Sunday January 17th, 2021 Roundtable
The Healing of the Nations
This week’s Lesson Sermon Subject: Life
Click here to play the audio as you read:
Morning Prayers
Abide in the 91st Psalm and know that such abiding is treatment and protection. There is nothing that can make laws or influence you. There is but one Mind and that is Love. Do not give life to evil by attaching it to a person or thing. It cannot live without a body. Man is immortal, one. There is but one infinite manifestation. No error can attach itself to man and why deceive ourselves by thinking it can do so? Every manifestation of life is ever-present and omnipresent good and this carries within itself all healing, sustaining. Know that the kingdom of heaven is within you and this is your armor.
— from Divinity Course and General Collectanea, the “Blue Book,” by Mary Baker Eddy, page 222
Repeat the following affirmations silently several times each day not with strained anxiety to get something out of them, but trying calmly to realize the meaning of the words:
God is All; there is no evil.
All is harmony; there is no discord.
All is health; there is no sickness.
All is Spirit; there is no matter.
All is joy; there is no sorrow.
All is Truth; there is no falsehood.
All is faith; there is no fear.
All is Life; there is no death.
All is Love; there is no hate.
— from Divinity Course and General Collectanea, the “Blue Book,” by Mary Baker Eddy, page 282
Listen as you read: 91st Psalm
Discussion points
320 — WATCH that you keep in thought the fact that the answer to the Biblical query, “O grave, where is thy victory,” is to be found in the acceptance of the belief of birth. Science and Health tells us that that which has a beginning must also have an ending. When you accept the belief of birth, — or a beginning, — at that point the grave, or man’s ending, gains its victory, since it follows as a necessary consequence, that mortal man must die. To accept birth is to accept death, as surely as to accept pride means to accept fear. Birth and pride represent separation from God which means finity. When an electric battery is separated from the generator which keeps it charged, it becomes a storage battery, of finite duration.
— from 500 Watching Points by Gilbert Carpenter
GOLDEN TEXT: Romans 6 : 23
“The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Click here to read: — — Hymn 87 from the Christian Science Hymnal
This hour is the acme of hate against Love, and Love alone can meet it. There is no law but the divine, and this law reigns and rules this hour.
— from Divinity Course and General Collectanea, (the “Blue Book”), by Mary Baker Eddy, page 236
Genesis i. 1. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
The infinite has no beginning. This word beginning is employed to signify the only, — that is, the eternal verity and unity of God and man, including the universe.
— from Science and Health, 1910, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 502
“Christ and Christmas” issue “Christ and Christmas” Love is the Liberator, November 2020, Plainfield Church
from Watches, Prayers, and Arguments, as given by Mary Baker Eddy, page 49
“Hear, O Israel, for the Lord, our God, is one God.”
You are not to come in your own name to pray.
You are not to control any mind.
You are to come only in the divine strength, and know that God will rule and does, and that hypnotism and evil minds cannot, and do not, control men or governments.
All power is God, good.
This is my only formula to Christian Scientists for prayer, and God will give you faith that will remove mountains.
Article: — “Watching in Mrs. Eddy’s Home” Mary Baker Eddy, Her Spiritual Precepts by Gilbert Carpenter
There is no power in evil. That is why victory is always on the side of Truth.
— Florence Roberts
Click here to play the Hymn: — Hymn 350 from the Christian Science Hymnal
We expect a bright tomorrow,
All will be well;
Faith can sing through days of sorrow,
All must be well;
While His truth we are applying,
And upon His love relying,
God is every need supplying,
All, all is well.
Click here to play the Hymn: — Hymn 169 from the Christian Science Hymnal
Treatment for Pain
When mesmerized by pain, turn and say: “I know what you are. This is not pain or a belief of pain. It is a belief of mind in matter; a lie of belief without a believer, nothingness claiming to be something. I am not afraid. I am spiritual, and so immune.”
— from Teaching and Addresses by Edward kimball, page 139
VERSES 29-37. Only Luke records the parable of the good Samaritan. Remember that the disciples had recently said of the Samaritans, “Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them?” The man who “fell among thieves” is you as a mortal. The priest and the Levite represent false theology, which cannot save you. The good Samaritan symbolizes the operation of the Son of man, and gives a wonderful sense of relationship. The two pence symbolize the manhood and womanhood of God identified.
LUKE 10 : 38-42 Sometimes we seem to be robbed of everything which matters to us, but we can never tell what is going to save us from that sense of robbery often help comes from the source we least expect it. If we didn’t have that womanhood sense of conception and acceptance, we couldn’t take that help. But there comes to us some idea of God in the realm of divine order and divine reflection, and it lifts us right above that robbery, and it restores the true sense of manhood and womanhood
— from “Vol. 2. Luke and John” in, Talks at Oxford Summer Schools on the Science of the Bible, 1948, by John Doorly
Poem — “He touched me and made me whole” Sung by Samie, Jared, Bryce, Craig, and Bruce
[Extract from the leading Editorial in Vol. 1, No. 1, of The Christian Science Monitor, November 25, 1908]
I have given the name to all the Christian Science periodicals. The first was The Christian Science Journal, designed to put on record the divine Science of Truth; the second I entitled Sentinel, intended to hold guard over Truth, Life, and Love; the third, Der Herold der Christian Science, to proclaim the universal activity and availability of Truth; the next I named Monitor, to spread undivided the Science that operates unspent. The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.
Mary Baker Eddy
— from Miscellany, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 353
Final Readings
Waymarks
In the first century of the Christian era Jesus went about doing good. The evangelists of those days wandered about. Christ, or the spiritual idea, appeared to human consciousness as the man Jesus. At the present epoch the human concept of Christ is based on the incorporeal divine Principle of man, and Science has elevated this idea and established its rules in consonance with their Principle. Hear this saying of our Master, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.”
The ideal of God is no longer impersonated as a waif or wanderer; and Truth is not fragmentary, disconnected, unsystematic, but concentrated and immovably fixed in Principle. The best spiritual type of Christly method for uplifting human thought and imparting divine Truth, is stationary power, stillness, and strength; and when this spiritual ideal is made our own, it becomes the model for human action.
St. Paul said to the Athenians, “For in Him we live, and move, and have our being.” This statement is in substance identical with my own: “There is no life, truth, substance, nor intelligence in matter.” It is quite clear that as yet this grandest verity has not been fully demonstrated, but it is nevertheless true. If Christian Science reiterates St. Paul’s teaching, we, as Christian Scientists, should give to the world convincing proof of the validity of this scientific statement of being. Having perceived, in advance of others, this scientific fact, we owe to ourselves and to the world a struggle for its demonstration.
At some period and in some way the conclusion must be met that whatsoever seems true, and yet contradicts divine Science and St. Paul’s text, must be and is false; and that whatsoever seems to be good, and yet errs, though acknowledging the true way, is really evil. As dross is separated from gold, so Christ’s baptism of fire, his purification through suffering, consumes whatsoever is of sin. Therefore this purgation of divine mercy, destroying all error, leaves no flesh, no matter, to the mental consciousness.
When all fleshly belief is annihilated, and every spot and blemish on the disk of consciousness is removed, then, and not till then, will immortal Truth be found true, and scientific teaching, preaching, and practice be essentially one. “Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth. . . . for whatsoever is not of faith is sin.” (Romans xiv. 22, 23.)
There is no “lo here! or lo there!” in divine Science; its manifestation must be “the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever,” since Science is eternally one, and unchanging, in Principle, rule, and demonstration.
I am persuaded that only by the modesty and distinguishing affection illustrated in Jesus’ career, can Christian Scientists aid the establishment of Christ’s kingdom on the earth. In the first century of the Christian era Jesus’ teachings bore much fruit, and the Father was glorified therein. In this period and the forthcoming centuries, watered by dews of divine Science, this “tree of life” will blossom into greater freedom, and its leaves will be “for the healing of the nations.”
Ask God to give thee skill
In comfort’s art:
That thou may’st consecrated be
And set apart
Unto a life of sympathy.
For heavy is the weight of ill
In every heart;
And comforters are needed much
Of Christlike touch.
— A. E. Hamilton
— from Retrospection and Introspection by Mary Baker Eddy, page 93-96