01.10. For Thine Kingdom, Power Glory
Chapter X. For thine is the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory for ever and ever amen.
THESE words do not form part of the original text of the Lord’s Prayer. They are omitted accordingly in the Revised Version of St. Matthew 6:13. A doxology, however, closely similar to this was attached to the Lord’s Prayer, in the custom of Syrian Christians, before the end of the first century: It is based on David’s doxology l: Thine, O Lord, is the... power, and the glory, and... the kingdom, and it expresses nobly indeed the reason why we pray. God our Father, who is in heaven, has, in spite of all that appears to the contrary, always and everywhere the kingdom, and the power, and the glory. Whatever royalty or power or glory the kingdom of evil seems to have to our eyes, as we contemplate the prevalence of lust and worldliness and cruelty and selfishness all around us, is in truth 1 1 Chronicles 29:11. but a transitory show, like the imposing glory of Nebuchadnezzar’s image of gold in the plain of Dura, of the province of Babylon. There is no real power in it, because its doom is spoken and its overthrow is certain. Therefore there is only one true refuge and strength, and that is God, and only one thing worth having, and that is the life according to God, the life of the Kingdom of God.
II
I have come to the end of this brief explanation of the Lord’s Prayer, and I would not add anything, were it not that I have just read in the newspaper a remark able instance of the difference which I spoke of in an earlier paper between the prayer of instinct and the prayer which is in the name of Christ the Lord’s Prayer. It is well known that Australian primary education has been, speaking generally, purely secular. But recently a much-beloved inspector in South Australia was lying on his death-bed, and an anonymous advertisement in the newspapers, addressed to school masters, brought it about that one minute before or after regular school hours on a certain day, the children were assembled and requested to repeat off a black board the words, Our Father which art in heaven, grant that our dear master and beloved friend... may be restored to health. Now such a prayer is a remark able instance of the way in which at any time of imminent calamity the human instinct of prayer will re-assert itself. But it is also a proof that the human instinct does not reach to the point of offering the prayer in Christ’s name. The prayer of human instinct is always, Give me to-day what I so sorely want/ whereas the prayer which is in the name of Christ starts always from God’s point of view, and puts the special need of the individual, of the class, of the country, in its true subordination to the will of God and to the interest of His kingdom. A detached prayer for something we want, apart from any wider or diviner point of view, can never be a prayer in the name of Christ. May the good God teach us all to pray the Lord’s Prayer and the whole of it with heart and will and intelligence and voice, in private and in public, in Eucharist and in penitence, for ourselves, for the whole Church, and for all mankind. For he who is ever truly learning to say the Lord’s Prayer cannot be far from the kingdom of Heaven, and to say it perfectly is to be in truth a heavenly being already.
WELLS GARDNER, BARTON AND CO, PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS.
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