Sunday, December 12th, 2021 Roundtable

My health, strength, life, intelligence, action, etc., are subject to the governing and controlling power of the divine Mind, and to nothing else, for there is no other power.

God is your refuge and a strong deliverer. He will hide you under His wings till the storms are past and the sunlight of His presence cheers and invigorates you with new strength and exaltation.

Yes, He who clothes the lilies will tend you and gird you with strength in Truth and Love, and so establish the labor of your hands in His vineyard. Never distrust. Never doubt the All-Love, for it never faileth. As your day, so shall your strength be. Be patient, and let faith grow stronger and stronger each day of this pilgrimage.

— from Divinity Course and General Collectanea, (the “Blue Book”), by Mary Baker Eddy, page 77, 139

268 — WATCH, when you have cranked your automobile engine to the point where it has started, that you quickly let go of the crank. In the days before the self-starter was invented, if you were not quick enough to get out of the way when the engine started, the crank might even break your wrist.

When we have done our part to put divine power into operation in this human dream, we must quickly withdraw, leaving God to care for the situation, as He will. We have our part to perform, to be sure; but when we have finished it, we must trust God to do His, and not continue to grind out arguments through fear.

When you have sharpened your pencil in the sharpener, your work is done. If you continue longer to grind the sharpener, you merely wear the pencil away. Similarly, when you have reached the point of faith, you should know that you have done what God requires of you, and He will do the rest. Mrs. Eddy once said, “We must talk more closely with God, bring Him nearer to us, more like the old style of praying. We must feel and know that God is what we live in, like the atmosphere or the sunlight. It is all about us. We must rest more in God.

— from 500 Watching Points by Gilbert Carpenter

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GOLDEN TEXT: Psalm 27 : 11

“Teach me thy way, O Lord, and lead me in a plain path, because of mine enemies.”

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Let unselfishness, goodness, mercy, justice, health, holiness, love — the kingdom of heaven — reign within us, and sin, disease, and death will diminish until they finally disappear.

— from Science and Health, 1910, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 248

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Excerpts about Clara Barton shared from the following article:

“Christian Science Most Potent Factor in Religious Life, Says Clara Barton” in The Christian Science Journal February 1908 by Viola Rodgers

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Forum posts — God the Preserver of Man — December 12th, 2021

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First thing in the morning, before your feet hit the floor repeat:

“God is Mind. God is my mind. God is the only pure Mind.”

“God is Life. God is my life. God is the only Life.”

— Plainfield Roundtable

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“What Our Leader Says,” from Miscellany by Mary Baker Eddy, page 210

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If I could give you information of my life, it would be to show how a woman of very ordinary ability has been led by God in strange and unaccustomed paths to do in His service what He has done in her. And if I could tell you all, you would see how God has done all, and I nothing. I have worked hard, very hard, that is all; and I have never refused God anything.

— “Quote” from Christian Science Sentinel, February 20, 1902 by Florence Nightingale

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If arrows are shot at a sunbeam, they never harm the sunbeam. If a blacksmith were to try to injure a sunbeam with his sledge-hammer he would find it impossible to do so. Thus it is with a right-minded, God-expressing man. The shafts of malice, envy, criticism, and hate do him no harm for it is impossible for them to find lodgment. Arrows do not stick in sunbeams. Evil thoughts cannot lodge in a consciousness filled with good. The righteous man lives in a realm into which error’s shafts cannot enter. Evil shoots at its own, it cannot see God’s own. …God has provided a place of safety for His children. David called it “the secret place of the most High.” (Ps. 91, 1). This safe refuge is very near, even at the turn in our thinking. While we entertain the thoughts of the evil mind we are in constant danger. When we entertain the thoughts of God we are always safe.

The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts [Delivered April 1, 1923, at Col. Payne School in North Tonawanda, New York, and published in The Tonawanda Evening News of North Tonawanda.

— “Man Always Protected” from Christian Science Sentinel, April 2, 1923, by Paul Stark Seeley, C.S.B.

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The Book of Acts might well be called the Book of Demonstration, so full is it of the proofs of God’s power over sin, sickness, and death, and other supposititious forces of evil. From the record of that memorable occasion when Peter and John healed the lame man who was “laid daily at the gate of the temple which is called Beautiful,” to the story of Paul’s shipwreck on the island of Malta, when the apostle to the Gentiles shook off the viper which had fastened itself upon his hand “and felt no harm,” the Book of Acts worthily fulfils the promise of its name. It is, as it were, a special chapter added to the gospels to illustrate the correctness of Christ Jesus’ teaching and the ever present availability of his promises, much in the same way as the chapter entitled Fruitage puts a fitting climax upon the Christian Science text-book, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” by Mrs. Eddy. The Acts is the necessary afterglow of the Sermon on the Mount and stands to it in the relationship of effect to cause. To the Scientist this book is therefore a constant exhortation to beware of mere theorizing and to keep on proving the practicability of God’s law.

— from Christian Science Journal, February 1917 issue of The Christian Science Journal By William D. McCrackan

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“He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet’s reward.”

He that receiveth a prophet in the name or character of a prophet, does so because he perceives that the prophecy is true and could have been uttered by no one less exalted than a prophet. This perception is of itself spiritual or prophetic vision and entitles the possessor to a prophet’s reward—the understanding in some degree of the truth revealed.

It is thus seen that if we do not understand, at least in part, our Leader’s relation to the cause of Christian Science, it is because we have not comprehended that Christian Science is a divine revelation, and thus we miss the reward of such knowledge. To say that Christian Science is divine revelation and yet not to love the Revelator and believe that her mission is divinely appointed, is to doubt God’s wisdom in selecting the one through whom to give this great revelation to the world. To criticise her motives and acts is to expose our own egotism in attempting to judge one whom, in accepting Christian Science, we have acknowledged to be best fitted among all people for the place she fills.

It was when their own faith was tried and found wanting that the Israelites murmured against Moses. After the mighty triumph at the Red Sea, the children of Israel sang with Moses, “I will sing unto the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously,” etc.

There was no confusion of ideas then, they knew that God was leading them; but when they came to Marah and the waters were bitter, “The people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink?” And again, when tempted with hunger, “The whole congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness,” and said “Ye have brought us forth into this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” They had so soon forgotten that God was leading them.

But Moses said, “The Lord heareth your murmurings which ye murmur against him; and what are we? your murmurings are not against us, but against the Lord.”

When trials come we should not admit the sin of ingratitude and forget, like the Israelites, the passage of the Red Sea and all the blessings of the past which God has given us by the hand of His messenger, but remember that these very victories lead to Marah whose waters must be sweetened by Truth. “Neither murmur ye, as some of them also murmured, and were destroyed of the destroyer.”

— “The True Sense of Gratitude” from Christian Science Sentinel, January 9, 1904, by S. A. Price

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Click here to play the audio as you read: — Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, Pages 390-393

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Fidelity finds its reward and its strength in exalted purpose. Seeking is not sufficient whereby to arrive at the results of Science: you must strive; and the glory of the strife comes of honesty and humility.

— from Miscellaneous Writings by Mary Baker Eddy, page 341

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The individuality created by God is not carnivorous, as witness the millennial estate pictured by Isaiah:

All of God’s creatures, moving in the harmony of Science, are harmless, useful, indestructible. A realization of this grand verity was a source of strength to the ancient worthies. It supports Christian healing, and enables its possessor to emulate the example of Jesus. “And God saw that it was good.”

— from Science and Health, 1910, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 514

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To Mrs. Annie M. Knott, C.S.D., principal of the Detroit Christian Science Institute, she gave warning that the time might come when medical thought might be so organized that it would make the practice of Christian Science almost impossible. The remedy given was not the counter power of Christian Science churches, but “When [that] time comes I want my students to take every means possible to make Science and Health available to the whole world.”

Mary Baker Eddy’s Six Days of Revelation, page 79

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Final Readings