Next we come to the profound word which shows how completely our lives are bound together in organic union, above and below: “Forgive us as we forgive.” What a solemn thing to say. Dare we pray it! And yet few words have ever so truly revealed the nature of prayer. It is, one sees, no easy, lazy way to blessings. Once more, it is co-operation. Forgiveness is not a gift which can fall upon us from the skies, in return for a capricious request. The blessing depends on us as much as it does on God. A cold, hard, unforgiving heart can no more be forgiven than a lazy, slipshod student can have knowledge given to him. Like all spiritual things, forgiveness can come only when there is a person who appreciates its worth and meaning. The deep cry for forgiveness must rise out of a forgiving spirit. It is always more than a transaction, an event. It is an inward condition of the personal life, and the soul that feels what it means to love and forgive is so bound into the whole divine order that love and forgiveness come in as naturally as light goes through the open casement, or the tide into an inlet. The next word is surely to be thought of as a human cry: “Take us not into testing.” It is the natural shrinking of the tender, sensitive soul, and it is the right attitude. Most of us know by hard experience that trial, proving, testing, yes, even actual temptation, have a marvelous ministry. No saint is made in the level plain, where the waters are still and the pastures green. “Never on custom’s oilëd grooves The world to a higher level moves, But grates and grinds with friction hard On granite boulder and flinty shard. The heart must bleed before it feels, The pool be troubled before it heals.” All this we know. We know that the stem battle makes the veteran. But this prayer is the childlike cry, the shrinking fear, which are always safer than the bold dash, the impetuous plunge. It is the utterance of an instinctive wish to keep where safety lies, and, humanly speaking, it is right, though, in a world whose highest fruit is character, we may expect that bitter cups and hard baptisms will be a part of our experience. Like all that has gone before, it is an effort at co-operation. It is a sincere aspiration for green pastures and still waters joined with a readiness to be fed at the table in presence of the enemy, if need be, readiness for the perilous edge of conflict, for “high strife and glorious hazard.” Last of all there rises the cry for deliverance from the power of evil. Once more we realize that this is not an occasion for magical interference, no call for a fiery dart out of the sky to pierce a black demon who is pushing us into sin. The drama is an inward one and the enemy, called of many names, is a part of our own self. Each soul has its own struggle with the immemorial tug of brute inheritance--the sag of lower nature.