self come to be the
saddest instance in all Christendom of these very faults, while the
beads slip through the fingers of the mechanical repeater of muttered
Paternosters. Instead of wrangling about this subordinate question, let
us try to pray after this manner. We shall find it hard, but blessed. Be
sure that every prayer not after this manner is after a wrong manner.

This prayer helps to reverse our foolish desire to make earth foremost.
The true end of prayer is to get our wills harmonised with His, not to
bend His to ours. Surely if self-denial and submission be the very heart
of Christianity, that should be most expressed in prayer which is the
very sanctuary of religion. The prayers that are to be offered after
this manner will not be passionate, petulant pleadings or prescriptions
to God to do this or that, but in them God and His glory will be first,
I second, and through Him and as He wills.

Ah, brethren! this is an awful requirement of Christ's. Who dare take
such holy words into his lips? It is a hard matter to pray as Christ
taught us. The prayer seems to move in a height of unapproachable
elevation, and the air there is too thin and pure for our gross lungs.
For be it remembered, we are not praying after this manner unless our
lives in some sort repeat and confirm our prayers. Do our hearts seek
first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness? Are our energies given
to this, as their noblest aim, to hallow God's name; or does the very
blood in our hearts throb hot, passionate desires for worldly things,
and God's name and kingdom and will seem dreamy and far-off objects
which kindle no desire in our souls and rule no effort of our lives,
like suns far away which shed little light upon the earth and sway not
its rolling tides, that are obedient to the nearer but borrowed light of
the changeful moon? If so, no matter whether we use this form or not, we
are not praying after this manner.

Look, now, at this first clause, which is the basis of all.

I. The divine Name which is the ground and object of all our prayers. It
is not merely a formula of address, like the superscription on a letter,
but the reality of His character as revealed before us. There is
inseparable from all prayer the effort to conceive worthily of Him to
whom we speak; to raise our souls to that height.

How much of our prayer, even while truest, fails here! We may be
distinctly conscious of our wants; our wishes may be right, and our