Luke 11:2 And he said to them, When you pray, say, Our Father which are in heaven, Hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done… It is the state of a man's mind which qualifies him to enjoy any one of God's kingdoms. What is the celestial kingdom of suns and stars to him whose eye is downward looking? Tell him that in yonder space "there are 1,000 stars seen by the naked eye, and each of them is the centre of a planetary system; that it has been computed that 100,000,000 might be seen by the telescope were they explored"; but his soul is not awakened to these stupendous and distant realities, and that celestial kingdom rings no peal of harmonies, no everlasting chime in his ears. The world is what we make it. It is a marketplace, or the portico of a temple, or a school where character is disciplined for eternity, or a sphere of government where the ground wears the stamp of God's footsteps to the observant eye; the world is either of these to us according to our culture, our knowledge, our life. So this kingdom of God is to you according to your point of observation. It is appreciated or neglected as you are wont to prize or to despise the spiritual world and spiritual influences. Do you think that the greatest thing in the world is a soul ruled by God? A soul receptive of influence to guide its convictions and to give conscience dominion over the passions? Are you wont to think that falsehood, excess, enmity, impurity, ignorance — the curses which turn the earth into a wilderness — shall be weeded up as sure as there is a God in heaven; weeded up out of the soil of men's affections by the mighty power and all-subduing love of the gospel of His Son? Is it a bent of your mind, a resolute habit of thought, that you will not dishonour your Maker's purpose or character by suspecting that He could make this earth for a horde of guilty and unbridled passions to riot in; for war and cupidity, for envy, lust, and avarice; that it is no part of your creed that disease and the cry of the lazar-house are the natural state of man. kind? No; they were brought in by evil, by malignant influences; brought into a world which its Maker pronounced to he "very good"; brought in by sin. But as God did not bring them in, He will rid the earth of them. Their sentence is already pronounced. The throne is set. Judgment is passed. Let them revel their appointed time. To your eye they are doomed; creation has groaned under their weight too long already, but the hour of its redemption is come; to your ear it is already striking; and "Behold, I make all things new: new heavens, and a new earth." "Belief is something towards its own realization." Grotius, in de. scribing the success of the Batavians in breaking the Spanish yoke, says beautifully, "credendo fecerunt." By believing they could do it — they did it. So he who prays, "Thy kingdom come," from his heart, hastens its coming, and sees it come. (B. Kent.) Parallel Verses KJV: And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth. |
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