r our God will be in it
as He has been in the past. He will never take us where He will not go
with us. Each day will have its own brightness, as each place its own
rainbow. If we are led into dry lands, there will be a fountain opened
in the desert, and He will feed us by His ravens ere we shall want.
Bread shall be given and water made sure. To-morrow shall be as this
day. Then let the veil still hang, nor try to lift it with the hand of
forecasting thought, nor be over-careful to make the future sure by
earthly means, but let present blessings be parents of bright hopes.
Remember Him who is the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever. In Him
the past is unwept for and the future sure. Accept the merciful
limitations on His gifts, and let them be the limitations which you set
to your own desires while you pray, 'Give us this day our daily bread.'

IV. The prayer for bread suited to our needs.

'_Daily_ bread' clearly cannot be the right rendering, for after 'this
day' that would be weak repetition.

The word is difficult, for it only occurs here and there in Luke.

It may be rendered 'for the coming (day),' but that can scarcely be
supposed to be our Lord's meaning, when His precept to take no thought
for the morrow is remembered. A more satisfactory rendering is,
'sufficient for our subsistence,' the bread which we need to sustain us.

Such a petition points to desires limited by our necessities. What we
should wish, and what we have a right to ask from God, is what we
_need_--no more and no less.

This does not reduce us all to one level, but leaves Him to settle what
we do want. How different this prayer in the mouth of a king and of a
pauper! But it does rebuke immoderate and unbridled desires. God does
not limit us to mere naked necessaries--He giveth liberally, and means
life to be beautiful and adorned. That which is over and above bread is
to a large extent that which makes life graceful and refined, and I have
no wish to preach a crusade against it; but I have just as little
hesitation in declaring what it is not left to pulpit moralists to say,
that the falsely luxurious style of living among us looks very strange
by the side of this petition. So much luxury which does not mean
refinement; so much ostentatious expenditure which does not represent
increased culture or pleasure or anything but a resolve to be on a level
with somebody else; so much which is so ludicrously unlike the poor
little shrimp of