PLAIN VILLAGE SERMONS ON THE LORD'S PRAYER, AND The Beatitudes. BY HENRY ALFORD, A.M., VICAR OF WYMESWOLD, LEICESTERSHIRE, AND LATE FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. LONDON: J. G. F. & J. RIVINGTON. NOTTINGHAM, DEARDEN. 1846. 566. ADVERTISEMENT. THESE sermons, most of which have appeared in a series entitled "The Nottingham Church Tracts," are published in the humble and sincere hope, that they may, by their plainness and simplicity, (for they have no other pretension,) lead their readers to HIM, Who gave us this Divine Prayer, and spoke these Blessings. If any be by them induced to put on the spirit which was in Him, and be thereby made partakers of these blessings, the Author's purpose will have been abundantly answered. CONTENTS. PAGE US NOT INTO TEMPTATION, BUT DELIVER US FROM EVIL: FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM, AND THE POWER, AND THE GIORY, FOR EVER. AMEN."-St. Matt. vi. 13. 41 PAGE On the Lord's Prayer. SERMON I. "CONTINUING INSTANT IN PRAYER."-Rom. xii. 12. If there be one duty which makes more frequent or more urgent calls upon a Christian than any other, it is that of prayer. Any one who has entered in earnest upon the divine life, will not be long before he perceives this. As a natural man, indeed, he owes a debt to his good and gracious God, which he can never acknowledge often enough, or be too mindful of; he is also dependent on God every day for every thing, being merely the creature of His hands, to do with as He thinks fit. What then can be more proper or more seemly, than, if for these reasons only, to fall down before the Lord his Maker, and while he acknowledges himself to be one of the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand, to beg for a continuance of that upholding care which has hitherto preserved him? So that, if this were all-if the air which we breathe, and the raiment which clothes us, and the food which we eat day by day, were all we received at God's hands, common gratitude would require that we should thank Him for it; and a common sense of our dependence on Him, that we should request the continuance of it. But we are not alone in the world-God has placed each of us here, surrounded by others of the same form and blood with himself; He has appointed that each of us should be brought into the world, not by a sudden and particular creation from Himself, but by the means of others on whom we are im B |