"The chief end of human life is to glorify God..." This is the pregnant answer of our catechisms to the age-old question of the meaning of human life. It is the very heartbeat of Reformed church life and theology. Not, of course, of it alone. This answer is rooted in the bedrock prophetic and apostolic faith of all Christians, in the truly ecumenical faith, therefore. But in the teaching of a Calvin, a Zwingli, a John Knox, it receives a quite special emphasis: Soli deo gloria! To God alone be the glory! Our Reformed ancestors longed that, out of the depths of this human life of ours in all its weakness, God should be honoured and glorified. That longing was the very air in which their piety and ethos lived and breathed. As they understood it, human life is, from start to finish, a doxological existence.

This basic conviction explains our choice of the theme "Thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory." But this choice was by no means an obvious one. Certainly these words are taken from the best-known of all Christian doxologies. But - make no mistake about it - the "glorification of God" is an odd, disconcerting and even unintelligible theme for many of our contemporaries. This was pointed out by our president, James I McCord, at our last Reformed family gathering in St Andrews in 1977. In the opening sentences of his address on that occasion, he quoted the words of Joseph Haroutunian:

"Modern theology shows a profound indifference to the glory of God. It is inspired, rather, by a passion for the wellbeing of man."

In addressing ourselves to this doxological theme here in Ottawa, therefore, we seem to be running straight into the head winds of our time.

But winds, even theological winds, have a way of changing direction. The revival of the sixties found itself halted - in all three "worlds" - by intractable barriers, too intractable to be surmounted by activistic onslaughts however engaging and congenial. This, too, was pointed out by our president in St Andrews:

" A few years ago we thought we were ready to embark on an Exodus that would lead us to a society where disease would be eradicated, inequities overcome, and men and women would live together with peace and plenty... But something happened to the vision before the trek had hardly begun."

These words must not be misinterpreted as a summons to theology to retire from a social arena which had become too uncomfortable. They were - and are - a summons to a more effective and alert remembrance, and to a deeper and more radical hope. We know from experience how vulnerable human beings become when they become shortsighted and no longer able to live their lives, day by day, hour by hour, in the light of eternity, sub specie aeternitatis. We then become the prisoners of our days and hours and sometimes are overwhelmed by them. The fate of several friends of mine, comrades of the '68 movement, has been much on my mind of late. The failure of very tenaciously pursued efforts to change the world plunged them into disappointment and distress and eventually drove them to abandon even life itself. And the question I have to put to myself is this: was our activistic approach, both theologically and socially, not perhaps too short-sighted and feverish? In the very fervour of our commitment, did we perhaps fail to take seriously enough not only the power of evil in our human life but also, and above all, the glory of God?

It is here that Christian doxology comes in. It is meant to help us in our weakness - our failures of remembrance and hope. It reminds us that God is the true measure of man. It reminds us that in him there is a "breadth and length, depth and height" (Ephesians 3.18) which completely transcends the day and the night of our life and so liberates us from the "tyranny of the here and now" in all its forms. The new creed of the United Church of Canada (1980) begins, properly, with the affirmation:

"We are not alone, we live in God's world. We believe in God." To glorify God really is the chief end of human life. "For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory."

When we take our bearings from this, is the "passion for human welfare', forgotten and betrayed? The possibility, the danger, of the happening certainly exists. There are forms of "religion" which are so heavenly minded as to be of no earthly use, which lose sight of the earth and betray it. There are forms of piety which operate as an "opium of the people." The criticism made by Marx - and by the prophets and apostles - continues to be valid. But in the biblical view, these two passions - the passion for the glory of God and the passion for human welfare - go together. They are inseparably interwoven in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. That life and ministry was wholly devoted to the glory of God and, at the same time, wholly given up to the sacrificial service of human beings in their diverse needs. What Dietrich Bonhoeffer says is true: "The present hour,. in which the church prays for the kingdom of God, drives it to identify itself in complete solidarity with the children of this earth and world, commits it irrevocably to fidelity to the earth, to its distress, its hunger, its death', (Thy kingdom come).

It is in this sense that we understand the theme "For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory..." This is the direction in which it should influence and shape our council, guide our common prayers, our common thought and action. Let me now turn to the three emphases of this theme. The wealth of preparatory material already in your hands for this general council makes it unnecessary for me to offer here more than an introductory perspective.

For thine is the kingdom...

The first word of our triad - the kingdom - is the first word and the central theme of the gospel of Jesus himself: "The kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel" - this, according to Mark 1.15, is the call of Jesus from the very beginning. Everything which follows in the accounts given by the evangelists is a commentary on this basic proclamation. The message of Jesus is the good news of the coming kingdom of God, and its liberating promise and claim. We have only to think of the parables of Jesus, almost all of which are centred on the mystery of the kingdom; or of the Sermon on the Mount, which is the covenant constitution and signpost to the coming kingdom. More important still, it is not just the words of Jesus which bring the kingdom of God but also his deeds, not just his theory, but also his praxis; his healings, for example: "But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you', (Lk 11.20). Still further and deeper, it is not only in his action but also in his suffering, above all in his cross and in the resurrection, that God's sovereignty is demonstrated. The view of the whole New Testament is that the kingdom of God draws near to us as the man from Nazareth goes his way from the manger to the cross and to the empty tomb. Calvin puts it in this way: "Whenever Christ could be pointed out with the finger, the kingdom of God was opened" (Institutes II, 11,5 - Ubi autem digito potest ostendi Christus, reseratum est regnum Dei).

What then? "Repent and believe. " In other words, the consequence of this coming of the kingdom is that human hearts and human conditions are to be changed; firstly in the circle of the disciples and then, through them, these consequences are to reach out "into all the world", as soon happens with truly world-transforming consequences in the mission of the new covenant people. The human world is stirred into movement. "Status mundi renovabitur" ("the state of the world will be renewed"), this was the way the Hussites summed up their view of faith and world in the light of the coming kingdom of God.

But what does this mean in more specific terms? There is one well-known New Testament passage which makes the consequences of the kingdom clear in their rich diversity: the Lukan version of Jesus' initial summons, sometimes known in ecumenical circles as his "Nazareth Manifesto" - Luke 4.14-21. The key words in this "manifesto" are: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, to proclaim deliverance to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty the broken victims, and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.".

As you know, this is a quotation from Isaiah setting forth the basis of Israel's hope, namely, the promise of the coming divine liberation and reconciliation. Jesus takes this as the text for his sermon. This sermon is summarized in the" words: "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your ears." Short as this sermon is, it nevertheless outlines the whole "kingdom of God programme." What Isaiah had promised for the final messianic divine future, Jesus declares to be already in operation today. The hope of reconciliation and liberation is not the distant music of a future utopia remote from reality. The promises of the kingdom of God break into our present conditions and circumstances.

The way is opened up for a new understanding of human life. Not an extremist, fanatical one, for it takes present realities very seriously indeed. What strikes us here is the speaker's keen perception of the various constraints and dangers in our human world. Isaiah and Jesus do not take refuge in a remote heavenly realm, but direct our attention to the very worst, very real conditions which oppress us all. They identify the sufferers, individuals and groups:

The poor - human beings who have come off badly in life, whether in economic or financial terms, the hungry and the unemployed, or again in social or religious terms, those who are despised, ignored, shunned by the official church and by society and viewed with suspicion.

Then the prisoners - those of our fellow human beings who are oppressed or under restraint or who have lost their way and are now at the mercy, or mercilessness of their successful and privileged fellow human beings; the servants and slaves who are robbed of their freedom and their human rights in the name of law and order.

Then the blind - the disabled in body and mind, the sick and the infirm, whose capacities for living have been diminished.

Finally, the bruised and the broken, the people who have come to grief, made shipwreck of their lives, whether by buffetings from circumstances beyond their control or because of inner failure and collapse...

All these groups and individuals are included, the whole human race, every single one of us, each with his or her own particular need and pain. No one can possibly say that Jesus ignores the conditions and oppressions of the real world in which we live. On the contrary, he calls them by their real names: poverty, injustice, sickness, brokenness...

But, in the light of the kingdom of God, this unvarnished view of the world is not the whole truth. The whole human race, every single one of us with our own particular needs and distress, is not alone, not left to its own devices, not handed over, lock, stock and barrel, to the blind fate and naked power of circumstance, but, on the contrary, and this is what really matters, set irrevocably within the horizon of God's promise. The message of Jesus, at any rate, as of the prophet before him, is this:

To the poor - good news! To the captives - deliverance! To the blind - sight! To the broken - salvation!

In short, human distress takes many forms but also, the promise of God likewise takes many forms.

The mission of the covenant people of God is patiently and persistently to try to match conditions to promises, to relate promises to conditions. To do so is our mission and a particularly urgent one today. The horizons of our world today are darkening. If we consider only the circumstances of our world today, only its actual state, the verdict on it can only be an alarming and depressing one. We can then only endorse the view of the poet Erich Fried in his poem "Status quo in the age of the arms race."

"If you want
the world
to stay
the way
it is,
you don't want
the world
to stay."

But it is precisely here that the covenant people have the duty and privilege of confessing: "Thine is the kingdom! ', This we affirm, notwithstanding the present circumstances. It does not magically wipe out the tribulations just mentioned. Yet they are nevertheless brought within the field of force of the kingdom and thereby relativized, robbed of their apparent finality. "Kyrios Christos": the risen Lord is sovereign over "the principalities and powers. This liberates us. We are no longer in the hands of an almighty Fate. Today, just as in apostolic times, faith operates as a resistance movement against fatalism. Our world does not have to stay the way it is." Our hearts and our conditions can be changed. The "principalities and powers", the sinful traps and destructive structures no longer have us completely in their grip. It is a case of persistently dismantling them; of directing our steps towards the coming kingdom of God. Status mundi renovabitur! The condition of the world will be renewed!

It makes all the difference to any culture or society if within it there are groups of people who keep their eyes open for the kingdom of God in the midst of all the tribulations of their time; who seek first that kingdom and its justice and do so, indeed, in the direction pointed by the promises of Christ: in the championship of the poor, in sacrificial service of the prisoners and the disabled, in comforting and encouraging the bruised and broken; and, above all, in proclaiming "the acceptable year of the Lord", the liberating future of God. FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM!

...The power...

The second keyword in our doxology brings us to an area of tension in human history which is particularly acute today; the question of power. Looking ahead to our twentieth century, Friedrich Nietzsche once predicted that the future would be dominated by the will to live, intensified "even to the extent of becoming an absolute will to power and supremacy." Indeed our century has in actual fact been marked "ominously" by an unprecedented increase, a dangerous increase in power. This exploded in a particularly spectacular way in the most ferocious and brutal wars ever known in human history. It lurks today behind the extremely unstable "balance of terror" with its stockpile of weapons whose destructive power is capable of putting an end to our life on this planet. As far as the political systems are concerned, it has crystallized in a particularly cynical form in fascist or Stalinist regimes, but has even tempted other political systems in what has been called "the arrogance of power." Its economic influence is seen in the patterns of exploitation at the national and international levels, sometimes reinforced by racist tendencies, the victims of which are the classes and peoples which are economically handicapped. Technological power, moreover, in the last century still celebrated as the force of unequivocal progress, soon showed its other "unacceptable" face in our own times, namely, as a potent instrument of technocratic alienation and ecological menace. In view of these tendencies, it is no wonder that the second of the three subthemes of our general council speaks of the "graceless powers."

But, in accordance with the doxology of the Lord's prayer, it also speaks first of the 'power of grace" of the power of God. A deliberate contrast is intended here, for when we ask what the Bible means by the "power of God", it is at once clear that "God has not joined the power club" (CS Song). If it is the case that the power of God was revealed in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, if it is the case that God's "authoritative word" took flesh and blood in Jesus, then it is equally clear that the direction in which this power moves is not towards graceless supremacy, compulsion and manipulation, not towards the establishment of dominance over others but towards their deliverance, their reclamation, their encouragement and consolation. "For the Son of Man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mark 10.45).

In the world of the graceless powers, does this power have any chance at all? There are some who have their doubts. Even some of us theologians have become uncertain on this point. This has been pointed out by Andre Dumas in his preparatory paper. In much recent theology, the term "the powerless God', has driven out the traditional talk of the " Almighty". This was quite justifiable as a prophetic emphasis, especially in the case of such pioneering thinkers as Dietrich Bonhoeffer or the Czech philosopher Emanuel Reidl. In their case they bore witness to the "revolution in the concept of power" undertaken in the life of Jesus. But when attention is paid only to this aspect, this important insight becomes a theological pitfall. When we are so fascinated or depressed by the triumph of the graceless powers and the seeming impotence of God in comparison with these powers that we are no longer able to speak of the power of God, then we turn an important biblical insight into an ideology and a caricature.

For there is another side to the life of Jesus of Nazareth: Inseparably bound up with the cross is the resurrection. In the experience of the disciples, the weakness of Jesus proved to be in fact the power of God; indeed, the final definitive power, power of the "last enemy" death. This power loses in order to win. It is by losing that it wins. According to the New Testament witness, this power alone is true power. Speaking of this power, the apostle uses the phrase: "the power of an indestructible life', (Hebrews 7.16). We need to bear his phrase in mind. That there are destructive powers of destructible life is obvious. We experience the pain of these destructive powers every day of our lives. But the gospel is this: that these powers have no lasting right or validity. They are destructible; indeed, despite all appearances to the contrary, they have already, in the sacrifice of Christ and in the sight of God, been deprived of their right and therefore of their essential power. They no longer have any future. They are self-destructive. And indeed there are facts which bear this out. How many assertions of power and excesses of power have abjectly collapsed before our very eyes! What is really lasting in God's sight and among us human beings is love. Love is the "power of an indestructible life", for, as Paul attests, only love "never fails" (1 Corinthians 13.8). If there is and can be such a thing as a really fresh start in our power-obsessed world, it can surely only begin from the forgiving and reconciling love of Christ, from the Spirit of grace. The witness required of the people of God is witness to this fresh start and to all its consequences.

It may seem odd to talk of the "consequences" of grace. By its very nature, surely, grace is a free and spontaneous power which transcends all conditions and stipulations. It is the free flow of the overflowing goodness of God. We can neither measure it nor control it. Like the Spirit, grace, too, goes wherever it wills, in sovereign freedom. But the spontaneity of grace is never to be equated with arbitrariness. Grace does not issue in chaos. Rooted and grounded in the history of Christ, it has a built-in dynamic towards Christ-like consequences. Our praise of grace loses all credibility when we reduce it to "cheap grace", ie to a grace without consequences. Talk of grace then becomes mere religious sentimentality remote from reality, "opium of the people."

We find in the Reformed heritage elements which are helpful here. I have in mind the Reformed version of the "marks of the true church " (notae verae ecclesiae). The pure preaching of the word of God and the right administration of the sacraments are certainly such marks of the true church, they especially. But our predecessors in the Reformed tradition also added a third nota to these two: namely, the mark of a binding visible church order, an orderly form of the church life and social life of Christians. This is a fruitful influence, of which I want to offer two examples.

a) A positive attitude to law. Law is a human instrument and a human attempt to set limits to the arbitrary exercise of power. Often it is a fragile instrument which it is only too easy to evade or abuse; a dam which is constantly being breached by the pent-up stream of power. Yet the fragile dam is to be repaired again and again, patiently and persistently. For, as the Bible understands the matter, legitimate power is inconceivable without reference to law and justice: "God's power is from the start the power of law" (Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline, p.48). It is no accident that the World Alliance of Reformed Churches should have shown such intense interest in the question of human rights in recent years. Championship of the grace of law - and of the law of grace - is a Reformed contribution which down to the present time has preserved its actuality.

b) The power of grace is also meant to be reflected in the "domestic affairs" of the Christian and to make its influence felt there. I find the thinkers of the Czech Reformation, the Czech Brethren especially, a great help in pointing the way here. I am thinking of their struggle for the discipline of grace in family, education and personal lifestyle. The dangers of legalism were never far away, of course, here as elsewhere in the Reformed tradition. We must not lose sight of this danger; but the basic truth is still valid, namely, that grace is not something shapeless and chaotic, but rather something which seeks to shape life in a committed and disciplined fashion. Understood in this sense, discipline is not so much a "must" as a "may", a privilege rather than an obligation, deliverance from arbitrariness, progress in a life with its source in grace.

This is why praise of the liberating command of God rings out in the rich treasury of the hymns of the Czech Brethren, just as it does in the biblical psalms, which the Czech reformers were just as fond of singing as the later Reformed brothers and sisters. We should stick to this heritage even today. The struggle for the discipline of grace is not merely a form of Reformed "nostalgie". This struggle could be a vital support in an age like our own, marked to such a large degree by instability and licence and therefore, unhappiness, despite all its enthusiastic celebration of permissive indulgence.

On one point, however, we must be clear: the struggle for law and discipline will only be really fruitful and humanly beneficial when it is understood and clearly shown to be a consequence of grace, when it is not distorted into an end in itself but continues to be "transparent" to grace. There is such a thing as graceless law which can degenerate into injustice of the very worst kind ( "summun ius, summa iniuria" as the Romans said, with this danger in mind). There is also such a thing as graceless discipline which, instead of providing human life with a solid support, forces it into a straitjacket which cramps and kills life. Law and discipline of this kind do not really exorcise the demon of gracelessness nor really present any serious challenge to the "graceless powers".

It is at this point that the central theological question must be raised: what really lies behind this gracelessness? What is its basis? I want to make the following suggestion: Is it not the delusion of "works righteousness" of "glorification by works", which is secretly at work in these graceless powers? This is certainly how the Reformers understood the matter. Over against the specific (above all, religious) form that gracelessness took in their day, they insisted on an unequivocal sola gratia, by grace alone. Their struggle could become much more relevant today than we tend to assume. The delusion of works righteousness in other words, the idea that, by their achievements human beings are able to establish themselves, to save themselves, to justify themselves, in the sight of God and of one another, this superstition is the basic evil in human behaviour and attitudes. In its modern version, it is the delusion of feasibility the illusion that the salvation and happiness of individuals and societies is humanly feasible, that it can be achieved by human power, "taken by force"! In this climate, the graceless powers thrive. Is it not the case that, behind the maleficent and calamitous drive and pressure of power in the direction of supremacy, there ultimately lies the mistaken belief that our life and happiness can be secured, saved, justified by what power can do?

The gospel contradicts this delusion. With its promise of grace, it breaks through the vicious circles and automatic reflexes of power and human omnicompetence, seeks the human being buried beneath them, and reveals the alternative:

, "Who shall lay a charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies; who shall condemn? It is Christ Jesus who died, and, more than that, who was also raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us" (Romans 8.33 f.). The ultimate right of our life is not something which has still to

be gained by force, still to be achieved from within ourselves; it has already been achieved and conferred upon us in the grace of God, in Christ's adoption of our cause. When we recognize this, we are liberated from the obsession with power and the compulsion to justify ourselves and are encouraged to overcome, patiently and persistently, all gracelessness in our hearts and in our conditions. It is not the salvation offered by power but the power offered by salvation which creates the hope "which does not put us to shame"

(Romans 5.5). FOR THINE IS.. THE POWER!

...And the glory

This third keyword is the culmination of our theme. It is this third term, which gives the concluding sentence of the Lord's prayer its name - "doxology". "Doxa" is the Greek word for "glory". It is easy to misunderstand the content and significance of this term today. Is it not inspired by a triumphalistic spirit which contradicts the spirit of the gospel and robs it of its credibility? When our World Alliance was preparing for its 1977 centennial consultation on the general theme of "The Glory of God and the Future of Man',, doubts were voiced by some member churches, by some theologians on the North American continent especially.

Serious consideration is due to these doubts. Both theologically and ecclesiologically, a "theologia gloriae" ie a one-sided emphasis on the "glorious" aspects of our Christian life (as opposed to a "theologia crucis"), would be a very questionable enterprise. But neither our doxology - "Thine is the glory" - nor the biblical theme of glory generally is to be understood in this way. Quite emphatically, the glory of God is understood in the New Testament in the light of the life of Jesus, and in this context, vital importance is attached not just to the resurrection but also to the crucifixion. The glory of God appears here as the glory of the crucifixion, the glory of self - sacrificing love.

The Christian community is seen in the same light. It partakes of the glory of its Lord but this actually means that it shares in his cross and resurrection. The "people of glory" is not a "glorious people". Existence in prospect of the glory of God is never a "triumphalistic" existence, free from tension. Particularly clear expression is given to this view by the apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 4. This passage is a firm testimony to the glory of God in the life of Christians, But "We have this treasure in earthen vessels. We are hard-pressed on every side but never hemmed in; we are bewildered but never in despair, persecuted but never forsaken, cast down but not destroyed; always we bear in our body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be revealed in our life"

(2 Cor 4.7-10). This is an extremely dramatic view of the Christian life. But it is a dramatic, not a tragic view. The ambiguity and brokenness of the Christian life does not signify any permanent stalemate. There is no "fifty-fifty" distribution between cross and resurrection. "Thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory." The dynamic of our life is in the direction of this promise. This explains why the same apostle Paul, who was so profoundly aware of the misery of the Christian community, of his own misery, can nevertheless venture to describe the Christian life as, in spite of everything, a progress "from glory to glory" (2 Cor 3.18).

The sole ground for his venturing to do so, however, is the presence of the Spirit, as he himself also points out. The basis of our confidence can never be the thought that, in the end, it is we ourselves who achieve this. It is not we ourselves who can ensure that the glory far outweighs the power of "our troubles" (2 Cor 4.17), but the presence of the Holy Spirit, the power of God. "The Spirit helps our weakness" (Romans 8.26).

The Spirit gives the impetus, sets in motion; its power is intended to be demonstrated. "Glory" necessarily calls for "glorification" and leads to doxologixal commitment. This glorification extends to all areas of our human life, individual and social. It is demonstrated in word and deed in a great variety of ways. Think, for example, of the way in which the Reformed emphasis on the "glory of God" has encouraged democratic movements in the political sphere, movements critical of tyranny in all its forms because no political authority is entitled to claim that ultimate respect due to God alone.

For our present purposes I want to emphasize one particular dimension, the doxological dimension in its narrower sense. This could also be described as the "aesthetic" dimension of glorification, to use a terminology which is rather strange and suspect to Reformed ears. To reduce the possibilities of misunderstanding, let me make it quite clear that I am not pleading here for any sort of theological aestheticism. The glory of God is not a spectacle which we could enjoy in the way a viewer enjoys a television programme. But to ignore the fact that the most direct response to doxa is the doxological response would be to ignore a vital aspect. By the doxological attitude we mean, in the first instance, praise, worship, prayer, the adoration of God. This is a response which is not seeking anything which could be evaluated or calculated; it is the liturgy of freedom, the festival of joy.

It is in such an attitude that the "aesthetic dimension" of glorification is to be found. At the beginning of this address I quoted the catechism: "The chief end of human life it to glorify God..." That, however, is not the whole answer. The catechism goes on:...and to enjoy him for ever', (ie to take delight in him for ever). There is an element of pleasure, therefore, in our response to the glory of God, an element of desire and joy. We cannot but endorse the words of Jürgen Moltmann:

" As the exalted, transfigured and transformed man of God, he works on downtrodden, barely human and mortal man not only through his liberating power and new demands, but through his perfection and his beauty as well... These aesthetic categories of the resurrection are part of the new life in faith; without them the imitation of Christ and the new obedience would become a joyless legalistic task." (Moltmann, The Church in the power of the Spirit, p.109).

For the most part these emphases received far too little attention in the Reformed tradition. Indeed we occasionally meet there with a certain suspicion of joy and beauty. It is high time to correct this tendency, not merely in order to bring more joy and beauty into our style of living and into our church services but also in the interest of a relevant ethic and in order to counteract the temptations to adopt a utilitarian attitude to our fellow human beings and our fellow creatures. The third subtheme of our general council rightly refers to the "threatened creation ". It quotes the magnificent term which Calvin used to describe the created world: Theatrum gloriae Dei - the theatre of God's glory. This term deserves to be remembered for it shows that the world, nature, the creation, are not simply objects for us to dispose of as we please, much more than merely material for our arbitrary use. At every turn today we are discovering the disastrous consequences of such an attitude on our part. We need to rediscover the creation as the theatre of God's glory; we must be much bolder in developing the aesthetic dimension of the glorification of God, not least in our practical dealings with God's beautiful creation which we, to our shame, have so often ill-treated and marred.

The fact is, moreover, that the other two keywords of our doxology also point us in the same direction. The note of joy in the creation, in the kindness of God, is unmistakably present also in what the Bible has to say about God's power as grace. And as for the kingdom of God, Jesus' message is in this respect, too, full of echoes and images of overflowing joy. Paul captures the polyphony of the kingdom of God perfectly when he sums it up as the harmony of justice, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit (Romans f4.17).

What is involved, therefore, when we pray: "Thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory', and seek to live accordingly is just this: justice, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. In the glorification of God, none of these elements can be left out - not the championship of justice, not the commitment to the cause of peace. But it is only in the doxology of joy that our striving for justice and our commitment for peace achieve their goal, for the chief end of human life is to glorify God - and to enjoy him for ever.

Two remarks in conclusion, respecting the occasion of our meeting here in Ottawa for the general council of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.

"Thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory." It is the privilege and the duty of us all to glorify God in our time in a way that carries conviction; of the organized church with its ministers, elders, theologians, but also its members, each and every one of us who belong to the people of God, but beyond that indeed, the privilege and duty of all our fellow human beings and all our fellow creatures. One of my favourite Reformed fathers of the 16th century, Amandus Polanus, a fellow-countryman of mine and my predecessor as professor and rector in Basle, expressed this thought in a very memorable way: "It is God's will that his glory should be proclaimed, in the first place by the ministers of his word. If the ministers are unwilling to do this, if the bishops are unwilling to do this, then the lay people will do it. If the men are unwilling, then the women will do it. If the rich and mighty in this world are unwilling, then the poor and the needy will come forward and do it. If grown-ups are unwilling to do it, then God will bring forth his praise from the mouths of babes and sucklings. If human beings are unwilling to do it, God is able to raise up children from the very stones, indeed He is able to ordain inanimate creatures themselves as heralds of his glory. And indeed, the heavens themselves tell the glory of God" (Syntagma, 1609).

Whether it must come in this last possibility alone depends on each one of us; in other words, whether God, because of our failure to glorify him, has to resort to this final possibility, and depend on his dumb creatures, or the creatures silenced by our sin to declare his glory. May this meeting here in Ottawa help to remind us afresh that we are called to witness to God's glory!

"Thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory." Sisters and brothers, we do not pray these words simply as individuals, each of us for him or herself, but all of us together. Specifically, as members of the worldwide Reformed family, and, indeed, together with our guests, as members of the worldwide ecumenical fellowship. To employ a fine image of Calvin's, we pray, and it is to be hoped also think and act, as a pia conspiratio fratrum (et sororum - we have to add today!). It is my earnest hope that something of this "brotherly and sisterly breathing-in together" (con-spiratio) may be evident here in Ottawa. When we consider who we all are, this will not be easy. We come from various nations; races, cultures, traditions...These have left their mark on us. Tensions, even differences, are inevitable. We could be tempted to deal with each other "conspiratorially" rather than "con-spiratorially"! We must have no illusions about this! But no hopelessness either! Differences and tensions are not the alpha and the omega. "Thine, Lord, is the kingdom, the power and the glory." Over us we have this covenanting, unifying "THOU" - and beneath us for our feet, ever itching to run in different directions, therefore, an irremovable piece of consolidating ground. That is our hope, the hope of this general council, and, in the last analysis, also the hope for our world.

"This is firm and tranquil repose for our faith. For if our prayers were to be commended to God by our worth, who would dare even mutter in his presence? Now, however miserable we may be, though unworthiest of all, however devoid of all commendation, we will yet never lack a reason to pray, never be shorn of assurance, since his kingdom, power and glory, can never be snatched away from our Father!"

(Calvin, Institutes III, 20, 47. ET McNeill & Battles, vol.2, p.915).

This address was delivered in the plenary session on Tuesday 17th August 1982.