” Does his dying voice rise once more from this vale of tears, just at the moment when he is about to pass through the valley of the shadow of death, and enter into his glory? “ Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit!” This name, then, which he loved, this name which spoke so powerfully to his own heart, he permits us also to pronounce; he shares this privilege with us; he desires to sustain the character of our eldest brother; he would have us belong to the same family; he calls God “ his Father, and our Father; his God, and our God!”
Here, my brethren! you, who have been taught by Jesus to know God, here you see the spirit in which you, like him, are permitted to pray, to pray at all times, to pray under all circumstances. You are no longer the poor fearful creature, exiled to a distance from God, that approaches, with trembling, an unknown and dreaded being, surrounded with terrors, and enshrined in an inaccessible immensity. No; Jesus himself puts into your mouth, when you fall upon your knees before your God, the name of Father, that most endearing name in nature, a name which summons up to the mind the tenderest affections, a name which we never pronounce without the deepest feelings of veneration and love! Is there in the heart a single feeling of filial fear, of filial love, of child-like and unreserved confidence, which this name is not calculated to awaken? He, then, who thus prays, a child, weak, indeed, but loving, who approaches the best of parents to ask of him, with confidence, every thing that he has need of. in the assurance that nothing which he asks shall be denied him, if it contribute to his real happiness. The Bible insists much- upon this comparison of an earthly father and our Father in heaven; and it challenges the tenderest affection of a parent’s heart to surpass in any respect the love and care of our heavenly Father. “ What man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye, then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?” Does a suffering or an erring child meet with assistance or compassion from his father? “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.” The Bible does not stop even here; the experience of the Christian contains still richer treasures of consolation. If there be found a father so unnatural as to abandon his own child, or if death, striking a beloved father, leave his child an unprotected orphan, the arms of a heavenly Father are stretched out to receive him, to surround him with love and with paternal care: “ When my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up!” And this assurance, which David had found so blessed a reality when he pronounced these words, is the same to every soul whose confidence is in the Lord. Yes, I have seen the young child returning sad and dejected, after accompanying its father to the tomb, and have heard it ask, in the agony of grief Who will now be my guide and my support in this life of misery upon which I am about to enter, alone, and poor, weak, and without hope? And then I have seen the hand of a faithful servant of God pointing upwards, while with accents of sympathy and tenderness he said “ My child! remember that thou hast still a Father in heaven;” and these words, these few words, found the way to that young heart, and never after departed from it; and these few words gave a direction to his whole future life by shedding over it a new light.
And, my brethren, it is to remind us also of this power of consolation and of succor which resides in God, that Jesus teaches us to say, in our prayers, “ Our Father, which art in heaven!” Which art in heaven! but is not God present everywhere? Is he not on earth as well as in heaven 1 Doubtless; but Jesus, by these words, seeks to raise our hearts, our thoughts, our hopes, above this earth, above our miseries, above every thing that changes, passes, and dies; above life and death! He desires to remind us, that were all our earthly supports to crumble into dust beneath us, were the earth itself to be shaken to its foundations, were we to remain solitary and alone in the midst of an immensity reduced to chaos, God, our Father, who is in heaven above all, would still be there to receive, to succor, and to save us. He wishes to remind us, that, we have for a Father Him who reigns from all eternity in heaven, who by his Word created all things, and hence, that every one of his works ought to proclaim to us his presence, his care, and his love. The poorest and the meanest creature, then, who has become a child of God, can say, with the fullest confidence, He who made the heavens and the earth, He who peopled immensity with glittering worlds, who maketh summer and winter to succeed one another, he is also my Father! He who enriched the earth with its beauties, who gave the flower its bloom and its fragrance, and the bird of the air its note of joy. is also my Father! The God who governs the world which he created, is also my Father! What, then, shall I fear? Poverty, the wants of life? my Father is he who gives the sun its brightness, the earth its riches, the bird of the air its food. Shall I fear sickness or suffering? my Father is he who, from the height of heaven, where he reigns, holds, in his almighty hand, all the moments of my existence, “ who maketh sore and bindeth up; who woundeth, and his hands make whole!” Shall I fear the death ’of those who are dear to me? if I have loved them in the Lord, they go, like my Saviour, “ to their Father and to my Father, to their God and to my God.” Shall I fear the hour of darkness, when I myself shall be called to descend into the grave? my Saviour has taught me to pray, “ Our Father, which art in heaven” that I might learn, while on earth, to see in that blessed place my Father who loves me, my family, and my real home. He wished, that every time these words escaped my lips, I might remember that I was an exile, and that my hopes, my wishes, and my happiness, ought not to cleave to this perishing dust, but rise, with this prayer, even unto God!
Thus, my brethren, you see, that to him who can really say from his heart, “Our Father, which art in heaven,” every thing changes its aspect in life, in death, and in eternity, upon which there now no longer rests to him the shadow of a doubt. But his relations with men are also changed, elevated, ennobled, and immortalized. Observe, that Jesus does not teach us, isolating ourselves, each in his own selfish individuality, to say my Father, but our Father, which art in heaven! And in pronouncing these words, we remember with joy that we do not pray alone. Whosoever is born of God upon earth is a member of that family of the redeemed of Christ, with which we are all united; a new bond of imperishable relationship links together the children of God, from the most obscure Christian whose whole religious knowledge consists in being able to pronounce, with affection, the name of his heavenly Father, even to the spirits of the just which already surround the throne of God. O, believing soul! wert thou even alone and desolate upon earth, forgotten of men and of the world, yet art thou a member of a great and glorious family. Wherever there exists a human being in whose heart burns a spark of love for the Almighty Father, there thou hast a beloved brother, who can never separate thee from his interest and affection.
Thou art not alone in thy conflicts; thou art not pursuing thine earthly pilgrimage alone; thou dost not pray alone, for in every corner of this globe, where a soul prays, it addresses itself to thy Father and to its Father, to thy God and to its God; wherever the Lord’s Prayer is repeated, thou art comprised in this word of boundless charity: “ OUR Father, which art in heaven!”
Let us then remember, my brethren, that we can never really address this prayer to God without coining out of our miserable egotism.
You know, that the language of individualism, the little singular pronoun which so continually betrays our narrow self-love; my. rights, my interests, my property, my family, my enjoyments; the language of egotism is banished from the vocabulary of the Christian as Christ Jesus has formed it. After him, when we pray, we say, our Father, and we ask no favor which we do not wish to see extended to all those whom these words embrace. Here must be realized that famous device which the men of the world sometimes adopt, but to which, alas! they ever give the direct lie, “ One for all, and all for one!” Here the interests of our brethren must be ours, their joys our joys, their trials our trials: “If one member of the body suffer, all suffer with it.”
O, my brethren, did this love fill the hearts of all the disciples of Jesus when praying did they know how to avail themselves of the precious privilege of praying for one another, of uniting to ask of God their mutual happiness, and the conversion and salvation of the world, the Church of God would soon change its appearance! Where, then, would be the divisions, the animosities, the wretched strivings of a miserable self-love? Where would be that cold and disdainful charity which belies itself in assuming the name? Soon would all other feelings give place to love, and love would unite all hearts, so that they would be able to say, with feelings of delight, and in sublime unison, “ Our Father, which art in heaven.”
And, my brethren, since the Saviour introduces us by such words and such ideas into the sanctuary of prayer, what may we not expect to find there! what riches of grace, of consolation, and of love! What can such a Father refuse to his children? But permit me to conclude this discourse by a question which I would entreat you to examine in your consciences before God. Can you really and sincerely address to the Almighty these words, “ Our Father, which art in heaven? “ Do these words, on your lips, speak the truth? Do they express your feelings, your soul, your heart? ]s God really your Father? Do you entertain for him. the love, the submission, the confidence which he expects from his children? Happy, a thousand times happy are you, if the witness of his Spirit in your hearts responds affirmatively to these questions! For then there is nothing in life or in death which can inspire you with a fear that is without an antidote, an anguish that has no remedy.
Nothing can really hurt you; you are happy!
Give thanks unto the Father, who hath loved you, and brought you to the knowledge of Himself; love him in return; serve him all the days of your life! But if it be otherwise, if you have never said to God, in the spirit of adoption, “ Our Father;” if your conscience forces you to acknowledge that these words, upon your lips, would be a lie from whom, then, do you expect your happiness and your peace? If God be not your Father, what then is he to you? What will he be to you when in a few days you appear before his throne 1 If God be not your Father, from whom do you expect help in danger, consolation in affliction, life and salvation in death and in judgment? Put not away from you this great question, treat it not lightly, seek not to distract your mind that you may shun it; but solemnly charge it upon your conscience to resolve it. But I wish not to conclude with severe words; those of my text are so encouraging.
God does not come to you here as a judge or as an avenger. No, he comes to meet you, calling himself your Father! Oh! if hitherto the threatenings of his Word, and the chastisements of his justice, have been powerless to shake your souls, to awaken your consciences, to lead you to God, through that fear, which is due to him, let your hearts at least be touched by the words upon which we have been meditating; let them be attracted and subjugated by them forever!
We conjure you this day not by the terrors of the law, we conjure you by ’the mercies of God, to hear the Saviour, who himself would lead you to the foot of the throne of grace, put into your hearts and upon your lips the endearing name of Father, and teach you to stammer, were it for the first time in your lives, “ Our Father, which art in heaven.” Do you refuse to follow him? Do you refuse to have God for your Father? Whatever part you choose, the responsibility rests upon your own heads!