Father, teach me how to still the clamoring of sense, and fill my place as listener, that I may hear Thy voice and grow to understand Thy Word, and so become Thy messenger. Then teach me how to banish pride and stubborn will that I may be Thy representative – with no false sense of human zeal, that every word may bless and heal, when I Thy message give.

— from Divinity Course and General Collectanea, the “Blue Book,” by Mary Baker Eddy, page 61

115 — WATCH lest you unthinkingly accept the purpose of Christian Science to be merely healing the sick, without growing in your understanding of what true healing is. According to the higher concept, healing is not a change from a sick body to a well body; it is giving up a false conception of man for the right idea, namely, God’s idea of man. True healing does not seek to make mortal man harmonious in hell; it is dissipating the mist of falsity that hides reality. First we heal man in matter; then we heal him of matter. 

— from 500 Watching Points by Gilbert Carpenter

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Golden Text — “I am the Lord that healeth thee.” — Exodus 15 : 26

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To suddenly drop our earthly character, and become partakers of eternal Life, without the pangs of a new birth, is morally impossible.

— from Science and Health, 1875, by Mary Baker Eddy

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What Hindered Naaman’s Healing the first time?

Pride – ”Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? may I not wash in them, and be clean? So he turned and went away in a rage.”

Anger – Naaman was wroth and went away.

Thought He could buy his treatment. “And he departed, and took with him ten talents of silver, and six thousand pieces of gold.”

Came with idea of how his treatment should be carried out. ”Behold, I thought, He will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the Lord his God, and strike his hand over the place, and recover the leper.”

There are lessons here for us all. Rev Kratzer’s “Hinderances to Healing” found in audio form here, is a good place to glean much of what stalls our spiritual progress (healing).

As Mrs. Eddy cautions about the necessity of moral regeneration in healing, “In order to heal by Science, you must not be ignorant of the moral and spiritual demands of Science nor disobey them. Moral ignorance or sin affects your demonstration, and hinders its approach to the standard in Christian Science.”(S.& H. page 483:8-12)

The next healing of the same physical claim in the Lesson found in Matthew 8, without pride but humility is healed instantly. Quite often pride, irritability, selfishness, resentment, etc are the claim!

— “Christian Science Heals” Forum post by Florence Roberts

Audio — “Hinderances to Healing” by Rev. Kratzer’s

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The decisions by vote of Church Councils as to what should and should not be considered Holy Writ; the manifest mistakes in the ancient versions; the thirty thousand different readings in the Old Testament, and the three hundred thousand in the New, — these facts show how a mortal and material sense stole into the divine record, with its own hue darkening to some extent the inspired pages. But mistakes could neither wholly obscure the divine Science of the Scriptures seen from Genesis to Revelation, mar the demonstration of Jesus, nor annul the healing by the prophets, who foresaw that “the stone which the builders rejected” would become “the head of the corner.”

— Citation 2 in this week’s Lesson from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, page 139

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And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.

And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.

He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.

— Revelation 21: 3, 6-7 from citation 1 in the Bible portion of this week’s Lesson

Tabernacle: The tent used as a sancuary for the Ark of the Covenant by the Isrealites during the exodus until the building of the temple.

Overcometh: Gotten the better of with difficulty or after a hard struggle.

Alpha/Omega: Used by Christians as a title for Jesus.

— Shared during Plainfield Roundtable

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Forum post — A new heaven and a new earth. by Susan

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Is it correct to say of material objects, that they are nothing and exist only in imagination?

Nothing and something are words which need correct definition. They either mean formations of indefinite and vague human opinions, or scientific classifications of the unreal and the real. My sense of the beauty of the universe is, that beauty typifies holiness, and is something to be desired. Earth is more spiritually beautiful to my gaze now than when it was more earthly to the eyes of Eve. The pleasant sensations of human belief, of form and color, must be spiritualized, until we gain the glorified sense of substance as in the new heaven and earth, the harmony of body and Mind.

Even the human conception of beauty, grandeur, and utility is something that defies a sneer. It is more than imagination. It is next to divine beauty and the grandeur of Spirit. It lives with our earth-life, and is the subjective state of high thoughts. The atmosphere of mortal mind constitutes our mortal environment. What mortals hear, see, feel, taste, smell, constitutes their present earth and heaven: but we must grow out of even this pleasing thraldom, and find wings to reach the glory of supersensible Life; then we shall soar above, as the bird in the clear ether of the blue temporal sky.

To take all earth’s beauty into one gulp of vacuity and label beauty nothing, is ignorantly to caricature God’s creation, which is unjust to human sense and to the divine realism. In our immature sense of spiritual things, let us say of the beauties of the sensuous universe: “I love your promise; and shall know, some time, the spiritual reality and substance of form, light, and color, of what I now through you discern dimly; and knowing this, I shall be satisfied. Matter is a frail conception of mortal mind; and mortal mind is a poorer representative of the beauty, grandeur, and glory of the immortal Mind.”

— from Miscellaneous Writings by Mary Baker Eddy, page 86-88

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To-day the healing power of Truth is widely demonstrated as an immanent, eternal Science, instead of a phenomenal exhibition. Its appearing is the coming anew of the gospel of “on earth peace, good-will toward men.” This coming, as was promised by the Master, is for its establishment as a permanent dispensation among men; but the mission of Christian Science now, as in the time of its earlier demonstration, is not primarily one of physical healing. Now, as then, signs and wonders are wrought in the metaphysical healing of physical disease; but these signs are only to demonstrate its divine origin, — to attest the reality of the higher mission of the Christ-power to take away the sins of the world.

— Citation 7 in this week’s Lesson from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, page 150

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Therefore, give up thy earth-weights; and observe the apostle’s admonition, “Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those which are before.”

— from “The Allegory”Miscellaneous Writings by Mary Baker Eddy, page 328

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Article — Scientific Translation by Martha Wilcox

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The discoverer of Christian Science finds the path less difficult when she has the high goal always before her thoughts, than when she counts her footsteps in endeavoring to reach it. When the destination is desirable, expectation speeds our progress. The struggle for Truth makes one strong instead of weak, resting instead of wearying one.

— from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, page 426

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Hold thought steadfastly to the enduring, the good, and the true, and you will bring these into your experience proportionably to their occupancy of your thoughts.

— from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, page 261

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Final Readings