God's
will? His will is that the town shall be cleansed. And who are to do
His will? Why, the citizens. Typhoid fever and bad drainage are not
the will of God. The will of God is that they should be abolished.
Social wrongs are not to be endured with resignation. They simply
indicate to man what is God's will. And who is to do God's will in
these things? We are. The man who enters into his closet and says:
"Thy will be done," is asking no mere help to bear the unavoidable; he
is asking help to be a participator in the purposes of God, a laborer
together with Him, first a discerner and then a doer of his will. "Our
Father," he says, "accomplish Thine ends not over me, or in spite of
me, but through me,--Thou the power and I the instrument,--Thine to
will and mine to do."

{213}

LXXXVI

THE LORD'S PRAYER, VII

DAILY BREAD

The Lord's Prayer begins with the desire for the great things, the
universal needs; a holy world, a kingdom of righteousness, the will of
God fulfilled. Then, in the light of these great things it goes on to
one's personal needs, and prays, first of all, for the present, then
for the past, then for the future. The prayer for the present is this:
"Give us our daily bread,"--our bread, that is to say, sufficient for
to-day, enough to live on and to work by, just for today. The prayer
is limitative. It puts restraint on my desire and limit on my
ambition. It does not demand the future. It looks only to this
present unexplored and unknown day. "Give us in this day what is
necessary for us, fit to sustain us,--strength to do thy will, patience
to bring in thy kingdom, grace to hallow thy name."

Into the midst of the restless anticipations of modern life, its living
of to-morrow's life in {214} to-day's anxiety, its social disease which
has been described as "Americanitis," and which, if it is not arrested,
will have to be operated on some day at the risk of the nation's life,
there enters every morning in your daily prayer the desire for quiet
acceptance of the day's blessings, the dismissal of the care for the
morrow, the sense of sufficiency in the bread of to-day:--

"Lord, for to-morrow and its needs I do not pray,
Keep me from stain of sin, just for to-day.
Let me both diligently work, and duly pray,
Let me be kind in word and deed, just for to-day.
Let me no wrong or idle word unthinking say,
Set thou a seal upon my lips, just for to-day.
Let me be sl