The All-Father (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1891. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... 135 XIV. THE EVIL. 'But deliver us from evil.'--Matt. vi. 13. The first thing that I shall ask you to notice in this, the concluding petition in the Lord's Prayer, is the close connection in which it stands with the petition which immediately precedes it. Indeed, I strongly doubt whether we should not better understand the united sense of the apparently two requests, if we were to consider them as forming one petition only; for the two are linked together by a chain of logical reasoning which we are in danger of overlooking, so long as we treat them as two separate petitions for two separate needs. As we saw in the last sermon, our poor frail humanity is encouraged, not only by these words of our Master, but also by His own personal example, to cry to our Father, in the hour of our sorest trials, that if it be His loving will, He will spare us from the test which we fear we shall sink under. And then, not as an introduction of any new thought, but as the full development of the absolute sacrifice of our own wills implied in our Lord's 'if it be possible, '--we go on to cry, 'But deliver us from the evil.' 'But.' I want you to mark and cling to that first word. It carries out the same chain of thought as marked our Master's own cry: --' Father, save Me from this hour ' But--but it cannot be; 'for for this very cause came I unto this hour, ' that I should meet the temptation, and by bearing it, rise to a truer height, and learn a better lesson, than if My human weakness were to wrest from Thee permission for the cup to pass away from Me. Even so does He, the tempted one, teach us here to pray: --' Father, lead us not into temptation: But' forasmuch as this cannot be;--but, forasmuch as without the temptation our education could not be completed;--but, forasmuch as i...