a man or woman that sits in the centre of it all!

'Plain living and high thinking are no more.'

'My riches consist not in the abundance of my possessions, but in the
fewness of my wants.'

'The less a man needs, the nearer is he to the gods.'

So, what a lesson for us all in this age, where everyone of us is
tempted to adopt a scale of what is necessary very far beyond the truth.

Young and old--dare, if need be, to be poor. 'Having food and raiment,
let us therewith be content.'

We cannot all become rich, but let us learn to bring down our desires
to, and bound them by, our true wants.

Christ has taught us here to put this petition after these loftier ones,
and He has taught us to pass quickly by it to the more noble and higher
needs of the soul. Do we treat it thus, making it a secondary element in
our wishes? If so, then our days will be blessed, each filled with fresh
gifts from God, and each leading us to Him who is the true Bread that
came down from Heaven.

'FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS'

'Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.'--MATT. vi. 12.

The sequence of the petitions in the second half of the Lord's Prayer
suggests that every man who needs to pray for daily bread needs also to
pray for daily forgiveness. The supplication for the supply of our
bodily needs precedes the others, because it deals with a need which is
fundamental indeed, but of less importance than those which prompt the
subsequent petitions. God made us to need bread, we have made ourselves
to need pardon. The answer to the later petition is as certain as that
to the earlier. He who gives meat will not withhold forgiveness. _Give_
and _forgive_ refer to our deepest wants, but how many who feel the one
are all unconscious of the other!

I. The consciousness of sin, of which this petition is the expression.

'Debt' and 'duty' are one word. 'Owe' and 'ought' are one word. Duty is
what is due. Ought is what we owe--to some one or other. We are under
obligations all round, which conscience tells us that we have not
fulfilled. The unfulfilled obligation or duty becomes a debt. We divide
our obligations into duties to God, our neighbours, and ourselves; but
the division is superficial, for whatever we owe to ourselves or to men,
we owe also to God, and the non-fulfilment of our obligations to Him is
sin. 'No man liveth to himself, ... we live unto God.' Our consciences
accuse us of undone duties to ourselves, the indulgence