ces and our fears
frame, the heathen notion of an avenger and cruel. We do not need to
seek to avert His anger. This mighty word shatters all cowering terror
and abject prostration.

And it is a vow as well as an Invocation, binding us to supreme love to
Him, to obedience to Him, to moral conformity with Him. Be ye perfect as
your Father which is in heaven is perfect. The noblest prayer is 'Abba,
Father.'

II. The loftiness and perfectness of that divine Name.

'In heaven.' Not fact, but symbol, to express His exaltation above the
earth, and so suggesting all ideas of remoteness from creatures, from
earth's limitations and conditions, changes and imperfection, and
showing the gulf between man and God.

1. The thought that He is in heaven deepens our reverence, love casting
out fear, but making us more lowly. It leads to familiar yet
awe-stricken approach.

2. It exalts the preciousness of the Fatherhood, as being free from all
weakness and all change. It reveals a better Father than we can know
here; one not narrow of view, infirm of purpose, weak in tenderness,
bounded in power. As the heavens stretch calm and serene above us, far
from all our trouble and noise, unvexed, pitying, and dropping rain and
dew on earth, so is He.

3. It draws our hearts and hopes to our Father's home.

4. It delivers us from worship of the visible and from worship by means
of the visible. So the Name guards against placing stress on externals
and secondary forms, places, times of worship.

III. The Community of Brotherhood of the Worshippers.

_Our_ Father.

1. All true enjoyment of blessings depends on our being willing to share
them. To keep for ourselves is to lose. We enter by faith into a great
community.

2. The effect of this on our prayers: to destroy their selfishness. We
bow to Him of whom the whole family is named.

3. Effect on our lives.

Dare we rise from our knees to plan and plot for ourselves? How we are
tempted to forget our brotherhood in personal animosities, vanity, and
self-interest, competing with others! Our differences of ideas arising
from differences of race, training, occupation, country, fling us apart.
Our differences of wealth and position alienate us. Our differences of
conception of Christianity often separate and embitter us. But do these
not crumble when we say '_Our_ Father'?

Think of the generations who have gone to the grave saying this prayer.
What a prophecy of the heaven, where al