time if our human wills were more pliant to His. He can be trusted. And of
course _trust_ means _trust in the darkest dark_ where you cannot see. And
trust means trust. It does not mean test. Where you trust you do not test.
Where you test you do not trust. Making this our prayer means trusting
God. That is God, and that His will, and that the meaning of our offering
this prayer. "Thy will _be_." A man's will is the man in action, within
the limits of his power. God's will for man is Himself in action, within
the limits of our cooperation. _Be_ is a verb, an action-word, in the
passive voice. It takes some form of the verb to be to express the
passive voice of any action-word. It takes the intensest activity of will
to put this passive voice into human action. The greatest strength is
revealed in intelligent yielding. Here the prayer is expressing the utter
willingness of a man that God's will shall be done in him, and through
him. A man never _loses_ his will, unless indeed he lose his manhood. But
here he makes that will as strong as it can be made, as a bit of steel,
better like the strong oak, strong enough to sway and bend in the wind.
Then he uses all its strength in becoming passive to a higher will. And
that too when the purpose of that higher will is not clear to his own
limited knowledge and understanding.

"Thy will be _done_." That is, be accomplished, be brought to pass. The
word stands for the action in its perfected, finished state. Thy will be
fully accomplished in its whole sweep and in all its items. It speaks not
only the earnest desire of the heart praying, but the set purpose that
everything in the life is held subject to the doing of this purpose of
God. It means that surrender of purpose that has utterly changed the lives
of the strongest men in order that the purpose of God might be dominant.
It cut off from a great throne earth's greatest jurist, the Hebrew
lawgiver, and led him instead to be allied to a race of slaves. It led
that intellectual giant Jeremiah from an easy enjoyable leadership to