Page:Sermons on the Lord's Prayer.djvu/121



The "doxology," as it is termed, appended to the Lord's Prayer in Matthew, namely, the words, "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory for ever. Amen,"—is of no certain authority. Every reader must have observed that those words are wanting at the end of the Lord's Prayer in Luke (xi. 4). Nor are they found in Matthew, in the best and most ancient manuscripts; and they are therefore almost unanimously rejected by the editors of the Greek Text. They were probably taken from the early Christian Liturgies, in which they were used as a response by the people to the Lord's Prayer as repeated by the minister. In some MSS. they are found written in red ink in the margin, whence, doubtless, they became, in time, interpolated into the text. The Prayer properly ends with the words, "Deliver us from evil"