AS Christian Scientists, we all acknowledge that 'Jesus Christ was the highest manifestation of manhood. To him we are indebted for the Lord's Prayer, which is the sacred prayer of all Christendom. No one who believes in him will dispute his authority and right to this prayer, and no one will deny that he lived it. Because he lived it, he became the perfect man—the Way-shower for all other men. It was the living of this prayer that enabled him to heal sin and disease, and to triumph over death. It is the living of this prayer that will enable all who believe in him to do the works which he did. This prayer heals because it turns to God as the only Cause and establishes man in his true relationship with this Cause. It shows to him that to be in ill-health is to be unconscious of this relationship, and that ill-health is therefore mental obliquity. The man who lives the Lord's Prayer, is the man who prays understanding, and can say with Jesus, "I knew that Thou hearest me always."
The Scientific Statement of Being, as found on page 468 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker G. Eddy, is a declaration which, if lived, will prove to be an answered prayer; for if it be lived nothing is left, to be consumed upon lust of eye or ear or earth. Again, that prayer of at-one-ment, the seventeenth chapter of John, is a prayer authorized by Christ, and lived by the man who healed and prayed, who dwelt forever within the Holy of Holies, and said we should pray in secret and the Father would reward us openly. The prayer of the righteous man does heal the sick in this age, when offered with understanding, and he who follows Jesus Christ aright, will pray aright.
Jesus was a man of prayer, demonstrating spiritual understanding in his daily life. He was not a hypnotist. He did not enter the sanctuary of another's thought, an unbidden guest. When he spoke to man's erring belief of mind it was to heal that belief, and prove to him that he lived only in the consciousness of the one Mind—God; in other words, he taught him how to pray the prayer which was the realization of his true being—freedom from sin, sickness, and death.
