A Goodly Heritage

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven.’—Matt. vi. 9. EVERY teacher knows the power of example. He not only tells the child what to do and how to do it, but shows him how it really can be done. In condescension to our weakness, our heavenly Teacher has given us the very words we are to take with us as we draw near to our Father. We have in them a form of prayer in which there breathe the freshness and fulness of the Eternal Life. So simple that the child can lisp it, so divinely rich that it comprehends all that God can give. A form of prayer that becomes the model and inspiration for all other prayer, and yet always draws us back to itself as the deepest utterance of our souls before our God. ‘Our Father which art in heaven!’ To appreciate this word of adoration aright, I must remember that none of the saints had in Scripture ever ventured to address God as their Father. The invocation places us at once in the centre of the wonderful revelation ...

It is true  that conformity to the will of God must be first a condition of the heart, created by the Spirit's regenerative grace and fostered by his sanctifying presence. Upright conduct can never coexist with impurity of heart. Merely external and servile conformity to precepts of law does not constitute obedience. Upon none did the anathemas of our Lord descend with such severity as upon the legalistic Pharisees who made clean the outside of the cup and of the platter but who were within full of malice and hypocrisy, who were like whited sepulchers outwardly beautiful but within full of dead men's bones and of all uncleanness. Without the inward condition of purity and the inward impulsion of love obedience is impossible. But in these watchwords of our modern exponents of the Christian ethic there is also devastating error. We are not saved  by  obedience to the law, but we are saved  unto  it. In their insistence upon love they have placed love in opposi...