So we pray in the Lord's Prayer "deliver us from evil"
"They shall cry to the Lord, but he will not hear them" in the day of their distress, as the poor cried to them in the day of their prosperity and they would not hear them. There will come a time when the most proud and scornful sinners will
"cry to the Lord" and sue for that mercy which, when time was, they never valued nor copied out; but it will then be in vain.
Let them now "seek good and not evil", as the prophet Amos invites them (Amos v. 14, 15). Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate. Re-establish it there whence it has been banished (Amos v. 7). Things are never so bad but that they may be amended if the right course be taken. We must not despair but that grievances may be redressed and abuses rectified. Justice may yet triumph there where injustice tyrannizes. That this may come about, good must be loved and sought, evil must be hated and no longer sought. We must love good principles and adhere to them; love to do good and abound in it. We must love good people, and good converse, and good duties, and whatever good we do we must do it from a principle of love—do it of choice and with delight.
5. DELIVERANCE FROM EVIL
So we pray in the Lord's Prayer "deliver us from evil" (Matt. vi. 13)—"'from the evil one"', as some would read. That is, the devil, the tempter. Keep us, that either we may not be assaulted by him, or we may not be overcome by those assaults. It means also "'from the evil thing". That is, sin, the worst of evils. An evil, an only evil. That evil which God hates, and that Satan tempts men to, and destroys them by. "Lord deliver us from the evil of the world, the corruption that is in the world through lust, from the evil of every condition in the world; from the evil of death, from the sting of death, which is sin. Deliver us from ourselves, from our own evil hearts; deliver us from evil men, that they may not be a snare to us, nor we a prey to them."
Deliverance from evil has been made possible for sinful man through the death of Jesus Christ, ""who gave himself for our sins that he might deliver us from this present evil world" (Gal. 7. 4). Christ gave Himself not only to redeem us from the wrath of God and the curse of the law, but also to recover us from the corruption that is in the world through lust, and to