‘Thine is the Kingdom, and the power, and the glory.’  Then the world and we shall be guided right and kept safe, and whatsoever is true and good shall rule, and the weak cause shall be the conquering, and all false fame shall fade like morning mist, and every honest desire and effort for man’s blessedness shall have eternal honour.  God is King; God is mighty; God’s name shall have glory; then for us there is Hope invincible in spite of all evil.  Courage to stand by His truth and His will, endless patience and endless charity, are our fitting robes, the livery of our King.  Because He is our Father, He will deliver us and our brethren from all evil, and by His all-powerful Love will found His universal kingdom and get the glory due unto His name, the glory of loving and being loved by all His children.

II.  The force of the doxology in its place here.

It reminds us that the ground of our confidence is in God’s own character.  We do not need to make ourselves worthy to receive.  We cannot move Him, but He is self-moved, and so we do not need to be afraid.  Nor is our prayer to be an attempt to bend His will.

Our confidence digs deep down to build on the rock of the ever-living God, whose ‘is the Kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever.’  We flee to Him for a refuge against ourselves.  We bring nothing.  We look to His own character, which will always be the same, and to His past, which is the type and prophecy for all His future.  He is His own reason, His own motive, His own end.

When we ground our prayers on Him, then we touch ground, and in whatever weltering sea of trouble we may be buffeted, we have found the bottom and can stand firm.

But the ‘Amen’ which closes the doxology is not the empty form which it has now become.  It means not only, So may it be! but also, So will it be!  It is not only the last breathing of desire, but also the expression of assured expectancy and confidence; not merely be it so, but confident expression of assurance that it will be so.

How much of our prayer flies off into empty air because there is no expectation in it!  How much which has no certainty of being answered in it!  How much which is followed by no marking of the future to discern the answer!  We should stand praying like some Grecian statue of an archer, with hand extended and lips parted and eye following the arrow of our prayer on its flight till it touches the mark.  We have a right to be confident that we shall be heard.  We should apply the Amen to all the petitions of the prayer.  So it becomes a prophecy, and the Christian man is to live in the calm expectation that all the petitions will be accomplished.  For the world they will be, for us they may be.  It is for each of us to decide for ourselves whether they will be answered in and for us.

The place of the doxology here suggests that all prayer should lead to thankful contemplation of God’s character.