Sunday, October 5th, 2025 Roundtable
It is Not God’s Plan to Coexist With Error
This week’s Lesson Sermon Subject: Unreality
Click here to play the audio as you read:
Morning Prayer
WATCH — No form of error can make a C.S. treatment produce an opposite effect, nor can I be made to overlook or forget anything in the treatment that is necessary for its certain accomplishment of good.
We must go ahead of error, and keep ahead of error all the way.
Error is nothing but erroneous thought, and we must never give in to it, or go down before it. Mental activity must be tranquil — not lazy; it must express force, be exact, and it must know the reality of man’s oneness with God, and the utter unreality of evil in all its forms of beliefs.
from Divinity Course and General Collectanea, (the “Blue Book”), by Mary Baker Eddy, page 41
Daily Watch
230 — WATCH lest you think of error in terms of getting rid of it as fast as possible, rather than overcoming your fear of it, belief in it, and learning the lessons it teaches. A child might beg its father to turn on the light, so that the darkness of which it was afraid might be dispelled. A wise father would explain the nature of darkness as merely being the absence of light, and keep the child in it long enough so that it would lose its fear of it. This must be our heavenly Father’s purpose, when we find ourselves confronted with claims of darkness which do not disappear at once, which we find voiced in Science and Health, page 22 (link), “Love is not hasty to deliver us from temptation, for Love means that we shall be tried and purified.”
Once when explaining Exodus 4:4 Mrs. Eddy said, “Sometimes I seem to hear the voice of the Father like this — My child, there is nothing in mortal mind to fear, not even the educated thought that knows what it is doing. But these different claims must needs remain until thou art not afraid. They are here only for thee to learn that they cannot harm. When that is learned, their mission is accomplished and away they go. The way to learn their powerlessness is through the constant recognition of God’s power to dislodge them.”
From this we can learn what our heavenly Father’s purpose is, when we are at times confronted with suggestions and arguments which frighten us and which do not retreat at once, under our sincere and scientific effort.
Discussion points
2. 490 : 3-11
Will-power is but a product of belief, and this belief commits depredations on harmony. Human will is an animal propensity, not a faculty of Soul. Hence it cannot govern man aright. Christian Science reveals Truth and Love as the motive-powers of man. Will — blind, stubborn, and headlong — cooperates with appetite and passion. From this cooperation arises its evil. From this also comes its powerlessness, since all power belongs to God, good.
Golden Text: Isaiah 55 : 7
“Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.”
Mortals move onward towards good or evil as time glides on. If mortals are not progressive, past failures will be repeated until all wrong work is effaced or rectified. If at present satisfied with wrong-doing, we must learn to loathe it. If at present content with idleness, we must become dissatisfied with it. Remember that mankind must sooner or later, either by suffering or by Science, be convinced of the error that is to be overcome.
from Miscellaneous Writings, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 240
Human affection is not poured forth vainly, even though it meet no return. Love enriches the nature, enlarging, purifying, and elevating it. The wintry blasts of earth may uproot the flowers of affection, and scatter them to the winds; but this severance of fleshly ties serves to unite thought more closely to God, for Love supports the struggling heart until it ceases to sigh over the world and begins to unfold its wings for heaven.
from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 57
When these things cease to bless they will cease to occur.
from Miscellany, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 143
Every trial of our faith in God makes us stronger. The more difficult seems the material condition to be overcome by Spirit, the stronger should be our faith and the purer our love.
from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 410
When I see a student grateful I know he is safe.
from Divinity Course and General Collectanea, (the “Blue Book”), by Mary Baker Eddy, page 235
A knowledge of error and of its operations must precede that understanding of Truth which destroys error, until the entire mortal, material error finally disappears, and the eternal verity, man created by and of Spirit, is understood and recognized as the true likeness of his Maker.
from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 252
The way to escape the misery of sin is to cease sinning. There is no other way.
from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 327
Jeremiah 6:14
14 They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace.
Rules for overcoming animal magnetism:
1. See what it is trying to do
2. Know that it cannot do it
3. See that it is not done
from Collectanea, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 14
The author has not compromised conscience to suit the general drift of thought, but has bluntly and honestly given the text of Truth.
from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, page x
A certain apothegm of a Talmudical philosopher suits my sense of doing good. It reads thus: “The noblest charity is to prevent a man from accepting charity; and the best alms are to show and to enable a man to dispense with alms.”
from Miscellaneous Writings, by Mary Baker Eddy, page ix
Mrs. Eddy — The Woman, from the March 1910 issue of the Christian Science Journal by Annie M. Knott
Final Readings
While living in Concord, N. H., some years ago, I often saw Mrs. Eddy out driving, and on Feb. 27, 1898, I heard her preach on the ninety-first Psalm at the Christian Science church in that city. Before this time I was inclined to be prejudiced against Christian Science, not knowing what the teaching really was (this was before my healing), but when I heard Mrs. Eddy explain that psalm so beautifully, and say that in gratitude to Jesus for all he had done for her she could wash his feet with her tears, and wipe them with the hairs of her head, my heart went out to her, and I felt I could never again say anything against Christian Science.
excerpt from the September 7, 1912 issue of the Christian Science Sentinel, by J. A. Grant