The Lord's Prayer is elementary teaching for Christians, but it is not the first thing to be taught to those outside the family of God. The truth that we have a Father in heaven is a fundamental part of the Gospel. It is assumed in the Lord's Prayer; and so is the further truth that our Father of His tender love towards us has given His Son to die for us, that we may be delivered from the "consuming fire" which sin, not God, has kindled; and thus we have indeed a blessed scheme of pardon for which we are to be thankful to both the Father and the Son. This makes all the clauses of the apostolic blessing intelligible and living.
[Page 14]: "For other sins," etc. I think this is an incorrect comment. The force of the threat is positive, not comparative. The language of the law is similar towards every sin.
In what is said about the abomination of hypocrisy in prayer we cordially agree. God give us grace to avoid it ourselves, and to warn our brethren faithfully against it! But in what follows there is an assumption of a power of discipline which the clergy do not possess, and which I fear the laity would be most unwilling to concede to them. Mr. Ruskin seems also to slip into the old error of the servants in the parable of the tares.
On [page 21] St. John xiv. 9 is incorrectly cited, and it is difficult to know the exact drift of the writer.
I object to the statement that "in all His relations to us and commands to us," etc. (See, e.g., St. Matt. xxviii. 18-20.)
As to His not knowing whether His prayer could be heard, see St. John xi. 41, 42.
I think it is incorrect to say that our Lord Himself used the prayer He gave us, at least in its entirety as it stands.
Pages [20], [21]: Mr. Ruskin seems to me to draw most strongly the very comparison to which he objects. Surely the kingdom of Christ is the kingdom of His Father. (Rev. xi. 15, xii. 10; Eph. v. 5.) Does not an unwillingness to accept the true divinity of our Lord underlie this passage?