Sunday, March 9th, 2025 Roundtable
You Are God’s Reflection, Ever Beautiful and Complete
This week’s Lesson Sermon Subject: Man
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Morning Prayer
Look away from body to Spirit. My being is spiritual; my life, my intelligence are spiritual; my senses are spiritual; my life is hid with Christ in God, and there is no other existence.
The Christ, or Truth, the manifestation of God, does supersede my belief that my true being, that real life and intelligence, are in matter. We have immortality now, not shall have. …
There is no fear, conscious or unconscious, that can restrain the power of divine Love to heal.
I was born free, not in bondage to anything, nor to any one, for Principle leads me ever. Infinity includes only the man who is well, and all he needs. There is no mind to put forth a law of reversal. Love governs all, and there is only one Governor. Mortal mind cannot make a law to reverse God’s law, for God’s law is not reversible.
from Watches, Prayers, and Arguments, as given by Mary Baker Eddy, page 130
Daily Watch
143 — WATCH lest you believe that the spiritual idea, which is the real nature of man, can be lost, contaminated, or rendered inoperative, because of any human condition, happening or evidence. …Once a Christian Science lecturer said, “Never believe that even your own folly can indefinitely postpone the destiny God has in store for you.”
In Matthew 4:7 Jesus says, “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” If “the Lord” is God transformed into idea, or man, then our task is to realize that this Christ nature in ourselves or others cannot be lost, that it cannot be defiled or even tempted by any earthly suggestions or conditions.
Mrs. Eddy once said, “Error says we are sick or discouraged; we don’t say it. It is error talking about itself. If we admit it, we have accepted a lie. Truth says, ‘I have perfect eyes, perfect heart, perfect limbs, etc.; all there is to me is like God, like perfection.’ We should discard mortal mind judgment, and pray for the Christ Mind.”
Once a woman had an internal displacement. She was a Christian Scientist, but she was greatly tempted to submit to an operation, because it seemed the only way to get relief. She started for her practitioner’s office in order to tell her what she planned to do, but on the way she became so grateful for Christian Science, that she determined to live up to its teachings to the best of her ability, even if she were never healed of the physical disorder (C.S. Sentinel, August 15, 1931).
This lady experienced her healing right then and there. Her declaration was really a determination to defend her recognition of the fact that she was a spiritual idea and reflected God, against being belittled or interfered with by any false testimony, or human suggestion.
Mrs. Eddy once declared, “I must know that the definition of man in Science and Health applies to me. I am that spiritual man; I am God’s image and likeness, reflecting a full, perfect image of Life, Mind, action, etc., not under material laws or limitations.”
Discussion points
What Did Jesus Say? The Second Coming of the Christ, Genesis through Revelation by David Keyston
To order call 208.255.2407 and David Keyston can take your order over the phone.
1. 475 : 5-1 (to 1st .)
Question. — What is man?
Answer. — Man is not matter; he is not made up of brain, blood, bones, and other material elements. The Scriptures inform us that man is made in the image and likeness of God. Matter is not that likeness. The likeness of Spirit cannot be so unlike Spirit. Man is spiritual and perfect; and because he is spiritual and perfect, he must be so understood in Christian Science. Man is idea, the image, of Love; he is not physique. He is the compound idea of God, including all right ideas; the generic term for all that reflects God’s image and likeness; the conscious identity of being as found in Science, in which man is the reflection of God, or Mind, and therefore is eternal; that which has no separate mind from God; that which has not a single quality underived from Deity; that which possesses no life, intelligence, nor creative power of his own, but reflects spiritually all that belongs to his Maker.
And God said: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”
Man is incapable of sin, sickness, and death. The real man cannot depart from holiness, nor can God, by whom man is evolved, engender the capacity or freedom to sin. A mortal sinner is not God’s man.
It is neither Science nor Truth which acts through blind belief, nor is it the human understanding of the divine healing Principle as manifested in Jesus, whose humble prayers were deep and conscientious protests of Truth, — of man’s likeness t0 God and of man’s unity with Truth and Love.
from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 12
The time must come when we recognize ourselves as aggressors, rather than merely defenders of the faith.
From Watching Point 496 in 500 Watching Points by Gilbert Carpenter
Man, God’s Image by Bicknell Young
The Practice of Christian Science by Bicknell Young
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
“Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of?” (Isaiah)
The word “accounted” means “esteemed, considered, regarded, valued.” I feel this is a good check – to ask myself how much time and consideration do I give to this so-called mortal self? Am I always concerned about how it is feeling? Looking? Sleeping? How “blood” relations are doing? Do I worry about diet, exercise, beliefs of aging etc.? This instruction from Isaiah tells me to stop all this – cease ye!! How much infinitely better to dwell upon my spiritual nature, to be thinking about the things of God, to be knowing I am His perfect reflection, to know we are all His children, God is the one and only Creator, to know the government is on His shoulders, to know I am “ageless, diseaseless and deathless”… The Bible and Science and Health gives us so many wonderful Truths to identify myself with and in so doing I am enriching and expanding the kingdom of God within me – rather than dreary, destructive mortal mind fussing about.
“Spirit is God, and man is his image and likeness. Therefore man is not material; he is spiritual.”! (S&H page 468)
Science and Health, by Mary Baker Eddy, pages 390 to 394
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;
Healing with Truth by Ella W. Hoag
Marching to Music by M. Ethel Whitcomb
Christian Science and Christian Scientists will, must, have a history; and if I could write the history in poor parody on Tennyson’s grand verse, it would read thus: —
Traitors to right of them,
M. D.’s to left of them,
Priestcraft in front of them,
Volleyed and thundered!
Into the jaws of hate,
Out through the door of Love,
On to the blest above,
Marched the one hundred.
from Miscellaneous Writings, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 106
Thoughts
Not what we do or say, but what we think
Determines what we are.
Within the realm of high and noble thought
Soars mankind’s highest star.
There is no deed of valor, might, or right
Without the thought behind.
No work of love was ever wrought or taught
But started in the mind.
No king, dictator, or president defines
What thoughts we choose to think.
No prison bars can hold or stay the thought
That is with God a link.
Would you rule over all that life can bring,
Be joyous, strong, and free?
Guard, then, the thoughts of every hour, for these
Are life and destiny.