Sunday, September 1st, 2019 Roundtable

To Sit at the Feet of Jesus

This week’s Lesson Sermon Subject: Christ Jesus

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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

Discussion points

495 — WATCH that you remember the rule, “If you take error seriously, it will take you seriously,” using against you the very weapon you give it. Error is only a belief, and one receives from it exactly what one puts into it. Let us put into it the realization of its nothingness and the allness of good, as well as the conviction that there is nothing in us to respond to it, to believe in it or to fear it. Neither can we be made to forget or to neglect the necessity for standing up to it and meeting it under all circumstances.

Error cannot be serious unless you make it serious. So keep your grin ahead of your groan. Mrs. Eddy once said, “Some of you are taking life too seriously. A sense of humor is a saving grace.”

— from 500 Watching Points by Gilbert Carpenter

This material world is even now becoming the arena for conflicting forces. On one side there will be discord and dismay; on the other side there will be Science and peace. The breaking up of material beliefs may seem to be famine and pestilence, want and woe, sin, sickness, and death, which assume new phases until their nothingness appears. These disturbances will continue until the end of error, when all discord will be swallowed up in spiritual Truth.

— from Science and Health, 1875, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 96

The beliefs we commonly entertain about happiness and life afford no scatheless and permanent evidence of either. Security for the claims of harmonious and eternal being is found only in divine Science.

— from Science and Health, 1875, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 232

If living in disobedience to Him, we ought to feel no security, although God is good.

— from Science and Health, 1875, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 21

Golden Text — “I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star.” — Revelation 22 : 16

Forum post — “The Root of David” by Parthens

…For the Lord GOD will help me; therefore shall I not be confounded: therefore have I set my face like a flint,…

— from the King James Bible, Isaiah 50:7

Forum post — Whosoever doth not bear his cross by Joanne from FL

The advent of Jesus of Nazareth marked the first century of the Christian era, but the Christ is without beginning of years or end of days. Throughout all generations both before and after the Christian era, the Christ, as the spiritual idea, — the reflection of God, — has come with some measure of power and grace to all prepared to receive Christ, Truth. Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and the prophets caught glorious glimpses of the Messiah, or Christ, which baptized these seers in the divine nature, the essence of Love. The divine image, idea, or Christ was, is, and ever will be inseparable from the divine Principle, God. Jesus referred to this unity of his spiritual identity thus: “Before Abraham was, I am;” “I and my Father are one;” “My Father is greater than I.” The one Spirit includes all identities.

— Citation 2 in this week’s Lesson from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, page 333 : 16 – 31

Humility is not weakness or cowardess but strength. It is acknowledging God as all powerful and the only reliable souce for all.

— Roundtable

Pride is not your friend.

— Roundtable

The professors of Christian Science must take off their shoes at our altars; they must unclasp the material sense of things at the very threshold of Christian Science: they must obey implicitly each and every injunction of the divine Principle of life’s long problem, or repeat their work in tears. In the words of St. Paul, “Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?”

— from Miscellaneous Writings by Mary Baker Eddy, page 120

Self-depreciation is not humility but the meanest kind of pride because it admits a sense of self apart from God.

— from Divinity Course and General Collectanea, the “blue book,” by Mary Baker Eddy, page 199

Wearing in part a human form (that is, as it seemed to mortal view), being conceived by a human mother, Jesus was the mediator between Spirit and the flesh, between Truth and error. Explaining and demonstrating the way of divine Science, he became the way of salvation to all who accepted his word. From him mortals may learn how to escape from evil. The real man being linked by Science to his Maker, mortals need only turn from sin and lose sight of mortal selfhood to find Christ, the real man and his relation to God, and to recognize the divine sonship. Christ, Truth, was demonstrated through Jesus to prove the power of Spirit over the flesh, — to show that Truth is made manifest by its effects upon the human mind and body, healing sickness and destroying sin.

— Citation 4 in this week’s Lesson from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, page 315 : 29-11

Forum post — My “earthly all” by Susanne from VT

Few understand or adhere to Jesus’ divine precepts for living and healing. Why? Because his precepts require the disciple to cut off the right hand and pluck out the right eye, — that is, to set aside even the most cherished beliefs and practices, to leave all for Christ.

— Citation 8 in this week’s Lesson from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, page 141 : 4-9

Too soon we cannot turn from disease in the body to find disease in the mortal mind, and its cure, in working for God. Thought must be made better, and human life more fruitful, for the divine energy to move it onward and upward.

— from “Fidelity” in Miscellaneous Writings by Mary Baker Eddy, page 343

I arise today
Through the strength of heaven;
Light of the sun, Splendor of fire,
Speed of lightning, Swiftness of the wind,
Depth of the sea, Stability of the earth,
Firmness of the rock.

I arise today
Through God’s strength to pilot me;
God’s might to uphold me, God’s wisdom to guide me,
God’s eye to look before me, God’s ear to hear me,
God’s word to speak for me, God’s hand to guard me,
God’s way to lie before me, God’s shield to protect me,
God’s hosts to save me, Afar and anear,
Alone or in a multitude.

Christ shield me today
Against wounding,
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down,
Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,

Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in the eye that sees me,
Christ in the ear that hears me.

I arise today
Through the mighty strength
Of the Lord of creation.

— “The Deer`s Cry” by Saint Patrick in the year 433 AD

My individual Christ Jesus will go before me and lead me in the work.

— from Divinity Course and General Collectanea, the “blue book,” by Mary Baker Eddy, page 268

Forum post — “he commandeth the unclean spirits” by Lynda from PA

Final Readings

The new birth is not the work of a moment. It begins with moments, and goes on with years; moments of surrender to God, of childlike trust and joyful adoption of good; moments of self-abnegation, self-consecration, heaven-born hope, and spiritual love.

Time may commence, but it cannot complete, the new birth: eternity does this; for progress is the law of infinity. Only through the sore travail of mortal mind shall soul as sense be satisfied, and man awake in His likeness. What a faith-lighted thought is this! that mortals can lay off the “old man,” until man is found to be the image of the infinite good that we name God, and the fulness of the stature of man in Christ appears.

In mortal and material man, goodness seems in embryo. By suffering for sin, and the gradual fading out of the mortal and material sense of man, thought is developed into an infant Christianity; and, feeding at first on the milk of the Word, it drinks in the sweet revealings of a new and more spiritual Life and Love. These nourish the hungry hope, satisfy more the cravings for immortality, and so comfort, cheer, and bless one, that he saith: In mine infancy, this is enough of heaven to come down to earth.

But, as one grows into the manhood or womanhood of Christianity, one finds so much lacking, and so very much requisite to become wholly Christlike, that one saith: The Principle of Christianity is infinite: it is indeed God; and this infinite Principle hath infinite claims on man, and these claims are divine, not human; and man’s ability to meet them is from God; for, being His likeness and image, man must reflect the full dominion of Spirit—even its supremacy over sin, sickness, and death.

Here, then, is the awakening from the dream of life in matter, to the great fact that God is the only Life; that, therefore, we must entertain a higher sense of both God and man. We must learn that God is infinitely more than a person, or finite form, can contain; that God is a divine Whole, and All, an all-pervading intelligence and Love, a divine, infinite Principle; and that Christianity is a divine Science. This newly awakened consciousness is wholly spiritual; it emanates from Soul instead of body, and is the new birth begun in Christian Science.

Now, dear reader, pause for a moment with me, earnestly to contemplate this new-born spiritual altitude; for this statement demands demonstration.

Here you stand face to face with the laws of infinite Spirit, and behold for the first time the irresistible conflict between the flesh and Spirit. You stand before the awful detonations of Sinai. You hear and record the thunderings of the spiritual law of Life, as opposed to the material law of death; the spiritual law of Love, as opposed to the material sense of love; the law of omnipotent harmony and good, as opposed to any supposititious law of sin, sickness, or death. And, before the flames have died away on this mount of revelation, like the patriarch of old, you take off your shoes—lay aside your material appendages, human opinions and doctrines, give up your more material religion with its rites and ceremonies, put off your materia medica and hygiene as worse than useless — to sit at the feet of Jesus.

— from “The New Birth” in Miscellaneous Writings by Mary Baker Eddy, page 15-17