Sunday, April 21st, 2024 Roundtable
Preserving a Sense of Unity With Your Divine Source
This week’s Lesson Sermon Subject: Doctrine Of Atonement
Click here to play the audio as you read:
Morning Prayers
May meekness, mercy, and love dwell forever in the hearts of those who worship in this tabernacle: then will they receive the heritage that God has prepared for His people, — made ready for the pure in affection, the meek in spirit, the worshipper in truth, the follower of good.
Thus founded upon the rock of Christ, when storm and tempest beat against this sure foundation, you, safely sheltered in the strong tower of hope, faith, and Love, are God’s nestlings; and He will hide you in His feathers till the storm has passed. Into His haven of Soul there enters no element of earth to cast out angels, to silence the right intuition which guides you safely home.
— from Miscellaneous Writings, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 152
Unity is oneness with God and man. It is the bond of peace; it keeps the first commandment and obeys the golden rule. It rejoices with those that rejoice and ministers to such as mourn. It is the bond of perfectness.
— from Divinity Course and General Collectanea, (the “Blue Book”), by Mary Baker Eddy, page 130
Discussion points
402 — WATCH that you realize that you have never been cut off from God, and never can be. Cut flowers soon die, even though they may be preserved for a time in water. If we believe that we have been cut off from God and placed in the water of mortal mind, we will be dogged by the claims of limitation, finiteness and death. The claim of personality, that is used to frighten so many students, is no more than the suggestion that man can be cut off from God and still live. Read Miscellaneous Writings 97:32.
— from 500 Watching Points by Gilbert Carpenter
GOLDEN TEXT: LUKE 15 : 31
“Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.”
Article — “Serving Continually” by Louise Knight Wheatley
Book — Mary Baker Eddy, Her Spiritual Footsteps by Gilbert Carpenter
All that man can have or need or legitimately hope for is already supplied by divine Love, and it is but a deceptive argument of error which makes one believe he cannot know this all the time, and enjoy the blessings that come from this active and continuous knowing. “Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine,” applies to those who abide in this true knowledge. It was the prodigal, separated by belief from his divine origin, who soon became poor, and he regained his supply when he remembered his sonship with the Father. So do we need to purify thought of all that is unlike good, of all faith in matter and materialism, and hold strongly to good as the infinite source and resource, from whom all blessings flow, who has all, gives all, and is All.
“Source And Resource”(excerpt) from Christian Science Journal, January 1909 by Edward Everett Norwood
Article — “Dominion Within”, Dominion Within by Rev. G. A. Kratzer
The Master said, “I can of mine own self do nothing;” “the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works; … that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” God is the only good, and His goodness is made visible through us and through all other real things. It is possible by an effort of the human will to appear peaceful and patient, but we cannot by our own exertions be peaceful or patient; nor by the same means can we possess faith, love, joy, and spiritual power, — these are qualities of the divine Mind, and are seen in us not because we try to express them, but because God manifests them in His ideas.
Similarly, the flowers, lakes, hills, and trees do not by their own endeavors express the purity and beauty, the strength and glory of the divine Mind, but divine Mind may be revealed to us through right concepts of them. Man is the highest idea of infinite Mind, and was made in His image and likeness. If we, then, realize to some extent that the infinite Mind is here, and that our true selfhood naturally manifests that Mind, it follows that we have a certainty of life, a consciousness of strength, “an anchor of the soul, … which entereth into that within the veil.” We cannot by any exertions on our part reject mortality, with its sickness and sin, and become at-one with God and live henceforth as the expression of divine Mind. God alone has made us and all creation the manifestation of Mind. In the knowledge of this Principle of spiritual law there lies peace and confidence and power, from which we cannot be parted by the clamorous waves and winds of material sense.
“Strong Consolation”(excerpt) from Christian Science Journal, April 1913 by S. A. Tirbutt
Article — Three Essential Statements by Mary Beth Singleterry
The record of Jesus’ earth-life portrays his unalterable, inviolate unity with God, and nothing short of his understanding of this spiritual unity could have enabled him to express at all times and under all circumstances the power of the divine nature in the overcoming of every mode and form of evil.
When Jesus said to his disciples, “The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works,” he revealed the secret of the success of his entire life-work. Because men have not understood the full import of Jesus’ work as the Way-shower to all mankind, they have failed to see that in these words of his there is the assurance to all men of such a unity with the Father.
“The Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works”! …In “Retrospection and Introspection” (p. 28) Mrs. Eddy says, “He must be ours practically, guiding our every thought and action; else we cannot understand the omnipresence of good sufficiently to demonstrate, even in part, the Science of the perfect Mind and divine healing.”
… All the divine thoughts of which we are conscious are indeed from the Father expressing Himself through His children. And what a marvelous vista of joy and gladness does such a realization unfold! With such a consciousness, how impossible would it be to entertain as real any opposing belief in evil! To be conscious of dwelling with Spirit would certainly exclude all belief in matter as real or as having law or power. To be conscious of dwelling with Truth and Love would be the law of annihilation to all belief of error and hate. To be conscious of dwelling with Life would be the transforming power to all belief in inaction, inability, limitation. Even to catch a glimpse of our unity with God as His perfect spiritual child is to place our feet on that immovable Rock from which all storms of material sense are powerless to move us.
Then whatever the circumstances or condition, whatever the multiform problems with which a Christian Scientist may be confronted, his great necessity is to know that God is at hand doing the works. He should be sure that he divests himself of the false responsibility which would make him believe that he has something to do of himself unaided, since such a mistaken mental attitude invariably binds him with the chains of limitation and fear; and he will be all too apt to look upon the error of belief, which must be proved unreal, as a formidable something.
On the other hand, to start with the understanding that the only real activity is always the activity of divine Mind expressing itself through its ideas, and that he as the child of God is in and of this activity, starts him out with the sense of assurance that nothing can be impossible to him.
Jesus never failed, because he never once admitted that he could do anything apart from God. This did not tempt him into a belief that he could ever be mentally inactive; but, on the contrary, he was ever awake to every argument of any activity apart from the divine. Nothing so reveals to us the claims of error as the understanding of the omnipresence of God. The consciousness that the Father is ever present will uncover to the human consciousness every belief in another presence and power. But having begun with the truth of being, that “the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works,” we have not only the means for the exposure of all evil, but also the method of its annihilation.
“The Father… He Doeth The Works”(excerpt) from Christian Science Journal, February 1928 By Ella W. Hoag
Final Readings
How can we do this Christianly scientific work? By intrenching ourselves in the knowledge that our true temple is no human fabrication, but the superstructure of Truth, reared on the foundation of Love, and pinnacled in Life. Such being its nature, how can our godly temple possibly be demolished, or even disturbed? Can eternity end? Can Life die? Can Truth be uncertain? Can Love be less than boundless? Referring to this temple, our Master said: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” He also said: “The kingdom of God is within you.” Know, then, that you possess sovereign power to think and act rightly, and that nothing can dispossess you of this heritage and trespass on Love. If you maintain this position, who or what can cause you to sin or suffer? Our surety is in our confidence that we are indeed dwellers in Truth and Love, man’s eternal mansion. Such a heavenly assurance ends all warfare, and bids tumult cease, for the good fight we have waged is over, and divine Love gives us the true sense of victory. “They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of Thy house; and Thou shalt make them drink of the river of Thy pleasures.” No longer are we of the church militant, but of the church triumphant; and with Job of old we exclaim, “Yet in my flesh shall I see God.” The river of
His pleasures is a tributary of divine Love, whose living waters have their source in God, and flow into everlasting Life. We drink of this river when all human desires are quenched, satisfied with what is pleasing to the divine Mind.
Perchance some one of you may say, “The evidence of spiritual verity in me is so small that I am afraid. I feel so far from victory over the flesh that to reach out for a
present realization of my hope savors of temerity. Because of my own unfitness for such a spiritual animus my strength is naught and my faith fails.” O thou “weak and infirm of purpose.” Jesus said, “Be not afraid”!
“What if the little rain should say,
‘So small a drop as I
Can ne’er refresh a drooping earth,
I’ll tarry in the sky.'”
Is not a man metaphysically and mathematically number one, a unit, and therefore whole number, governed and protected by his divine Principle, God? You have simply to preserve a scientific, positive sense of unity with your divine source, and daily demonstrate this. Then you will find that one is as important a factor as duodecillions in being and doing right, and thus demonstrating deific Principle. A dewdrop reflects the sun. Each of Christ’s little ones reflects the infinite One, and therefore is the seer’s declaration true, that “one on God’s side is a majority.”
A single drop of water may help to hide the stars, or crown the tree with blossoms.
Who lives in good, lives also in God, — lives in all Life, through all space. His is an individual kingdom, his diadem a crown of crowns. His existence is deathless, forever unfolding its eternal Principle. Wait patiently on illimitable Love, the lord and giver of Life. Reflect this Life, and with it cometh the full power of being. “They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of Thy house.”
“Dedicatory Sermon” (excerpt) from Pulpit and Press, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 2-4