Sunday November 14th, 2021 Roundtable
Man Is, Not Shall Be, Perfect and Immortal
This week’s Lesson Sermon Subject: Mortals and Immortals
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Morning Prayers
May God enable my students to take up the cross as I have done, and meet the pressing need of a proper preparation of heart to practise, teach, and live Christian Science! Your means of protection and defense from sin are, constant watchfulness and prayer that you enter not into temptation and are delivered from every claim of evil, till you intelligently know and demonstrate, in Science, that evil has neither prestige, power, nor existence, since God, good, is All-in-all.
Man is free born: he is neither the slave of sense, nor a silly ambler to the so-called pleasures and pains of self conscious matter. Man is God’s image and likeness; whatever is possible to God, is possible to man as God’s reflection.
— from Miscellaneous Writings, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 115 and 183
Discussion points
149 — WATCH lest you permit demonstration to become work, in the sense of its seeming a burden. The human conception of work, if permitted to obtrude into Science, takes away the joy and efficacy of scientific effort.
The scientific effort is not to establish good, but to realize that good is already established as a present reality. True work is not to make good everpresent, but to awaken to recognize it. Demonstration is hard work only when it is the effort to do something. It becomes a buoyant and triumphant joy, when it is the effort to recognize and realize that which God has already done. Only such a right endeavor will establish God’s will on earth, as it is in heaven, and will be unlabored.
— from 500 Watching Points by Gilbert Carpenter
GOLDEN TEXT: Genesis 1 : 26
“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”
Forum posts — Mortals and Immortals — November 14th, 2021
Article “Immortality Brought to Light” by Dorothy Rieke
“Behind a frowning providence He hides a shining face.”
The Christian Scientists at Mrs. Eddy’s home are the happiest group on earth. Their faces shine with the reflection of light and love; their footsteps are not weary; their thoughts are upward; their way is onward, and their light shines. The world is better for this happy group of Christian Scientists; Mrs. Eddy is happier because of them; God is glorified in His reflection of peace, love, joy.
When will mankind awake to know their present ownership of all good, and praise and love the spot where God dwells most conspicuously in His reflection of love and leadership ? When will the world waken to the privilege of knowing God, the liberty and glory of His presence, — where “He plants His footsteps in the sea And rides upon the storm.”
Mary Baker Eddy
Chestnut Hill, Mass., April 20, 1910
— from “A Pæan of Praise” Miscellany by Mary Baker Eddy, page 355-356
When we understand man’s true birthright, that he is “born, not … of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God,” we shall understand that man is the offspring of Spirit, and not of the flesh; recognize him through spiritual, and not material laws; and regard him as spiritual, and not material.
— from Miscellaneous Writings by Mary Baker Eddy, page 19-20
Serving the Lord is not limited to public worship. To serve is to do something, — to do something for one’s self and for others. It means the performance of the daily duties in the home, in the office, in the place of business. One serves when he does whatever is required of him, and whatever it is his duty to do. If he does so honestly, thoroughly, and gladly, he serves the Lord. One is in God’s presence all the time, and it is his privilege to know this; if he does, he is glad and sings. One may sing without being heard audibly. True singing includes right thinking, and the audible expression in song is in order at the opportune time. The results of true singing — whether audible or inaudible — are health and holiness, joy and peace, love to God and goodwill towards men.
One serves the Lord with gladness and comes before His presence with singing, when he does what God wants him to do, and what God has ordained that he shall do. Christian Science teaches that one’s real service or work is to reflect or to express God. Jesus did this. He said he could of himself do nothing: it was what the Father did that he did; it was not his own will, but the Father’s will that he sought and strove to do. Christian Science shows one how to serve the Lord with gladness, and how to come before His presence with singing; and this glad service and this joyful singing heal sickness and bring relief to every form of human distress. Christian Science is the new-old gospel of a present salvation.
— from “Glad Service” Christian Science Sentinel, March 14, 1925 by Brigman C. Odom
Final Readings
Some of mortal mind’s creeping things are expressed in the material body as age, obesity, anemia, deafness, failing eyesight, wrinkles, thinning hair, slowing up of organs, and many other conditions which even Christian Scientists accept as inevitable, and over which they exercise no control.
Where is our dominion with which we were endowed and about which we love to boast? Why do we, as Christian Scientists, permit these so-called creeping things to come upon us, or supinely accept them as beyond our control? And what are we going to do about them in the future?
These seeming conditions are not of God, and they are not the fact of man or body. They inhere in, or are evolved from, human belief, or what is called mortal mind; and by that is meant the material opinions of mankind. If we wish to rid ourselves of these untoward conditions, it stands to reason that we must oppose and overcome these opinions of mankind rather than accept them, and the only place we can overcome them is in our individual thinking. We, as Christian Scientists, are neglecting a very important part of our work when we just let these creeping things of mortal mind do what they will with us.
Then we say to ourselves, “O Lord, how long?” And the answer comes back, “Just as long as you deny My omnipresence.”
— from “Body Second Article” in Addresses by Martha Wilcox