Sunday March 21st, 2021 Roundtable
The Scientific Statement of Being
This week’s Lesson Sermon Subject: Matter
Click here to play the audio as you read:
Morning Prayers
The Christian Scientist’s Prayer – There is no matter and no mortal mind. God is All-in-all. All is harmony, health, holiness. This is the prayer ‘unceasing’ to be used on all occasions and at all times. It lays the axe at the root of unreality, materiality (that forbidden tree) and cuts it down. Preserve a sacred silence on this subject of prayer.
— from Divinity Course and General Collectanea, (the “Blue Book”), by Mary Baker Eddy, page 63
Discussion points
208 — WATCH lest you use the scientific statement of being, thinking you are being scientific, when your underlying purpose is the elimination of unpleasant or painful sensation, and are arguing the truth about matter and its so-called laws for the purpose of returning to pleasant sensation.
An airplane needs two wings in order to fly. Flight would be an impossibility if perchance one wing was frozen to the ground. If one seeks on the one hand to throw off painful sensation, and on the other to retain pleasurable sensation, he need not be surprised if his demonstration falls short of the skies and fails to accomplish its purpose.
The scientific statement of being embodies the spiritual truth that is designed to free one from the belief of the flesh, in order that his thought may assimilate itself to God, and he may awaken from this fleshly dream. But a one-sided use of it shows immaturity of thought and a weak application of its great power. Mrs. Eddy sought to rouse students to a broader comprehension and use of this rule, by including in her illustration of pleasurable sensation, that which the world does not frown upon, with that which is condemned by most thoughtful Christians.
— from 500 Watching Points by Gilbert Carpenter
Golden Text — “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God. For in him we live, and move, and have our being.” — Psalm 42 : 11; Acts 17 : 28
Article — “Gates of Heaven” Christian Science Journal February 1916, by Elizabeth Earl Jones
To enter into the heart of prayer, the door of the erring senses must be closed. Lips must be mute and materialism silent, that man may have audience with Spirit, the divine Principle, Love, which destroys all error.
— from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, page 15: 9-11
Our preconceptions of Truth will not help us to gain an understanding of Christian Science, but rather the reverse. A recent experience will serve to illustrate this point. A certain one remarked to us: “I repeat over and over again the Scientific Statement of Being, but I can’t understand it.” It states, “There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all. Spirit is immortal Truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore, man is not material; he is spiritual.” We replied to him: “Do you accept this statement as God’s word or simply as Mrs. Eddy’s opinion?” The answer was: “I accept it as Mrs. Eddy’s statement.” We replied: “Then you have not accepted Christian Science as the revealed Truth, but almost unconsciously are clinging to the belief that you really had an understanding of Truth before Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures was given to the world, and this is the very thought that admits a failure to understand the Scientific Statement of Being. This thought can only see Mrs. Eddy as a good woman personally, rather than in her true light as the inspired author of Science and Health, consequently you fail to discern the new idea, not having made room for it to come in.”
This is an error which many professing to believe in Christian Science seem unwilling to admit, and we shall certainly see nothing beyond profession until the past is cut off and belief gives way to understanding. It may be wise for us all to examine self on this very point to see whether we understand Science and Health to be an inspired work, or simply a human mind production for us to pick to pieces and revise at leisure. If accepting it blindly, by trying to make it harmonize with any of our old misconceptions, we shall fail to make it practical, either for ourselves or for others, and shall deserve the censure of our Master, when he says: “This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth and honoreth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.” (Matt. 15 : 8.)
— from “Christian Science, A Practical Religion”, by C. W. Chadwick
“Then as to the laws — the health laws of the States on the question of infectious and contagious diseases. How does Christian Science stand as to them?”
“I say, ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.’ We cannot force perfection on the world. Were vaccination of any avail, I should tremble for mankind; but, knowing it is not, and that the fear of catching smallpox is more dangerous than any material infection, I say: Where vaccination is compulsory, let your children be vaccinated, and see that your mind is in such a state that by your prayers vaccination will do the children no harm. So long as Christian Scientists obey the laws, I do not suppose their mental reservations will be thought to matter much. But every thought tells, and Christian Science will overthrow false knowledge in the end.”
— from Miscellany, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 344-345
Rather than quarrel over being vaccinated, I recommend that, if the law demand an individual to submit to this process, he obey the law; and then appeal to the gospel to save him from any bad results. Whatever change belongs to this century, or any epoch, we may safely submit to the providence of God, to common justice, individual rights and governmental usages.
from in Essays and Other Footprints (the “Red Book”), by Mary Baker Eddy, page 63
Testimony post — Prayer Provides Immunity and Contagious Disease Proved Powerless by Eaglet – PA.
Honesty is spiritual power. Dishonesty is human weakness, which forfeits divine help.
— from Science and Health, 1910, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 453
Article — “Materia Medica” from Watches, Prayers, and Arguments given by Mary Baker Eddy, pages 110-111
Article — Taking Offense by Mary Baker Eddy
The physical affirmation of disease should always be met with the mental negation. Stand porter at the door of thought. Admitting only such conclusions as you wish realized in bodily results, you will control yourself harmoniously. When the condition is present which you say induces disease, whether it be air, exercise, heredity, contagion, or accident, then perform your office as porter and shut out these unhealthy thoughts and fears.
— from Science and Health, 1910, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 392
…the human self must be evangelized. This task God demands us to accept lovingly to-day, and to abandon so fast as practical the material, and to work out the spiritual which determines the outward and actual.
— from Science and Health, 1910, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 254
Forum post — Matter – Nothing by Louise
If God does not recognize matter, how did Jesus, who was “the way, the truth, and the life,” cognize it?
Christ Jesus’ sense of matter was the opposite of that which mortals entertain: his nativity was a spiritual and immortal sense of the ideal world. His earthly mission was to translate substance into its original meaning, Mind. He walked upon the waves; he turned the water into wine; he healed the sick and the sinner; he raised the dead, and rolled away the stone from the door of his own tomb. His demonstration of Spirit virtually vanquished matter and its supposed laws. Walking the wave, he proved the fallacy of the theory that matter is substance; healing through Mind, he removed any supposition that matter is intelligent, or can recognize or express pain and pleasure. His triumph over the grave was an everlasting victory for Life; it demonstrated the lifelessness of matter, and the power and permanence of Spirit. He met and conquered the resistance of the world.
If you will admit, with me, that matter is neither substance, intelligence, nor Life, you may have all that is left of it; and you will have touched the hem of the garment of Jesus’ idea of matter, Christ was “the way;” since Life and Truth were the way that gave us, through a human person, a spiritual revelation of man’s possible earthly development.
— from Miscellaneous Writings by Mary Baker Eddy, page 74: 11
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.”
— Teaching and Addresses by Edward Kimball
A wise worker once said, “Be so instant in Truth that error is always too late.
— Sermons and Articles by Doris White Evans, page 70
Click here to play the audio as you read: — Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, Pages 390-393
1 — WATCH lest you attempt to do anything in Christian Science from any standpoint except that of joy. Our Leader’s hymn admonishes us to follow and rejoice all the rugged way. Work in Christian Science that is done joyously, has a power and effectiveness that work done as a solemn duty never has. If you seem to have lost your joy obey Mrs. Eddy’s command, “If your joy is lost, handle animal magnetism.” If this is properly done, your joy will return, and you can again take up your work. Our Leader once wrote to George Kinter, “Gladness and rejoicing are divine in essence, and their reward is manifold in its effect.”
If you should fall through the ice, you would become further imprisoned if you attempted to swim at once for the shore. The first thing to do is to rise. Then you can clamber onto the surface of the ice and walk to shore. This rising to the surface symbolizes the lightening of thought necessary, in preparation for all effort in Christian Science. “The hope of the righteous shall be gladness.” Prov. 10:28.
— Watching Point 1 from 500 Watching Points by Gilbert Carpenter
Forum post — “Wonderfully Sustained by Truth – Part 1” by Parthens
There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all.
— from “The Scientific Statement of Being”Science and Health, 1910, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 468
Final Readings
Man and the Universe Translated
How shall we translate man and the universe back into Spirit? We do this by knowing and feeling that Spirit, Mind, or Conscious Life, lives in all things and as all things. All things are the spiritual evidence of Mind.
There should be a feeling of infinite tenderness towards the things of Spirit which are here before us, even though we see them now as through a glass darkly. We can never behold the creations of Spirit at hand, so long as we see things as matter, or illusions, or nothing, and try to destroy them. The work of a Christian Scientist “is to discern the spiritual fact of whatever the material senses behold.” Only in this way can man and universe be translated back into Spirit.
In our present stage of understanding, we are not viewing things and forms as we shall view them when we open our perception wider, and live Reality more abundantly. Jesus said, John 10:10, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” As we experience perfect life more abundantly, we begin to view everything about us in a more perfect way. And as we discern the spiritual fact of all things, the material accompaniments such as inanimate life, weight, density, solidity, finiteness, impermanence, insecurity, uncertainty, time and place will vanish from our consciousness and human experience.
Spiritual objects are forms of spiritual thought, and “thought will finally be understood and seen in all form, substance, and color, but without material accompaniments.” (S&H 310:6)
The revealment or the disclosure of infinite Mind as ideas and forms is constant and eternal, and these higher revealments is what our Leader has termed states and stages of consciousness. Jesus said, John 14:2, “In my Father’s house (infinite Being) are many mansions,” that is, there are many higher and continuous revealments of Perfection or the things of Reality. Jesus demonstrated that the spiritual fact was the thing at hand, and that it was to be seen and utilized right in the midst of his human experience. So we are to utilize the thing in our midst, and see that our human experiences and the spiritual fact is now the same thing, and the only thing.
Under the marginal reference “Scientific Translations”, Mrs. Eddy says, “Emerge gently from matter into Spirit. Think not to thwart the spiritual ultimate of all things, but come naturally into Spirit through better health and morals and as the result of spiritual growth.” (S&H 485:14) That is, emerge gently into your successive stages of consciousness, and let your demonstrations keep pace with your successive stages.
One lady said to me, “I fear I shall emerge too gently,” and someone else is trying to take the kingdom of heaven by violence. “Therefore are its spiritual gates not captured, nor its golden streets invaded.” (Ret. 79:27) This anxiety results from separating any stage of consciousness from its divine source, and considering it other than the spiritual fact.
It is always best to be temperate in thought, word, and deed, and if translation means the carrying forward of the states and stages of human consciousness into successive, higher modes of experience, this can be done only by degrees. God’s work is finished; His idea man, is finished; all creation is finished; and all will appear as finished and spiritual from the infinitesimal to infinity as we, individually, discern the spiritual fact of all that we behold.
— from Addresses by Martha Wilcox, page 252