Sunday, June 7th, 2026 Roundtable
The Word That Heals
This week’s Lesson Sermon Subject: God The Only Cause And Creator
Click here to play the audio as you read:
Morning Prayer
Animal magnetism, ignorant or malicious, you cannot separate me from God, good. You cannot dim my spiritual perception. You cannot make a law that I cannot heal myself or others. …
For God is All-in-all, the only creator of the only universe and man. We are His children and we do realize the all-fulness of the omnipotence of God. …
My health, strength, life, intelligence, action, etc., are subject to the governing and controlling power of the divine Mind, and to nothing else, for there is no other power.
from Divinity Course and General Collectanea, (the “Blue Book”), by Mary Baker Eddy, page 77
Daily Watch
389 — WATCH in stressing mental causation, lest you forget that the belief in physical effect is as unreal as is its cause. The whole phenomenon of human cause and effect is a dream. Furthermore in an article called Dreams, Mrs. Eddy once wrote, “Admitting that mortal life is a dream is admitting that it is something, when the fact remains that it is nothing, since there is no mortal life.” Thus when you begin to see that the seeming effects of mortal mind are as mental as is mortal mind, you must not stop until you see that mortal mind is nothing, since God is All.
Discussion points
WATCH lest, in reducing error to zero, you neglect to rub out the zero.
500 Watching Points by Gilbert Carpenter
Is it possible to know why we are put into this condition of mortality?
It is quite as possible to know wherefore man is thus conditioned, as to be certain that he is in a state of mortality. The only evidence of the existence of a mortal man, or of a material state and universe, is gathered from the five personal senses. This delusive evidence, Science has dethroned by repeated proofs of its falsity.
We have no more proof of human discord, — sin, sickness, disease, or death, — than we have that the earth’s surface is flat, and her motions imaginary. If man’s ipse dixit as to the stellar system is correct, this is because Science is true, and the evidence of the senses is false. Then why not submit to the affirmations of Science concerning the greater subject of human weal and woe? Every question between Truth and error, Science must and will decide. Left to the decision of Science, your query concerns a negative which the positive Truth destroys; for God’s universe and man are immortal. We must not consider the false side of existence in order to gain the true solution of Life and its great realities.
from Miscellaneous Writings, by Mary Baker Eddy, pages 64 to 65
Body, unabridged Attributed to Mary Baker G. Eddy
Golden Text: John 1 : 1
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
The Word That Heals by Bliss Knapp
Responsive Reading: Psalm 24 : 1-5, 7-10
1. The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.
2. For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods.
3. Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place?
4. He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully.
5. He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation.
7. Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.
8. Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.
9. Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.
10. Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory.
The church is not a building built of stones and bricks. That is a house of worship, a temple, a synagogue, a tabernacle. The real church is in men’s deeds and thoughts. It lives in the keeping of the commandments Sunday and every day of the week. The real church is built of things men do on Monday, of things men think on Tuesday, of things men love and wish on Wednesday. The church is a church of every day, not alone of Sunday. It is a grievous mistake to make, this mistake of the Syrian, that God is a God only inside a certain building and that the rest of the world belongs to the devil. The fact is the devil owns no property at all. All things are God’s. “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof.” There is no room for any one else in ownership. And God is a God of the hills, of the highest, and He is a God of the valleys, of the lowest. If you ascend into heaven He is there, and if you make your bed in hell, lo! He is there. Men must serve God on the hills, of course ; but they must serve Him in the valleys, equally, of course. Make other mistakes, if you will, but do not make the mistake of the Syrian that God is a God of the hills, and not of the valleys.
From Our Exchanges from the April 8, 1911 issue of the Christian Science Sentinel [Adolph Roeder in New-Church Messenger.]
The Independent Christian Scientist by Doris Grekel, volume 1
Who Shall Stand? by Annie M. Knott
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE BIBLE LESSONS (International Series.) by F. E. MASON, C.S.B.
From the November 1889 issue of The Christian Science Journal
“The Hebrew people, and the Egyptians who followed them out of Egypt to recapture them, both marched toward the promised land; but one passed over the Red Sea in safety, while the others were drowned. Suffering will eventually drive all into Science; “whom He loveth He chasteneth.” Those who “will not have this Ruler of men to rule over them,” accept a tyrannical master who will eventually drive man home to God.”
People are led to look wistfully up to heaven, whereas they ought to be engaging their attention with something nearer home. It is not outpouring that is wanted, but inletting. The prayer for the Spirit which is needed is not the beseeching of heaven to open its shut windows. The windows of heaven are not shut. They are wide open. In too many cases it is our hearts that are shut. Ah, these gates that shut the Spirit out! gates of brass, doors whose hinges are so stiff with selfish habit that they seem forever closed. “Lift up your heads, oh ye gates, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, that the King of Glory may come in!”
Religious Items by Monro Gibson from the MAY 16, 1903 issue of the Christian Science Sentinel
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE BIBLE LESSONS (International Series.) by F. E. MASON, C.S.B.
From the November 1889 issue of The Christian Science Journal
“The Hebrew people, and the Egyptians who followed them out of Egypt to recapture them, both marched toward the promised land; but one passed over the Red Sea in safety, while the others were drowned. Suffering will eventually drive all into Science; “whom He loveth He chasteneth.” Those who “will not have this Ruler of men to rule over them,” accept a tyrannical master who will eventually drive man home to God.”
“Does Christian Science take any attitude on the broader political questions?
Does it, for instance, lean toward the higher socialism?”
Mrs. Eddy thought over this before replying and said cautiously: —
“We are not indifferent to forms of government, but we support the best in each. A church to be universal must in many things be neutral about forms of government and at the same time support what is right to support.”
This had the vague sound, but Mrs. Eddy found vent at last in one of her rapt speeches, delivered always with wide open eyes, looking into the air, and as if the words were dictated to her: —
When all men are one in the Church of Christ, the perfection of life and the perfection of government under the application of the Golden Rule will come. It will all be simple, natural, without clash or combat, all over the world in a divine brotherhood.”
Fragments Gathered From Unpublished Items, ascribed to Mary Baker Eddy
Doubt is trust in evil.
from Essays and Other Footprints, (the “Red Book”), by Mary Baker Eddy
Give Us A King by Ella W. Hoag
Man is properly self-governed only when he is guided rightly and governed by his Maker, divine Truth and Love.
from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 106
Twelve Years with Mary Baker Eddy by Irving Tomlinson
Final Readings
The Mount of Transfiguration by Doris Grekel
from The Independent Christian Scientist, volume 1
When Jesus went up onto the mount of transfiguration, he had three faithful disciples with him. More than one thousand eight hundred years later Mrs. Eddy was on the mount of transfiguration in the presence of three faithful disciples, and, like Jesus, she was transfigured before them.
It was the night of October 21, 1881. The Christian Scientists’ Association was holding a regular meeting at Mrs. Eddy’s home in Lynn. Members who had been deceitfully pleasant to Mrs. Eddy until this moment had signed their names to a repudiation of her and a withdrawal from her organization which one of the members read aloud. She made no reply. When the meeting closed, she went to her room, and all but three students departed. The three who remained were her devoted husband, Asa Gilbert Eddy, Mrs. Abbie K. Whiting, and Calvin A. Frye. Their names are destined to become as familiar to posterity as are those of Peter, James, and John, albeit the record of their mountaintop experience is no more detailed than the Biblical accounts.
These three loyal disciples watched with our leader all that long night, burdened and sorrowful. As morning dawned, Mrs. Eddy suddenly arose from her chair and stepped out into the room. Her eyes beheld what her students could not see, and she began to speak, but not to them. Her face shone, and her words were so stirring that her students wept. But they picked up pencils and endeavored to record some of her words:
“Is this humiliation, the humility the oppressor would heap upon me! 0, the exaltation of Spirit! I have made thee ruler over many things.”
“Height upon height! Holiness! Unquenchable light! Divine Being! The Womanhood of God!”
“Well done, good and faithful, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.”
“One woe is passed, and behold, another cometh quickly; and no sign shall be given thee. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”
“Woe, woe unto my people! The furnace is heated, the dross will be destroyed.”
“And the false prophet that is among you shall deceive if possible the very elect, and he shall lead them into forbidden paths. And their feet shall bleed upon the jagged rocks. And the briars shall tear the rags from them. For they are not clothed with a garment of righteousness.”
“And will give to thee, daughter of Zion, a new heritage and a new people.”
“Her ways shall be ways of pleasantness and ways of peace.”
When our Leader stopped speaking, she put down her hand and said, “Why, haven’t any body.”
At that point Dr. Eddy answered a summons at the door to admit another student, Julia Bartlett, who had come as soon as she heard what had transpired the night before. She and Dr. Eddy quietly took seats near the others and listened to their teacher talking with a power they had never heard before-wonderful words of great spiritual illumination which had come through her glorious triumph.
After a while Mrs. Eddy said, “I want you three to stay with me three days.”
In Miss Barlett’s words: “Those three days were wonderful. It was as if God was talking to her and she would come to us and tell us the wonderful revelations that came. We were on the Mount. We felt that we must take the shoes from off our feet, that we were standing on holy ground.”