Sunday, April 27th, 2025 Roundtable
Handle the Belief of Evil With the Allness of God
This week’s Lesson Sermon Subject: Probation After Death
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Morning Prayer
Goodness never fails to receive its reward, for goodness makes life a blessing. As an active portion of one stupendous whole, goodness identifies man with universal good. Thus may each member of this church rise above the oft-repeated inquiry, What am I? to the scientific response: I am able to impart truth, health, and happiness, and this is my rock of salvation and my reason for existing.
from Miscellany, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 165
Oh God, I ask for Love divine to lead me, not to be tempted or yield to temptation in any way. I ask for wisdom and grace to know and do just what God would have me do….
from Divinity Course and General Collectanea, (the “Blue Book”), by Mary Baker Eddy, page 275
Daily Watch
95 — WATCH lest the phrase, “The fear of the Lord,” offend you so much that you seek to interpret it by softening the meaning of the word fear… Our Leader once declared, “The fear of the Lord is a wholesome idea.”
When the Lord, or the spirit of understanding, comes to you, it brings you fear, not of mortal mind, but of the effects of continuing to let it control you, since in belief it shuts you off from God. This is the beginning of wisdom, because it is the first step out of bondage. The student should be afraid to let his thought be overshadowed by mortal belief, not because he is afraid of a lie, or what the lie claims to do, but of what it means to have a distorted sense of omnipotent good.
The fear of the Lord might be defined as a fear to offend God by accepting a finite or sinful sense of man and the universe. God is perfect and His creation is perfect. We should fear lest we accept or believe anything less than that high standard. If one understands the nature of omnipotence, he will fear to misuse or misconceive of it in the slightest degree.
Mortal man is kept in line through fear of matter, suffering, punishment, medical law, etc. In Science we need a certain measure of fear to take the place of this, to keep us in line prior to the point where we gain such a love for God, good, that no other incentive is necessary.
Discussion points
Never absent from your post, never off guard, never ill-humored, never unready to work for God,
from Miscellaneous Writings, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 116
Golden Text: I John 5 : 11
“God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.”
Probation
Moral trial; the state of man in the present life, in which he has the opportunity of proving his character and being qualified for a happier state.
The 1828 Webster’s Dictionary
Man’s probation after death is the necessity of his immortality; for good dies not and evil is self-destructive, therefore evil must be mortal and self-destroyed. If man should not progress after death, but should remain in error, he would be inevitably self-annihilated. Those upon whom “the second death hath no power” are those who progress here and hereafter out of evil, their mortal element, and into good that is immortal; thus laying off the material beliefs that war against Spirit, and putting on the spiritual elements in divine Science.
from Miscellaneous Writings, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 2
Very gently the Teacher asked if any would translate passages from the Bible into the new tongue for her, and started the first young man who volunteered on Luke 24:1. The second to volunteer was Mrs. Mims and the Teacher called her to the platform to sit by her side saying she wanted all to see her. When she translated the second verse of Luke 24 (“And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre.”) Mrs. Mims started by saying, “The stone was the concentrated human belief that life was limited, and they saw that Life had rolled it away and that man was immortal — that he was never born and never dies.” But she did not stop there. She went on to say:
They saw what our beloved mother has through Science and Health enabled us to see. Through the book we have seen all that they saw and more, and we owe it all to her, to this beloved one who is God’s messenger today.
After she had returned to her seat, the Mother said that she had given a beautiful exegesis but “I have one fault to find — it was not necessary to mention me.” The class was deeply moved: one arose, and with eyes full of tears said, “Mother, how could we forget you?” Judge Hanna stood and in heart-rending tones said:
Mother, let me tell you this. Sometimes all the machinations of evil that are conceivable to the human mind seem to be hurled at us, and sometimes for days the world seems black. Every argument that the ingenuity of evil can suggest whispers, trying to hide your mission, and the light returns only when we see you as you are the revelator of this Truth.
The spontaneity of the occasion was beautiful to behold as one after another arose and expressed the importance to him of acknowledging the Mother’s position. A strange wonderful look of humility and self-effacement was on her face along with tears of joy. Then she responded:
My dear children, if you had not seen it, I should have had to teach you this. I could not have avoided telling you that when my students become blinded to me as the one through whom Truth has come in this age, they miss the path. I would have had to tell you.
from The Founding by Doris Grekel, pages 365 to 366
You need to learn to love me more. — Mary Baker Eddy
If the right thinker and worker’s servitude is duly valued, he is not thereby worshipped. One’s idol is by no means his servant, but his master. And they who love a good work or good workers are themselves workers who appreciate a life, and labor to awake the slumbering capability of man. And what the best thinker and worker has said and done, they are not far from saying and doing. As a rule the Adam-race are not apt to worship the pioneer of spiritual ideas, — but ofttimes to shun him as their tormentor. Only the good man loves the right thinker and worker, and cannot worship him, for that would destroy this man’s goodness.
from Message for 1900 , by Mary Baker Eddy
Who can declare what loving hearts have done?
All silent and alone they stand,
Fulfilling daily Love’s command
Until they shall come forth with victory won.
Like him who toiled along the rugged slope
That led him to Golgotha’s hill
To prove to men they could not kill
The life that lived in love, in faith, in hope.
Or she, who in a lonely attic room
Communed with God for love of men;
Till He should move her waiting pen
To write the book whose light should banish gloom.
O we cannot repay them for such good.
But we can let our lives declare
How richly did their own lives bear
And do the works that prove our gratitude.
The methods of Animal Magnetism, especially its secret work, should be exposed. This alone can protect the people from a future Reign of Terror, far surpassing any terrorism of the Dark Ages. One has nothing to fear from this evil if he is conscious of its presence and, on the basis of Christian Science, understands it impotence.
from Essays and Other Footprints, (the “Red Book”), by Mary Baker Eddy, page 280
Rather than quarrel over vaccination, I recommend, if the law demand, that an individual submit to this process, that he obey the law, and then appeal to the gospel to save him from bad physical results.
from Miscellaneous Writings, by Mary Baker Eddy, pages 219 to 220
1. 6 : 14-17
To reach heaven, the harmony of being, we must understand the divine Principle of being.
“God is Love.”
Responsive Reading: I John 3
14. … He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.
15. Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.
The Brother’s Keeper by Mary Brookins
Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals.
from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, pages 476 to 477
Love, The Only Life by Ira W. Packard
3. John 12
25 He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.
Philippians 2:12
…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
Ephesians 3:20-21
20 Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us,
21 Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.