Nearly two thousand years ago, on a quiet hillside in old Judea, a little group of thoughtful men rested and listened. Their world was seething with trouble, and these men sought a solution to its many problems. For some time now they had been followers of Christ Jesus. "Master" they called him, this gentle, understanding, beloved Teacher and Friend. Eagerly they had listened to his teaching and witnessed his mighty works. Every problem presented to him, he had solved. The storm-tossed sea had been stilled; in the wilderness a vast crowd of more than five thousand hungry people had been fed; the sick and sinning had been healed, the dead had been restored to life. Every need, both his own and theirs, he had abundantly supplied.
They knew that it was through prayer that Jesus had been able to do all these things, and earnestly they desired to know how to pray as he did. "Lord, teach us to pray," they besought him. And so he taught them that which was to be for all men and for all time, the prayer which has since been called the Lord's Prayer. Christian Science teaches that through the spiritual understanding of the great truths on which this prayer rests will all evil, injustice, and sickness among men and nations be destroyed.
During the past year, a Christian Science Sunday School class, consisting of boys and girls of high school age, has been studying the Lord's Prayer and its spiritual interpretation by Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, to be found on pages 16 and 17 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." Some of the helpful lessons learned in this study, especially those pertaining to democracy and the universal brotherhood of man, follow.
