Sunday, February 23rd, 2025 Roundtable
He That is Perfect in Knowledge is With Thee
This week’s Lesson Sermon Subject: Mind
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Morning Prayer
There is one Mind, and this Mind is yours and mine, and governs us. All our thoughts come to us from this Mind, and go back to their Source. There is no other Mind to tempt, to harm, or to control. Know this, and you are the master of the occasion, master of yourself and others.
from Mary Baker Eddy’s Lessons of the Seventh Day, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 338
Declare every morning: I feel fine, I cannot be discouraged, dismayed, confused, influenced, or in any way affected by mortal mind. No thought, conscious or unconscious, felt or unfelt, known or unknown, no power seen or unseen, can in any way touch me, unless it originates in divine Mind.
from Mary Baker Eddy’s Lessons of the Seventh Day, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 342
Daily Watch
111 — WATCH that you draw a sharp line of distinction between that improved condition of the human mind which is described in Science and Health, page 128: 6, and that state where, the human mind having been eliminated, man is governed wholly by divine Mind.
It is a necessary step in progress to improve the human mind to the point where having been stimulated and impregnated with Truth, its endurance is enhanced and its capabilities are improved; but this temporary condition should not be mistaken for the attainment of divine Mind.
The discipline and purification of the human mind by Truth belongs to the early stages of growth in Christian Science. The effect of Truth on the human mind caused our Leader to declare that students of this Science should excel in whatever they undertake. But she did not want them to feel that they were governed by God, when they had merely impregnated the human mind with the “grain of Truth” that one gains in his early study, and that does wonders for mortals.
It is an indication of progress when one has let enough truth into thought to improve his beliefs; but the real student of Science does not begin to appear until one sees the need of putting the human mind entirely under foot, so that one may declare, “I will do my best to make the demonstration to have God talk through me, or I will be silent, when I have not made the demonstration of reflection. I will strive not to let pride cause me to use a substitute. I will seek silence rather than voice that which is not the result of demonstration.” … Divine Mind is not attained until the human mind is put off.
Discussion points
Pond and Purpose by Mary Baker Eddy
Twelve Years with Mary Baker Eddy by Irving Tomlinson
Destiny of the Mother Church by Bliss Knapp
Mary Baker Eddy, Her Spiritual Footsteps by Gilbert Carpenter
Love has a plan and purpose for everyone to fulfill and none can escape it, or fail to perform the will of God. — Mary Baker Eddy
Daily Calendar Statement for Sunday, February 23rd, 2025
Immortal ideas, pure, perfect, and enduring, are transmitted by the divine Mind through divine Science, which corrects error with truth and demands spiritual thoughts, divine concepts, to the end that they may produce harmonious results.
from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 259
The student who heals by teaching and teaches by healing, will graduate under divine honors, which are the only appropriate seals for Christian Science.
from Miscellaneous Writings, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 358
To Mrs. Annie M. Knott, C.S.D., principal of the Detroit Christian Science Institute, she gave warning that the time might come when medical thought * might be so organized that it would make the practice of Christian Science almost impossible. The remedy given was not the counter power of Christian Science churches, but:
When [that] time comes I want my students to take every means possible to make Science and Health available to the whole world.
from Mary Baker Eddy’s Six Days of Revelation, the green book, by 321
To David Easton, who later became the pastor of the Boston church, she wrote: “If you will make a study of Science and Health for one month and go through the book as you’would any textbook in college, it will be of great advantage to you.” And to another she wrote: “God wrote the textbook. Study it; let God speak to you!”
from Mary Baker Eddy’s Six Days of Revelation, the green book, by 321
MATERIA MEDICA
There is no power, intelligence or principle, mesmeric or hypnotic, in materia medica, as individual or collective mind. Therefore, it cannot blind nor hypnotize mortals, through human beliefs or will-power, from seeking the true healing, as it is in Christ Jesus and Christian Science.
There is but one Physician, because there is but one Mind; whose medicine is Truth; which destroys all error; whose attraction is Love, which casteth out all fear. This is the one Mind, which was also in Christ Jesus, and this Mind alone can draw all men unto Him — divine Love.
Materia medica cannot hide under the guise of hygiene, witchcraft, magic, spiritualism, mind-cure, faith-cure, or any other subtle form of carnality, for to be carnally-minded is death. Man (I) cannot be bewitched or mesmerized by alluring or high sounding phrases or methods, nor by any personality, individual or collective, which substitutes matter and materia medica for the healing power of Truth, Christ. The nothingness and impotence of materia medica is demonstrated through divine Science by its loyal students, who reflect divine intelligence, which destroys any claim of intelligence not in God, good, divine Mind. To enmity’s own hell of ignorance, superstition, hypocrisy and hatred, justice consigns the lie, which would slay man in order to satisfy its own beliefs in materia medica and false theology. God made man immortal and in His image, the image of His own eternity, and to this end gave him dominion over all the earth, over all the works of His hands. This is the Truth of being, and nothing can change the Truth into a lie. Nothing can wrest man out of the Father’s hand, for ‘It is He who hath made us, and not we ourselves,’ and hath given us life everlasting. Therefore, health, harmony and immortality are the everlasting facts of being. It is so.”
from Watches, Prayers, and Arguments, as given by Mary Baker Eddy, pages 110 to 111
I Timothy 6:10
For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
Another aspect of great help to us is that the divine Mind is all that feels. I quote: “Thou shalt not admit that error is something . . . to feel or be felt” (Unity of Good, p. 22). “Mind, not matter . . . feels” (Science and Health, p. 485). There are not two kinds of feeling, mortal and divine, comfortable and painful, happy and depressed. Just think of the freedom and comfort due to the fact that the divine Mind alone is capable of feeling! The divine Mind, your Mind, is ceaselessly feeling, experiencing, its own unalterable perfection, totally separate from any mortal concept.
In the very place and at the very moment where the misconception might suggest, “I feel weary, I feel pain, I feel age creeping on,” all that is really going on is the one and only I, ceaselessly, naturally and effortlessly feeling the bliss of the one and only Life. This divine I, Cause and effect, knows Itself in terms of harmony, wholeness and beauty—knowing only (and I quote)
“. . . His own all-presence, all-knowledge, all-power” (Unity of Good, p. 27). The Allness of Truth permits nothing but Itself. It permits nothing, and bears witness to nothing, but its own infinite nature, which is your nature.
…“What joy I am and feel! What peace, strength, vigour I am and feel!
from Addresses and Other Writings on Christian Science, by Doris Dufour Henty
…I enjoy the touch of weakness, pain, and all suffering of the flesh, because it compels me to seek the remedy for it, and to find happiness, apart from the personal senses.
from Miscellaneous Writings, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 200
Trials are proofs of God’s care.
from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 66
The Healing Mind, from the Christian Science Sentinel, March 10, 1917, by Samuel Greenwood
Golden Text: Job 36 : 4
“He that is perfect in knowledge is with thee.”
John 8:29
And he that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him.
The individuality created by God is not carnivorous, as witness the millennial estate pictured by Isaiah: —
The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb,
And the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
And the calf and the young lion, and the fatling together;
And a little child shall lead them.
from Watches, Prayers, and Arguments, as given by Mary Baker Eddy, page 514
Looking Always For Good By Stokes Anthony Bennett
8. 89 : 18-24
Mind is not necessarily dependent upon educational processes. It possesses of itself all beauty and poetry, and the power of expressing them. Spirit, God, is heard when the senses are silent.
Final Readings
Poet
For an instant of eternity,
He plucked the strings of an angel’s harp.
from Triumph and other poems by Max Dunaway
Inspiration
I listened for God’s thoughts: none came.
Vainly I pleaded, called upon His name,
Promised to obey whatever I should hear
And let His message guide me, but none fell upon my ear.
So, turning to a task at hand,
I did it well; then suddenly a band
Of angel thoughts swept in with heart-uplifting call
And whispered holy things till I could scarcely count them all.
Unhindered, inspiration flows
From doing faithfully the good one knows.
Fidelity will open wide the golden door
Through which God’s holy messages of love and light must pour.
from Triumph and other poems by Max Dunaway