Sunday, November 16th, 2025 Roundtable
Cling Steadfastly to God and His Idea
This week’s Lesson Sermon Subject: Mortals And Immortals
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Morning Prayer
God bless you; God keep your eyes open to the movements of evil, so that your good will be effectual and not diluted. Every truth you promulgate, every good and ardent thought you entertain, though it expose you to the aim of evil, makes you healthier, wealthier, wiser, and longer lived, — the evidence of the senses to the contrary notwithstanding. Go on in this path — and your immortality is brought to light.
from Collectanea, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 82
Daily Watch
396 — WATCH that you realize each day that mortal man can never be depended upon. Could you depend on a puppet or marionette, every movement of which is controlled by the whim of the operator? Mortal man is a puppet, with a mind that is human in belief, and that is controlled by the consolidation of universal thought. His consciousness is subject at all times to being invaded, changed, and influenced mesmerically without his knowledge or consent. His desires may be inflamed or quenched, his impulses altered or reversed, his conclusions shaped unconsciously, and prejudices, envy and hatred may be induced in him. All the while he nurtures such suggestions as his own.
His whole effort is to sell himself, not God, and yet his most intimate thoughts and desires cannot be depended on, until he has learned through Christian Science how to protect his thinking, and to relinquish the human mind for the divine.
Through its very weakness, the individual human mind must yield to the will of the majority, all the while under the delusion that it is deciding weighty matters according to its own intelligence and judgment. A mortal’s mind is like a lot where the public has been permitted to cross without restriction so long, that by law it has become public property. Thus the owner loses all power to prevent anyone who will, from tramping about on it and using it.
In a pamphlet called Christian Science History, Mrs. Eddy once wrote as follows, indicating that mortal mind and its erroneous suggestions are totally unreliable…”Without a question the student of Christian Science is not qualified to teach, preach or practice divine metaphysics, who knows not thoroughly how wisely and successfully to handle this heinous sin — mental malpractice.
“Without this understanding he cannot separate the tares from the wheat and destroy the tares — he cannot divide between an impartation from the immortal or divine Mind and the temptation, or the evil suggestion of human thought and argument; but this must be done, in order to obey the former, and resist and destroy the latter, and not till it is done will he be protected and imbued with wisdom and power to rise superior to evil suggestions. This attainment is indispensable whereby to establish a student on the scientific basis of Christian Science.”
Discussion points
Man is incapable of sin, sickness, and death.
from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 475
You are scientifically correct in your statement about yourself. You can never demonstrate spirituality until you declare yourself to be immortal and understand that you are so. Christian Science is absolute; it is neither behind the point of perfection nor advancing towards it; it is at this point and must be practised therefrom. Unless you fully perceive that you are the child of God, hence perfect, you have no Principle to demonstrate and no rule for its demonstration. By this I do not mean that mortals are the children of God, — far from it. In practising Christian Science you must state its Principle correctly, or you forfeit your ability to demonstrate it.
from Miscellany, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 242
Evil has no reality. It is neither person, place, nor thing, but is simply a belief, an illusion of material sense.
from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 71
12. 495 : 14-24
When the illusion of sickness or sin tempts you, cling steadfastly to God and His idea. Allow nothing but His likeness to abide in your thought. Let neither fear nor doubt overshadow your clear sense and calm trust, that the recognition of life harmonious — as Life eternally is — can destroy any painful sense of, or belief in, that which Life is not. Let Christian Science, instead of corporeal sense, support your understanding of being, and this understanding will supplant error with Truth, replace mortality with immortality, and silence discord with harmony.
Steadfastly
Firmly; with constancy or steadiness of mind.
The 1828 Webster’s Dictionary
Supplant
To overthrow; to undermine.
The 1828 Webster’s Dictionary
Replace
To put again in the former place
The 1828 Webster’s Dictionary
Silence
cessation of rage
The 1828 Webster’s Dictionary
Strive to work from God, instead of up to God.
from Divinity Course and General Collectanea, (the “Blue Book”), by Mary Baker Eddy, page 235
God has made man capable of this, and nothing can vitiate the ability and power divinely bestowed on man.
from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 393
We ought to read one biography of Mrs. Eddy each year. There are six authorized volumes: Sibyl Wilbur’s, Powell’s, Ramsey’s, Julia Johnston’s, Tomlinson’s, and Mrs. Eddy’s own autobiography in Retrospection and Introspection. The next time you read one of these biographies, be right there throughout the story. It will then mean much more to you. Be a companion in Mrs. Eddy’s mental household. Ride in her carriage with her and see the things she saw. Speak to those she spoke to. Sit with her on Red Rock while the poem “O’er Waiting Harpstrings” unfolds. Attend her last class in 1898. You know you almost can for many things have been written about that class both in her biographies and in recent articles in the Journal. It is not necessary for you to be excluded from anything good that happened in the spiritual unfoldments of our Leader.
Immortality — 1949 Association Address by Herbert E. Rieke
John 12:32
And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.
Psalm 105:15
Saying, Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm.
Don’t be a mortal living in a state of mortality. Be an immortal living in this glorious state of immortality, enjoying everything immortal, beautiful, good, and true. Live in that eternal Mind that knows no beginning and no end, no birth and no death. Live in that perfect Life that exists through all time. It is eternity itself. In no other way can you demonstrate the infinite capacities of healing in Christian Science.
Reading the Bible intelligently with the true imagination and with a sincere desire for all of the spiritual interpretation inspiration and lessons to be learned therefrom, will extend your atmosphere of thought. You will learn to see yourself not as a mortal living a few decades in the twentieth century, but as an immortal living in an eternal universe with every idea that is beautiful, good and true. Such a correct spiritual, eternal, immortal sense of things will eliminate from your thought any fear of death — yea, every belief in death and the accompanying experience of sickness and sin. Truly, be “a priest after the order of Melchisedec without father or mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God.”
Immortality — 1949 Association Address by Herbert E. Rieke
Immortality Brought to Light by Dorothy Rieke
A student once asked Mrs. Eddy in class respecting some book. She paused a moment, then said thoughtfully that we must test books and people by their influence over us, and that as results might not appear at once, great care was needed in the choice of both books and friends. One at least of those present began to apply the test then given to Mrs. Eddy herself and to her writings, the result being that their entire influence has been felt as a ceaseless stimulus in the line of spiritual endeavor and of worthy attainment in everything undertaken, and this would assuredly be the verdict of the unnumbered thousands who know this wonderful woman personally and through her teachings. It is this which crowns her life today,—a noble purpose grandly realized,—the vision dearer, the heights nearer, and to her apply Whittier’s words:—
Beyond a narrow-bounded age
Stretches thy prophet heritage;
Through Heaven’s dim spaces, angel-trod.
Through arches round the throne of God!
Thy audience worlds!—all
Time to be The witness of the Truth in thee.
Mrs. Eddy — The Woman by Annie M. Knott
Virtue Medicine: Kindness
God’s preparations for the sick are potions of His own qualities.
from Miscellaneous Writings, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 268
And Love is reflected in love;
from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 17