Sunday February 21st, 2021 Roundtable
Control Thought
This week’s Lesson Sermon Subject: Mind
Click here to play the audio as you read:
Morning Prayers
January 31, 1904. … All we have to do is one thing: keep the First Commandment, “thou shalt have none other gods before (beside) me” – infinite Mind and that is infinite Love. There is no evil mind; that sweeps away error; there is infinite Mind – good. Infinity is all. There is no other intelligence, life or love. Now work out your problem from this standpoint. If we do not keep the First we cannot keep the Second – “to love one another.” If ye love not man (your brother) whom you have seen how can you love God whom you have not seen? You only love God as far as you love man.
February 20, 1904. God is Love, and Love is infinite; realize this and you are safe from harm: nothing can touch you
— from Divinity Course and General Collectanea, (the “Blue Book”), by Mary Baker Eddy, page 19-20
Discussion Points
84 — WATCH lest you forget that there is only one Mind, and that what we call the human mind is only a humanized, limited or distorted sense of divine Mind. When one individual absorbs his thoughts from another, that is an illustration of the adulteration of the Science of Mind, in which ideas really come from God direct to man. Contagious thinking is an adulterated or humanized sense of mind. Science means to reflect and manifest the pure Mind of God, unadulterated, carrying with it wisdom, power, guidance and healing. This means to reflect the ideas of God from Him, and not from man, and these must be reflected fresh every morning, and new every evening. Absorbing a used, or second-hand mind is taking on that which has lost so much of its divinity, that it is almost mortal in every respect.
One believes it is hard work to apply directly to divine Mind for his ideas. As a matter of fact, it is essential that we go to Mrs. Eddy’s writings for our right ideas, until we are able to reflect them from God directly.
Every man’s salvation depends upon his success in going to God and reflecting his thoughts and wisdom directly from that primitive source.
In Is. 66 : 6 we find three steps, the first of which is the voice of noise from the city. This is mortal mind, since all it is is noise. Then we have the voice from the temple. This must include all the good embraced in the Christian Science organization, which Mrs. Eddy reflected from God and left for us. But it is second-hand truth. So we must hasten to the third stage, which is the voice of the Lord, or our reflection of God without any intermediary.
— from 500 Watching Points by Gilbert Carpenter
Golden Text — “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.” — Proverbs 9 : 108
Rapport: A friendly, harmonious relationship especially : a relationship characterized by agreement, mutual understanding, or empathy that makes communication possible or easy.
— from 1828 Webster’s Dictionary
Be careful what you say after “I”.
— Plainfield Roundtable
Nothing you can say about this man of God is too wondrous, for all that God is this man of God must be.
— “The Nature of God and Man”, by Herbert Eustace.
Intellectualism is the bane of Christian Science.
— Plainfield Roundtable
Forum post — Sound wisdom – The Ultimate Freedom – Control Thought by Louise
Forum post — New Research on the Nature of Mesmerism by Parthens
ParthensRouse ye, rouse ye, face the foe,
Rise to conquer death and sin;
On with Christ to victory go,
O side with God, and win!
Click here to play the Hymn: — Hymn 296 by Henry Francis Lyte
Forum post — “Mind is the source of all movement.” by Joanne from FL
Click here to play the audio as you read: — Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, Pages 390-393
Final Readings
Mind
Mind’s demonstration of intelligence has never been reversed, interrupted, or impeded. Man’s oneness with the intelligence and divine faculties of Mind is forever demonstrated. A divine idea carries within itself the power to accomplish the divine purpose, and the responsibility of its unfoldment belongs to divine Principle, who cares for each detail of its progressive being. All the qual- ities of God, good, are expressed in man, His reflection, and no one quality or function is missing or inactive. There is a vast wealth of ideas hidden to material sense, but ceaselessly flowing from God and available to all. Mind expresses itself in continuous activity, in harmony, joy, and infinite unfoldment, in ever self-renewal, in inexhaustible self-refreshment.
When Mrs. Eddy declared “God is Mind,” she brought about a religious revolution, for old religious thought had it God with a mind. God IS Mind, and we need to improve our understanding of this fact. Self-existent Mind is the source and substance of everything that exists. We must think God is Mind, not of God as a mind. Mind’s characteristic is limitless intelligence. Everything that Mind conceives is perfect and everlasting. God cannot conceive of anything contrary to His own selfhood. An idea is the only thing without restriction or limitation, for an infinite, un- limited Mind cannot know a limited thing. Every idea is unlimited, infinite. An idea cannot know anything about the limitation of space, time, or obstruction. Ideas are ever alive, all intelligent, always active.
Spirit is always active. Everything that is substance is always active. Let ideas or facts be vital. Maintaining facts means that facts alone exist. Things, beliefs, and experiences contrary to facts do not exist.
The entire objective consciousness is a dream. There is no subconsciousness. There are no planes of Mind; there is only one Mind. The only Science there is, is the Science of Mind. The true Science of all things is the Science of Life or Being, and that is the Science of the divine Mind.
Rely on Mind to do everything. God is our Mind, the only Mind there is. God fills all space. There is no material space; there is no limited space, such as four walls.
Mind is cause, therefore effect is idea. Cause is Mind, therefore effect is mental. Mind is the one and only cause, and cause must have an effect. We must hold in thought the fact that we reflect all intelligence. Mind is calm, serene, secure, supreme, always mindful of its own. You have the best mind on earth as effect, because you have the only Mind in heaven as Cause.
Mind is the infinite intelligence of man, and everything that He knows is instantly available. Mind is never uncertain. One with Mind is absolute guidance. Truth is insistent and quick to appear in the consciousness that is alert and receptive. Mind Is the Infinite Capacity to Think, and that is my mind. The greater our understanding of the one Mind, the greater our individual intelligence. Mind is infinite, and its ideas are forever progressive as expression. Divine thought always finds infinite expression. By substituting true knowledge for false belief, we demonstrate Truth. Man has one infinite Mind, and that Mind is my mind and your mind.
Spiritualizing thought is but getting away from limitation. A Christian Scientist stands as Mind. What he knows has got to govern the earth. We must recognize the power and dominion of Mind, which is all there is. Mind is the infinite capacity to think; it is consciousness. Mind is the self-existence which we call God, and there is no other self-existence. Everything that exists is included in this Mind. Humanly speaking, all the Mind you have is ideas. There is not a thought or idea in the universe that is not infinite. Keep this in mind. These ideas exist because they co-exist with the divine Mind.
There is no mystery in godliness. Mystery and confusion come about through the human being’s incapacity to understand infinity. We, as human beings, are all the time thinking of ourselves in a limited way, and now we come into Science where there is no limitation, and here is where we must be wise, because we cannot consistently hold in thought two concepts of man, the real and the un- real, the limited and the unlimited. We cannot deny a thing, and make it real at the same time.
Whether this life shall be one of dominion or subjection is determined by the kind of thoughts we think. Thought is the only thing we have to deal with. All there is to anything is our consciousness of it. Do not think of yourself. What you know of God is yourself. Spiritual understanding comes more and more, and that is you. The dominion of man is simply the perfect law of God. Find out that you do not want anything, for that is dominion.
It is not a matter of what others may think. In the measure of our clearness, we are unassailable.
The only Mind there is, is right here, and we only need to claim it as ours to find how available God is to us. All of Mind is present with all of its infinite possibilities, and that is the law to this occasion. Claim your divine right to understand it right now. It all belongs to you. Claim it and expect it. There is not a thing in the whole universe of Truth that is not yours right now. Individual man has at his disposal the infinity of ideas to apprehend forever. There is no limit to the possibility of unfoldment. There is a power always available to you that is greater than any human power and superior to any combination of circumstances. The thought which is in accord with God is allied to omnipotence.
— 1937 by Bicknell Young, page 2-4