Bible Study from January 27th, 2024

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The Philistines, indeed, were the hereditary enemies of Israel. They represented brute force and insolent pride and heathen worship, as opposed to higher thoughts of duty and justice, and the presence and power of God with His people. The name “Philistine” has been used in modern times, accordingly, to represent stupidity and opposition to light and knowledge and advancement and “sweet reasonableness.”

— “The Philistines” (excerpt) By W. J. Knox Little, M. A. from Bible Hub.com

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153 — WATCH lest you accept the common notion that the small power represented by David’s little stone, overthrew a great power, called Goliath. David, as the visible representative and manifestation of the omnipotence of divine Mind, was the invincible giant, equipped with infinite power that overthrew Goliath, whose power lay wholly in deception through size.

The trick of the mesmerism of sense testimony, is to reverse everything, magnifying the nothingness of error so that it seems like a giant, and belittling the power and presence of Spirit.

Thus, when we come to a problem that seems gigantic, we should not ask God for more power; we should handle animal magnetism, that our eyes may be opened to see things in their proper relationship and size. Then we will recognize ourselves as representatives of God equipped with omnipotence, going forth to meet a foe no more to be feared than a sparrow.

Christian Science does not equip man with greater and greater power, so that he may go forth to meet the gigantic forces of evil; but it takes from his eyes the magnifying glasses of sense testimony, which cause error to loom up as real, swollen in size and power.

Once a boy was told that the high-stepping horses of the gay nineties were trained to step high, by putting magnifying glasses on them, so that small stones would appear as boulders in their path. In this way they would lift their feet much higher than was necessary, to step over them, and thus become high-steppers.

Whether this story is true or not, it does illustrate the fact that the belief of matter birth puts mortal mind’s glasses of material vision on mortals, so that the pigmy of human powerlessness and nothingness is swollen to appear as a Goliath of power and vengeance. When spiritual understanding takes away this distortion, and enables man to have a clear vision, he beholds the utter nothingness of nothing, and the great fact of God’s allness. In this way the Goliath of mortal mind is vanquished.

— from 500 Watching Points by Gilbert Carpenter

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What you have to meet is a fear; and what pacifies fear does not destroy it. Take your weapon that kills it, the First Commandment; and with that cut off its head.

— from Divinity Course and General Collectanea, the “Blue Book,” by Mary Baker Eddy, page 209

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The spirit of the boy David lives again in the Leader of Christian Science. “In this revolutionary period, like the shepherd-boy with his sling, woman goes forth to battle with Goliath,” Mary Baker Eddy writes on page 268 of Science and Health. Of the same royal line of moral courage, reflecting the same beauty of holiness, trusting in the same God of Israel, ever forgiving her enemies, she leads her people for a triumphant entry into the spiritual Jerusalem, the everlasting city.

— “The Boy David” (excerpt) from The Christian Science Journal, May 1919, By William D. McCrackan

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There was no spiritual Jesus of Nazareth. The spiritual Jesus is after the similitude of the Father, without personality or finity.

One taint of worldliness, human pride, or self-will, by demoralizing his motives would have dethroned his power.

To carry out his holy purpose he must be oblivious of self.

Of the lineage of David, like him he went forth simple as the shepherd boy to disarm the Goliath. Panoplied with the strength of an exalted hope, faith, and understanding, he conquered the three in one of error — the world, the flesh, and the devil.

— “The Personal And The Impersonal Saviour” (excerpt) from The Christian Science Journal, February 1889, By Mary B. G. Eddy (This article was later revised and republished in Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896: 161:1-168:20)

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Saul, who would clothe David with armor, represents those Christians who would use the world’s means to conquer the world. Goliath, who saw only David’s staff and overlooked the sling which was the means of his defeat and death, represents the world which ridicules the Church for its apparent weakness, and knows nothing of the mighty power of the Holy Spirit which the Church has at its command. David, who was not afraid of Goliath’s great weapons and show of strength, and who did not even depend on his own weapons, but on the Lord, represents the good soldier of Jesus Christ who relies not on his own strength but on the mighty power of God, and goes bravely forth to the apparently unequal conflict with the world and the evil of the world, confident of victory through the ever-present help of the Lord whom he serves.

— “Methods of fighting by Saul, Goliath, and David” (excerpt) from The Christian Science Sentinel, August 29, 1903, By The Watchman

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Article — “A Treatment for Every Day” by Mary Baker Eddy

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