Sunday, June 30th, 2024 Roundtable

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

We, to-day, in this class-room, are enough to convert the world if we are of one Mind; for then the whole world will feel the influence of this Mind; as when the earth was without form, and Mind spake and form appeared.

— from Miscellaneous Writings by Mary Baker Eddy, page 279: 27-2

178 — WATCH lest you continue to mix the spiritual method with human desire, and believe yourself to be a progressive Christian Scientist. Mortals bring into Christian Science the human desire for ease and comfort in matter, and attempt to mix this with the spiritual method, which has for its purpose to free mortals from illusion. If they are not progressive, they will continue to use this method as an easier way of obtaining and maintaining human health and prosperity, than a material one. Such an attitude fails to perceive the value in human affliction.

Grass that is watered too much does not put its roots down far enough to find the water that will last through a dry summer. A student who is able to maintain continuous human harmony, never gets his roots very deep into divine Mind.

It sounds odd to say that if one does not watch, he will find himself tempted to use demonstration so that he can stop demonstrating. Mortal man yearns to find security in matter, and brings this desire with him into Science. Yet the right goal should be to reach the point where one cannot get along without demonstration, and must demonstrate every day in order to eat, sleep, walk, talk, and even exist! Only in this way will human weakness be dissolved in divine strength. Why? Because demonstration means learning to rely utterly on God.

We should not be found adopting the infinite method of Christian Science to attain the finite goal of false theology! A mortal who is prosperous, healthy, and merely refrains from certain things that are considered sinful, is not the ideal in Christian Science. We are seeking to throw off a finite sense of man so that God’s man will appear.

— from 500 Watching Points by Gilbert Carpenter

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GOLDEN TEXT: PSALM 107 : 20

“He sent his word, and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions.”

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The material senses are always crying out for “peace, peace; when there is no peace.” They are ever asking, “Art thou come hither to torment us before the time?” They look for comfort and satisfaction in matter; and since it is quickly seen that Christian Science stands for the reality of good and good alone, students may believe therein has been found that which will always insure immediate relief from all that is discordant and unpleasant in matter, while allowing them still to rest in the belief of good in matter. They are therefore more or less loath to enter upon that digestion of the “primal elements, of Truth and Love” which uncovers the entire falsity of materiality, and which is necessary before the reality of spiritual good can be realized.

In “The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany” (p. 230), in an article entitled “Mental Digestion,” Mrs. Eddy writes: “Scientific pathology illustrates the digestion of spiritual nutriment as both sweet and bitter,—sweet in expectancy and bitter in experience or during the senses’ assimilation thereof, and digested only when Soul silences the dyspepsia of sense.” Here is the reason why all must eat the bitter herbs and drink the hemlock cup! Because nothing to which the material senses testifies is true or anything like the truth, every claim they present must be uncovered as false, and rebuked and annulled by Soul, by that spiritual evidence which reverses the lying suppositions of both good and evil in matter. This of course human belief resists; hence the bitterness!

— “Compassion” (excerpt) from Christian Science Sentinel, February 6, 1926 by Ella W. Hoag

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Article — The United States of America by Bicknell Young

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“SENT” — by Parthens

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Scriptures is full of allusions to the doing of errands in the furtherance of God’s work and will which surely redeems either the task or its accomplishment from triviality, however the world and its toilers may regard both. In the one hundred and seventh psalm we read, “He sent his word, and healed them.” Isaiah alludes to this sending of the divine Word, accompanied by the assurance that it should prosper in the thing whereto God sent it. The prophet himself was sent by God to proclaim the ultimate deliverance of the Israelites from the distresses their own faulty following had brought upon them, and his great reward was in being given the special errand of foretelling the coming upon earth of one who would so undeviatingly obey the divine sending as to stand forth to the world throughout all ages as “the way.”

John the Baptist, the Messianic herald, was “a man sent from God,” who adhered so closely to his assigned errand as to incur the murderous enmity of those whose divergence from the right caused them to resent the message he proclaimed. The one born blind was sent by Jesus on an errand to the pool of Siloam, a spot difficult of access and, for him, seemingly almost impossible to reach; but his obedience was unquestioning and was gloriously rewarded,—”he went … and came seeing.” Jesus sent his disciples, the twelve and later the seventy, on errands, to carry and show the healing message to the needy in Palestine. They obeyed, and returned with joy to bring their report to him.

But the divine sending, foretold by the prophet and carried out in varying degree whatever responsive hearts were found, was most clearly revealed to the world in the third chapter of John’s gospel, wherein we read that God sent His Son “that the world through him might be saved.” And the divine doing of this errand was patiently and lovingly accomplished by Jesus the Christ in his brief period of earthly life and ministry. Jesus early recognized that he was sent upon his Father’s errand, and declared that he must be about his Father’s business. Despite delays and hardships he permitted nothing to hinder him from constantly proving his sonship with God, and that he was to redeem and save the world.

— “Sent” (excerpt) from Christian Science Sentinel, December 13, 1924 by Mary I. Mesechre

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There was never any danger that Christianity as a whole, or Christian healing in particular, would be lost. “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away,” said the Master. Nevertheless, because some of the essential teachings of Christ Jesus were temporarily obscured, the world experienced a great deal of needless suffering. Therefore, although as Christian Scientists we have our Leader’s assurance, “No human pen nor tongue taught me the Science contained in this book, Science And Health; and neither tongue nor pen can overthrow it” (Science and Health, p. 110), it is still necessary to guard our thought, at this the second appearing of the healing truth, against the same qualities of the carnal mind which have sought throughout the ages to deflect Truth’s course.

— “The Circle” (excerpt) from Christian Science Journal, November 1920 by Wanda Willson Whitman

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Final Readings