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Show THE "OUR FATHER." Our Ogden correspondent is perplexed, and quite naturally, over the singular appeal to our Heavenly Father pronounced toward the end of the Lord's Prayer. The "lead us not into temptation" is much more difficult of solution than the "prevent we beseech be-seech the our prayers or actions" explained elsewhere else-where on this page. In Bishop Challaner's annotations anno-tations to the Rhemish translation of the Bible from the Latin Vulgate are many lucid, if not always satisfactory, explanations of "many things hard to be understood." Commenting on the 13th verse in the sixth chapter of St. Mathew, that is, on the words: "Lead us not into temptation," Bishop Bish-op Challoner, and, indeed, most of the annotators of the New Testament whom we have read, tell us that the appeal to God to "L?ad us not into temptation" temp-tation" means to "suffer us not to be overcome by temptation." How they can permit themselves to take this freedom with the Latin word "inducas" and the Greek "Eisensyxns" and the English "lead us not" is beyond our comprehension. When we read in St. Paul (1 Cor. 1, VI) that "God will not suffer us to be tempted above what we are able to bear," and in St. James (1, 3) that "God is not a tempter of evils; and he temptcth no man," we are satisfied that God docs not and cannot lead us into temptation. Xow let us place side by side the 24th verse of the first chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans Ro-mans with the: "lead us not into temptation" of the Lord's prayer. St. Pf.ul says, "God gave them up to the de sires of their own heart, to uncleanliness, to dishonor dis-honor their own bodies among themselves" and igain, verse 23: "God delivered them up to a reprobate rep-robate sense to do these things which are shameful." shame-ful." Here, wc find that God, in punishment for the iniquities of the heathens, "delivered them to uncleanliness." Do we not read in Jeremiah: "I will fill the prophets with drunkenness and I will abandon them to sin." Do we not also read that God permitted false prophets to arise among the people, and to deceive them, in punishment for their sins. In Psalm, xl, 2, we read that God "abandoned them to shameful iniquities." Did not David, Psalm xxv, pray: "Abandon not my soul, O God, to the wicked nor my life to men of blood." That is, he begged of God not to punish him for his past sins by exposing him to greater crimes. There is a limit to the patience of God, so that the time comes in the life of the wicked man when God gives him over to his evil ways to punish him for his crimes. "Divine justice" writes the great Bossuet in his "Variations," "avenges sin by other sin." We are of the opinion that "lead us not into temptation" means precisely what it says. It means, in the language of St. Paul, that God would not "give us up to the desires of our hearts" or "deliver us to a reprobate sense," or "abandon us to shameful iniquities," in punishment for our past sins. In the sublime prayer taught the Jewish multitude, multi-tude, our Lord advises the people to pray to their heavenly Father, lest, in His anger and disquiet. He would subject them to (lead them into) ths same excesses and temptations visited upon their fathers. fath-ers. We understand the various meanings of the word "temptation" so often used in Holy Writ, but here we deal only with the word in its rigorous sense as tending or leading to the commission of sin. If we may twist the plain English, "lead us not" into "do not permit us" or "suffer us not," - ; i then we may take any liberty with the language of the Old or Xew Testament, precisely what all heretics her-etics have done and are doing, as Ward in his "Errata" "Er-rata" conclusively proves. |