Sunday, May 11th, 2025 Roundtable
Spirit, the Great Architect, Has Created You
This week’s Lesson Sermon Subject: Adam And Fallen Man
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Morning Prayer
Honor thy Father and Mother, God. Continue in His love. Bring forth fruit — “signs following” — that your prayers be not hindered. Pray without ceasing. Watch diligently; never desert the post of spiritual observation and self-examination. Strive for self-abnegation, justice, meekness, mercy, purity, love. Let your light reflect Light. Have no ambition, affection, nor aim apart from holiness. Forget not for a moment, that God is All-in-all — therefore, that in reality there is but one cause and effect.
from Miscellaneous Writings, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 154
Spirit duly feeds and clothes every object, as it appears in the line of spiritual creation, thus tenderly expressing the fatherhood and motherhood of God.
from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 507
Daily Watch
110 — WATCH lest you take the children’s meat and give it unto dogs (Mark 7:27). If the children represent the Christ-consciousness, or the recognition of all mankind as children of God, then the dogs would symbolize the animal nature of mortal man which is always demanding to be fed, amused, harmonized and healed.
The right application of Truth is always to feed the spiritual sense of man, to re-establish the realization and consciousness of oneness with God. Does this mean that it is not legitimate to heal physical sickness? No — but the spiritual should be directed to the spiritual. True treatment should have as its object the feeding of the spiritual nature in man, of his consciousness of himself as a child of God. As this is done, because of the omnipotent and overflowing nature of Truth, the physical sense is fed and healed by the crumbs which fall from the children’s table.
Jesus’ rule is to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness — to establish man’s recognition of his divine heritage and harmony as a child of God; thereafter all these things will be added. This means that the human need will be met in the way that will keep the human most out of sight and attention.
Discussion points
7. 61 : 4-13
The good in human affections must have ascendency over the evil and the spiritual over the animal, or happiness will never be won. The attainment of this celestial condition would improve our progeny, diminish crime, and give higher aims to ambition. Every valley of sin must be exalted, and every mountain of selfishness be brought low, that the highway of our God may be prepared in Science. The offspring of heavenly-minded parents inherit more intellect, better balanced minds, and sounder constitutions.
Defining Success Differently by Joshua Becker
When error confronts you, withhold not the rebuke or the explanation which destroys error. Never breathe an immoral atmosphere, unless in the attempt to purify it.
from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 452
The Term MAN by Bicknell Young
2. 63 : 5 (In)-11
In Science man is the offspring of Spirit. The beautiful, good, and pure constitute his ancestry. His origin is not, like that of mortals, in brute instinct, nor does he pass through material conditions prior to reaching intelligence. Spirit is his primitive and ultimate source of being; God is his Father, and Life is the law of his being.
Primitive — Pertaining to the beginning or origin; original; first;
From the 1828 Webster’s Dictionary
Ultimate — highest, incomparable, supreme, the most, unmatchable, unsurpassable.
From the Cambridge English Dictionary
Source — First cause; original.
From the 1828 Webster’s Dictionary
When we understand man’s true birthright, that he is “born, not … of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God,” we shall understand that man is the offspring of Spirit, and not of the flesh; recognize him through spiritual, and not material laws; and regard him as spiritual, and not material. His sonship, referred to in the text, is his spiritual relation to Deity: it is not, then, a personal gift, but is the order of divine Science. The apostle urges upon our acceptance this great fact: “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God.” Mortals will lose their sense of mortality — disease, sickness, sin, and death — in the proportion that they gain the sense of man’s spiritual preexistence as God’s child; as the offspring of good, and not of God’s opposite, — evil, or a fallen man.
from Miscellaneous Writings, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 181
12. 68 : 4-8
Sometime we shall learn how Spirit, the great architect, has created men and women in Science. We ought to weary of the fleeting and false and to cherish nothing which hinders our highest selfhood.
11. 57 : 23-24
Love enriches the nature, enlarging, purifying, and elevating it.
Golden Text: Acts 3 : 25
“Ye are the children of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying unto Abraham, And in thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed.”
3:22-26 Here is a powerful address to warn the Jews of the dreadful consequences of their unbelief, in the very words of Moses, their favourite prophet, out of pretended zeal for whom they were ready to reject Christianity, and to try to destroy it. Christ came into the world to bring a blessing with him. And he sent his Spirit to be the great blessing. Christ came to bless us, by turning us from our iniquities, and saving us from our sins. We, by nature cleave to sin; the design of Divine grace is to turn us from it, that we may not only forsake, but hate it. Let none think that they can be happy by continuing in sin, when God declares that the blessing is in being turned from all iniquity. Let none think that they understand or believe the gospel, who only seek deliverance from the punishment of sin, but do not expect happiness in being delivered from sin itself. And let none expect to be turned from their sin, except by believing in, and receiving Christ the Son of God, as their wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.
From Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary
Ye are the children of the prophets – Greek: “Ye are the sons of the prophets.” The meaning is, not that they were literally the “descendants” of the prophets, but that they were their “disciples,” “pupils,” “followers.” They professed to follow the prophets as their teachers and guides. Teachers among the Jews were often spoken of under the appellation of fathers, and disciples as sons, Matthew 12:27. See notes on Matthew 1:1. As they were the professed disciples of the prophets, they should listen to them. As they lived among the people to whom the prophets were sent, and to whom the promises were made, they should avail themselves of the offer of mercy, and embrace the Messiah.
And of the covenant – Ye are the sons of the covenant; that is, you are of the posterity of Abraham, with whom the covenant was made. The word “sons” was often thus used to denote those to whom any favor pertained. whether by inheritance or in any other way. Thus, Matthew 8:12, “The children (sons) of the kingdom”; John 17:12, “the son of perdition.” The word “covenant” denotes properly “a compact or agreement between equals, or those who have a right to make such a compact, and to choose or refuse the terms.” When applied to God and man, it denotes a firm promise on the part of God; a pledge to be regarded with all the sacredness of a compact, that he will do certain things on certain conditions. It is called a covenant only to designate its sacredness and the certainty of its fulfillment, not that man had any right to reject any of the terms or stipulations. As man has no such right, as he is bound to receive all that his Maker proposes, so, strictly and literally, there has been no compact or covenant between God and man. The promise to which Peter refers in the passage before us is in Genesis 22:18; Genesis 12:3.
In thy seed – Thy posterity. See Romans 4:13, Romans 4:16. This promise the apostle Paul affirms had express reference to the Messiah, Galatians 3:16. The word “seed” is used sometimes to denote an individual Genesis 4:25; and the apostle Galatians 3:16 affirms that there was special reference to Christ in the promise made to Abraham.
All the kindreds – The word translated “kindreds” πατριαὶ patriai denotes “those who have a common father or ancestor,” and is applied to families. It is also referred to those larger communities which were descended from the same ancestor, and thus refers to nations, Ephesians 3:15. Here it evidently refers to “all nations.”
Be blessed – Be made happy.
From Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
The Covenant by Nathaniel Dickey
The second or false account of creation begins by stating that there had been no rain upon the earth, but ―there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.
This mist symbolizes the incessant uprising of misconceptions of fundamental truth. They impose themselves on our thinking and make us lose sight of the facts symbolized in the story of the days of creation. Primarily, they contradict the great truth of the first day, in which God said, ―Let there be light, and there was light – this symbolizes that the divine intelligence is forever revealing ideas which banish the darkness of fear and ignorance in our thinking. The false record presupposes the power of an opposing so-called intelligence to ―cast on for us it’s lying stitches and knit them up in our mentality. Thus reason is befooled into accepting a distortion of the real facts, just as a child allows a mistake to enter its calculations in arithmetic, although the mistake itself has no underlying intelligence to create it or support it.
The mist can never for one moment stop the light from shining, nor prevent it from breaking through intermittently; but if we let it, it hides from us the presence and power of the light, and keeps us in obscurity, apathetically putting up with the creations of the mist as if they were established facts. ―The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.
The purpose of the mist was to irrigate the dry ground, and so cause things to live and grow in it. Thinking which is based merely on what the physical senses announce is always building itself up before our eyes, as both cause and effect. It acts on itself and reacts to itself. For instance, it acts on you, and says, perhaps, ―You have a cold, and you react ―Yes, so I have.
The mist has thus created a condition for you and implanted it in your mind. It has indicated the character of your circumstances. The whole complexion of your existence may be thus altered, and in entirely undesirable ways, yet the monstrous tyranny of the mist goes for the most part unchallenged. But, instead of blindly submitting to its tyranny we have the divine right to enter our protest against its pronouncements, knowing that the only creative power is the light of ideas. Ideas are quite apart from belief based on the testimony of the physical senses, which is always temporary, changeful, and uncertain; an idea is that which is perfect, eternal, and indestructible, and what else can possibly be regarded as absolute fact? Any other so-called creative power has only so much power as we give it – usually we give it as much as it asks for. Once we admit that it can bring conditions into existence, we admit that those conditions can develop and establish themselves along their own lines. Thus do we allow the formation of formidable mountains out of nonexistent molehills. That is the simple fact about the vast conglomeration of apparently solid evils, which throng our world; and yet because of the crushing weight of centuries of false education, this simple fact has to be faithfully proved in specific instances in the teeth of opposition. It demands consistent effort to make material belief surrender its claims.
Elisha was once with a school of prophets who were cutting down trees in order to make a new dwelling-place for themselves (II Kings, 6), and as one of them was felling, his axe dropped into the water. He was especially worried about this, because it was a borrowed axe – a symbol indicating that a mortal is not master of his own fate. When a mortal tries to improve his lot, any accident may impede his efforts, because so many factors are beyond his control. But Elisha asked him where it had fallen, cut off a stick and threw it in at that very place, and made the iron float, so that the man was able to rescue it. Elisha had refused to dignify unintelligent material belief as law, and he had handled specifically the fear that man is powerless to deal with conditions forced upon him by his own lack of alertness. It seemed like a miracle, but Elisha was really just introducing a higher law, which dispelled the helplessness induced by the mist masquerading as law. The light of the divine Mind constitutes the only basic law, and this gives man all the intelligence he needs in any situation. As Isaiah says, ―come ye, and let us walk in the light of the Lord.
Otherwise, there is no sure way of going forward, and all our judgments are unsound, watered by the mist, which goes up from the earth.
“A Mist Waters the Ground” by Rosalie Maas Stamp
One by one, pure thoughts, and holy lift us out of self and sin,
One by one, bright gleams of glory show the goal we all would win.
One by one, our trusts are strengthened, as our lives to God we give;
One by one, our days are lengthened, as in Love we move and live.
One by one our aims grow purer as our deeds reflect our God;
One by one, our songs are clearer as we rise above the clod.
One by one, the years move onward to the time of Prophets told;
One by one, their words float homeward, singing of one Lord, one fold.
Then, within Love’s everpresence, we shall live arrayed in white;
Know in full that great Effulgence which men call The Infinite;
Know the mysteries of His Kingdom, hear the chants of Spirit sung;
Be at one with that great Wisdom, from which all creation sprung.
1906 poem entitled Ascension by Carol Norton
Final Readings
What magic in the word! All the magnificence of the dim and storied past, all the great promises of futurity, hold not the simple grandeur of that holy word. It echoes through all time, past, present, and future, and drifts out into eternity, as the mightiest word in man’s vocabulary,—the synonym of purity, goodness, faith, trust, loving kindness, noble self-sacrifice, boundless unselfishness, tenderness, forbearance, meekness, virtue.
When interpreted spiritually and applied to God, it brings to mankind the highest concept of God as Good,—binding the broken heart, bringing peace and rest to the weary ones and hope to the downcast,—healing the sin-sick and suffering.
Throughout all the ages past, and throughout all time to come, it has been, and will still continue to be, corrective, alterative, and regenerative to the human character,—sublime and eternal in its significance.
Ponder this;—then remember we have with us to-day a true Spiritual Mother, bearing in her hand the Book of Divine Love, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations.”
Mighty the age,—anointed with the oil of gladness,—fraught with infinite possibilities,—cradled in the Divine Love,—big with eternal promises—All hail!
Mother By William Bradford Dickson, from the November 1895 issue of the Christian Science Journal