Sunday, April 14th, 2019 Roundtable

Goodness never fails to receive its reward, for goodness makes life a blessing. As an active portion of one stupendous whole, goodness identifies man with universal good. Thus may each member of this church rise above the oft-repeated inquiry, What am I? to the scientific response: I am able to impart truth, health, and happiness, and this is my rock of salvation and my reason for existing.

— from Miscellany, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 165

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We, to-day, in this class-room, are enough to convert the world if we are of one Mind; for then the whole world will feel the influence of this Mind; as when the earth was without form, and Mind spake and form appeared.

— from Miscellaneous Writings by Mary Baker Eddy, page 279: 27-2

382 — WATCH that you finish and clean up every demonstration by knowing that the error was never real, never present, never happened, never had a manifestation, nor was there ever such a claim. Only in this way can you guard against a relapse. Whatever the claim was, you may believe it to be real again, if you hold that you did believe in it formerly. The only scientific attitude is to know you never had it. Once when a patient asked Gilbert Carpenter if he should stop treatment, he said, “Give me one more day in which to know that you never had the claim.”

— from 500 Watching Points by Gilbert Carpenter

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The “tree of life” is significant of eternal reality or being. The “tree of knowledge” typifies unreality. The testimony of the serpent is significant of the illusion of error, of the false claims that misrepresent God, good. Sin, sickness, and death have no record in the Elohistic introduction of Genesis, in which God creates the heavens, earth, and man. Until that which contradicts the truth of being enters into the arena, evil has no history, and evil is brought into view only as the unreal in contradistinction to the real and eternal.

— Citation 4 from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, page 538 : 13-22

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Golden Text —“He sent his word, and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions.”—Psalm 107 : 20

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Forum post — Seeing, Hearing, Feeling – All 3 Indispensible by Parthens

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Self-love is more opaque than a solid body. In patient obedience to a patient God, let us labor to dissolve with the universal solvent of Love the adamant of error, — self-will, self-justification, and self-love, — which wars against spirituality and is the law of sin and death.

— Citation 13 from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, page 242 : 9-20

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Forum post — Self-love versus loving yourself by Jeremy from PA

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“The Word made flesh” does not mean that Christ, the divine idea, was in evidence as a state that was personal, corporeal and mortal. No, that was a misconception of the reality of things as they are at hand. “The flesh of the Word” are those concrete evidences, which exhibit the word, or are the evidence of the actual at hand. Jesus demonstrated that the “flesh of the Word” was at hand as imperishable sight and hearing and wholeness and supply. “The flesh of the Word” was also in evidence as his own incorporeal, weightless, incorruptible, deathless being or body. We must look beyond and above the evidence of the material senses. “The Word made flesh,” Mrs. Eddy says, Plainfield Christian Science Church, Independent is the Truth “rendered practical.” Or it is the Truth or understanding in its evidence, exhibited as active practice or living. “The Word made flesh” is the Truth in demonstration or in concrete evidence. It is the Truth, or the actual, exhibited in practice or daily living.

— from “Word Made Flesh” in Addresses by Martha Wilcox, page 413-414

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Forum — prayer and fasting by Lynda from PA

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These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.

— John 15 : 11 from citation 7 in the Bible portion of this week’s lesson

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Forum post — All Illusions! by Florence from GA

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Definition of delusion:
A fixed, dominating or persistent false mental conception resistant to reason with regard to actual things or matters of fact.

— shared by Mary Beth Singleterry

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Years ago in a lecture, Mr. Kimball told the story of an insane woman, who was deluded into thinking that her arms were covered with feathers. She was sure of it. She both saw and felt feathers.

He gave this illustration to show that sickness or disease were wholly delusions, and were never objectified or externalized, and that one could never remove the feathers by treatment, any more than one could remove the snake in the corner by treatment, because there never was a snake to be removed, nor any feathers to be removed. The feathers did not fill space, they were not externalizations of thought, but rather distortions of the vision or misleading impressions.

— from “Word Made Flesh” in Addresses by Martha Wilcox, page 426

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Paul’s demonstration was not in destroying the viper’s power to cause death. His demonstration was the proof that a viper is Mind in particular form expression. Vipers had never been anything but what God is in being, and yet, because many persons believed that their misconception of a viper was an object, and this object had life in and of itself, these people died.

They died, not because their misconception of a viper existed as an objectified thing, not because they were bitten by a viper, but they died because of their belief or delusion.

Oh! How many of you are spending much time in inharmony, because you have objectified YOUR misconception of man as a husband or wife or somebody, and given this illusion life?

— from “Word Made Flesh” in Addresses by Martha Wilcox, page 427

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Final Readings