ject to influence as well as open to entreaty. We may carry up, in short, the idea of human frailty, as well as of human affection, to the Supreme. And it is needless to say that this has been universally done in all human religions. An element of human passion is found clinging to every natural imagination of Deity. The Divine is pictured as subject to animal instincts and gratified by animal sacrifices. The most cruel and dreadful practices have sprung out of this picture of a Divine being as not only to be entreated of men, but propitiated by them-moved by some ceremony which they performed or some victim which they offered. You have only to realise the picture to see how irreligious it is. A God of such a nature could be no God. A being pleased with sacrifices and burnt-offerings, whose disposition towards men was affected by the slaying of a victim, and the sprinkling of its blood upon an altar, is hardly a moral being at all. The taint of weakness in its grossest form clings to such a notion of Deity. You must get quite out of the region of such notions before you attain to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ -of a Father who is at the same time "Our Father which art in heaven." In Christ the

Supreme is seen to be a perfect Moral Will, whose sacrifices are the reasonable services of the creatures He has made.

The essence of the Divine Fatherhood in Christ, as we have said, is love, but love which is wholly without weakness; not any mere tenderness, or pitifulness, or affectionateness, but a perfectly good Will, at once just and loving, righteous and tender, holy and gracious. It is only in our imperfect perceptions that these moral attributes are separable. Essentially in the supreme Will, they are inseparable. A love which failed in justice would be no true love, morally speaking. A tenderness which lacked righteousness would become mere good-nature, and issue in evils probably worse than the most rigorous equity. A grace which was without holiness would be no blessing. To break up or separate these moral conceptions in God is a fertile root of false religion, and, we may add, of false theology.

The invocation of the Lord's Prayer in its full form, unspeakably tender as it is, blends inseparably all these moral conceptions. It brings God into the closest personal relation to us, and yet it raises Him infinitely above us. It reveals a love near to us, and which we can fully comprehend, and yet a love transcending while it

embraces us. No closeness of relationship with God brings Him down to our level. He remains far above us. "Our Father," indeed, but "Our Father which art in heaven"- the Head not merely of the lower world of visible beings-in which we live, and move, and make our daily bread-but the Head as well of a higher world or order of being. The expression "which art in heaven" must mean this at least. It must mean that there is a transcending sphere in which God dwells. Such an idea of a higher world-a world of spirit, and not merely of matter-a supernatural order exceeding yet embracing the natural order, seems necessarily implied in religious thought. It is the teaching more or less of all spiritual philosophy that such a world is the true world of being-of substance and reality - of which the visible material world is only the transitory form or expression. Nature is a veil or screen hiding God in His essence from us, while revealing Him in His operations. We must pierce the veil of sense, and get behind the screen, of which our outward lives themselves are a part, before we reach the higher world, where God is the light which no man can approach unto.

This conception of a higher life than the

present - a supernatural life in which all the elements of good that we know here shall be perfected, and all the elements of evil expelled -seems the essential foundation of religious aspiration of all lifting of the soul towards the Divine. Apart from such a conception, prayer seems a mockery, worship a delusion. Yet we have lived to see an attempt to build religion upon a mere basis of Nature—on the denial that there is a higher world at all, and that man himself in his varied activities is the highest form of being, above which there is nothing, or nothing at least which we can ever know. Unless all the past expressions of the religious instinct are a delusion, this must be a delusion. Not in himself, but above himself-in a higher, holier, and perfect Being-has man in his best moments hitherto sought the power of religious consolation and the bond of his spiritual life. It has been the awe of such a Being which has most moved man to religious thoughtfulness, and inspired him with the dread of sin. He has never been able to sustain his higher aspirations, or to purify his inner life, by Nature. If there is nothing beyond himself to which he can lift his eyes, he will not lift them at all. object of religion which can at once

The only

engage his

intelligence and affection is a Father in heaven. If we worship, we must worship a Glory that is above us. If our hearts move in prayer, they must move towards another Heart that liveth for ever, in which there is all the love, and far more than the love, that is in us, and yet in which there is none of the weakness which mingles with love in us. If we bow in adoration, we must bow before a Personal Presence-a throne at once of mercy and of judgment, of righteousness and of grace-a Will higher than our own, whither our wills, feeble and wavering, yet amidst all these fluctuations pointing beyond earth and flesh, may ascend. Such a Will it is, such a Presence, such a Heart, such an enthroned Personality, that is revealed to us in Christ: a Father, yet a Judge; a Saviour, yet a Lord; near to us, yet infinitely transcending us; "having respect unto the lowly,"* yet "the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy."+ Towards such a Presence and Person should we worship when we pray "after this manner "Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy Name." In conclusion, let us bear in mind that we cannot claim God as our Father unless we are willIsaiah, lvii. 15.

*Psalm cxxxviii. 6.