LORD'S PRAYER (lord's prar), the common title given to the only form of prayer which our Lord himself taught his disciples, and which is re corded in Matt. vi:o-i3; Luke xi:2-4.
"The Lord's Prayer is the Prayer of prayers, as the Bible is the Book of books and the Apostles' Creed the Creed of creeds. It is the best and most beautiful, the simplest and yet the deepest, the shortest and yet the most hensive, of all forms of devotion. Only from the lips of the Son of God could such a perfect tern proceed. An ancient Father calls it a mary of Christianity or the gospel in a nutshell. It embraces all kinds of prayer, petition, sion, and thanksgiving, all essential objects of prayer, spiritual and temporal, divine and human, in the most suitable and beautiful order, mencing with the glory of God,gradually ing to man's needs, then rising to the final liverance from all evil, and ending in thanksgiving and praise, as all prayer must end at last, in heaven, where all our wants shall be supplied.
It accompanies the Christian from the cradle to the grave. It can never be superseded. If we have exhausted the whole extent of our religious wants and the whole vocabulary of devotion, we gladly return to this model prayer as infinitely prior to all our own effusions. It may, indeed, be abused, like every gift of God, and become a dead form—Luther called it in this respect 'the greatest martyr on earth'—but this is no ment against its proper and frequent use. It is not intended, of course, to supersede other forms or extemporaneous prayers, but it should serve as a general pattern and directory to all our votions, and breathe into them the proper spirit." Schaff.