Sunday February 14th, 2021 Roundtable
The Days of Heaven Upon the Earth
This week’s Lesson Sermon Subject: Soul
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Morning Prayers
Oh, my God, I offer as a consecrated gift upon Thine altar, a heart dedicated to Thy service, lips speaking only words of charity, love, and truth, thoughts striving to be only the true thoughts of the Mind of God. Help me to endure unto the end, strong in the faith, powerful in the truth, all the influence that I can bring to bear, all the force of tongue or pen that is mine, I offer in Thy service. May heaven help, consecrate, and accept.
— Mrs. Eddy’s Prayer, given at the Massachusetts Metaphysical College, found in both the April 1885 Christian Science Journal and in Mary Baker Eddy’s Six Days of Revelation, page 171
Discussion points
159 — WATCH lest you believe that your work is to gain a perfect sense of yourself, in order to get into the kingdom of heaven, rather than to perfect your sense of yourself as God’s child, in order that you may perfect your idea of all mankind, which reveals the kingdom of heaven here and now. We are not preparing to go to heaven. Heaven is within, and it will appear without in proportion as we realize this grand verity.
— from 500 Watching Points by Gilbert Carpenter
Golden Text — “The merciful man doeth good to his own soul.” — Proverbs 11 : 17
Past Forum post — The Ultimate Freedom. by Rae from FL
Love for God and man is the true incentive in both healing and teaching. Love inspires, illumines, designates, and leads the way. Right motives give pinions to thought, and strength and freedom to speech and action.
— from the Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, page 454 : 17-21
Article — “Strength and Sweetness” from Mary Baker Eddy, Her Spiritual Precepts Gilbert Carpenter
In a little book by Professor Drummond we read: “Every one has asked himself the great question of antiquity as of the modern world: What is the summum bonum—the supreme good? You have life before you. Once only you can live it. What is the noblest object of desire, the supreme gift to covet?” He then goes on to speak of faith and the need of possessing it, and quotes from Paul, “If I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing” (Rev. Ver.); to which he adds Paul’s striking climax: “Now abideth faith, hope, love, . . . but the greatest of these is love.” Professor Drummond therefore called his book “The Greatest Thing in the World,” and so beautiful is it, and so unanswerable, that Mrs. Eddy once said she had intended to write such a book herself, but Professor Drummond had done it so well that he had saved her the effort.
— “Love Fulfils Law” in Christian Science Journal, by Kate Davidson Kimball
It (Psalm 23) has charmed more griefs to rest than all the philosophy of the world.
It has remanded to their dungeon more felon thoughts, more black doubts, more thieving sorrows than there are sands on the sea shore.
It has comforted the noble host of the poor.
It has sung courage to the army of the disappointed.
It has poured balm and consolation into the heart of the sick, of captives in dungeons, of widows in their pinching griefs, of orphans in their loneliness.
Dying soldiers have died easier as it was read to them; ghastly hospitals have been illuminated;
It has visited the prisoner, and broken his chains.
It has made the dying Christian slave freer than his master.
It will go singing to your children and my children, and to their children, through all the generations of time; nor will it fold its wings till the last pilgrim is safe, and time ended; and then it shall fly back to the bosom of God, whence it issued, and sound on, mingled with all those sounds of celestial joy which make heaven musical for ever.
— by Henry Ward Beecher
Forum post — First Commandment Requires First Love by Parthens
In the following Psalm one word shows, though faintly, the light which Christian Science throws on the Scriptures by substituting for the corporeal sense, the incorporeal or spiritual sense of Deity: —
PSALM XXIII
[DIVINE LOVE] is my shepherd; I shall not want. [LOVE] maketh me to lie down in green pastures: [LOVE] leadeth me beside the still waters.
[LOVE] restoreth my soul [spiritual sense]: [Love] leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for [LOVE] is with me; [LOVE’s] rod and [LOVE’S] staff they comfort me.
[LOVE] prepareth a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: [LOVE] anointeth my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house [the consciousness] of [LOVE] for ever.
— from the Glossary of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, page 578
Final Readings
Soul Un. 37:17-2; S&H 291:25-26; 210:19-20. The human mind is a seeming mingling and commingling, but only seemingly.
S&H 95:31-5 (begin with “spiritual”); 209:31-32;
298:13-15; 359:14-17; 481:7-9; 505:20-7; 596:1-2; 597:18-19 (begin with “spiritual”); 60:29.
The one who is demonstrating Soul will not seek to do it, but the beauty of his Soul will be manifested in his surroundings.
Soul particularly stands for the things that beautify human experience and make life more enjoyable. Soul is a word that signifies beauty, happiness, harmony, peace, and so on. Soul indicates a higher attainment of Science than Mind. Mind signifies reasoning faculties. Soul is the spontaneity of knowing without process. Soul is the ISNESS of ALL.
Soul is the substance of all beauty, the principle, the activity, the law of all that is beautiful. It is the impulsion of all true expression. Man is a state of revelation, spontaneously showing forth Soul.
He who believes that he has a soul in his body will have to get rid of that belief; there is nothing to that at all. There is just one Spirit, one Soul, and that is God. Soul is the divine Mind, and it is that particular quality of Infinity that expresses itself in infinite beauty and grandeur throughout creation.
Soul is all there is to music and the arts. Everything that is beautiful, noble, and grand, has its origin in Soul, in divine Mind. Human emotion is not altogether a quality to be avoided. Sometimes emotional people are much more scientific. If a person gets rid of his fear, and his human emotions are redeemed by Soul, he will become very intuitive and often have a very clear perception and wisdom that will be sufficient to heal cases quickly, when a quality less loving and beautiful will fail to see the truth.
Soul is the spontaneous nature of man, the epitome of natural knowing. Soul is true inspiration. As you advance in the Science of Soul, you will see beauty where you never saw it before. A Christian Scientist attains his dominion in the proportion that he seeks not the image and likeness, but the original. In that original, which is in Principle, Spirit, Soul, resides and shines in full effulgence, all comeliness, originality, receptivity, beauty, and joy.
The fact is, you cannot demonstrate the kingdom of heaven unless you demonstrate beauty and joy in everything.
There is not an ugly thing in heaven; not one idea could ever show forth anything less than infinite Soul, which means infinite beauty and joy. We will never come into an experience where we cannot see and appreciate beauty; where we will appreciate by thinking a spiritual sense, and not have any evidence of that fact. The fact is that the evidence is to accumulate and be more desirable and abiding than it is at present, because the kingdom of heaven is the kingdom of beauty.
Be sure that the kingdom of heaven is the kingdom of beauty. We need not think we can ignore the beauty of what we call the material world. The beauty is not material. We associate matter with beauty, but the beauty is eternal, and that eternality will appear in the measure that we cease to associate matter and personality with that beauty. (Incident of the roses.) These characteristics are not mere qualities, but they belong to Being; they belong to man; they are Soul.
“Mystery, miracle, sin, and death will disappear when it becomes fairly understood that the divine Mind controls man and man has no Mind but God.” (S&H 319:17-20) Thus the connecting link between divinity and humanity is seen to be your scientific, right thinking; and this right thinking is not gained by secondary reflection, but by expressing the original, by thinking as Mind, and you do not have to wait to do it.
“Soul” from 1937 College by Bicknell Young, page 64-66