"Give us this day our daily bread." "The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof." (Make us partakers of thy bounty, that our bodies may have needed nourishment. Illuminate our spiritual understanding that we may take to ourselves each day such spiritual food as we are best fitted to appropriate and use.)
"And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." Up to this point there is simply suggested the personal relationship between the petitioner and the Being to whom he prays; but into this phrase quite another element is introduced—a new factor; forgive us, as we in turn forgive our enemies. This puts upon one who utters these words the responsibility of answering his own prayer, or of making the conditions whereby he shall be forgiven and accepted, that thus may be established the eternal vibrations that bind the very lowest to the Highest.
"And lead us not into temptation;" i. e., graciously protect us from following the devices of our own ignorance; but if we willfully go our own way, and are overcome with grief and disappointment because of our misdoing, "deliver us from [the] evil" consequences thereof, by inspiring our minds with courage to bear our pains and penalties with true heroism, and teach us through our experiences wherein lie our highest growth and wisdom for all our future lives. "For thine is the kingdom, and the power" to create and destroy, "and the glory." (All things begin and end in God.) "Forever and ever. Amen."
Jesus had undoubtedly learned the pure ethics of this all-embracing appeal. Principles are unchanging; but, as the law of evolution carries each succeeding representation of the underlying facts of spiritual science ever higher in the ascending series, on the spiral pathway that leads to the kingdom of God, so in each is embodied a more advanced phase or externalization of such facts. The revelations vouchsafed to the world through the teachings of Confucius, Buddha, and other saviors of men appealed only to the intellect. Jesus was the first to announce to the heart-hungry that "God so loved the world" that he sent one of his best beloved sons to bear witness to his own eternal love, and to show how all may become participators in its boundlessness.
The potency of prayer corresponds to the power of the thought or to the exalted aspiration of the soul projecting it. There are some who, seeking divine aid, are too weak in this respect to realize any special results, while the prayers of others ascend as on the wings of eagles. This attitude of the soul is not to be confounded with the "communion of saints." Communion indicates the existence of a degree of equality which, in the relation of finite man with his Maker, cannot be.
An occult wave has swept round the world. The seals are being broken, and the sphinxes are speaking wherever they find ears to hear and minds to comprehend. The heart of the mystery is this; there is no new thing to be proclaimed. "Spiritual things are spiritually discerned," and, with the divine illumination vouchsafed to all, "a wayfaring man, though a fool," may see and know the deep things of God. But no door will be opened, no angel or "minister of grace" or "spirit friend" will descend the ladder of light that leads to the realms supernal, no inspiration of God will ever come to any soul on earth without prayer—in response to either conscious supplication or unconscious aspiration toward the Giver of every good and perfect gift. The ultimate function and use of prayer is simply to establish our relationship with the divine and ever-lasting forces that rule and guide our lives. These are ever operating to help us to live above the purely personal relationships that limit our growth and advancement along the lines of spiritual unfoldment, and to open to our souls vistas of perfectness on the higher planes of wisdom and understanding of the mysteries of immortal life.
ABSURD BELIEFS.
The supreme egotism of man has been largely corrected through the influence of education and experience which have made him conscious of the ridiculousness of his demands for recognition of his supremacy. Each one of those high, old eastern Emperors had to have his pedestal, and his title of god, without reference to his real character. Modern men do not expect to be real head-up gods. They know too much to be so ridiculous. But there are those who seem to feel that they are at least "little tin gods on wheels."
When the Nazarene appeared among men possessing godlike qualities, it was entirely in line with the custom of the time to call him a god. There was neither logic nor common sense in the role Jesus was to play. He was God of all gods. He was, at the same time, the Only Begotten Son of God, and, as the idea of sacrifice to the numerous gods was an important part of the religious orgies of the time, they could only bring that into their new scheme for entrapping souls by making the Son—who was really God—a sacrifice to himself, to propitiate himself, and keep himself from utterly destroying and damning the folks He himself had created. So they made it out that this good man should be a propitiation for the "sins of the race." Silly; improbable; unlawful; incredible; impossible. The more useless and undeveloped people were, the more they believed that the sacrifice of a very God—to their egotistical minds—was not too much for the salvation of their infinitesimal, pinhead souls.