The Lord's Prayer is the inspired teaching of Jesus the Christ, accepted by the Christian church throughout all ages. The Discoverer of Christian Science has given to her church the spiritual interpretation of the Lord's Prayer in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," pages 16 and 17. In her sermon, "Christian Healing," she writes, beginning on page 15, "The Lord's Prayer, understood in its spiritual sense, and given its spiritual version, can never be repeated too often for the benefit of all who, having ears, hear and understand." Again in Science and Health (p.16) she writes, "Our Master said, 'After this manner therefore pray ye,' and then he gave that prayer which covers all human needs." Bewildering questions concerning birth and death, sickness and health, home and kindred, as well as problems economic, social, civil, and religious, are solved by its metaphysical application.
This scientific model prayer, according with all of Jesus' teachings, is revolutionary to the human mind's preconceived beliefs, and demands the exercise and activity of spiritual sense in the consciousness and experience of the petitioner, in order that he may verify the promise of the Master, "If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it." Like all true healing prayer it begins with the absolute, measures the temporal, and closes with the eternal. In direct challenge to ancient and modern beliefs and theories—biological, theological, and traditional—it asserts and affirms the kingdom of Spirit; man universal and individual, spiritual in eternal unity, as idea, with that Mind which is Love.
As the First Commandment obeyed fulfills the ten, so one may discover the key to any problem in the opening words of the Lord's Prayer. Is the Christian who is learning to pray this prayer scientifically, carefully keeping watch over his admissions and conclusions in his human experience? When repeating these significant words, "Our Father which art in heaven," is he ever caught looking back, entertaining the belief in material ancestry and heredity, a reproduction of life in matter, its symptoms and superstitions,—the Adam dream, with its claim of selfhood apart from Spirit, hostile to his brother and at variance with the universe? Or, does he often find himself looking forward, expecting perfection in persons, longing for ease, health, and rest in matter,—the Garden of Eden dream, always just beyond his reach, though forever signaling to the material senses?
