“Hallowed be thy name” is often taken in a very feeble sense to mean “keep us from using thy name in vain,” or it is thought of as synonymous with the easy and meaningless platitude, “Let thy name be holy.” It is in reality a heart-cry for a full appreciation of the meaning of the Divine name, i. e., the Divine character. It is an uprising of the soul to an apprehension of the holiness of God and the fullness of His life that the soul may return to its tasks with a sense of infinite resources and under the sway of a vision of the true ideal. This Lord’s prayer begins with a word of intimate relationship and social union—“Our Father.” It then goes out beyond the familiar boundaries of experience to feel the infinite sweep of God’s completeness and perfectness and to become penetrated with solemn awe and reverence which fit such companionship,—“Our Father of the holy name.”
This is the prelude. The true melody of prayer, if I may say so, begins with the positive facing of the task of life:—“Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Here again we have the loftiest Fellowship. The person who prays this way is linked with God in one mighty spiritual whole. The last vestige of atomic selfishness is washed out. There are those who say these words of prayer with folded hands and closed eyes, and then expect the desired kingdom to come by miracle; they suppose that if the request is made often enough a millennium age will drop out of the skies. Ah, no! If God is Spirit and man is meant to be spiritual, such a millennium is a sheer impossibility. This prayer involves the most strenuous life that ever was lived. To pray seriously for the coming of the kingdom of heaven means to contribute to its coming. It has come in any life which is completely under the sway of the holy Will and which is consecrated to the task of making that holy Will prevail in society. It is no “far off Divine event.” It is always coming.
“For an ye heard a music, like enow
They are building still, seeing the city is built
To music, therefore never built at all
And therefore built forever.”
In a plain word, it is the total task of humanity through the ages. It is the embodiment in a temporal order of the eternal purpose. It is the weaving in concrete figure and color of the Divine pattern. It is the slow and somewhat painful work of making an actual Divine society out of this rather stubborn and unpromising potential material. But it is our main business, and this prayer is the girding of the loins for the sublime task of helping God make His world.
“Man as yet is being made, and e’er the crowning age of ages,
Shall not aeon after aeon pass and touch him into shape?