VI “Daily Bread” “Give us this day our daily bread.”—MATT. vi. 11 “Give us day by day our daily bread.”—LUKE xi. 3. The petition which we are to study together this morning opens the second part of the Lord’s Prayer. Up to this point our petitions have all been concerned with God’s glory and praise. We have prayed “Hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done.” Having thus observed the rule, “first things first,” having sought first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, we are now at liberty to pass on to secondary things, and to offer up to God petitions for personal blessings. And the first petition we are taught to offer is this, “Give us this day our daily bread.” We begin at the very bottom. We start the list of personal petitions with a prayer for “daily bread.” Will you notice what a gracious light this petition throws upon the _condescension of God_? Our Lord is the high and Holy One, who inhabits eternity, and yet He stoops to lowly folk and lowly things. “The Lord thinketh upon _me_.” Whatsoever concerns me is of concern to Him. “Give me bread” is not too humble a petition to bring into the presence of the great White Throne. A one-sided notion of the majesty of God has led men oftentimes to feel that the ordinary little cares of a human life are quite too insignificant and trifling for Him to notice. “God is so busy,” they say; “He has so many things to think about, that we ought not to trouble Him with our little anxieties and worries. Such petty things are quite beneath the dignity of His attention.” That was exactly how the disciples felt long ago, when they were for driving away those mothers who had brought their little children for Christ to bless. They felt that the great Preacher, on whose lips vast crowds hung, ought not to be bothered about babies. They thought that Christ had so many things of importance to think about, that it was absurd to expect Him to take notice of little children. The same kind of feeling has possessed many of the men who have commented on this petition. Many of the old church fathers, and indeed many modern commentators, refuse to believe that this is a prayer for ordinary food, for mere bread. They cannot persuade themselves that a petition for so commonplace a thing as _bread_ could possibly find a place for itself in the Model Prayer. This is too trifling a request to trouble God about. So they cast about for some other than the obvious and literal meaning of the sentence, something which they imagine is more _dignified_, and satisfy themselves at last by saying that bread here means _spiritual bread_, food for the soul, the Bread of Life. But the simple and obvious meaning of the phrase is, after all, the true one. Erasmus, the great sixteenth century Grecian, thought a reference to physical food would be incongruous “in so heavenly a prayer.” But far from being incongruous, the prayer becomes