Sunday February 28th, 2021 Roundtable
Blessed is He, Whosoever Shall Not Be Offended in Me
This week’s Lesson Sermon Subject: Christ Jesus
Click here to play the audio as you read:
Morning Prayers
Have no will opposed to God. Meekness is not weakness. It is ‘not my will but Thine be done,’ throwing ourselves into God’s power.
Know that you – your God-reflected self – has God-health, God-peace, God-happiness, etc. and that the evil one or devil cannot take this from you.
Trust in God and leave evil to do its own work of self-destruction. Always overcome evil with good. Never descend to the warfare between evil and human will trying to do God’s will. But forgive all offences and Love every enemy you may think you have.
Watch and pray against becoming worldly; also for spiritual sense to govern all your motives and acts.
Human will may trespass on divine law; corporeal sense may hide health, and truth, as the mist obscures the mountain; but Science subordinates human will and is the sunshine of Truth which melts the shadow and reveals the substance. Follow my teachings only so far as they follow Christ’s in word and deed.
— from Divinity Course and General Collectanea, (the “Blue Book”), by Mary Baker Eddy, pages 95, 96, 173
Discussion Points
29 — WATCH lest in your effort to study and understand Christian Science, your thought overbalance on, or incline to the side of intellectual comprehension at the expense of demonstration. Man’s spiritual growth is like a tree in which the superstructure, representing man’s comprehension of the truth, must keep a proper balance with the roots, illustrating man’s demonstration of his understanding and ability to withstand the storms. Ministers who become Christian Scientists have a difficult time, because their old religious training enables them to grasp the theory of Science much more readily than the average student; they are apt to become top heavy, because they have taken in a great deal of truth which they have not demonstrated, and, therefore, which they do not really comprehend. In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy tells us that we understand only what we can demonstrate. Consistent spiritual progress is the effort to build up a comprehension of absolute truth, with a corresponding effort to put new ideas into practice as fast as they are revealed. This maintains a right balance between precept and practice.
— from 500 Watching Points by Gilbert Carpenter
Golden Text — “In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” – Christ Jesus, John 16 : 33
Bulletin Board — Watch 29 growing towards the light, rooted in truth by Ron in NC
Click here to play the audio as you read: — Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, Pages 390-393
True practice, as our Leader says, is also teaching. “He who heals by teaching and teaches by healing, will graduate under divine honors.”
— from Class of 1923 Notes, by Joseph Mann
Article — Taking Offense by Mary Baker Eddy
The Christian Scientist has enlisted to lessen evil, disease, and death; and he will overcome them by understanding their nothingness and the allness of God, or good.
— from Science and Health, 1910, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 450
Forum post — “Blessed is he…” by Joanne from FL
Forum post — “Whom say ye that I am? – Part 1” by Louise from MO
Forum post — “Whom say ye that I am? – Part 2” by Louise from MO
Forum post — Touch not, taste not, handle not the rudiments of the world by Jeremy from NJ
Mortal mind has never been kind enough to me to make me want to linger in it.
— Mary Baker Eddy
The world conquers me when it draws me away from God, when it makes me its slave, when it coaxes me to trust it. . . . when it comes between me and God, when it fills my desires, when it absorbs my energies, when it blinds my eyes to the things unseen and eternal. I conquer the world when I put my foot upon its temptations, when I crush it down, when I shake off its bonds, and when nothing . . . prevents me from cleaving to my Father with all my heart, and from living as His child here.
— McLaren Commentary
Final Readings
Good – None Beside
From Science and Health, pages 442 and 494) –
“When Christ changes a belief of sin or of sickness into a better belief, then belief melts into spiritual understanding, and sin, disease, and death disappear.”
“Our Master cast out devils (evils) and healed the sick. It should be said of his followers also, that they cast fear and all evil out of themselves and others and heal the sick. God will heal the sick through man, whenever man is governed by God. Truth casts out error now as surely as it did nineteen centuries ago. ”
“Gospel” means “good news.” We know from the first chapter of Genesis that God — which is another word for Good — created all things good. “Very good,” in fact. The only news that heaven reports is the Gospel, or news of the Good – omnipotent Good, omnipresent Good, omniscient Good, omni-active Good.
Thus, there is no room for laws and ordinances based on the bad-news-anti-Gospel creation story of Genesis 2 to come against Good or Good’s image and likeness. Furthermore, Good’s image and likeness is complete and complicit in this omnipotent Good, “which is the head all principality and power.” (Col. 2:10)
Relevant here is this excerpt from Mrs. Eddy’s letter to Eldridge and Melinda Smith in 1882. written from Washington, D.C.(archived in the Mary Baker Eddy Library):
The relation that Jesus sustains to the race is not primarily as a teacher but an inspirer of faith, understanding, immortal hopes and divine love. Now my dear students, catch those heavenly echoes and send them resounding along the dim corridors of time.
The highest cannot be put into words for words would limit what is infinite. There is a greater power than speech, the power of Being, yea, of Life. Speech is of man; Life, Spirit, is of God. Herein is the atonement, the power and science of Jesus was his divine Truth, that saved from sin, sickness and death. Now, my dear children, possess yourselves of this divine power, yea, of this Truth and you are saved — and you will save and heal others.
Be not afraid of the storms that beat against this rock. They can never overthrow the superstructures built thereon. The enemy is at work in Washington, and we have at last learned what the old dragon is and what he is not. He has not horns or hoofs, but he claims personality, for he is the error that says, “The ‘I’ is a personal intelligence instead of the impersonal Good. And thus, I can go to minds mortal and breathe into their thoughts lies, temptations, and fears — and win them over to error.”
But, dear ones, “Resist this devil and he will flee from you. Draw near unto God and He will draw near unto you.” A mental malpractice is this Satan unchained for a season. Watch that your house be not broken open. What I say unto you I say unto all: Watch.
—Forum Post this week by Parthens