Sunday, September 22nd, 2024 Roundtable
Overcoming Fear
This week’s Lesson Sermon Subject: Matter
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Morning Prayers
Do not look to matter to tell you your success but look up, for your harvest is right at hand. You know the Father’s love, trust it. Then when you hear a whisper, ‘Now you are a sinner and so and so is your punishment, this suffering is the consequence’, put it out; put it out. … O! May you feel the touch of the spiritual idea that is the light in your path!
— from Divinity Course and General Collectanea, (the “Blue Book”), by Mary Baker Eddy, page 204
Discussion points
103 — WATCH lest you fail to differentiate between the fundamental belief of fear, of which matter is the manifestation, and the fear produced in conscious thought, when the manifestation of that fundamental fear is discordant. You need a clear conception of the sequence, namely, that the fundamental fear causes disease, which in turn arouses fear, conjecture, dismay and confusion in conscious thought; otherwise you may believe that the sense of fear in conscious thought is the only fear one has to deal with, that it is this fear that produces the disease, and that its removal will heal the disease. This also explains why you may find yourself afflicted with some disease you never heard of and of which you had no conscious fear.
In Science and Health we are told that when the fear is removed, the patient is healed; but here Mrs. Eddy does not refer wholly to conscious, or secondary fear. It is true that the removal of conscious fear is necessary in order to gain entrance into the patient’s thought, just as the fear of a householder in whose house a fire has broken out must be removed before she will stop running around in a panic, and open the front door to the firemen.
When the secondary fear is removed, which is caused by the manifestation of discord, the way is opened for Truth to come in and destroy the primary fear, which is the fundamental belief in matter, or in a power apart from God.
This watching point is much needed, for many patients believe that their fear could not have produced their disease, because they found no fear in their conscious thought. They do not realize that latent, or primary fear may be formed in unconscious thought, the structural mind, a fear one is not aware of till he sees its manifestation. Therefore, it is latent fear that one finds manifested on the body, which, in turn, produces fear in conscious thought.
— from 500 Watching Points by Gilbert Carpenter
GOLDEN TEXT Psalm 56 : 11
“In God have I put my trust: I will not be afraid what man can do unto me.”
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Final Readings
So far as we know, all attempts at Christian worship have included Christian song. In Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians, he urges them to “be filled with the Spirit; speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.” In earlier times the singing of psalms comprised a major part of public worship, and now we have the use of ancient and modern religious poetry set to music as an essential part of church services. Our own Hymnal expresses the endeavor to bring into use for the Christian Science services the best that poetry, combined with music, affords.
It will be of interest to Christian Scientists to know of their revered Leader’s love of hymn singing, and that it brightened many of her hours. We all know how happy she was in expressing her thought poetically, and that many of her choicest poems have been set to music, especially for use as hymns and solos in our services, Christian song thus rightly and beautifully entering into our worship. All Christian Scientists do not know, however, that Mrs. Eddy was very fond of music, and especially of sacred songs. She frequently indulged herself to the extent of having songs and hymns sung for her in her home, and from the time she settled in the new home at Chestnut Hill, she devoted one room almost exclusively to this purpose. It was her custom every morning, before the daily routine of the household was fully entered into, to have some one of her helpers take a seat at the piano and play and sing for a longer or shorter period, sometimes as much as a full hour being devoted to this helpful, happy exercise. Quite as frequently she would call in all her helpers and ask for singing in concert, usually on these occasions selecting many of the hymns herself.
It is not unlikely that our friends throughout the Christian Science world would be happy to know what were some of the selections which she usually chose. Almost invariably the first hymn called for was the “Communion Doxology,” which appears on the first page of the Christian Science Hymnal. Then in turn, and with happy variations, she would ask for others, occasionally one of her own hymns, “O’er Waiting Harpstrings of the Mind,” or “Shepherd, Show Me How to Go,” and nearly every day, “Mother’s Evening Prayer.”
Mrs. Eddy had a rare memory for the hymns and songs of her earlier years, and often called for some which were sung in her childhood days. All who knew her, whether through her writings or by way of personal association, will readily admit that whatever the theme she touched upon, it at once glowed with new spiritual meaning, and it is surely our privilege to gain this same inspiration for ourselves, and to some extent at least to impart it to others, that the spiritual healing of Christian Science may have “free course, and be glorified.
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