04.02. Hallowed be thy name

Chapter II. “Hallowed be Thy name.” OF the petitions which are included in this prayer, none has been less prayed than this which our Lord sets first. Many a man has cried earnestly and sincerely enough, “ Give me this day my daily bread “; many with deeper earnestness, and out of a more appalling helplessness, have cried, “Deliver us from evil”; but few have learnt to have this petition deepest in the heart and readiest on the lip, “ Hallowed be Thy name “. At all times we recognise it as very proper, but rather as a doing of homage to Him we invoke, than as the first soaring petition, in which the spirit, feeling its liberty and rejoicing in the wealth of its prospect, rises at once to the very summit of all desire. Is there not this feeling still in our hearts (and is it not one that must be got rid of), that to desire God’s glory, and pray for it before we tell the wants which are gnawing our spirits with very sensible agony, may be a seemly and decorous order, but is cer tainly not the natural one; that, if it be right to seek the glory of God first, this must always be with us an artificial order; that the habit of our minds is so constantly to make for our own good that it can only be by constraint and correction we can reverse this habit, and seek other things as heartily? Now, prayer demands that the very order of it be sincere, that we do not set first among our petitions what ranks among the last of our desires, nor think to propitiate God by an artificial introduction wrought up beyond our feeling. The aid of the Spirit is afforded us that the deep-seated longing for the glory of God, which has seemed impossible to us, may become not only possible, but habitually predominant.

However, that we may not set before ourselves a higher attainment than God has set, and higher therefore than we can achieve, and so, instead of rising, sink into a despairing helplessness that gives up all effort, let us remember that God’s glory and our own good are so connected that we cannot desire the one without also, at least in directly, desiring the other; as little as a soldier can eagerly advance the glory of his commander without thereby advancing himself. And as there are times when the only way to secure the good of the cause in which he serves is to give his whole thought to the providing for his personal safety, and when he is so tumultuously and pressingly surrounded with dangers, that it were idle to ask him to think of anything else, or desire definitely anything else than his own deliverance and victory, so there are times when a man’s personal wants so throng before him, and when his own condition is so critical, that to ask him to pray for anything else than personal help and deliverance would be useless and wrong. For what so desirable as that a man be brought to God by the intense agonising desires of his own heart, and should own, out of his personal and unmistakable experience, that with God are blessings which must be had now, and before anything further can be thought of? But this prayer, while by its individual petitions it satisfies these occasional moods, is specially adapted to our ordinary condition, and teaches that to an unperturbed mind, calmly surveying the desirable state of things, the glory of God will appear to be the comprehensive and prime blessing, which, if secured, all else will go well. We are to desire it not as something different from, but as including our own good; nor yet are we to desire it for this one reason only, that it includes our own good, but in view also of all that other good which is besides embraced in it. The right condition of things, the well-ordered and firmly-established condition, in which we may eternally abide with security, gladness, scope, and highest energy, is to be attained by this prayer; surely, then, first of all must God, the centre and head of all, get His place in the world. Should we believe that this was a prayer to be trusted to, did it open with any other, any lower petition? Is not this at least a good beginning, a sure foundation? Is not this that which all men, at all times, may agree to desire? But though these words, “ Hallowed be Thy name,” are a distinct petition, and not a mere appendix to the invocation, yet without the invocation we cannot understand nor use this first petition. For to think of God as we naturally do, and pray that His name may be hallowed, is impossible. The names by which our untaught hearts would call God are such as these, distant, inexorable unsympathising, grudging; inhabiting quite another world than ours; separate from, and even ignorant of, all influences which move us; having a will to humble and tyrannise over and baffle us. If such be the names which bestrepresent our idea of God, then of course we cannot pray, “ Hallowed be Thy name “. But such is not the God to whom we have been introduced by Christ; He has taught us to say, “Our Father “; He has come, and, without upbraiding, has convinced us how totally we have misunder stood God. He has taken the veil from our hearts, and the fixed aspect of eternal and unalterable love moves us to humility and wondering devotion. He shows us how, while we have been forgetting God, He has been thinking upon us; how, while our thoughts toward Him have been full of suspicion, and weariness, and aversion, His towards us have been “ precious,” fraught with ineffable compassion, forbearance such as the patience of God could alone exhibit, and a marvellous goodness which has taken up every feature of our necessity, and being still unexhausted by this great draught upon it, has liberally and rejoicingly showered upon us lavish and unthought-of blessings. He has shown us above all, that, while we have been seeking to sever ourselves from God, He has been connecting Himself with us, so that no interests can be dearer to Him than ours; that “ hitherto hath the Father worked “ and the Son for the unconscious and helpless younger brethren; and that His care being to provide for us, His purpose to prosper us, His glory our well-being, and His Son our elder brother, He would have us know Him by this name, “ Our Father “. And when we are moved by the Spirit of adoption to call God by this name, and to believe that there is one family in heaven and on earth, called by the name of the Son of man who came down from heaven; when we look to the face of this Father and see in its loving wisdom and majesty and truth that verily He is also God; when we survey the excellences which belong alone to Him whose love thus embraces us as in a sure dwelling place, then glorying, we glory in God; and saying, “ Our Father which art in heaven,” we say in the same breath, in the same burst of feeling, Hallowed be Thy name”. We need not the old admonition, “ If I be a Father, where is Mine honour? “ For the time, at least, we have the feelings of God’s children; and what so dear to the heart of the child as the honour of his father’s name? As we approach and address Him our hearts fill and swell with a sense of His boundless might and marvellous counsel, of His supremacy in dominion and in excellence, so different from all else that He is seen to have right to His name, “ I am, and there is none else beside Me,” and yet “ Our Father “: so separated from all besides that He and they can not be named under the same kind of existence, and yet “ Our Father “. How can we but long that all men should revere this name, and should come to such knowledge of it as to live by it? But what precisely are the feelings we express when we say, “ Hallowed be Thy name “? Is the name of God of similar use and meaning to the name of a man? A man’s name is that by which we speak of him to distinguish him from every one else. When we use the name of any one, it calls up to our minds a certain character, not always according to truth, but according to our idea of the man. And so, when we hear or use the name of God, there is also present to our minds a certain character; too often a character made up of the ideas which we have thoughtlessly suffered to cluster round the name; some times, however, a character which does on the whole agree with what God has taught us to believe about Him. The name of God is not God Himself, neither is it our idea of God; but it is that expressed idea of Him which He Himself would have us to possess, and which may be gathered from His own revelation. The name of God is not the nature of God, nor His relationship to us; but if the conception which God would have us to cherish of Him can be summed up in one word, then that word is the name of God. When it is said, “ Some trust in chariots, and some in horses, but we will remember the name of the Lord our God,” the meaning is, that confidence could be best maintained by remembering what God had taught concerning Himself. When it is said, “ They that know Thy name will put their trust in Thee,” it is meant that whoever has that idea of God which He Himself by His dealings and teaching has warranted, will trust in Him. These dealings and teaching are not themselves the name, but rather the utterance of the name. From all that God has done and said, gather up the various features of His character, and express these, and in that expression you have the name. The name of God is that which we can contemplate and say, “ God is that “. This name we are not left to find out for ourselves. From the first it has been the care of God “ to spell out Himself to us, sometimes by one perfection, and sometimes by another “. One feature after another of His character has been revealed, until at length all has been shown us in Him who is “ the express image of His person “. Hint upon hint was given of the loving purpose of God to man, until all was told in the Word who declared the Father. Nearer and nearer did heaven seem coming to earth, closer and closer did God involve His glory with human interests, till the Son came and showed us “the Father”. Nothing now can be added to this name; in it all that God is to us is summed up, and all that He is in Himself is implied in it. He jealously guarded His former names, and called the attention of men to each addition to His name, that the glory of this final name might be understood and received. To Moses He says, “ I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob by the name of God Almighty; but by My name Jehovah was I not known to them,” intimating as distinctly as may be that now He is about to reveal something more of His character. When He gave this name, He was about to bring out of an idolatrous country, and plant in the midst of an idolatrous world, a people in whom the knowledge of the one God was to be maintained for all generations. And so He calls Himself now by a name distinguishing Him from all usurpant gods. He calls Him self Jehovah, the I Am, the living God, who alone has life in Himself, the eternal and unchangeable One, which is, and which was, and which is to come. So hallowed was this name by the Jews, that they would not pronounce it; nor do we wonder at their awe when we read their books, and see what God Himself made of this name.

There, at the end of warnings that are terrible to read, come these words as the seal, “ I Jehovah “; He who would be of the same mind to all generations, whose threatenings could not be vain, but were the expression of an eternal decision, of judgment passed with all time present to His eternal, all-embracing vision. And at the end of promises reaching far into the future, and speaking of things far different from the then present, come again these words as the firm ground of all assurance, the signature of God, “ I Jehovah “. This name was the fountain of all authority, and the guarantee of all confidence: a name asserting for its owner, what no other name ever did, the exclusive proprietorship of life; a “ glorious and fearful name,” which set itself above every name, and inhabited a glory of its own. But this name was then given not only to preserve those who hallowed it from the hallowing of any names which were unworthy of worship, but to be a constant comfort and near refuge to them in all their wanderings. Jehovah is the eternal, the only God, because He only hath life, but also the only dwelling-place of His people, because He only is unchangeable. They had to be taught, as we have to be taught, that not in this place nor in that, but in God is the true rest. And so, while they were led from place to place, they had God dwelling among them by a striking symbol, and they had the name of the Eternal and Un changeable, keeping them in mind that He who led them changed not nor ever passed away. But to this was to be added a further name. To know God as a rest and a home, even this was not enough. It might seem at first sight to be enough to know Him as the “ I AM,” who has life, independent of all origin, independent also of all accidents and contingencies, who possesses the only true existence, and without whom nothing else can be; it might seem enough to know Him as the “ I AM,” the eternally Present, with whom is neither past nor future, whose name is “ I AM,” because in Him is no revolution of years nor succession and lapse of times. If He “ is “ now all that He ever has been, all that He ever shall become; if all time as well as all place is embraced in His existence; if by the name He has given us of Himself He has taught our faculties to strive to annihilate time and its changes and rise to His eternity, to resist our sinkings and waverings of faith and our varying moods, and to live now in all the peace and joy of a life that we have in the Eternal; if He has taught us thus that with Him there is and can be “ neither variableness nor shadow of turning”; if He has taught us also to be independent of place, and has shown to us Himself as the One that is still with us, in whom we live, and who still brings us to the place that yields us the life He intends; if He does all this, is there more that He can do?

Over the virgin mother’s babe He pronounces a name which so fills the heart that it excludes all others. “ Behold, I send a messenger before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared; obey His voice, for My name is in Him.” And the name that is in Him is “ Our Father,” no longer a name that needs to be interpreted by accompanying symbols, but a name that “ is in” the living person of Jesus Christ, and that we read as often as we look to Him; no longer the dwelling-place merely, but the Father in whom we are secured of refuge and rest; no longer the Almighty to whom we may appeal with sure hope, but the Father who “ Him self loveth us,” and whose care it is to accomplish our blessedness; no longer a “fearful name,” the utterance of which overwhelms us, and the comprehension of which is above us; but a name which every child of woman can understand, and whose very simplicity attracts and wins us by its condescending nearness to ourselves. But this name excludes all other names, only because it contains all that was in them. It comes “ not to destroy, but to fulfil”. It was this name that the hearts of God’s people were unconsciously yearning after through all other names that were given, until the Son came forth, for whom all revelation of God’s nature and relation to us was preparing, and in whom all revelation is summed up, the Word whom God “has magnified above all His name”.

It is this name, then, which we are to hallow. The prayer runs thus, “ Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name”. And so it is of all the petitions: each is introduced by an in vocation to “ Our Father”. It is our Father we ask to rule us, our Father we ask to forgive us, our Father we ask to lead us. And it is, along with this, to be noted that this is a name which, though at first hearing it speaks only of relation ship to us, tells also and fully of God’s nature. The relation it speaks of is one that comes of His attributes. It is not accidental nor arbitrary, but is so truly the result and free expression of the nature of God, that through it we can read all that it concerns us to know of that nature. And this will be obvious to all who are accustomed to find in the incarnation and cross of Christ the most evident manifestation of God. So that we learn to pray that this name may be hallowed not only because it is our Father’s name, but because the name of God is “ Our Father”; that is, we see that the name of God is to be hallowed not only because of His connection with us, but in view also of all the worth which this connection reveals. Beginning, it may be, with more of gratitude for God’s grace to us than of vision of His nature, and springing always from this source of grateful love, this petition yet leads us to all the depths and all the heights of worship. God would have us, first of all, to worship Him not as the Ruler of all worlds, but as bound to this world; not as attending to all parts of an infinite universe, but as regarding us; not, in short, as the Head of all things that are, but mainly and in the first instance as “ Our Father”. He confines our view that we may see more distinctly; this name does not show any part of His nature nor any portion of His dealings with which we are not concerned, but it runs directly between us and Him, and as through a glass which by confining magnifies and renders distinct, so through this name we are separated from distracting views of God, and led straight to all that He means to kindle our worship.

Learning what God is, we ask that His name may be hallowed or held sacred, regarded by all as a true and holy thing that is at any cost to be maintained in esteem, and under all temptation still believed in. May the idea of God, which He would have us to possess, be held as the choice possession of our spirits, the treasure on which our hearts rest, and to which they ever return; may it be held separate from all contamination of our own thoughts about God; and may it never be obscured by any cloud of adversity tempting us to think that God has changed; never lost sight of by any careless devotion of our thoughts to other objects and names; never presumed upon nor polluted as countenancing folly or sin, but cherished still and guarded as “ the holy and reverend name of the Lord “. For this is what we all need, the abiding assurance of the reality of God in the excellences of His nature and the grace of His connection with us.

How heartily would this name of God in Christ have been welcomed by those who felt after God, if haply they might find Him; how would they have welcomed the utterance of God’s name in the life of Christ, as giving to them at last the knowledge of what is eternally right and good, pure and holy; as giving them at last one whom they could eternally worship, from whom they could accept law and guidance, and in whom they could trust for all. And this is what we also must find; if there be One, and who He is, to whom we may ever look up, and whom we may love and worship; whose actings are not biassed by personal leanings, nor fashioned by the customs or ideas of others, but are true and righteous; One who “is light, and in whom is no darkness at all “; One in whom we may trust without fear, because He is absolutely good, His love breaking down at no point, interrupted by no suspicion or coldness, yet never leading us astray, nor doing for us what needs to be undone. This is what we need, to learn and not to invent the name of God; to see His character displayed in a perfect, living person, that we may no longer guess at His thoughts and ways from our own, nor worship our own best idea, but may worship one whom we can call by name; whose name is written for us, and has become familiar to us, by the actualities of life, and whose name embodies and represents to us all that is absolutely and eternally excellent. And who that worships at all has not found his need of a more fixed idea of God? Who has not learnt that, if he is to worship at all, or pray to some more real object than a Samaritan god, he needs this for his first petition, “ Hallowed be Thy name “? This morning I found it easy to worship; God seemed near and living, as a second Person with me; His majesty so patent, that humility was natural, and levity impossible; His holiness and love so evident, that my soul was rapt from all other objects. I did worship, and I worshipped God; but when the remembrance of the morning bids me this evening seek a renewal of the delight, how different and how hard a task do I set my self! What seemed so substantial and living, has become shadowy and ideal only. He who seemed so attractive, that I was prepared to for sake all and follow Him, has put on the task master, or the cold, repulsive indifference of the ruler of other worlds. The name of God has not been hallowed by me; profane feet have trodden the shrine consecrated to it. The examples of men have pressed out of remembrance the unalterable holiness of God, and I have lived as if holiness were not expected of me. Eagerness to compete with the world at its own race, has hurried me beyond the voice of God, and the restraining sense of His presence has been sup planted by indifference and forgetfulness. Once having fallen, I have thought myself unworthy or made myself regardless of God’s forgiveness and aid, and have fought my own battles wiping the name of my Father from my heart. I have let go the thought of what God is to me, and have too freely admitted other claims. And now the name that I have so often denied seems untrue in my lips. And not less for life than for worship do we need that the name of God be hallowed; for by a man’s thoughts of God is his whole character formed.* Let him think of a god who delights in blood, and he will delight in the same; let him worship a god imperfect in holiness, and his efforts after holy living will not be many nor severe; let him think of a god who is pleased with ceremonies, and he will become a formalist; let him think of a god who can be paid by ser vice, and he will become a hypocrite; let him think of a hard master, reaping where he has not sown, and gathering where he strawed not, and he will shirk every duty he dare, and tremble through a life of slavery to a death of confusion and dismay. But let him know God as his Father in Christ, and every influence for good that can be brought to bear upon the human character is enjoyed by that man. This knowledge will be the little leaven leavening the whole mass; the new centre in the heart round which each regenerated principle within us will take its place.

It is an influence all for good, unlike that of the * “ Upon our thoughts of God, it will depend, in one time or another, whether we rise higher or sink lower as societies and as individuals.” MAURICE. character of man, which mingles harm with its healing. It is the character which from the first has sustained, and to the last will sustain, all good that is found in man. It is because God is what He is, that there has been any holiness on earth; because He loveth righteousness, therefore has He created men capable of righteous deeds; because He has been demanding perfect holiness, therefore have those who hallowed His name bitterly mourned over their shortcomings, and have still persevered and hoped, because He is their Father. By His name, by the real and holy and aiding personality which that name keeps within our ken, is the inevitable and stimulating idea of duty cherished within us. These words, “ Re member thy Father in Christ “ (which have taken the place of “Remember the Lord thy God”*), when spoken amid the tumult of the soul, have been as the monarch’s voice, and have been enough to calm and lay its wild rebellion, to curb its passionate desire, to turn again to its rightful object the attention and homage of the soul.

Under the most adverse circumstances, the name of God has still done its work. Through this name God has found entrance to the most har * See Tholuck on “ The Sermon on the Mount “. dened heart, and uttering it over the dead conscience that has long lain buried under manifold iniquities, He has quickened it to life and wakeful activity; in hearts that have been a prey to all doubt, and whose doubt has been fostered by all impurity of life, this name has enshrined itself and round it has gradually been formed again a temple of the living God; and it has still been calmly and lovingly answering the doleful questions of despairing souls, and to those who have either wickedly or in their weakness cried, “ What is truth?” and, “Who will show us any good?” its response has ever been, “ Our Father “. Hope fully as the morning star has it risen on the benighted and weary; with healing and joy, as the Sun of Righteousness, has it ushered in the ever lasting “ day which the Lord hath made,” and from which all darkness is passed away, and in which. we see God as He is, and discover the holiness and the hope there is for us in Him.

Scattering all false ideas of sin and duty, all false rules of life that have grown with our growth, all blind thoughts of God which keep us murmuring and unbelieving, this name of God has come into the soul and said, “ Now our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God. even our Father, which hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation, and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts, and stablish you in every good word and work”. And what the name of God is for individuals it is for communities. If for our own land, or for other lands, we hope for better things than the present, these better things will be brought about, when the name of God is hallowed when His name is declared to all, and believed by all and kept jealously and sacredly by all; when it shines out from the contempt and misunderstanding which overlay it, and is recovered from the suspicion which banishes it; when it rises above all the representations and tones of man’s utterance of it, and appears in its own purity, as if written by the finger of God in the heavens; when it is acknowledged by all as the highest name, and receives from each a regard which nothing else commands; when, that is, men learn to look simply and constantly, intelligently and devoutly, to Jesus Christ as the “ image of God,” and will suffer no thought of God to find harbour and influence within them, which is not expressed in His person. When men own God, and own Him as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, then will there be saving health among all nations. When men come to the knowledge of the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He hath sent, then shall they have eternal life. Need it be said that there is nothing else that will reform the world than this, no other head under which all things can be reconciled, no other centre round which all can gather in love? Let all men have one common idea of God, and that the true one; let each man be a true worshipper of the true God; let each in the solemn and secret chamber of his own soul, where none seeth but our Father who seeth in secret, be owning his responsibility to his God; let each man lie prostrate and broken-hearted before the love of God in Christ; and is there not already “ Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth “? How different a world would be that little world with which each of us has to do, and which gives us samples of its sin and its misery, could we say of every one we had to deal with, “ I may trust that man to the uttermost; I may banish every fear, and all suspicion; I may expect great things of him, for I know that, far deeper than any earthly influence can penetrate, lies written on his heart the name of God, his Redeemer and Father; he knows and acknowledges God, and therefore acknowledges every right claim; he is already bound by an obligation which no entreaty, no persuasion of mine, could make more binding “.

Let each one, then, look on his own life, and on other lives, and see the blank which God’s answers to this petition might have already filled and may yet fill. Let him consider the place which God claims for Himself; let him give heed to His Word, “ Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom; neither let the mighty man glory in his might; let not the rich man glory in his riches; but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth Me, that I am the Lord which exercise loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth “. And let him pray, “ From me, then, O Lord, remove all ignorance of Thee, and all unworthy thoughts of Thee; keep far from me all that is forgetful, irreverent, profane; cast forth from my heart all that opposeth and exalteth itself above all the name of God or that is worshipped; cast forth from Thy temple all that sitteth therein showing itself that it is God; all my rebellious distrust of Thee do Thou graciously turn into childlike attachment and confidence; my presumption of Thy indifference into hope of Thy mercy; grant to me the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Thee, that, whatever fails me, my trust in Thee may still increase, and that I may serve Thee in love and acceptance, and my body become a temple of Thine. And these things not in myself only, but in all others perform, that men may know that Thou whose name alone is Jehovah, art the Most High over all the earth; that all nations whom Thou hast made may come and worship before Thee, O Lord, and may glorify Thy name.” And this he prays, who with the understanding and the spirit prays, “ Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name “.