est
pinnacles looking out to the morning sky must have their foundations
rooted in common earth. 'That was not first which is spiritual, but that
which is natural, and afterwards that which is spiritual.' This order,
then, is in symmetrical opposition to that of the previous part. There
is a rhythmical correspondence in inverted movement, like the expansion
and contraction of the heart, or the rise and fall of a fountain.

It is worth noticing how these two opposed halves make one whole; and as
the former begins with contemplation of the fatherly greatness in the
heavens, so the latter part, starting with the cry for bread, climbs
slowly up through all the ills of life, and passing from want to
trespass, human unkindness and hatred, and again to personal weakness
and a tempting world, and the evil of sin and the evil of sorrow,
reaches once more after cries and tears the point from which all began,
and rises to heaven and God. The doxology comes circling round to the
invocation, and the prayer, which has winged its weary way through all
weltering floods of human sorrow and want, comes back like Noah's dove,
with peace born of its flight, to its home in God, and ends where it
began. They whose prayer and whose lives start with 'Our Father which
art in Heaven,' will end with the confidence and the praise, 'Thine is
the kingdom and the honour.'

Now looking at this petition in itself, I note--

I. The prayer for Bread.

This contains first an important lesson as to what may be legitimately
the subject of our prayers.

The Lord by this juxtaposition condemns the overstrained and fantastic
spiritualism which tramples down earthly wants and condemns desires
rooted in our physical nature as sin. It is a wonderful testimony from
Jesus of the worth of common gifts, that the desire for them should here
stand beside that great one for the doing of God's will. There is
nothing here of the false asceticism which undervalues the life which
now is, nothing of the morbid tone of feeling which despises and
condemns as sinful the due appreciation of and desire for the blessings
of this life. To give predominance to material wants and earthly good is
heathen and unchristian, therefore the petition for these follows the
others. But to despise them and pretend to be indifferent to them is
heathen and unchristian too; therefore the prayer for them finds its
place among the others. So the right understanding of this prayer is a
barrier