On pages 16 and 17 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mary Baker Eddy gives us the spiritual sense of the Lord's Prayer. The understanding of this prayer in the light of Christian Science has raised many earnest seekers from beds of pain and helped to solve innumerable problems of lack and limitation. To understand this prayer in its true meaning brings the acceptance of God as All-in-all, the all-harmonious One. It shows us that God's kingdom is now and is ever present, that God is supreme and all-powerful.

The spiritual understanding of the Lord's Prayer gives us the ability to express the graciousness of Spirit and the loveliness of Love. It shows us that Love is truly reflected only as we love. It gives us assurance of deliverance from the dreams of mortal belief, sin, disease, and death; and it leads us away from temptation. Finally, it lifts us into the realization of infinite being.

Christ Jesus lived a life of unceasing prayer. His prayers were individual communion with God. Sometimes he talked with God on the mountaintop, sometimes in the wilderness. In his prayers he accepted spiritual reality in contradistinction to sensuous unreality. He continually assured his disciples that Christ, Truth, was forever with them and that Christ had always been and always will be.

Jesus' prayer at the grave of Lazarus was outstanding in its acceptance of the divine presence. He said (John 11:41, 42): "Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me." He acted with the conviction of God's power and presence when he commanded, "Lazarus, come forth." Error had no foothold in the presence of this prayer of spiritual understanding and omnipotence. Can we not say, then, that Jesus' prayers were the conscious recognition of God's omnipotence and omnipresence rather than mere words? They were felt rather than spoken. They were Love expressed instead of idle profession.

Prayer is the application of divine facts to our human problems. It is indigenous to true humanhood. Prayer does not change the divine manifestation of God, because that manifestation is already complete and perfect. Prayer brings us into the understanding of spiritual creation. It is the establishment in human consciousness of the absolute truth of being. Prayer is the recognition that God is and the acknowledgment of the allness and supremacy of God. It is the sincere desire to live and to demonstrate the Christ-spirit.

The activity of Christ in individual consciousness is true prayer, for it is the truth coming to fleshly, or mortal, beliefs and correcting and destroying them. Truly every Christian Science treatment is prayer. It is acquainting ourselves aright with God. It is the truth of God and man, declared and maintained, which penetrates the mist of mortal mind and reveals to human thought the fact of spiritual harmony.

In "No and Yes" Mrs. Eddy says (p. 39), "Prayer can neither change God, nor bring His designs into mortal modes; but it can and does change our modes and our false sense of Life, Love, and Truth, uplifting us to Him." And she continues in the next paragraph: "True prayer is not asking God for love; it is learning to love, and to include all mankind in one affection. Prayer is the utilization of the love wherewith He loves us. Prayer begets an awakened desire to be and do good." When the heaven of reality is reached through prayer and progressive demonstration, desire will resolve into the complete joy of spiritual realization.

We must always remember that there is no time or space involved in true prayer. The only time is now, and God's infinity knows no space or limitation. Our prayers must continually abide in eternity's now. We do not pray for future blessings, nor do we ask that past harmony be restored to us. We realize God's omnipresence and the affluence of His goodness as being here and continually made manifest.

God's infinity can be understood only through spiritual vision and enlightenment. Spirit does not occupy space, but annihilates it. The belief that matter occupies space must be proved an illusion of mortal belief. In our human experiences we see evidences of time and space being overcome gradually, but we must recognize the falsity of the arguments of time and space and let our prayers attest infinity.

Let us remember that through prayer we are establishing in human consciousness that which already is. We are not dealing with matter, except as a shadow which obscures the truth of being. We never need to be concerned with appearances, but we must continually rest in the unfoldment of the active ideas expressed by the one divine Mind. The recognition of the omniaction of divine Mind enables us to stand undaunted and unafraid.

When prayer is scientifically understood, we shall no longer reach up to God, but we shall abide in the consciousness of our oneness, or unity, with Him. From this height of consecration, let us say in Mrs. Eddy's words (Poems, p. 37):