Stillness · “Stillness Reveals”
The Lord's Prayer as a Method
Pray the Lord’s Prayer slowly, clause by clause, using each of its seven clauses as a complete stage of inner work — so the whole prayer becomes one compact treatment covering every spiritual need.
Pray it as seven stages, slowly: (1) Our Father — your real relationship to God and to all.
(2) Hallowed be Thy name — dwell on the nature/aspects of God.
(3) Thy kingdom come / will be done — welcome God’s harmony into actual conditions.
(4) Daily bread — affirm supply met day by day.
(5) Forgive as we forgive — actually release every grievance (a condition, not optional).
(6) Lead us not into temptation, deliver us from evil — protection and overcoming. Rest in “it is done.” One slow pass = a full treatment.
What it is
Fox read the Lord’s Prayer not as a set form of words to rattle off but as a complete, deliberately engineered method for the development of the soul. In The Sermon on the Mount he argues the prayer “naturally falls into seven clauses,” that seven is the number “of the individual soul,” and that the clauses are “put together with the utmost care, in perfect order and sequence,” containing “everything that is necessary for the nourishment of the soul” — “so compact that there is not a thought or word too much.” Used as a practice, you pray it slowly, pausing on each clause and doing the inner work that clause represents, so that running through the whole prayer once is itself a full spiritual treatment covering relationship to God, the nature of God, the coming of harmony, supply, forgiveness, and protection.
The Method
From Fox’s “The Lord’s Prayer: An Interpretation” (faithfully described; short quotes only):
- Pray it slowly, one clause at a time. Don’t recite for speed. Stop on each clause, take its meaning, and let it do its work before moving on.
- “Our Father which art in heaven.” Establish your real relationship to God: God is your loving Father and you His child; “Our” because all are God’s children — the spirit of brotherhood. “Heaven” is not a place but the omnipresent harmony of God, here and now.
- “Hallowed be Thy name.” Dwell on the nature of God — His holiness and the divine aspects (for Fox, Life, Truth, Love, Intelligence, Soul, Spirit, Principle). To “hallow the name” is to build a true, reverent sense of what God is.
- “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.” Claim and welcome the coming of God’s harmony into actual conditions — that the perfect pattern (“in heaven”) be expressed in your tangible life (“in earth”).
- “Give us this day our daily bread.” Affirm spiritual supply: that every need — material and spiritual — is met by God day by day, fresh each day, without anxious hoarding.
- “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” Do the work of forgiveness. Fox stresses this clause makes forgiveness unavoidable: we are forgiven as we forgive, so genuine release of every grievance is required for the prayer to work.
- “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” Seek protection and the overcoming of error — to be kept from the trials that would entangle you and freed from all that is unlike God.
- Close in the realization it is done. Rest for a moment in the sense that this whole movement of soul is accomplished, then return to the day. (Sourcing note: clause meanings and the “seven clauses / development of the soul” framing are Fox’s; phrases above are attributed quotation/paraphrase, not full reproduction.)
Source & Lineage
Emmet Fox (1886-1951) gave his line-by-line metaphysical reading of the Lord’s Prayer in The Sermon on the Mount (1934), later issued separately as The Lord’s Prayer: An Interpretation.
It belongs to the New Thought tradition of reading scripture allegorically as a manual of mind-law, and to the much older Christian practice of praying the Our Father meditatively (e.g. Teresa of Ávila’s commentary).
The Traditions' versions
“Take a sacred text and pray it slowly, phrase by phrase, as structured contemplation” is a classic move; Fox’s distinctive contribution is treating the whole Lord’s Prayer as one engineered seven-stage treatment: - Lectio divina / praying the scripture (Guyon, Keating) — dwelling slowly on a sacred passage.,
- The Jesus Prayer — a single Gospel phrase repeated as the prayer of the heart.
- Teresa of Ávila’s recollection on the Our Father — meditative praying of the same prayer.
- Fox’s scientific prayer / treatment — this is treatment given the Lord’s Prayer as its scaffold.
- Fox’s Seven Main Aspects of God — supplies the content for the “hallowed be Thy name” clause.
Common refinements
Reciting at speed. Rushing defeats the method entirely; the work happens in the pause on each clause.
- Skipping the forgiveness work. Fox is emphatic: “as we forgive” is a condition, not a decoration. Naming and releasing actual grievances is the hard, essential step.
- Treating clauses as words, not stages. Each clause is a piece of inner work to do, not a phrase to pronounce.
- Praying “Thy will be done” as grim resignation. Fox reads it as welcoming God’s harmony, not bracing for misfortune.
- Using “daily bread” as licence for passivity. Affirming supply is not a reason to stop sensible work and planning.