Sunday, April 20th, 2025 Roundtable
Protective Work in Christian Science
This week’s Lesson Sermon Subject: Doctrine Of Atonement
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Morning Prayer
Easter — Resurrection. We must be resurrected; must put off the old man and put on the new.
If you dress for Easter, your clothes are all in keeping — are clean. You do not put on some clean ones and some soiled ones. Neither can you put on part of the new man and part of the old; you must put on the whole of the new man — the spiritual idea.
from Divinity Course and General Collectanea, (the “Blue Book”), by Mary Baker Eddy, page 27
May this glad Easter morn find the members of this dear church having a pure peace, a fresh joy, a clear vision of heaven here, — heaven within us, — and an awakened sense of the risen Christ. May long lines of light span the horizon of their hope and brighten their faith with a dawn that knows no twilight and no night. May those who discourse music to-day, sing as the angels heaven’s symphonies that come to earth.
May the dear Sunday School children always be gathering Easter lilies of love with happy hearts and ripening goodness. To-day may they find some sweet scents and beautiful blossoms in their Leader’s love, which she sends to them this glad morn in the flowers and the cross from Pleasant View, smiling upon them.
from Miscellany, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 155
Daily Watch
10 — WATCH lest, in your effort to educate your thought along spiritual lines, you forget that you are not trying to learn something new to you, since, as a child of God, you already have access to the precious gems of truth hidden in divine consciousness, and are only working to dig up the spiritual thought through which you may reflect all true knowledge. The only thing the advancing student has to learn that is new to God’s child is a knowledge of the operation of evil, and this should be a disappearing knowledge, since, when one has disposed of evil, he should no longer carry along a knowledge of its operation.
A man suffering from amnesia, or loss of memory, is not trying to learn something. He does not need an education. He needs to have his memory restored. A veil of belief has been drawn across his consciousness, which temporarily shuts off his recollection of his real self. This describes man’s dilemma from the spiritual standpoint. Man has not really lost his spiritual selfhood and its relation to God; he has merely lost sight of it. Thus the work of Christian Science is to restore man’s soul, which in turn brings to light his unity with God.
Discussion points
[Love] restoreth my soul [spiritual sense]:
from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 578
In these days, when the material world seems to have lost its balance and all sense of values, we can have no better rules of life than those given by Christ Jesus and our Leader. Jesus announced, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). Our Leader said, “My world has sprung from Spirit, / In ever-lasting day” (Miscellaneous Writings, p. vii). These two witnesses, Jesus and our Leader, have found the same king-dom—the real universe, untouched by the troubles and trials of material sense. …
I quote Miscellaneous Writings, p. 174: “What is the kingdom of heaven? The abode of Spirit, the realm of the real. . . . Is this kingdom afar off? No: it is ever-present here. . . . The kingdom of heaven is the reign of divine Science: it is a mental state. Jesus said it is within you .
Here is a most important point. The kingdom of heaven is a mental state, and it is within us. Jesus placed the onus upon us. He did not accept human government or man-made laws as a reason for our lack of security or abundance. He said, “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:2 1). This realm is divine consciousness. There is not more of it in one country than in another, or in one government than another. …
Not all the material governments on earth can stop God from manifesting Himself as you.
Addresses and Other Writings on Christian Science by Doris Dufour Henty
Divine Science has rolled away the stone from the sepulchre of our Lord; and there has risen to the awakened thought the majestic atonement of divine Love. The at-one-ment with Christ has appeared — not through vicarious suffering, whereby the just obtain a pardon for the unjust, — but through the eternal law of justice; wherein sinners suffer for their own sins, repent, forsake sin, love God, and keep His commandments, thence to receive the reward of righteousness: salvation from sin, not through the death of a man, but through a divine Life, which is our Redeemer.
from Miscellaneous Writings, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 123
EASTER DAY
“Easter Day,” said I, “should be observed
With reverent thanks for life renewed.”
At church I heard the holy Word
And sang glad hymns of gratitude,
Then meditated on love too great
For lips to speak or words to say.
“It is good,” said I, “to glorify
The Master thus on Easter Day.”
But when the day had turned to night,
Somehow I felt an unnamed gloom.
I tossed and turned and strangely yearned
To learn the lesson of a tomb—
An empty tomb, within whose walls
The crucified no longer lay.
What holy prayer was uttered there
To bring about an Easter Day?
There Life shone through the dark of death
And its false promise of relief;
The wonder of that faultless love
That would not yield to hate or grief!
Ah, well indeed that men should raise
Their hymns of gladness and should pray;
But, oh, my heart, have you had part
With Truth and known Christ’s Easter Day?
Rise from your self-made sepulcher
And know the glory of Spirit’s might.
From every grave Love’s power can save
And bring mankind into the light.
And, oh, what peace unspeakable
The resurrection will convey!
In that glad morn of joy newborn
Walk forth with Christ on Easter Day.
Triumph and Other Poems by Max Dunaway
24 : 11-13
He to whom “the arm of the Lord” is revealed will believe our report, and rise into newness of life with regeneration.
From a 2016 Post
“Webster’s 1828 Dictionary defines “regeneration” as: “new birth by the grace of God; that change by which the will and natural enmity of man to God and his law are subdued, and a principle of supreme love to God and his law, or holy affections, are implanted in the heart.” This is what Christian Science does for all of us. Such an infinitely wonderful change!”
2017 Post on Isaiah 5
“51:5 My righteousness is near; my salvation is gone forth, and mine arms shall judge the people; the isles shall wait upon me, and on mine arm shall they trust.”
From “Is There No Death?” in Unity of Good by Mary Baker Eddy, page 37
“Who hath believed our report?” Who understands these sayings? He to whom the arm of the Lord is revealed. He loves them from whom divine Science removes human weakness by divine strength, and who unveil the Messiah, whose name is Wonderful.
Man has no underived power. That selfhood is false which opposes itself to God, claims another father, and denies spiritual sonship; but as many as receive the knowledge of God in Science must reflect, in some degree, the power of Him who gave and giveth man dominion over all the earth.
What Jesus Say? by David Keyston
Submitted by Parthens
A very powerful Watch statement relevant here is from the Glossary in Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy:
“WIND. That which indicates the might of omnipotence and the movements of God’s spiritual government, encompassing all things.”
Mrs. Eddy pointed out that Christianity is symbolically one of the four walls of the holy city, in which we live, move, and have our being, and so it feels right at this time to recall some of the great revivals in Christian history that were brought on by extensive, importunate prayer, followed by a “rushing mighty wind“, like the Day of Pentecost, the two Great Awakenings, and the Azusa Street Revival, etc.
We have the duty, the right, and privilege to command the “four winds” of spiritual dominion to sweep over every square inch of the Earth from every direction, as never before, removing everything unlike itself until Spirit, whose right it is to reign, shall reign.
In her chapter on the Apocalypse, Mrs. Eddy describes what these mighty, world-transforming “winds” carry in their eternal, unstoppable currents: “This sacred city . . . ‘lieth foursquare’ . . .
Northward . . . the North Star, the Word, the polar magnet of Revelation; eastward, to the star seen by the Wisemen of the Orient, who followed it to the manger of Jesus; southward, to the genial tropics, with the Southern Cross in the skies, — the Cross of Calvary, which binds human society into solemn union; westward, to the grand realization of the Golden Shore of Love and the Peaceful Sea of Harmony.”
Let the fourfold wind of Spirit cover the Earth as the waters cover the sea!
Regarding mass-madness and mass-moral-idiocy – Since God is all-knowing, so ignorance and brainwashing of all stripes, no matter how much they appear to be multiplying, are not a part of creation, hence have no origin whatsoever in our parent Mind, and this understanding — that the chaos of many minds against each other and the one Mind that made us mentally upright — can subdue ignorance and mesmeric programming, so that all can be clothed in their right mind, which is Mind.
Scripture teaches us that the insanity of King Nebuchadnezzar and Saul of Tarsus was short-lived.
Gilbert Carpenter on the ‘Judas Thought’
It was Mrs. Eddy’s necessity growing out of her Christly love, to protect the lambs that needed protection. In Matt. 12:20 we read, “A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench, till he send forth judgment unto victory.”
When Peter denied the Master, he yielded to the influence of evil inadvertently; so he was a bruised reed, in contrast to Judas who was harboring evil in the name of good. Peter was subject to the fiery darts of the evil one, because of the good he was accomplishing; but he was not a wilful sinner.
On the other hand, Judas had been harboring phases of the human mind that seemed good to him, and nothing but the fire of suffering would awaken him to see the error of his way, and thus rouse him to reformation. He was a smoking flax that should not be quenched, until the fire of purification had done its work.
Thus the Master’s statement is a call to use spiritual judgment in dealing with mortals, lest on the one hand we seek to break one who has already been bruised by error, or on the other to “spare through false pity the consuming tares,” as Mrs. Eddy writes on page 18 of her Message for 1902.
We are all Judases, in that we all have faults that need to be overcome. There are faults that resist and close the door on Truth, more than others. A fault may be called a “Judas fault” when a student harbors it, because he does not see or acknowledge the need of demonstrating over it.
The Bible indicates that it was Judas’ love of money that betrayed him. He saw no harm in retaining an appreciation of its value and purchasing power, as well as of his practical ability in handling it. It was as if he felt that this trait fitted in with his spiritual activities, enabling him to be the one who watched over the finances of the disciples; so he did not handle the error, and finally it became the obstacle that shut him off from God.
Every student of Mrs. Eddy who failed, who became disloyal or who went apart in paths devious, did so because of human traits that they could or would not see were inimical to spiritual progress. Finally these errors created a deterrent that barred further progress. Knowing this fact students should look themselves over for any lurking “Judas faults.” As Mrs. Eddy writes on page 128 of Miscellany, “Ofttimes examine yourselves, and see if there be found anywhere a deterrent of Truth and Love, and ‘hold fast that which is good.’”
Christian Science Protective Work by Bicknell Young
July 2017 issue of Love is the Liberator: “Cast Out Demons”
Final Readings
Govern my desire, dear God, and You will govern me,
For who can separate a man from what he longs to be?
Through right desire a man receives the answer to his prayer.
It grasps upon the thing he craves and clings steadfastly there.
Whatever obstacle would interfere must fall at last.
It cannot halt the deep desire that holds its vision fast,
By his desire is man enslaved, or else by it made free.
Govern my desire, dear God, and You will govern me.