In days gone by I often heard the minister in church say, "Let us pray;" So I say, "Let us pray;" first, that we enter not into temptation, and let us look ahead far enough to be sure this prayer is from the heart and genuine. Many of us when children had father, mother, or friends, to us loving, tender, and good, who used to teach us to bend our kness in prayer. The aim was to insure to us a future, and the lisping of our prayers, no doubt, was to them "sweeter than honey and the honey comb." As a rule, we were taught to pray to a seemingly good and terrible God, who when angry would punish with eternal hell-fire in the hereafter. Our parents did the best they knew to teach us rightly, but perhaps failed in many instances to teach us God as Love.

I had a praying father, a good man in many ways. He meant to give me sure guidance, so that I could escape the fires of hell. His instructions seemed right to him, but they filled me full of fears of what "the Lord" would do to me unless I did this or that, which to little me appeared impossible. Oh, how I feared God at times! I was even afraid to be left alone lest He should come and punish me, or take me away. Was that the way to make me love God? Could I look upon God as Love? Even after many years of trying to love God I found I still feared Him more than I Loved Him. But, my dear friends, we have cause to thank God to-day that we have changed our views, and, I hope, have forgotten such instructions, and are learning the prayers that will demonstrate for us here and now that God is Love.

The Lord's Prayer we know is sufficient to cover all human needs; but repeating "and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil," without a more clear apprehension of the real meaning of those words, is apt to impress upon our thoughts that man has not sole dominion and power. Now study that prayer through its spiritual interpretation as given in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker G. Eddy, and you will see that divinely bestowed power does enable man to do what Jesus taught,—command the evil to depart. It was through the prayer of understanding that Jesus did his healing. To the man with the withered hand he said, "Stretch forth thine hand." To the epileptic boy tormented, he said, "Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee, come out of him, and enter no more into him."

Jesus did not make terms with the tempter when he was upon the pinnacle of the temple, but he rather defied the tempter. Can we as Christian Scientists do otherwise? The Christian Scientist is supposed to be "instant in prayer," and to succeed in healing he has to be; he has to follow Jesus' command, as well as the instructions of Science and Health (P. 393) to "speak to disease as one having authority." In that way he will not only master the temptation on behalf of the patient, but will also deliver himself out of temptation, and in part overcome "the world, the flesh, and the devil."

Christian Science teaches men how to do good and how to overcome evil. But if the Christian Scientist relapses into the method of worldly people and of worldly pleasures, the same old errors which beset him before he studied Christian Science, will again rise to tempt him, and he will again depend more upon the sense of petition in prayer than upon the divine authority that says, "Get thee behind me, Satan."

What should we do if when called to the bedside of the sick we should see with human sympathy the sufferings of the patient? Should we not petition God to deliver us and the patient? Do we not rather in Christian Science cling to God as the divine Principle, as the only life, health, and all good, and thereby assure ourselves and the patient that evil is not, but good is All? Do we attempt to make terms with the supposed disease and timidly await its departure? Do we not rather use the two-edged sword of Truth to destroy the error, and so with spiritual assurance deny and denounce all claims of evil, sin, and disease, as they seem to exist in our patients? Do we not make use in a sense of the spiritual interpretation of that part of the Lord's Prayer that says, "And Love leaveth us not in temptation, but delivereth us from evil,—sin, disease, and death" (Science and Health, P. 322), or in our language say, there is neither suffering nor temptation to suffer here, for God is all there is, and so show the lie and the liar to be one same nothing?

The thought is master of the act. A good thought is sure to be rewarded, and a bad thought brings with it some belief in suffering. Science and Health (p. 130) says, "Sin is thought before it is acted." So the prayer is heard before we pray. Many are the blessings we receive for which we have not prayed.

Science and Health (p. 130) says, "He laid great stress on the action of the human mind, unseen to the senses." That shows us that the senses can be ignorant of many good things; also that the senses can be ignorant of sin. This shows us the importance of being "instant in prayer."

In Science and Health (p. 130) we read, "Evil thoughts and aims reach no farther, and do no greater harm than one's belief permits." Belief may direct evil thoughts to us, but while our own thoughts are pure and prayerful, error is powerless to harm us. Our dear Leader said in her address to the Mother Church in June, 1900, "Work—work—work—watch and pray." Let us obey her and "give thanks unto the Lord for he is good."