is His voice that bids us pray always, and after this manner: 'Deliver us from evil.' Daily, then, do we read the message of the Gospel of reconciliation, daily dying and daily rising again, seeing our sin and seeing Christ. The Holy Ghost reveals Christ in us, and at the same time reveals self, and daily does Christ teach us to pray for preservation from that which would hide Him from us, and bring everlasting death.

He who knew what was in man, the Good Physician touched with a feeling for our infirmities, knew also, for He had provided that, the remedy which alone could heal him, and so He taught us to pray, 'Deliver us.' Not once, now and then, after some bitter experience of a fall, after some terrible conflict with some sharp temptation, wounded, bruised, bowed with shame; but daily, as every day has its especial peril, so has it reserved and dependent on the daily exigence of desire its especial grace; and for this He taught us to pray.

He has given expression to what must be the cry of the heart when worn, wearied, and anxious: Oh, that I had the wings of a dove, that I might flee away and be at rest!' 'Why art thou cast down, O my soul, and why dis'quieted within me?' Beaten back, disappointed, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?' Free me, free me from this evil that doth so often, so constantly beset me. He has given expression to this yearning and this longing of the heart, and in so doing has revealed the terrible nature of the enemy whose work it is to sap the foundations of our spiri

tual life, and nip in the bud the hope of holiness. The prayer is 'divinely taught,' divinely fashioned to meet the daily necessities of the soul struggling with the manifold evils which belong to our state here below, and it is linked indissolubly with the previous words, Lead us not into temptation. In its true sense and purport it is in perfect accordance with the cry against temptation. He who imparted it to men in the old time, was He who gave it to 'His disciples in its clearness and purity, in its length and breadth, when He said, "after "this manner, therefore, pray ye: Our Father deliver us from evil.":

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Here, then, is the prayer 'which comprises shortly and collectively the whole of our petitions and desires. We end by saying, "Deliver

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us from evil," comprehending all adverse things which the enemy in this world devises against us; wherefrom we have a faithful and firm protection, if God deliver us, and grant His aid to our entreaties and complaints. But having said, "Deliver us from evil," there remains nothing beyond for us to ask for, after petition made for God's protection from evil; 'for, that gained, we stand secure and safe against 'all things that the devil and the world work against us. What fear hath he from this life, who has God through life for his guardian? We need not wonder that this is God's prayer, seeing how His instruction comprises all our petitioning in one saving sentence.' The word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, 'made a full compendium of His instructions, that the 'memory of His scholars might not labour in 'the heavenly discipline, but accept with

readiness whatsoever was necessary unto a 'simple faith.' (Cyprian.)

It is the prayer which is ever in the mind of the penitent; indeed, the prayer which comes earliest to the soul when sin has been revealed, when the candle of the Lord has searched the inner parts of the soul, and when the Divine light has lightened up the soul, and shewn, as with a sunbeam, the spot of dust in the chamber within. The cry, as of the Royal Penitent awakened, 'Have mercy on me, after "Thy great goodness;' mercy, which is the great want of the soul and which is Christ's prerogative. The depth of misery calls upon the depth of mercy. The depth of sin calls upon the depth of grace. That mercy which 'brought 'the Creator of the world from heaven, clad 'Him in an earthly body, made Him the guest of mortals, made the Lord of all a servant, 'the Bread of Life hungry, the Fount of Sal"vation thirsty, the Strength of God weak, the 'Eternal a victim to death.' It is this mercy that puts into the mouth of the penitent, 'De'liver me from evil.'

So hath Christ shewn us the way to meet the evil of life. Not to be blind to it nor palliate it, but see its exceeding sinfulness, and in another strength grapple with it and overcome. He would have us realize that we are naturally sinners, separate from God, therefore as man, 'to be the true servant of his Lord, must seek 'Him by prayer, so those iniquities which, as the prophet says, have separated between you and your God," and that sin which hath hid "His face from you that He will not hear," these are indeed against us.' (Jerome.)

Thus God goes forth to seek the soul, as once in familiar intercourse with our first parents in the days of their innocence, so now in the days of reconciliation He is with us, and Christ hath taught us of a boldness of access, of how personally to realize the presence and love of God, made one with us by His blood; how to cast ourselves on the compassion of an unfailing mercy, to draw near to God that He may draw nigh to us, He would shew us how the soul may go out of self and out of 'the depth call to Him,' He would tell us of an evil, an accumulation of evil, and encourage us to ask as our daily prayer how we may be delivered from it.

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'Seeing then the evil with His eyes, and guided by Him, we learn what the evil is, what the body of this death" which we must pray to be delivered from. Evil in all its multitude of forms and forces. All evil, 'from the least to the greatest, the countless ' variety of the ills of life as well as the sin 'that doth so easily beset us; and the whole 'swarm of possessions, sins as well as death, by which human nature has been driven wild as 'by a restive horse.' (Chrysostom.)

What is this evil? It is sin. Sin in its nature and in its varied developments; in what it is and in what it becomes; in its being and in its effects. That wonderful mystery which, from the moment we apprehend anything, comes to us as a very real and a very awful thing, spoils our happiness, withers our growth, and clouds our lives, a subtle awful thing growing up in us and becoming part of ourselves.

A simple fact in the child's history, unex

"plained, unintelligible, with an instinctive sense of shame indeed, but without the con'sciousness or discernment of its cause or its real horror, that comes by-and-by, that breaks upon us later on' (Carter). In the Bible story it is simply brought before us, and in its external effects in direct opposition to the law of God, sin revealed in its sinfulness externally, as against God in His infinite love, in the Gospel, and later on in its relation to the human soul. So does Christ here teach of evil as inward, and its power as that we must pray against.

What is this evil? Here is our difficulty in speaking of it. We get used to it quite early it comes to us as an element in our life, and as those living in a poisoned atmosphere are unconscious of the poison they are breathing, so we, living in an atmosphere of sin about, around us, in the people we meet, in the books we read, in the home in which we live, and worst of all in our hearts, we grow insensible to its danger, we assent to its necessity, and we believe we cannot avoid it.

But is it so?

Does He not bid us pray in His own words against this very thing, evil? Might not the world have gone on without sin? Did He, when He called into being creatures whom He could love and for whom He destined eternal life, foresee the evil that would come between Him and His design, the withering of the tree, the destroying of the innocence, and that He would be multiplying enemies rather than creating children to love Him? What are we to understand from such expressions as 'griev