Page:Sermons on the Lord's Prayer.djvu/29

 This, then, is the name or quality of God—love and wisdom, or goodness and truth. To hallow, means to regard as holy, to reverence, to adore. Then, to hallow God's name, signifies to regard goodness and truth as holy; to reverence them, to love them supremely, to place them in our estimation above all other things. The meaning of these words, "Hallowed be thy name," is in truth similar to that implied in the first of the two great commandments given by the Lord, namely, to love God above all things. To "love God" is not meant to love him as a Person, but to love that which constitutes his Divine quality or nature, which, as before said, is goodness and truth. The command, to love God above all things, means that we are to value goodness and truth above all other things,—that we should prefer them to riches, or power, or the pleasures of sense. And why? because goodness and truth constitute heaven itself, with all its infinity and eternity of joys: these are all wrapped up in those two principles; and whoever is possessed of goodness and truth has possession of the keys of heaven; he has the "kingdom of God within him" even now, and after death will come into the full enjoyment of that kingdom and all its delights. As far, then, as heaven is above earth, and so much as eternity is longer than time, so far are goodness and truth more valuable than all earthly possessions. And thus the command of the Lord to love God above all things, is only an urgent and affectionate entreaty to us, to seek that which will make us most happy in the ages of eternity which we are destined to live. But the reason that