But this prayer is much more than a prayer for the grace of resignation and patient submission. The petition is not “Help us to _suffer_ thy will,” but “Help us to do it.” This is not a prayer simply for the invalid and the mourner and the bereaved; it is a prayer also for those who are happy and well and strong. This is not a prayer simply for our times of trouble and our days of deep distress; it is a prayer for all times and every day. It is not every day, nor every month, nor even every year, that we are called upon to _suffer_ God’s will, but not a day, not an hour passes, but _we are_ called upon to do it. Do not narrow the scope of this prayer. You prayed this morning, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”? What did you mean by it? I will tell you what you ought to have meant by it: “Help me, O God, to do what Thou wouldest have me do, to be what Thou wouldest have me.” That is what the prayer means. It means that we accept God’s plans and purposes as our own, and resolve to realise them. You can pray no nobler prayer than this, for in the doing of God’s will lies the secret of the perfect life. We look at the life of Jesus—so beautiful, so pure, so perfect—and we are lost in wonder and rapture. But the secret of that life is here: Jesus from the beginning to the close of life was intent on doing God’s will. He Himself let us into the secret. “I am come,” He said, “not to do My own will, but the will of the Father who sent Me.” “My meat and drink,” He said, on another occasion, “is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to accomplish His work.” When a boy of twelve He had come to the sublime decision that every moment of His life should be spent in doing His Father’s business. Do not commit the mistake of thinking that it was only in Gethsemane and the Judgement Hall and on Calvary that Christ was doing the will of God. He was doing it during those silent years at Nazareth. He was doing it when at school, He was doing it when He was in the carpenter’s shop, mending the tables and chairs and ploughs of the dwellers in Nazareth. He was doing it when He preached the Gospel of the Kingdom in Galilee. He was doing it when sharing in the festivities at Cana, and taking part in Matthew’s farewell dinner. He was doing it when healing the sick and comforting the lonely and lifting up the outcast. In fact, He was never doing anything else. Every day, every moment, Jesus was doing the Father’s will, and the result is the only perfect life the world has ever seen. And so, in our case, the doing of God’s will is not something confined to our times of darkness and sorrow; the doing of God’s will is a daily and hourly endeavour. God’s will is really _done_ by us only when, to use the Apostle’s words, “whether we eat or drink, or whatsoever we do, we do all to the glory of God.” “Thy will be done on earth,” so runs the petition; the sphere in which God’s will is to be put into effect is this earth of ours—its