Page:SermonOnTheMount1900.djvu/102

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

Twenty-second Day


The Lord's Prayer: Our Father. — Matt. vi. 9.


LET an act of love be seen in each petition.

'Our Father.' At the first word of the Lord’s Prayer our heart melts with love. God chooses to be our Father by a special adoption. He has an only Son Who is equal to Him, and in Whom He is well pleased, but He adopts sinners. Men adopt children only when they have none of their own; God, Who had such a Son as this, nevertheless adopts us. Adoption is an effect of love, for we choose whom we will adopt; Nature bestows other children, but love alone makes adopted ones. God, Who loves His only begotten Son with the whole of His love, and to infinity, extends to us the love He bears to Him. Jesus Christ tells us this in that marvellous prayer that He made for us to His Father: 'That the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and