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The Christian indeed; or, The Lord's prayer expounded
The Christian indeed or The Lord's prayer expounded Author:William Tait Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. The Christian's Forgetfulness Of Self, His Devotedness To The Glory Of God And The Best Interests Of Man, His Holiness And His Resignation. " ... more »When ye pray, say, Our Father. . . Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, as in Heaven, so in earth." " Now abide," says St. Paul, " these three, Faith, Hope, Love." They are the fundamental principles of the Christian character, and the essentials of living Christianity. To approach God as a Father, is, as we have seen already, to give expression to all the three. Such an approach then eminently marks the Christian. " For as many as areled by the Spirit of God," says the same Apostle, " they are the sons of God." And what spirit is it which thus at once leads and marks His children ? " Not the spirit of bondage again to fear," the sacred text continues, " but . . . the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba ! Father." And if in the opening of this model of prayer we have found what is essential to the Christian, we shall find the developements of his character in the varied petitions which follow. For they reveal a temper of mind which is the natural result of love, and discover a state of heart which is the necessary fruit of faith and hope in God. ICor. xiii. 13. Original. In the petitions which we are now to consider, we discern in the first place, the Christian's entire forgetfulness of self, together with his devotedness to God and to those objects which are dear to God. The heart that is in man by nature, has no conception either of the true character of the religion of Jesus, or of that prayer which is its languageand expression. The professed worldling never prays at all. He may use a form of words, but immersed in pleasure or in business, occupied with schemes of avarice or ambitio...« less