Page:The Lord's Prayer (Saphir).djvu/51

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LECTURE II.

THE MODEL PRAYER.

"AFTER THIS MANNER THEREFORE PRAY YE."—MATT. VI. 9.

The model prayer which the Lord Jesus gave to His disciples has been a precious and most cherished treasure of the Church up to this hour.*^[1] Since those gracious words—words of infinite wisdom and infinite love—flowed from the lips of the Son of man, the saints of every age and every language have used them, and found in them the perfect expression of their deepest feelings and truest need, as well as the high ideal and standard of spiritual life, which on this

↑ * Although we have no direct evidence that the Lord's Prayer was used in the apostolic Church, we can scarcely doubt it. Bengel has pointed out the very striking parallelism between the Lord's Prayer, especially in its first petitions, and the first Epistle of Peter. (Gnomon, 1 Peter i.) According to the testimony of Tertullian and Cyprian, it was the usual prayer of the congregation. The former calls it the prayer taught by God, upon which all other prayers are to be founded, and by which they are to be sealed, the sum of the gospel and compendium of Christ's discourses. Augustine states that at baptism the Catechumens were taught this prayer: "Receive now this precious jewel and keep it; receive the prayer which God himself has taught us to bring before God." Of the Reformers, perhaps none had so deep an insight into this prayer, and such profound affection for it, as Luther, who constantly alludes to it, and always with peculiar warmth and enthusiasm.

[1] * Although we have no direct evidence that the Lord's Prayer was used in the apostolic Church, we can scarcely doubt it. Bengel has pointed out the very striking parallelism between the Lord's Prayer, especially in its first petitions, and the first Epistle of Peter. (Gnomon, 1 Peter i.) According to the testimony of Tertullian and Cyprian, it was the usual prayer of the congregation. The former calls it the prayer taught by God, upon which all other prayers are to be founded, and by which they are to be sealed, the sum of the gospel and compendium of Christ's discourses. Augustine states that at baptism the Catechumens were taught this prayer: "Receive now this precious jewel and keep it; receive the prayer which God himself has taught us to bring before God." Of the Reformers, perhaps none had so deep an insight into this prayer, and such profound affection for it, as Luther, who constantly alludes to it, and always with peculiar warmth and enthusiasm.

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