rivilege of my descent; I claim the great inheritance of the kinship
of God, and out of my self-distrust and weakness I turn to self-respect
and strength, when I pray: 'Our Father.'"

{207}

LXXXIII

THE LORD'S PRAYER, IV

HALLOWED BE THY NAME

_Exodus_ xx. 1-7.

I suppose that to many a reader the prayer: "Holy be Thy name," means
little more than: "Let me not be profane; help me to keep myself from
blasphemy." But it is not likely that Jesus began his prayer with any
such elementary desire as this; or that our first prayer need be only a
prayer to be kept from irreverence. The name of God to the Hebrews was
much more than a title. His name represented all His ways of
revelation. The Hebrews did not speak the name of God. It was a word
too sacred for utterance. Thus the man who begins the Lord's Prayer in
that Hebrew spirit first summons to his thought the things which are
the most sacred in the world to him, the thoughts and purposes which
stand to him for God; the associations, memories, and ideals which make
life holy, and asks that these may lead him into his own prayer. {208}
What he says is this: "My Father, and the Father of all other souls,
renew within me my most sacred thoughts and all the holy associations
which are to me the symbol of Thyself. Give to me a sense of the
sanctity of the world. Set me in the right mood of prayer. And as I
thus reverently look out on Thy varied ways of revelation and of
righteousness, help me to bring my own spirit into this unity with
Thyself, to make a part of Thy holy world, and humbly to begin my
prayer by hallowing Thy name."

{209}

LXXXIV

THE LORD'S PRAYER, V

THY KINGDOM COME

_Luke_ xvii. 21.

The prayer that the kingdom of God might come had long been familiar to
the Hebrews. They had been for centuries dreaming of a time when their
tyrants should be overcome and their nation delivered and their God
rule. But all this desire was for an outward change. Some day the
Romans and their tax-gatherers should be expelled from the land and
then the kingdom would come. Jesus repeats the same prayer, but with a
new significance in the familiar words. He is not thinking of a Hebrew
theocracy, or a Roman defeat; he is thinking of a human, universal,
spiritual emancipation. There dawns before his inspired imagination
the unparalleled conception of a purified and regenerated people.
Never did a modern socialist in his dream of a better