Page:Sermons on the Lord's Prayer.djvu/17

 order that it may be received by the hearer,—so is it of service to expound, as it were, or simplify, by expressing in human language, the truth and good comprehended in the Lord's Prayer, in order to reach and stir up to devotion both our own spirits and those of our fellow-worshipers.

While, however, for these reasons, it may be both proper and profitable to use in our worship, private and public, other modes of prayer than the set form of words contained in the Lord's Prayer,—yet, as this Prayer, being Divine, tends, like all the rest of the Holy Word, to conjoin the mind directly with the Lord, and to bring it into communication with heaven, it should be habitually used in acts of worship, and may form a fitting conclusion to other prayers.

Let us enter now upon an examination of the opening words of this Divine Prayer.

"Our Father." When we say these words, what is the idea that we are to have in our minds? What is the form, object, or appearance, that we should bring before our thoughts? Whom are we to conceive ourselves as addressing? This is a most important question: all our other ideas, in uttering the prayer, depend upon this: the effect of the prayer on our hearts, also, will depend in great part upon this. Are we to picture to ourselves a great, distant Being, the Creator of the Universe, an Infinite Spirit, without form? Such an idea would be no idea. God, as he is in his Divine Essence, the infinite Divinity, is incomprehensible to the mind of man; no idea