Sunday, September 30th, 2018 Roundtable

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Morning Prayers

Divine presence, breathe Thou Thy blessing on every heart in this house. Speak out, O soul! This is the new-born of Spirit, this is His redeemed; this, His beloved. May the kingdom of God within you, — with you alway, — reascending, bear you outward, upward, heavenward.

— from Pulpit and Press, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 10:27-1




We, to-day, in this class-room, are enough to convert the world if we are of one Mind; for then the whole world will feel the influence of this Mind; as when the earth was without form, and Mind spake and form appeared.

— from Miscellaneous Writings by Mary Baker Eddy, page 279: 27-2

Discussion points

Golden Text — “Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem.” — Revelation 3 : 12




344 — WATCH lest error tie you up in the following manner; first, to make you believe that, unless you are declaring the truth every moment, error stands ready to pounce upon you; second, to suggest that you have wearied yourself mentally to the point where you feel that you cannot declare another scientific thought. Error is never more than mesmeric suggestion. We barb its arrows with our own fear and belief; otherwise they fall harmlessly to the ground.

We do not have to argue against error in order to make it nothing, since it is nothing already. We must uncover its secret action and watch lest we believe its lies and accept its suggestions as being our own thoughts. We must strive to give it no power, by giving God all power. The suggestion that error may harm you, unless you are arguing against it all the time, is a form of fear that has no real power. In Science, we never fight against something; we watch lest we accept the belief that something besides God exists.

If you have a match in your hand, you do not fearfully and frantically call the fire department; you watch lest inadvertently you ignite it. The suggestion that you are sinking into the morass of evil unless you are arguing truth every moment is false. When you learn that two times two are four, do you have to declare that fact over and over again all day long, to protect yourself from the error that it is five?

— Watching Point 344 from 500 Watching Points by Gilbert Carpenter




Forum post — the salvation of our God by Barbara from PA




For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.

— Isaiah 65:17 from citation 1 in the Bible portion of this week’s lesson




The Revelator tells us of “a new heaven and a new earth.” Have you ever pictured this heaven and earth, inhabited by beings under the control of supreme wisdom?

— Citation 2 from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, page 91:1-4




Forum post — Love Is The Light, There Is No Night There by Mrs. Roberts




This testimony of Holy Writ sustains the fact in Science, that the heavens and earth to one human consciousness, that consciousness which God bestows, are spiritual, while to another, the unillumined human mind, the vision is material. This shows unmistakably that what the human mind terms matter and spirit indicates states and stages of consciousness.

— Citation 3 from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, page 91:1-4




Forum post — God with us by Lynda from PA




Forum post — North, east, south, and west by Jeremy from NJ




As the Psalmist saith, “Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great King.” It is indeed a city of the Spirit, fair, royal, and square. Northward, its gates open to the North Star, the Word, the polar magnet of Revelation; eastward, to the star seen by the Wisemen of the Orient, who followed it to the manger of Jesus; southward, to the genial tropics, with the Southern Cross in the skies, — the Cross of Calvary, which binds human society into solemn union; westward, to the grand realization of the Golden Shore of Love and the Peaceful Sea of Harmony.

— Citation 5 from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, page 575:22-2




Accompanying this scientific consciousness was another revelation, even the declaration from heaven, supreme harmony, that God, the divine Principle of harmony, is ever with men, and they are His people. Thus man was no longer regarded as a miserable sinner, but as the blessed child of God.

— Citation 3 from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, page 573:13-17




O God, our Father-Mother, Truth,
Send forth Thy light sublime,
That in its pure and cleansing rays
We may, with thought attuned to praise,
Behold reality.

— The second verse of hymn 206 from the Christian Science Hymnal




The world is not a playground; it is a schoolroom. Life is not a holiday, but an education. And the one eternal lesson for us all is how better we can love.

— Henry Drummond (Calendar statement from September 17th, 2018)




Note this, — that the very message, or swift-winged thought, which poured forth hatred and torment, brought also the experience which at last lifted the seer to behold the great city, the four equal sides of which were heaven-bestowed and heaven- bestowing.

— Citation 4 from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, page 574:19-24




The Revelator had not yet passed the transitional stage in human experience called death, but he already saw a new heaven and a new earth. Through what sense came this vision to St. John? Not through the material visual organs for seeing, for optics are inadequate to take in so wonderful a scene.

— Citation 3 from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, page 572:23-28




The four sides of our city are the Word, Christ, Christianity, and divine Science; “and the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day: for there shall be no night there.” This city is wholly spiritual, as its four sides indicate.

— Citation 4 from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, page 575:17-21




Final Readings

THE WORD reveals my path in life, shows me the way I should go, and makes clear every footstep. Therefore I move forward in light, trusting and confident; I cannot be befogged, uncertain or anxious, for “He knows the way He taketh, And I will walk with Him” (CSH. Hymn 148).

The Word of revelation shows that man is spiritually minded and not materially minded. Therefore I enjoy naturally the divine insight, reading from ideas and not from matter. So my vision is on an ever-rising scale, from the literal to the inspirational.

In the Word, my vision is desire to see and know Truth. “Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law” (Psalm 119 :18).


THE CHRIST is the ideal of God, and discovers to human sight man in the divine image. The Christ view transfigures our human concept of man, so that we behold man to be a transparency for Truth, just as Jesus served as a window for God. He that hath seen me (man) rightly, hath seen the Father. (See John 14 : 8-10.) We look out with Christ-coloured glasses.

But this Christ light is not abstract and static: it is dynamic and practical, for Truth inevitably has an effect upon our misconceptions. Therefore the Christ view is not only my eyes: it is also my physician and healer, remaking, restoring, and renewing.

This Christ view translates the infinite to the infinitesimal, so that I see divinity manifested in the smallest details of life. Everything is illuminated and transformed by the spirit of Truth.


CHRISTIANITY is the Christ viewpoint in actual use, the exercising of the Mind-faculties. (See S. & H. 487 : 6-9.) What I had seen with the inner eye, I now see externalized. “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee” (Job 42 : 5).

In Christianity, I love to exercise every aspect of true vision; yet I also discern that I am, in fact, the exercising of them. These faculties and qualities demonstrate themselves through and as me and everyone, for my seeing is but the reflecting of Truth.

In Christianity, vision is in relating the inner with the outer. So I am not self-absorbed, or immersed in my own affairs, but keenly aware of the inter-relationship of all ideas in the one plan, and I look with interest and wonder and appreciation upon all. (See S. & H. 516 : 4-8.) Christianity involves proof, proof of the true and disproof of the untrue. Wherever I look, I am aware that divine Love is in operation to heal and regenerate and save. Thus I am never dismayed by what I see, for I am increasingly aware of the supremacy of Truth.


SCIENCE is the Science of Being, and the Science attitude is living in line with this platform of perfection. My vision dwells in the unchanging facts of celestial goodness. God is of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look on iniquity. (See Habakkuk 1 : 13.) “God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good” (Gen. 1 : 31). “In this Science, we discover man in the image and likeness of God. We see that man has never lost his spiritual estate and his eternal harmony” (S. & H. 548 : 5-8).

In the Science viewpoint, we exclaim, “I see!” My thought and outlook coincides with that of Principle. I see what is, — or rather, I behold it. “Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man . . .” (See S. & H. 476 : 28-8.) Science is interpretation, and furnishes the explanation of all things. All is clear and explained, and there is no problem of being. In my seeing, therefore, there is no strain, no intensity, no forcing to discern spiritual conclusions beyond where my being is. It is divine Science that reveals and interprets to me everything I need to see and understand. My vision will indeed penetrate the deep things of God, but this is not intellectual effort; it is natural spiritual sense. (See S. & H. 258 : 31-1.) So my vision, while ever questing, is also ever at peace.

— from Some Notes on True Vision, John L. Morgan, pages 15-18




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