Sunday, January 19th, 2025 Roundtable
You Are On the Road to Eternal Life
This week’s Lesson Sermon Subject: Life
Click here to play the audio as you read:
Morning Prayer
(1884) Love is a mighty spiritual force.
(1887) Let the good you can do and the stimulation of action keep your mind from dwelling on the past, for the present demands your care, and you must go forth to meet the future calm and strong. God is your refuge and a strong deliverer. He will hide you under His wings till the storms are past and the sunlight of His presence cheers and invigorates you with new strength and exaltation. …
Yes, He who clothes the lilies will tend you and gird you with strength in Truth and Love, and so establish the labor of your hands in His vineyard. Never distrust, never doubt the All-Love, for it never faileth. As your day, so shall your strength be. Be patient, and let faith grow stronger and stronger each day of this pilgrimage.
from Divinity Course and General Collectanea, (the “Blue Book”), by Mary Baker Eddy, page 139
Daily Watch
93 — WATCH lest your anticipation of future good tend to nullify your present effort. The successful in this world are not those who waste time in the present by looking forward perhaps to receiving an inheritance, when some rich relative dies. One should face the fact that he will have in the future exactly what he works for now.
This same proposition should be held as true in the mental realm. The metaphysician’s effort is to level the valleys of regret in the past, and the mountains of anticipation, so that his work is seen to lie wholly in the eternal now.
Christian Science exposes the error of future anticipation, showing that time fulfills none of its promises to bring blessings. Mrs. Eddy calls time a mortal divisor, and declares that we must take advantage of time, not let time take advantage of us. We should make use of it in the sense that it will be the alchemy that turns present right effort into right results.
False theology is based on an exaltation of the future that belittles the present moment, teaching that man’s joys lie in some future state called heaven. Believing this, mortal man resembles a donkey with a wisp of hay tied on the end of a stick in front of his nose. No matter how much he may go ahead, he can never reach the hay.
Future expectation has been defined as the scourge of mortal life, and there is a danger of bringing this curse into Christian Science. It is a curse because it tricks one into placing his blessings where he cannot reach them. No man can manifest or experience heaven so long as he considers that it lies in the future. Behold, now is the accepted time. Behold, now is the time to realize that tomorrow holds nothing that cannot be found in today. Let us accept as a present reality the blessings which now belong to man as a gift of God, blessings which mortal mind can only anticipate, and hence, never attain.
Discussion points
Realize for yourself and all each day, clear and strong, that the Christ, Truth, does not merely open “the windows of heaven” for us, or promise us heaven, but the knowledge of the Christ in Christian Science is heaven here and now. This knowledge of Truth, as it is taught in Science, is heaven’s open door for all. (page 37)
Things to handle daily, from Watches, Prayers, and Arguments given by Mary Baker Eddy
God is Individual Consciousness by Bicknell Young
Improve Your Time by Mary Baker Eddy
Ecclesiastes 3:15
15 That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past.
Matthew 6:34
Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
John 14:10
… the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.
The King’s Speech – Lionel Logue and the Christian Science question
7. 428
It is a sin to believe that aught can overpower omnipotent and eternal Life, and this Life must be brought to light by the understanding that there is no death, as well as by other graces of Spirit.
9. 493
Who dares to doubt this consummate test of the power and willingness of divine Mind to hold man forever intact in his perfect state, and to govern man’s entire action?
4. 245 : 27 only
Impossibilities never occur.
Hebrews 11:6
But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
Matthew 9:29
… According to your faith be it unto you.
The blood, heart, lungs, brain, etc., have nothing to do with Life, God. Every function of the real man is governed by the divine Mind. The human mind has no power to kill or to cure, and it has no control over God’s man. The divine Mind that made man maintains His own image and likeness. The human mind is opposed to God and must be put off, as St. Paul declares. All that really exists is the divine Mind and its idea, and in this Mind the entire being is found harmonious and eternal. The straight and narrow way is to see and acknowledge this fact, yield to this power, and follow the leadings of truth.
from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 151
Maintain
MAINTA’IN, verb transitive [Latin manus and teneo.]
1. To hold, preserve or keep in any particular state or condition; to support; to sustain; not to suffer to fail or decline; as, to maintain a certain degree of heat in a furnace; to maintain the digestive process or powers of the stomach; to maintain the fertility of soil; to maintain present character or reputation.
2. To hold; to keep; not to lose or surrender; as, to maintain a place or post.
3. To continue; not to suffer to cease; as, to maintain a conversation.
4. To keep up; to uphold; to support the expense of; as, to maintain state or equipage.
What maintains one vice would bring up two children.
5. To support with food, clothing and other conveniences; as, to maintain a family by trade or labor.
6. To support by intellectual powers, or by force of reason; as, to maintain an argument.
7. To support; to defend; to vindicate; to justify; to prove to be just; as, to maintain one’s right or cause.
8. To support by assertion or argument; to affirm.
In tragedy and satire, I maintain that this age and the last have excelled the ancients.
Neither you nor I are living Life, but conscious Life is living you and me eternally.
from Addresses, by Martha Wilcox, page 200
Classification and Limitation by John M. Dean
Eternal Life by Duncan Sinclair
Christian Scientists, be a law to yourselves that mental malpractice cannot harm you either when asleep or when awake.
from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 442
There Is No Law of Death by Herbert W. Eustace
Time Is Not Toxic by Mary Beth Singleterry
Daily Calendar Statement for Tuesday, January 7th, 2025
Instead of being bound for the grave we must know we are on the eternal road of Life, that has no sense of death.
— Mary Baker Eddy
God’s preparations for the sick are potions of His own qualities.
from Miscellaneous Writings, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 268
Reverse the case. Stand porter at the door of thought.
from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 392
Genesis 1:24
And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
Final Readings
“While I was commanding officer of the First Ship’s company, California State Guard, and charged with protection of the water supply at its under-water crossing of San Francisco Bay, I was once engaged in bringing a small patrol boat from Sacramento to Dumbarton Point. I was accompanied by one of my petty officers and a civilian. We had been underway for about 8 hours with a moderately rough sea, and I had taken the wheel on the bridge deck of the boat. Suddenly the petty officer came to the bridge and said, ‘Sir, something is wrong with the man below. I think he is gone.’ I ordered him to take the wheel and I went below and found that the man had fallen out of his bunk and was lying on the deck.
He was unconscious; his eyes were set; there was no sign of breathing, and there were other evidences of his having passed on.
For a moment I wondered whether I should put the boat about and proceed to the nearest pier to secure the aid of a doctor, as this man was not interested in Christian Science. Then the thought came to me that there is only one Physician and He is omnipresent. The Golden Text in that week’s lesson sermon was ‘For God hath not given us the spirit of fear ; but of power and of love and of a sound mind.'(II Timothy 1:7) This kept recurring to me and enabled me to master the sense of confusion.
I knelt beside him, declaring audibly, ‘God is your Life,’ repeating it over and over, and asking if he could hear me. I also asked him to repeat after me, ‘God is my Life.’ In a very few minutes I saw him attempting to say something, perhaps trying to repeat the truths I was declaring. In about 20 minutes he became conscious and I was able to convey to him the truth about his spiritual heritage. Soon after this he was able to sit up, and in another half-hour, by the time we reached our destination, he walked ashore with very little help.
The other man was amazed at his quick recovery and kept repeating, ‘I don’t know how you did it!’ Of course I knew that I had had no hand in the matter, as it was the normal operation of divine Mind which we all had witnessed.
Afterward I had the opportunity to present some of the facts of Christian Science to this man. He acknowledged that it was due to Christian Science that his healing had been accomplished. He also said that he had felt as if he were drifting off but kept hearing me at a great distance repeating ‘God is your Life.’ He said this seemed to be pulling him back even as he was drifting farther away. At the present time I understand that this man is in the best of health and has suffered no ill effects from his experience.
Christian Science Wartime Activities, 1939-1946, page 411