Sunday, March 24th, 2019 Roundtable
Five Important Life Lessons.
This week’s Lesson Sermon Subject: Matter
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Morning Prayers
Each day I pray for the pacification of all national difficulties, for the brotherhood of man, for the end of idolatry and infidelity, and for the growth and establishment of Christian religion — Christ’s Christianity. I also have faith that my prayer availeth, and that He who is overturning will overturn until He whose right it is shall reign. Each day I pray: “God bless my enemies; make them Thy friends; give them to know the joy and the peace of love.”
— from Miscellany by Mary Baker Eddy, 220: 14-23
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
Discussion points
395 —WATCH lest you accept the suggestion that God has withdrawn Himself and left you to work out your own salvation. Has the mother hen deserted her young, when they, in the darkness of the eggs, believe that she has? She is close at hand tenderly watching over each egg, protecting it and keeping it warm.
The mother hen never helps her chickens to hatch. When a farmer attempts to help one do so, it never survives. This seems to point to a law concerning mortals, that they must peck open their shells with Christian Science, as part of the development needed by spiritual sense. We are told that it requires ten thousand pecks or more for a chicken to break through its shell and hatch. Every effort we make to break through the shell of materiality should be recognized as necessary and efficacious. At the same time we should feel God’s precious presence watching over our feeble efforts, which persistence will surely crown with success.
— from 500 Watching Points by Gilbert Carpenter
From The Christian Science Hymnal, 1932 edition page 359
Trust the Eternal when the shadows gather,
When joys of daylight seem so like a dream;
God the unchanging pities like a father;
Trust on and wait, the daystar yet shall gleam.
Trust the Eternal, for the clouds that vanish
No more can move the mountains from their base
Than sin’s illusive wreaths of mist can banish
Light from His throne or loving from His face.
Trust the Eternal, and repent in meekness
Of that heart’s pride which frowns and will not yield,
Then to thy child-heart shall come strength in weakness,
And thine immortal life shall be revealed.
From The Christian Science Hymnal, 1932 edition page 258
Oft to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of Truth with falsehood,
For the good or evil side.
A great cause, God’s new Messiah,
Shows to each the bloom or blight,
So can choice be made by all men
Twixt the darkness and the light.
New occasions teach new duties,
Time makes ancient creeds uncouth;
They must upward still and onward
Who would keep abreast of Truth,
And serenely down the future
See the thought of men incline
To the side of perfect justice
And to God’s supreme design.
Though the cause of evil prosper,
Yet ’tis Truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold,
And upon the throne be wrong,
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above His own.
Golden Text — “Hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods?” — Jeremiah 2 : 11
Forum post — The work of righteousness by Lynda from PA
Miscellany — “Ways That Are Vain” by Mary Baker Eddy page 210
“Do we not all understand cowardice never conquers? To get rid of a temptation of any sort or to get out of a difficulty, we are not passive and let the wrong rule the right, but we struggle and thus conquer. We should not avoid the things that hurt us, but repeat them and meet them as their superior. Disease is a coward that leaves when you are not afraid of it.”
— from Collectanea by Mary Baker Eddy, page 56
“As the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined.” As mortal mind is directed, it acts for a season. Some students leave my instructions before they are quite free from the bias of their first impressions, whether those be cor rect or incorrect. Such students are more or less subject to the future mental influence of their former teacher. Their knowledge of Mind-healing may be right theo retically, but the moral and spiritual status of thought must be right also. The tone of the teacher’s mind must be pure, grand, true, to aid the mental development of the student; for the tint of the instructor’s mind must take its hue from the divine Mind. A single mistake in metaphysics, or in ethics, is more fatal than a mistake in physics.
“If a teacher of Christian Science unwittingly or intentionally offers his own thought, and gives me as authority for it; if he diverges from Science and knows it not, or, knowing it, makes the venture from vanity, in order to be thought original, or wiser than somebody else, — this divergence widens. He grows dark, and cannot regain, at will, an upright understanding. This error in the teacher also predisposes his students to make mistakes and lose their way. Diverse opinions in Science are stultifying. All must have one Principle and the same rule; and all who follow the Principle and rule have but one opinion of it.
— from Miscellany by Mary Baker Eddy, 264-265
Forum post — The Judgment Seat of Truth by Parthens
From Chapter 12: Christian Science Practice in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy
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- Pages 390 to 394
Final Readings
Is it correct to say of material objects, that they are noth-
10 ing and exist only in imagination?
Nothing and something are words which need correct
definition. They either mean formations of indefinite
and vague human opinions, or scientific classifications
of the unreal and the real. My sense of the beauty of
15 the universe is, that beauty typifies holiness, and is some-
thing to be desired. Earth is more spiritually beautiful
to my gaze now than when it was more earthly to the
eyes of Eve. The pleasant sensations of human belief,
of form and color, must be spiritualized, until we gain the
20 glorified sense of substance as in the new heaven and
earth, the harmony of body and Mind.
Even the human conception of beauty, grandeur, and
utility is something that defies a sneer. It is more than
imagination. It is next to divine beauty and the gran-
25 deur of Spirit. It lives with our earth-life, and is
the subjective state of high thoughts. The atmos-
phere of mortal mind constitutes our mortal envi-
ronment. What mortals hear, see, feel, taste, smell,
constitutes their present earth and heaven: but we must
30 grow out of even this pleasing thraldom, and find wings
to reach the glory of supersensible Life; then we shall
Page 87
1 soar above, as the bird in the clear ether of the blue tem-
poral sky.
To take all earth’s beauty into one gulp of vacuity
and label beauty nothing, is ignorantly to caricature
5 God’s creation, which is unjust to human sense and
to the divine realism. In our immature sense of spirit-
ual things, let us say of the beauties of the sensuous
universe: “I love your promise; and shall know, some
time, the spiritual reality and substance of form, light,
10 and color, of what I now through you discern dimly; and
knowing this, I shall be satisfied. Matter is a frail con-
ception of mortal mind; and mortal mind is a poorer
representative of the beauty, grandeur, and glory of the
immortal Mind.”
— from Miscellaneous, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 86-87