Sunday, March 16th, 2025 Roundtable
Don’t Give Up on Your Healing
This week’s Lesson Sermon Subject: Substance
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Morning Prayer
No aggressive mortal suggestion can cause me to forget my duty to God, to our Leader, or to mankind. Mind is unlimited in its source and supply. Man’s substance is in Mind, and cannot be impoverished. There is no poverty, no lack. Fear is no part of consciousness. Consciousness is cognizant only of the things of God, good. There is no reality in discord. God’s child cannot suffer and be unhappy, because God is the only power and He never made anything but love and peace. …
I am exempt from want, loss, lack or limitation of any kind. There is no material resistance that can limit me. ‘The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.’
from Divinity Course and General Collectanea, (the “Blue Book”), by Mary Baker Eddy, pages 49 and 50
Daily Watch
129 — WATCH lest you misunderstand the scientific process of eliminating matter, and destroying the objects of sense. Realize that things appear to be material only because we have mistaken effect for cause, and placed life, substance and intelligence outside of ourselves as something apart from mind. When we learn the error of matter, we are liable to believe that God calls upon us to despise it. Thus we find students hating their bodies, hating money, hating their food, feeling that it is a mockery to have to fuss with matter so much.
As a matter of fact we should love money, love food, love our bodies as channels for God’s spiritual ideas, and realize that it is only a lie that tells us that they are material, or channels for mortal mind. It is this lie that we are to hate and to destroy. When we love money, for instance, we are never to admit that it has passed from the realm of cause as an idea of substance, down into effect, or shadow.
Our task is to withdraw from the objects of sense all belief of life, truth, intelligence and substance, in order to give these qualities back to Mind, where they belong. Then, we can see all things in creation as symbols pointing to God, with God back of them. The objects of sense will then disappear as matter, and God’s spiritual ideas will appear.
Discussion points
Scientific Translations, from Addresses by Martha Wilcox
Regarding citation 6 Science and Health: “As God is substance, and man is the divine image and likeness…“
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life, … That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ. — JOHN, First Epistle.
Here I stand. I can do no otherwise; so help me God! Amen! — MARTIN LUTHER.
Materialistic challenge
In the material world, thought has brought to light with great rapidity many useful wonders. With like activity have thought’s swift pinions been rising towards the realm of the real, to the spiritual cause of those lower things which give impulse to inquiry. Belief in a material basis, from which may be deduced all rationality, is slowly yielding to the idea of a metaphysical basis, looking away from matter to Mind as the cause of every effect. Materialistic hypotheses challenge metaphysics to meet in final combat. In this revolutionary period, like the shepherd-boy with his sling, woman goes forth to battle with Goliath.
from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 268
I Samuel 17 : 45
45 Then said David to the Philistine, Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied.
From the Sunday, February 23rd, 2025 Lesson on Subject — Mind
Ecclesiastes 9 : 13-15 (to ; )
13 This wisdom have I seen also under the sun, and it seemed great unto me:
14 There was a little city, and few men within it; and there came a great king against it, and besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it:
15 Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city;
There are evil beliefs, often called evil spirits; but these evils are not Spirit, for there is no evil in Spirit. Because God is Spirit, evil becomes more apparent and obnoxious proportionately as we advance spiritually, until it disappears from our lives.
from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, pages 206-207
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” — Edmund Burke
Children should be allowed to remain children in knowledge, and should become men and women only through growth in the understanding of man’s higher nature.
from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 62
Chastity is the cement of civilization and progress. Without it there is no stability in society, and without it one cannot attain the Science of Life.
from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 57
Spirit means substance. Spiritual means substantial. In this light it is important that we become more sure each day of actual substance.
Spirit signifies self-existent substance. Nothing is ever destroyed. There is not a single material object in the universe. All is spiritual. Principle, Mind, Soul, Life, are the cause of creation, and they are wholly mental, spiritual, tangible substance.
1937 College by Bicknell Young
Golden Text: II Kings 25 : 30
“And his allowance was a continual allowance given him of the king, a daily rate for every day, all the days of his life.”
“A continual allowance” by Frances M. Gorrell
Let unselfishness, goodness, mercy, justice, health, holiness, love — the kingdom of heaven — reign within us, and sin, disease, and death will diminish until they finally disappear.
from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 248
AFTER YOU HAVE SUFFERED
“The God of all grace,.. .” the Apostle said (with a gentle smile,
perhaps, who can say?), “After that ye have suffered a while,
make you perfect, stahlish, strengthen, settle you.”
But I have been appalled at what I first must do.
After I have suffered? Is there no other way
to be perfect, stablished, strengthened, settled, Lord, I pray?
I do not seek the way of suffering but of ease,
the pleasant path which will avoid inharmonies.
But it is after we have suffered we are blest,
after we have learned that earth affords no rest,
after we have turned away from sense to Soul,
then will we be perfect, strengthened, settled, whole.