llow-workers with Thee, O God,
even as those blessed spirits are who minister day and night to all
Thy creatures.

'Give us this day our daily bread.' People sometimes divide the
Lord's Prayer into two parts--the ascriptions and the petitions--and
consider that after we have sufficiently glorified and praised God
in the first three sentences of the prayer, then we are at liberty
to begin asking something for ourselves, and to say 'Give us day by
day our daily bread.' I cannot think so, my friends. I have been
showing you that 'Hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will
be done,' if we do but recollect that they are spoken to our Father,
are just as much prayers for all mankind, as they are hymns of
honour to God; and so I say of these latter: 'Give us--Forgive us--
Lead us not--Deliver us'--that if we will but remember that they,
too, are spoken to our Father, we shall find that they are just as
much hymns of honour to God as prayers for mankind.

Yes, my friends, when we say, 'Give us this day our daily bread,' we
do indeed honour God and the name of God. We declare that He is
Love, that He is The Giver, The absolutely and boundlessly _generous
and magnanimous_ Being. And what higher glory and honour or praise
can we ascribe, even to God Himself, than to say that of Him? Next,
we pray not for ourselves only, but for our neighbours; for England,
for Christendom, for the heathen who know not God, and for
generations yet unborn. We pray that God would so guide, and teach,
and preserve the children of men, as to enable them to fulfil in
every country and every age the work which He gave them to do, when
He said, 'Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue
it.' We know that our Father has commanded us to labour. We know
that our Father has so well ordered this glorious earth, that
whosoever labours may reap the just fruit of his labour; therefore
we pray that God would prosper our righteous plans for earning our
own living. We pray to Him not only so to order the earth that it
may bring forth its fruits in due season, but that men may be in a
fit state to enjoy those fruits, that God may not be forced for
their good to withhold from them blessings which they might abuse to
their ruin. But we pray, also, 'Give _us_:' not me only, but _us_;
and therefore we pray that He would prosper our neighbour's plans as
well as ours. So we confess that we believe God to be no respecter
of persons; we