THOUGHTS ON THE LORD'S PRAYER
By Robert Ellis Key
From the November 13, 1948 issue of the Christian Science Sentinel
When Christ Jesus offered his great prayer known to us as the Lord's Prayer, it was in
response to a request for instruction from one of his disciples. He did not ask the Master
to give them a prayer that they might repeat it in a perfunctory way, for he said (Luke
11:1), "Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples." These words indicate a
desire for specific instruction on prayer, a righteous desire to which the Master at once
responded.
The Sermon on the Mount, in which the Lord's Prayer occurs, is a sermon or discourse of
instruction, for we are told (Matt. 5:2), "He opened his mouth, and taught them." We may
therefore regard the Lord's Prayer as instructive as well as devotional. It is a model, or
pattern, for prayer; and this is borne out by the fact that Jesus did not insist on the use of
his exact words, for he said to them (Matt. 6:9), "After this manner therefore pray ye."
Regarded as a model, or pattern, the Lord's Prayer assumes an added significance. It lifts
the idea of prayer out of haphazard petition and points in an orderly way to essential
truths which it is desirable to entertain and dwell upon. It is noticeable that the prayer
begins with a reference to God, His realm, nature, and will. It goes on to establish man's
relationship with God and emphasizes God's cancellation of sin in proportion as sin is
forsaken. It refers to God's spiritual direction, provision, and protection and finally
declares the kingdom, the power, and the glory to be God's. These basic truths indicate,
the essential elements, or nucleus, of the healing prayer.
Christian Scientists are a prayerful people. They believe in Paul's admonition to "pray
without ceasing" (I Thess. 5:17), and they carry out this precept by endeavoring to be
habitually aware of the presence and power of God, good, and of man in His image and
likeness. They divest evil of power and recognize God's infinite love, expressed by
provision and protection. Confronted as we are with evidence often so unlike God and
with personalities travestying the ideal man, we find it necessary to be continually
watchful and prayerful. If we allow error in any form to get past unchallenged by Truth,
we should soon find ourselves a party to its arguments and thereby accept its claim to
reality, when in fact it is illusion.
Prayer in Christian Science is not a laborious repetition of words or phrases, but the
happy, spontaneous entertainment of spiritual truth. We rejoice in the fact that man, the
child of God, is the offspring of eternal Life and therefore has immortality. We rest
quietly in the understanding that material evidence of sickness or suffering is untrue
because existence is not material but spiritual, for God is Spirit. And again how thankful
we are to know that every loving provision is made for man's welfare, since God is Love
and man's inseparability from divine Love is a primal and basic reality.
The habitual realization of the presence and power of God, and of man's spiritual status,
is the prayer unceasing. We cannot doubt that the will of God, the volition of good, is
perpetually active. It never ceases to be, to act, to save, to protect, and to compensate.
The Lord's Prayer, as presented by the Master and as spiritually interpreted by Mary
Baker Eddy in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the
Scriptures," makes these basic truths apparent. The omniaction of the truth contained in
the Lord's Prayer is indicated by at least one modern translator of the Bible (Ferrar
Fenton), who points out in a footnote that this prayer was written in the Greek imperative
1st aorist, a tense which indicates an act to be done absolutely and continuously. For
instance, he translates the statement, "Thy will be done" as "Your will must be being
done."
It is natural that a prayer containing basic and eternal truth should inevitably heal the sick
when this truth it contains is seen to be omniactive. Mrs. Eddy warns us that more than a
repetition of words is required in order that healing may follow our use of the Lord's
Prayer. She writes (Science and Health, p. 16), "Only as we rise above all material
sensuousness and sin, can we reach the heaven-born aspiration and spiritual
consciousness, which is indicated in the Lord's Prayer and which instantaneously heals
the sick."
Our beloved Leader has not only given us a spiritually illumined interpretation of the
Lord's Prayer, but she has also revealed countless facts about prayer throughout the pages
of her inspired writings. Students of Christian Science cannot, therefore, have any excuse
for ignorance on the subject of prayer. Those who have carefully studied and practiced
what Mrs. Eddy has written about prayer should never entertain the belief that they do not
understand enough about Christian Science to give a Christian Science treatment.
Christian Science treatment is prayer; and if we understand how to pray, we cannot fail to
understand the modus of a Christian Science treatment.
As already mentioned, the Lord's Prayer presents a model, or pattern. We are no longer
praying to an unknown God in an unknown tongue.
Through the revelation of Christian Science we gain the spiritual meaning of the
Scriptures, and in connection with the Lord's Prayer we are enabled to discern the
necessity for habitually entertaining the fundamental truths which this prayer contains.
Mrs. Eddy has described the Lord's Prayer as a bond of unity and a nucleus. In "Pulpit
and Press" (p. 22) she writes: "All Christian churches have one bond of unity, one
nucleus or point of convergence, one prayer,—the Lord's Prayer. It is matter for rejoicing
that we unite in love, and in this sacred petition with every praying assembly on earth,—
'Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.'"
Robert Ellis Key