Page:Sermons on the Lord's Prayer.djvu/16

 itself in language which it makes for itself at the moment, than in any set form of words whatever; and though it be true, that the Lord's Prayer, as being Divine and infinite, contains in its interior sense, all prayer, yet in the letter merely that Divine truth may be less accommodated to man's natural mind than a human prayer: in the letter alone, the various thoughts and affections answering to the state of him who is praying, are not expressed in detail and in words in which his feelings can so naturally clothe themselves; and the full soul burns to pour itself forth in terms more correspondent to its simple human thoughts. Hence the necessity of human prayer. For the same reason, a prayer thus expressed in simple human language, warm from the heart, is often found to have more effect on the minds of listeners, than the mere repeating of the Lord's Prayer; not that the one is comparable in degree of goodness and truth to the other, but because it is goodness and truth accommodated to man's natural state; and, as the New Church Doctrine teaches, only that which is accommodated to the thing to be acted upon, can produce an effect. It is for the same reason, that expositions of the Word are given, on the Lord's Day, for the purpose of spiritual instruction: it is with the end of presenting Divine truth in a form accommodated to the states of the hearers; otherwise, the simple reading of the Word would be sufficient, as that contains in itself all truth. And just as it is necessary to expound, or to express in human language the Divine truth contained in the Word, in