08 - Dependence for Temporal Blessings

Chapter 8 DEPENDENCE FOR TEMPORAL BLESSINGS "Give us this Day our Daily Bread" When the Great Teacher undertakes to sum up, in seven short sentences, the whole matter of the sinner’s prayer, we are to expect that every one of them is of great importance. If wise and good men, or even holy angels, had had the forming of this prayer, while they would not have overlooked temporal blessings, it is not probable they would have given so prominent a place to the request, " Give us this day our daily bread.’’ We cannot too often call to mind that all the dispensations of God are consistent with one another. Although he has made man a creature destined for immortality, he has made him to partake of blessings that are mortal. He must have food and raiment, with numberless other attendant mercies, in order rightly to pursue the great ends of his immortality. "Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things." It is because he has connected the highest principle of happiness with the lowest gradation of that happiness, that in this summary of petitions the Lord Jesus has put so high an estimate on the good things of the present world. True religion neither idolizes, nor overlooks these things. It gives them their proper place; and while it reproves and condemns the avarice and sensuality of a worldly mind, it at the same time rebukes the stiff severity, the studied abstemiousness, the professed indifference to worldly good, which are equally at war with the promptings of our nature, and the claims of duty to God, to ourselves, and to our fellow-men. Our object is to present some expansion of this request, and to select and enforce the great principles it contains.

One of these is, that for the supply of ON God. Prayer is a distinct recognition of dependence. When the Saviour puts the petition into our mouths, " Give us this day our daily bread," he not only teaches the abstract doctrine of our dependence, but that we should be in the habit of acknowledging it. Just in the proportion in which men lose sight of this thought, or live in the neglect of this duty, are they sinking into blank atheism. Temporal enjoyments are no more the result of chance and contingency, than the beautiful and wondrous world in which we dwell. Natural causes may be the means and instruments of their production, but they are not the authors of them. They form no constituent part either of the firmament above us, or of the earth beneath us ; nor are any of the numerous physical combinations which give form and substance to them under the control either of angels or men. The industry of man may be employed in procuring them ; but his very toils furnish affecting admonitions of his dependence.

We are prone to stop at second causes in our survey of the entire range of temporal good; but the spirit of genuine piety stops not short of the great First Cause. Not all the second causes in the universe ever gave fertility to the harvest field, or clothed the silk worm, or called into being the humblest flower. " Beware," said God to his ancient people, "lest when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied; lest thy heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God, and thou say in thine heart, My power, and the might of my hand hath gotten me this wealth." This were neither sound philosophy, nor true religion. "The eyes of all wait upon thee, and thou givest them their meat in due season." The providence of God inweaves and immingles itself with all the affairs and circumstances of men. It extends itself alike to the drop of a bucket and to the ocean, to the small dust of the balance and to the whole material universe, to every individual of the human family and to the entire race. The goodness that visits the greater, also visits the less. If the meanest of the human family were too insignificant to be noticed, he would be too insignificant to be heard, and would be alike absolved from the duty and debarred the privilege of prayer. The children of poverty and want may have deeper impressions of their dependence than the sons and daughters of opulence; while in sober verity, the imperial purple, the splendid palace, and the sumptuous fare of princes, are as truly from God, as the coarse garb, the shattered tenement, and the scanty fare of the beggar in his rags. The latter may be more ready to disclaim all reliance on other sources; because their daily bread must be dealt out to them, and they must beg it at God’s hand. But the rich are not less dependent on the same Almighty Parent. Their abundant resources, their wide domains, their splendid edifices, their costly equipage, their gold and credit, are all in his hands who gives, and takes away, when and where he pleases. It is not necessary for him to work a miracle, in order to disappoint the expectations of the most confident; defeat their proudest hopes; and overturn the loftiest edifice their pride has reared.

Nature herself teaches us that our insufficiency is absolute, while God’s sufficiency is boundless. How many secondary causes, not one of which is under any human control, must be preserved in successful operation in order to secure his daily subsistence to a single individual of the human family! What a delicate and nice adjustment of all the laws of nature, in order to furnish him food to eat and raiment to put on! What a multitude of bodies in the planetary system must be constantly and wisely directed, in order to shelter him from the summer’s heat and the winter’s cold! What masses of matter must be arranged and propelled; what orbs must shine, and what clouds obscure; what vapors must be arrested in mid-air, or gently distil their moisture; what springs must be filled, and what rivers must flow; what tempests must agitate, and what zephyrs must breathe; what unnumbered processes in the vast laboratory of the universe must all be preserved in their due and fitting action, and how many intelligent agents sustained in their course of plodding industry, in order to furnish those blessings which make human life cheerful and happy! Nay, all this is needful even to furnish the wardrobe of the humblest cottager; or to procure a cup of cold water, or a loaf of bread, or one poor barley-corn. Had we an angel’s eye and wing, to follow out and trace the ten thousand influences of that great First Cause, and mark his unwearied care and offices of love, how should we discern his almighty and all-pervading providence, and how deeply should we feel that "in his hand is the soul of every living thing!" To instructions like these, we may also add the lessons of personal experience. You began the world poor; and God has not only taken care of you, but given you unexpected prosperity. Every shower and every drought, every storm and every calm, every revolution in human affairs at home and abroad, every year, and it may be every day, while fraught with calamity to others, has only served to heap up riches to yourselves. Or it may be that it has been your lot to experience sad and melancholy reverses. Your resources have failed ; your riches have taken to themselves wings, and passed away ; your industry and contrivance have all been in vain; calamity after calamity has invaded your comforts, and everything has seemed to be against you. And is there no overruling Providence in these things? Is there no dependence of the creature upon the Creator? " Who knoweth not, in all these, that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this?" What we ourselves seem to procure, is from Him; what we receive from others, is from Him; what comes to us we know not whence, we know not how, is from Him. What, in the view of man, is most contingent, is designed by Him. His providence is daily employed in this wonderful provision. Our dependence is as absolute and unceasing as His superintending care and bounty.

Another principle contained in this request is, that WHAT IS THUS SUPPLIED TO THE CHILDREN OF MEN, IS TO THEM A MERE GRATUITY. From men we can often claim temporal good; it is ours by contract, and for services rendered; we have a right to it by the decision of law, and can enforce that right by legal process. But we have no such claim on God. He owes us nothing. We may use the language of suppliants, "Give us this day our daily bread ;" but we have no claim of merit or of right. It is all of his mercy, and not of our own deserving. Man’s dependence renders his daily bread God’s gift’. It belongs to God; and our lives themselves are his. Gabriel himself cannot say of the smallest and obscurest gem that adorns his crown, that it is of his own procuring. For who hath first "given to the Lord, and it shall be recompensed to him again; for of him, and to him, and through him, are all things." He is not indebted to the holiest of them; nor may one among them all, either among the fallen or unfallen, take from a thread to a shoe latchet, unless he first asks it of God. Earthly good becomes ours only as we ask, and God gives it. The most laborious may not touch the fruits of the ground he has cultivated, and which he has gathered and garnered, without first asking leave of his heavenly Father. God requires us to ask; it is promised only to those who ask. We have the prospect of God’s blessing with our daily mercies, only as we ask for them. They become a curse, rather than a blessing, when we take them without asking. To those who will not lay it to heart to give glory unto his name, God says, " I will curse your blessings; yea, I have cursed them already; because ye do not lay it to heart." When the haughty King of Babylon pillaged the vessels of gold and silver from the Temple at Jerusalem, He who dwelleth not in temples made with hands held him responsible for the sacrilege. And He would have men know, that this rich and beautiful earth is his temple; that these unfathomed stores of wealth gathered from its recesses, or harvested from its surface, all belong to him, and that when bestowed, they are a mere gratuity, given freely, and without any remuneration to their Author. The rich and great have as little to give for them as the humblest poor. They themselves are nothing, they have nothing, they can do nothing, and enjoy nothing, without Him. And if man’s dependence renders his daily bread God’s gift, much more does his sinfulness render it so. As a sinner, he has no right to divine blessings of any kind. As to the creature’s right to claim anything from the Creator, it is simply this: so long as he remains innocent, he has a claim upon Him for protection. It would be wrong not to exempt him from punishment, because he does not deserve punishment. But when man, by sin, forfeited his life — the greater blessing — his claim to every smaller blessing was forfeited also. Had there been no forfeiture, there had been no such thing as suffering for want of the necessaries of life ; and this is one form in which God has written this forfeiture, on man’s actual condition.

Fallen, sinful, and sinning man ; man who not only owes God all that he is and has, but who has forfeited all by his transgressions ; man who has become so deeply indebted to the divine justice, that but for the timely interposition of sovereign mercy, nothing had awaited him but the worm and the flames; may well understand that, so far from having any claims on God, whatever he receives that is better than the equitable recompense of his iniquity, is gift, is bounty, is the " gift of God through Jesus Christ.’’

It is not a thought to which the minds of Christian men are strangers, that their daily bread is conveyed to them in channels opened at the cross. This otherwise barren and desert earth has become fertile, its clouds surcharged with blessings, and its revolving seasons, and the patient toil of its inhabitants, have become fruitful in mercies only through the mediation of that Great Sufferer, who arrested the sentence that would otherwise have consigned it to destruction. God might withhold their daily bread, and treat them better than their deservings. And when bestowed, it is without any equivalent or compensation. It is a daily present; it is a donation from Him whose eye never slumbers and whose goodness is never weary.

Many a man who disclaims all right to the bounties of God’s providence in theory, has a false and secret sense of his worthiness of temporal good. We should be disabused of this ensnaring thought, if we would rightly ask for our daily bread. It diminishes our impressions of the divine bounty, and weakens our sense of grateful obligation. If we are made to differ from others, it is God who makes us to differ. God is everything to us; but what are we to him? If it is a proof of an ungenerous and dishonorable mind to be indifferent to the accepted bounty of men; and human liberality becomes a thankless and irksome service, where it is imperiously claimed rather than gratefully acknowledged. Still more ungenerous and dishonorable is it to complain that heaven’s bounty is scantily, or grudgingly bestowed, or when bestowed liberally, that it is no more than we had a right to expect. It contributes not a little to our enjoyment of God’s goodness to dwell upon it as his gift, and to think of him as the greatest of givers. To know and feel this; to feel it when we pray, is the cheered and grateful sentiment of true piety, the blessedness of angels, the joy of heaven.

There is also another principle of great practical import contained in this request. It strongly inculcates an implicit reliance on WE NEED. It is a great privilege to trust with undisturbed tranquility on the bountiful providence of our Father who is in heaven. he has encouraged us to do this by the very privilege of prayer. " In all thy ways acknowledge God; so shall thy barns be filled with plenty and thy presses burst out with new wine." " What man is there of you that is a father, who if his son ask of him bread, will he give him a stone; or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? or if he ask an egg, will he give him a scorpion? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?"

Nothing can be more touching than such an appeal as this. We are needy; we are unworthy; infants are not more dependent: yet may we spread our wants before him as a child before a father. ’’ The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger; but they that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing." He gives his children ’’ things present," as well as " things to come;" he assures the poorest of them all, that "bread shall be given him, and his waters shall be sure." There is no other to whom we may with entire confidence commit all our temporal concerns ; " casting all our care upon him, because he careth for us." He will not trifle with our wants, nor "turn away our prayer, nor his mercy from us." He who fed Israel in the desert, and Elijah at the brook; he who decks the lily and beautifies the rose, will much more clothe those even of little faith. "Behold the fowls of the air; for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns ; yet your heavenly father feedeth them : are ye not much better than they ?" ’’ The life is more than meat, and the body than raiment" Life he has already given; and he who bestowed the greater will not withhold the less. He who first gave these mortal and perishing bodies, and breathed into them the breath of life, unsolicited and before they were asked for, will not, unless we trifle with the laws of his providence, and sinfully neglect the appointed means, deny that which is necessary to preserve the life he gave. Nay, we have stronger grounds for confidence. " He who spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him, also freely give us all things ? After such a demonstration of his goodness, who will question his readiness to supply minor wants, now that there is a free and unimpeded channel opened by which the divine goodness may flow to the guilty?

There is not only no reasonable desire, for the gratification of which the means are not provided, but the God of providence looks beyond the circle of actual want, and is sumptuous in his provision for the comfort of men, for their convenience, and even for their luxury. "Marvelous are thy works. Lord, God, Almighty, and that my soul knoweth right well I How precious are thy thoughts unto me, O God; how great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand." There is a richness, a munificence and constancy in God’s goodness which rebukes distrust. Long, very long has it been continued, without any intermission, to this rebellious and ungrateful world, extending itself from year to year, from century to century, from age to age. It never slumbers, and never sleeps; never relapses into a state of insensibility, or forgetfulness.

We distrust the bounty of creatures. It is one of the deepest trials to which humanity is subjected, to be dependent on creatures. Men feel the bitterness in the uncertainty of this dependence, not only because it is humbling to their pride, but because it defeats their expectations. But the divine bounty need not be distrusted; it is never bestowed capriciously, because it takes its rise from unfailing, overflowing sources; — its sources are neither sealed up by the demerits of its objects, nor exhausted by their poverty. Disquietude and distrust, therefore, are out of place in creatures that have access to God. Perplexing uneasiness, carking cares, corroding solicitude, are worse than useless, because they render us the less fitted to ask, to receive, to labor and to enjoy. They are at war with piety; with the reliance the Bible warrants, and the confidence God will not disappoint. The fault will be our own if he give us not our daily bread, and if we live not securely under his care; if his sun shine not upon us all the day, and his dew be all night upon our branch; if we sing not with the sweet Psalmist of Israel, "I will both lay me down in peace and sleep, for thou, Lord, only makest me dwell in safety!" Men who profess to trust in the promise of God for their eternal salvation, are often slow of heart to trust him for the things of time. It were well that they bring their faith to this practical test. They give themselves credit for more faith than they have, who cannot trust him for temporal favors.

There is yet another great principle involved in this request: it is that our desires for temporal GOOD SHOULD BE MODERATE. "Give us this day our daily bread" This prayer regulates the amount of our wants, and the measure of our desires. They are limited to a competency. If God’s will so decide our destiny, " having food and raiment," we should ’’ learn therewith to be content." We should be willing to live from day to day, fed by God, and from his table. Where our own duty is faithfully performed, we may not be anxious for tomorrow’s bread; God would have us ever coming to him. We are not sure of tomorrow; we may not need his bounty then ; for "what is your life; it is even a vapor that appeareth for a little while, and then vanisheth away." Time flies, the stream of life is ebbing away. That distant, uncertain thing, tomorrow, would have crowned the most ardent hopes, but for the grave. When it came, it brought only a cypress wreath. While we covet the good things of this world, the almond tree flourishes on our head, the shroud is weaving for us, and the dark and narrow house becomes our home. Whatever other Scriptures may justify a prudent forethought for the things of this world, the petition which we are amplifying obviously gives no countenance to the spirit, of hoarding up. If a Christian man were to make the experiment, he would find it a very difficult thing to pray for great wealth. The spirit of covetousness and of prayer do not dwell together in the same bosom. We are instructed to ask only as we need; there is danger in asking more. God may give more, but it is not safe to ask for more, lest he should say of us as he did of his restive and grasping people of other days, "I gave them their request, but sent leanness into their souls."

It is a beautiful remark of Lord Bacon, bad as he was, ’’Seek not proud wealth; but such as thou mayest get justly, use soberly, distribute cheerfully, and leave contentedly." Wealth is desirable, not for its own sake, not merely for the wants it supplies. In itself, it is an abstract, imaginary thing, and where it is possessed, not unfrequently creates more wants than it gratifies. It is desirable, mainly, to augment influence, and extend the facilities of doing good. That accomplished statesman and jurist, the late William Wirt, a name that will be long illustrious and venerated in American history, on this topic makes the following touching observations : " Excessive wealth is neither glory nor happiness. The cold and sordid wretch who thinks only of himself; who draws his head within his shell, and never puts it out, but for the purpose of lucre and ostentation; who looks upon his fellow-creatures, not only without sympathy, but with arrogance and insolence, as if they were made to be his vassals, and he to be their lord; as if they were made for no other purpose than to pamper his avarice, or to contribute to his aggrandizement; such a man may be rich, but, trust me, he never can be happy, nor virtuous, nor great. There is in a fortune a golden mean, which is the appropriate region of virtue and intelligence. Be content with that; and if the horn of plenty overflow, let its droppings fall upon your fellow-men; let them fall like the droppings of honey in the wilderness, to cheer the faint and weary pilgrim."

It is a sad thought, that wealth is essential to distinction. It is not so. The voice of conscience, the voice of reason, the voice of God, announces it is not so. Wealth alone is not worth living for. Sigh not for wealth. Envy not the splendor and ease of the affluent. The most wealthy are often the most in want. ’’ A man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth." Where wealth is the most eagerly sought after, it is the least satisfying. No wise man will ever venture to pray that he might be rich. Let a man be thankful, if by exemplary diligence he can procure a comfortable living; if with this he can be cheerful and happy, he has the earnest of more, and what is of much greater consequence, he has the pledge that more will not be his ruin. An eminent merchant of this metropolis, distinguished not less for his liberality than his integrity and success in business, and who was a most exemplary ruling elder in one of the churches, remarked to the writer of these pages, many years ago, ’’ Sir, God has been pleased to give me a large share of this world’s goods ; but I have never dared to ask for more than my daily bread."

It is no common attainment, rightly to regulate our desires for temporal blessings. There is nothing in regard to which a good man may be more easily beguiled and blinded, or in which he may trust his own heart less. All our desires and requests for temporal mercies should be constantly and implicitly referred to the will of God. He only knows what is best to give, and He only is able and willing to dispense his bounty in that measure which is dictated by unerring wisdom. This should satisfy us. Not to be satisfied with this, is to have the heart of a rebel. Our desires for this world should also all be regulated by desires still more earnest for spiritual blessings. This is the great object for which we should live and labor. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness.’^ "Whether ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." We ought to be deeply anxious, and the prayer should often be on our lips, that we may not be among those to whom God gives all their portion in this life. Better, a thousand fold, to live and die like Lazarus, than like Dives, and hear the affecting admonition at the last, " Son, remember that thou in thy life-time receivedst thy good things." It was the prayer of Agur, "Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me: lest I be full, and deny thee, and say, Who is the Lord ; or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the name of God in vain." Abject poverty may be best for us; when it is so, God will send it; when he sends it, it becomes us to submit to his providence, without repining; and when we are thus submissive, he will give grace to preserve us from its snares.

Still less can the human heart be trusted with overgrown riches. Christian men who make it an object to be rich, even under the expectation of being more useful, are very apt to impose upon themselves. " They that will be rich, fall into temptation and a snare." " He that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent." Great wealth is very apt to breed forgetfulness, and contempt of God. In giving the power, it is very apt to induce the habits of self-indulgence and luxury. It cherishes that "pride of life" which is so unfriendly to the claims of the gospel. It fosters that feeling of personal independence which leads the soul to lean on earth, and make not God its refuge. It strengthens that natural attachment to the things that are seen and temporal, which renders it so " hard to enter into the kingdom of God," and which it is one of the great objects of Christianity to subdue. " Covetousness is idolatry." There is little room in the heart for God where it is preoccupied by the world. The love, worship, and service of God are excluded by another deity; the loyalty which ought to be felt to the Great Supreme is transferred to another sovereign. True piety itself is very apt to be stinted in its growth, and to wither away under the burning sun of prosperity; it loses its strength and healthfulness when nursed in the lap of pride and luxury. The unction perishes from the heart, where it is overwhelmed by the cares and perplexities of opulence. Good men, when once they become rich, find themselves insensibly attached to their gold and their merchandise, their territory and their enterprises, their influence and the splendor of their name. They become avaricious and grasping; and before they are aware of it, feel embarrassed in their spiritual course, and find that they have new enemies to contend with, and mountains of difficulty to travel over in their heavenward career. They have little time for reading, prayer, reflection, and Christian intercourse. It is not often that you find a wealthy Christian a burning and shining light. I have often wondered why it is, that so many who in their youth were distinguished for Christian fervor, meekness, devotion and activity, should in middle life become so cold and languid. The simple truth is, they have become rich. Thorny cares have sprung up, and overpowered, and choked the word, so that it has become unfruitful. There may be instances in which such persons become more bountiful ; but it is a mistake to suppose that their liberality is an offset for their deficiencies in piety.

I would not have these remarks misunderstood. Men may be rich and yet be pious; nor are there wanting lovely exemplification of unostentatious and active piety among those who are the most successful in the world. And they may be pious and yet be poor — poor even to indigence. Grace can surmount the obstacles of both these extremes. But this is no evidence that our desires after the good things of this world ought not to be moderate; nor that the medium between riches and poverty is not the safest condition for fallen man. The Saviour has taught us, in this prayer, to seek a competency in the wisdom and bounty of his providence; to seek more is neither pious nor wise. "Godliness, with contentment, is great gain; for we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out." God approved the prayer of Solomon, because he desired a wise and understanding heart, rather than riches or long life. The happiest man is he who most gratefully enjoys and makes the best use of whatever God is pleased to bestow. The "providence of God is his surest estate;" his bounty his best treasure; his fatherly care his most certain and comfortable supply. He stays himself upon God, and his cheerful language is. "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters. He anointeth my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life!"

Such are some of the principles involved in the petition, "Give us this day our daily bread." We may well cherish the spirit of this request. It becomes us as God’s creatures, and as his children. Though we may have felt his scourge, we have much to be thankful for, which we should never forget. Would that our hearts were more truly touched with a sense of his goodness! Man’s ingratitude is affecting proof of his alienation from God. I had well nigh said, it is difficult to account for it, even upon the principles of his apostasy. Men feel deeply in seasons of trial; they dwell upon their losses; they magnify their afflictions; but how rarely do they dwell intensely on their mercies, and magnify the expressions of the divine bounty! How soon they forget them; what weakness and inconstancy of heart do they betray in those recollections which ought to be the most grateful and permanent! Scarcely have they received one favor but they are looking for another, and complain if it is not given. They may be slow in admitting the abstract thought that God is indebted to them; yet they too often feel and conduct themselves as though, in withholding his bounty, he were actually doing them an injury. A grateful mind is a happy mind. It is a peaceful, a joyous mind. It is the zest of joy.

How little do we know of the emphasis and urgency of the request, "Give us this day our daily bread!" The stress of want compels men to pray. That prodigal who is famishing with hunger, knows how to crave the crumbs that fall from the table of the divine bounty. That daughter of sorrow and want, who has wept over her last loaf and knows not, after all that her ingenuity can devise, where she is to look for the supplies of the passing hour, knows the import of the words, " give me this day my daily bread." The time may come when, if you have never prayed before, you too may feel the import of such a request as this. Your children, too, may learn its import, and kneeling at your feet, be taught to say, " Our Father, who art in heaven, give us this day our daily bread." And shall nothing but dependence thus realized drive you from all other resources, to God alone, nothing but poverty and want lead you and them thus to pray?