The Sermon on the Mount: A Practical ExpositionGore, Charles
Religion
The Sermon on the Mount: A Practical Exposition
Gore, Charles
Sermon on the mount
Now, this clause is intelligible enough to our hearts, but rather
difficult to explain exactly. St. James writes, “My brethren, count
it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations.” How can we pray not
to be tempted or tried when we know that it is only through temptation
that we can become strong? One explanation is to be got from our Lord’s
words to His disciples at the time of His agony in the garden: “Watch
and pray, that ye enter not into temptation.” If you fail to be on your
guard, if you live carelessly, without watching or praying, God suffers
you, as a punishment, to be brought within the scope of temptation, and
you find it too strong for you. Therefore the prayer may be interpreted
by expansion thus: make us watchful and prayerful, so that we never
be suffered to fall into temptation as into a snare. But it seems
better to interpret the prayer more generally as the expression of
that self-distrust for which we have only too sufficient grounds, as
a prayer like that of Christ’s, “Father, if it be possible let the cup
of trial pass from me without my drinking it, nevertheless, thy will
be done.”[72]
“But deliver us from the evil one.”
That is “from the devil.” Modern society seems to be very unwilling
to believe in the devil or diabolical temptation. It has been cleverly
said, “Satan never did a more successful stroke than when he persuaded
people to disbelieve in his own existence.” There is truth in that.
It is a real hindrance to our spiritual struggle, and an increase
of despondency, if we forget that evil solicitations come, not only
from our own nature, but from evil spirits. Moreover, if Christ
is a true prophet――if He discerned the conditions of our spiritual
struggle――certainly diabolical temptation must be real, for He is
always talking of it. When He sees evil at work, evil for body or soul,
His mind penetrates behind the appearances and detects hostile wills
working to pervert the kingdom of God, hostile wills which He knows are
to be at last subdued to God and are even now controlled by Him, but
which He knows also to be at present active and malevolent. He looks
forth upon the disorder of the world and says, “An enemy hath done
this.” And He teaches us to pray for deliverance from the evil one.
The familiar doxology “For Thine is the kingdom, the power and the
glory, for ever and ever, Amen,” which in our Church, though not over
the greater part of Christendom, follows here, was not in the original
Lord’s Prayer, though it was added to it very early. It was a doxology
in use in the early Church, which was added at the end of many of
the prayers, and which in very early times came to be attached to the
Lord’s Prayer in some of the manuscripts. It was thus given a place
which it cannot rightly claim, though it states, grandly enough, the
reason why we thankfully worship the Father.
It remains for us to notice some of the great principles which are
enshrined in the Lord’s Prayer as a whole.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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