| The Golden Gate of Prayer |
Chapter 7 |
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No doubt it seems to many even now that the answer to the petition has scarcely begun to come. Still is the world full of violence and strife. The great Christian nations yet resort to war for the settlement of their disputes. Wrong and injustice prevail. The poor are oppressed. The weak are crushed. Foul sins stain the story of daily life even in communities where Christian civilization has done the most for the uplifting of society. When we look abroad and see the evil that still exists, we are apt to ask whether, after all, the world is any better than it was when Jesus taught his disciples to offer this petition. Yet this question is easily set at rest. The Prayer has been wondrously answered already.
“If God,” says Maurice, “had not heard this prayer, going up from tens of thousands in all ages, the earth would have been a den of robbers.” We do not know from what depths of depravity this pleading, offered continually by loyal hearts, has saved the world. Nor do we begin to realize what Christianity has wrought in the world, in the countries where it has had power. If we would know how far this prayer has been answered, in what measure light has conquered darkness, to what extent the kingdom of God has advanced among men, we have but to study the world as it was in Christ’s day and compare with this the condition of society in the countries where Christianity has produced its best fruits. Or we need but to contrast, for example, the civilization of England and the United States with the debasement of the worst heathen lands, to see that the world is immeasurably better than it was at the beginning of the Christian era.
Still, however, even the best and holiest parts of the earth are far from the perfect realization of the blessing sought in this petition. Everywhere sin still abounds, and wrong, injustice, crime, and cruelty are found among men. Even in the purest church and in the sweetest home the kingdom of God is not yet fully come. The prayer in large measure has yet to be answered, for it will be answered perfectly only when the life of heaven shall rule without hindrance or resistance in the society of earth; when truth, righteousness, and love shall prevail everywhere. Until then we should never cease to breathe to our Father the petition, “Thy kingdom come.”
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