Not the least important characteristic of the Lord's Prayer is its simplicity in thought and expression. Surely it is not without significance that as it stands in the English tongue it is the purest piece of Saxon in literature, a monument of clearness and simplicity. God neither speaks or desires to be spoken to in grandiloquent language which belongs to the courts of earthly kings. The difficulty that so many persons find in praying without the aid of some form of devotion is largely due to the impression that the language needed for address to God is not such as an ordinary mortal can frame. There are four leading principles, the first of which contradicts this misconception, that stand out in bold prominence in the Lord's Prayer, and tell us what all speech Godward should be.
§ 1. _Prayer must be familiar yet reverent._ We are taught to address God as our Father. What a host of intimate confidences this single word calls up! There is no familiarity so close as that between child and father, no sympathy so sensitive. When Scripture declares that Enoch walked with God, whatever else it means beyond, it means at least that Enoch was able to hold familiar converse with God in prayer. Those who knew him could find no better way of describing his relationship with God than by drawing the picture of the familiar companionship of two intimate friends. Or again, when Abraham is termed the friend of God it implies, as well as much beside, that he knew how to speak familiarly yet acceptably to God. All this was long ago, before man's full relation to God was made known. The coming of the Son of God as the Son of Man makes what was really deep seem shallow, so mighty was the change that was wrought. It is not merely as an ordinary friend that the Christian may speak to God, but as a son. Filial relations are the highest type of friendship.
But familiarity must be chastened by reverence, a quality strangely lacking in our national character. It would seem as though in the boldness of our search for independence reverence had been largely forfeited. The Father addressed is in heaven. That is He is where holiness prevails to the utter exclusion of sin. So while we may tell out the whole mind it must be done with regard for the moral character of God and His eternal and infinite attributes; with the familiarity, not of equals, but of lowly souls addressing sympathetic greatness and holiness. To dwell exclusively on either one of these two considerations, God's Fatherhood or His infinite character, will result, on the one hand, in familiarity without reverence; or, on the other, in reverence without familiarity. Familiarity without the discipline of reverence is desecrating impertinence, and reverence without the warmth of familiarity is chilling formalism.