Sunday, October 22nd, 2023 Roundtable
We Are on the Eternal Road of Life
This week’s Lesson Sermon Subject: Probation After Death
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Morning Prayers
PRAYER FOR ONESELF – I thank Thee, Father-Mother God, that neither ignorant, fraudulent, nor malicious mortal mind can reach me, affect me mentally, physically, financially, or otherwise; and I know it, for God is the only power; that I am not the victim of aggressive mental suggestion, nor the target of M.A.M. claiming to operate through any channel whatever, but I am the blessed legal child of God, spiritual, immortal, all-harmonious, perfect, happy, healthy, pure, sinless, free, and fearless and diseaseless, and deathless, expressing the substance of all good. Hold yourself constantly and consciously under God’s eternal law of blessing, of happiness, harmony, health, peace, joy, power, progress, protection, abundance; there is no other law, – only a contrary mortal mind lie which you are awake and alert to, and not under.
Probation, progress, goes on, until there is no life, substance, or intelligence in matter.
— from Divinity Course and General Collectanea, (the “Blue Book”), by Mary Baker Eddy, page 64, 195
Discussion points
53 — WATCH lest you strain at a gnat and swallow a camel (Matt. 23:24), or try to eliminate the little unpleasant phases of mortal existence, while you swallow, or accept, mortality as a whole, because of the side it presents that seems good. To believe in good apart from God is as much a belief in mortality, or a mind apart from God, as to believe in evil. The belief that mortal existence has a good side breeds the belief that it has a bad side, just as a camel’s stall might breed gnats. You will have gnats, therefore, as long as you keep a camel. How useless to strain to kill the gnats, and swallow, or retain, the camel, because the gnats will breed faster than you can kill them.
The rule in Science is to seek the destruction of error and falsity because God does not like it, and not because we do not like it, since all materiality is offensive to Him; whereas, when we start in our work in Science, we dislike only parts of it.
— from 500 Watching Points by Gilbert Carpenter
GOLDEN TEXT: Revelation : 7
“To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.”
We dwarf ourselves when we say, “I can not.” Though man has Divine possibilities, he will never realize them while he says “I can’t.” Neither will he realize them, till he meets and conquers the sum of all his difficulties. The Master, who is our example, conquered every foe, the last foe being death; and he ascended into a realization of Divinity, leaving us the promise of a joint-heirship with him in glory. This confirms the argument for man’s divine possibilities, but they are attained only when we overcome every foe.
He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white, and I will not blot out his name out of the Book of Life. Revelation ii. 5. To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the Tree of Life. Revelation ii. 7.
We can not overcome error by tacitly admitting its existence. We must meet and overcome it through Love and Truth. Each victory lifts us farther above the things of time and sense, into that higher realm of thought where our spiritual intuitions become more keen, until the light of Divine Truth shall culminate, to our consciousness, in all its grandeur, where difficulties and conflicts will change into triumph, and “Christ, who is our Life, shall appear, and we shall be like him in glory.”
Saith the poet:
He that of such a height hath built his Mind,
And reared the dwelling of his thoughts so strong,
As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame
Of his resolved powers,—nor all the wind
Of vanity or malice pierce to wrong
This settled peace, or to disturb the same,—
What a fair seat hath he, from whence he may
The boundless wastes and wilds of man survey.
“Dealing With Difficulties” from Christian Science Journal, September 1887 by A. Lang
Artilce “Hindrances To Healing”, from Christian Science Journal, July 1909 by Rev. G. A. Kratzer
It behooves Christian Scientists to take heed that their thoughts be straitened, or confined from evil; and that their ways be straight, — that is, direct, sincere, honest. The gateway leading to Life is so strait, (narrow) that few find it; and yet the way is so straight (strict, even) that one who would walk in it, and reach the Everlasting Kingdom, must turn neither to the right nor left; while the gate of evil, materiality, is so wide, and the way so broad, that the multitude surge easily through them, into a city full of mischief.
“Straight And Narrow Way” from Christian Science Journal, December 1887 by S. C. R.
In the twenty-fifth chapter of Isaiah we read, “And in this mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things. . . . And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations.” In what mountain is it that the Lord of hosts will do this mighty thing? It is no doubt in the mountain of His holiness, the “mountain” where Jesus the Christ went so often to pray; not the visible, tangible pile of earth, but the height of understanding, the knowledge of the Lord.
And what is the “face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations”? Is it not the belief in mortality? This is the “vail” that seemingly hides from us all the splendors of eternity and infinite good, the “vail” of the flesh, that parts the seemingly seen from the seemingly unseen. When Christ Jesus had risen from the dead, demonstrated his understanding of the immortality of life in God, he walked with his disciples, and “their eyes were holden” that they did not know him, though their hearts burned within them. What was it that hid him from their sight but the “vail that is spread over all nations,” the veil of mortal belief? Could we for a moment rid ourselves of this veil, what wonders we should behold, and what joys we should know! In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy says, on page 428: “The great spiritual fact must be brought out that man is, not shall be, perfect and immortal. We must hold forever the consciousness of existence, and sooner or later, through Christ and Christian Science, we must master sin and death. The evidence of man’s immortality will become more apparent, as material beliefs are given up and the immortal facts of being are admitted.”
“Loose Him, And Let Him Go” from Christian Science Journal, January 1921 by Rose Seelye-Miller
Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God,” and “Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” Our Leader, Mary Baker G. Eddy, has told us in “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” p. 138, “There is but one way to Heaven and harmony, and Christ shows us this way.”
These sound at first hard sayings, but are they so? Are they not simple statements of fact, given to us in love, that we may face and recognize them? We cannot take any mortal, material, possession with us into Life—there is no room for it in the narrow way. The “rich man” is not only the wealthy man, but the man who is satisfied with himself, and therefore unwilling to part with his sense of self.
“Deny thyself” was the constant command of the Master.
Those who are willing to lay down all, find the strait gate wide enough, and pass rejoicing into their inheritance of all good. But few indeed there are who find this easy passage into Life. Science is open to us all, but if we refuse obedience to its rules, we must suffer the consequences. Let us not murmur, or envy those who passed through so easily. The suffering can injure nothing but error, it can only take from us what alone can cause, or feel, suffering. Let us therefore rejoice all the way, and take care never to lose sight of the Light at the end of the passage, and never to turn aside for a moment into the broad ways of ease and personal sense, fitted with every device of human ingenuity and skill, and bright with many lights, but leading only to darkness and uncertainty, as one by one the lights go out, having nothing to sustain them.
Our Light can never change or fade, and we know the way to it. Let us press on, then, rejoicing, till the goal is reached, and, having put off all sense of personal possessions, limited and imperfect, we enter upon the full inheritance of our Being in God.
“Deny Thyself” from Christian Science Sentinel, October 4, 1900 by E. M. B. S.
I tell you truth when I say there is only one source of all good — God. The conscious recognition and acceptance of this fact acknowledged by every activity of the mind, not two or three times a day — but every few moments all day long — no matter what the outer self is doing, and this maintained, will enable anyone to express his perfect freedom and dominion over all things human.
From article “Day” — Collectanea by Mary Baker Eddy
“An Allegory”, from Miscellaneous Writings by Mary Baker Eddy, page 323
Instead of being bound for the grave we must know we are on the eternal road of Life, that has no sense of death.
from “Essays Ascribed to Mary Baker Eddy” in Essays and Other Footprints
(the “Red Book”), by Mary Baker Eddy, page 13
Daily Duties: from Christian Science Manual, 88th and Final Church Manual of The Mother Church, 1910 by Mary Baker Eddy