Sunday, July 13th, 2025 Roundtable
One God, One Affection, One Way
This week’s Lesson Sermon Subject: Sacrament
Click here to play the audio as you read:
Morning Prayer
Set your affections on things above; love one another; commune at the table of our Lord in one spirit; worship in spirit and in truth; and if daily adoring, imploring, and living the divine Life, Truth, Love, thou shalt partake of the bread that cometh down from heaven, drink of the cup of salvation, and be baptized in Spirit.
from Christian Science versus Pantheism, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 14
Daily Watch
416 — WATCH lest, in your zeal to go forward and to do God’s work, you use human will without subordinating it to Truth. The way to build through spiritual power and to build up confidence in spiritual power, is first to know that of yourself you can do nothing. Then you must realize that because the power of God is with you, you can do all things; that nothing can stay its hand; that it is always successful; and that there is no conceivable collection of falsity that can stand before it.
If you do not start with this realization, you are apt to use the human will alone. If, when the need comes to exercise spiritual power, you start right in without this proper preliminary of realizing that of yourself you can do nothing, — without this deflation of self — and that what you are carrying to the problem is wholly the power of God, the power that holds the universe as you would hold a rubber ball, you are not subordinating the power of the human will to Truth. You must not start to build until you get the right thing to build. First realize the power that you represent — the infinite law of which you are the custodian — and then take that to the problem.
Discussion points
I wish as an act of justice that you hold sacredly in your memory that I assume no good or power of myself, that to God alone I ascribe all love, wisdom and power, the All-in-all, the all good; that I am absolutely nothing, a mere instrument in God’s hands to be used as He will. This is the only position for anyone of us to be in.
from Divinity Course and General Collectanea, (the “Blue Book”), by Mary Baker Eddy, page 213
Psalm 46:10
Be still, and know that I am God: …
Communion Services by Ella W. Hoag
Now, thank God, I have at least one student in Boston that promises to be a Healer such as I have long waited and hoped to see. Oh may the Love that looks on you and all guide your every thought and act up to the impersonal, spiritual model that is the only ideal- and constitutes the only scientific Healer.
To this glorious end I ask you to still press on, and have no other am bition or aim. A real scientific Healer is the highest position attainable in this sphere of being. Its altitude is far above a Teacher or preacher; it includes all that is divinely high and holy. Darling, James, leave behind all else and strive for this great achievement. Mother sighs to see how much her students need this attainment and longs to live to see one Christian Scientist attain it. Your aid to reach this goal is spiritualization. To achieve this you must have one God, one affection, one way, one Mind. Society, flattery, popularity are temptations in your pursuit of growth spiritual. Avoid them as much as in you lies. Pray daily, never miss praying, no matter how often: “Lead me not into temptation,”-scientifically rendered,- Lead me not to lose sight of strict purity, clean pure thoughts; let all my thoughts and aims be high, unselfish, charitable, meek,- spiritually minded. With this altitude of thought your mind is losing materiality and gaining spirituality and this is the state of mind that heals the sick. My new book will do you much good. Do not purchase one, Mother wants to give you one. I welcome you into the sanctum of my fold. God bless you.
from The Founding by Doris Grekel, page 293
6. 586 : 23-25
Gethsemane. Patient woe; the human yielding to the divine; love meeting no response, but still remaining love.
Thy Will Be Done, from the November 7, 1903 issue of the Christian Science Sentinel by J. R. Mosley
Attic Room, Lynn by Max Dunaway
PRAYER
Dear God, that I might prove
Of some worth to You.
Triumph and Other Poems by Max Dunaway
The passing on of Mrs. Knapp on March 15th needs to be carefully analyzed. On page 134 of the book written by Bliss Knapp about his father and mother, we learn that Mrs. Knapp was doing magnificent healing work at this time. He goes on to write, “In the latter part of February, 1898, she gave a most impressive testimony in The Mother Church. She spoke briefly of some of these healings, and then told of her own experience as an invalid, and of her quick recovery under Christian Science treatment….After she had seated herself, she again arose, and in a tone never to be forgotten, said, ‘For which of these works do ye stone me.’” These words indicate that she had progressed to a point, where she was feeling the opposition of animal magnetism for her good works. Her sudden passing on two weeks later, showed that she fell a victim of it.
Did animal magnetism kill Mrs. Knapp? Nothing can ever affect man apart from his own fear and belief; but when one reaches the point in growth where he believes and fears that the dogs of animal magnetism are after him, that belief will finish him on earth, if he does not change his thinking about it.
In her instructions in regard to animal magnetism, Mrs. Eddy was not educating her followers to believe that something was after them, but to awaken to realize that nothing was after them! Her task became difficult, not because mortals are not glad to be released from suffering, but because as they go through life with a rich appreciation of all of its pleasures and resources, they are unwilling to be told that they are to a great degree handled by animal magnetism. The end of every phase of mortal sense is the same, whether one is taken to that end through steps that are agreeable or disagreeable. …
When Mary Beecher Longyear moved to Brookline, she asked Mrs. Eddy to recommend a student near at hand to whom she might turn in time of need. Our Leader declined to do so, telling her to select one who knew Christian Science history. The deduction is that a knowledge of how error attacked Mrs. Eddy and the Cause down through the years, would give a worker an advantage in handling error for another, beyond what an understanding of Science gained through a mere study of the textbook would give. He would be one who knew the more subtle modes of error’s activities, and be aware of its claims, as it had been apparently successful for a time in dogging Mrs. Eddy’s footsteps, until she was able to see its nothingness.
Both Laura Sargent and Mr. Neal knew Christian Science history. They could easily have diagnosed Mrs. Knapp’s trouble as an obsession of animal magnetism; a continual suggestion that she was being persecuted through jealousy, that this persecution was real and that it was something from which she needed protection, — since without it she could not stand up against the suggestion. Obviously she hoped, by standing in the church and asserting what she did, that those who were persecuting her, would stop doing so, or see how unjust such persecution was.
Mrs. Knapp mistook the action of error. Immediately those who had not been aware of the situation, became aware of it, and through sympathy began to malpractice on her inadvertently, by holding her in the sense that she was being persecuted, and hence that she was to be pitied. It was a metaphysical mistake for her to rise up, and call for reinforcements to help her to fight animal magnetism. Her act proved that, while she was loyal to her Leader’s demand to uncover error, she had overlooked the vital sequel as expressed in the textbook, page 346, “Disbelief in error destroys error and leads to the discernment of Truth.” Her sickness was self-mesmerism.
Commentary on the May 31, 1898 letter as found in Mary Baker Eddy, Her Spiritual Precepts, by Gilbert Carpenter
Love your enemies by Mary Baker Eddy
Daily Calendar Statement for Sunday, July 13th, 2025
“Whatever forces growth and drives man to God, is a true friend.” — Gilbert C. Carpenter