Day 1

vii:1-viii:32

Happy New Year and thank you for joining me while I read S&H this year.

The first two pages of the Preface cover a lot of ground. I don't think as a new Christian Scientist or a youth, I would see that. 

The selection begins with the biblical Christmas which is nice since I still have my tree up the living room.

She discusses the needed for thinkers. I've always thought of Christian Science as a thinker's religion. Blind belief is pointless and the opposite of Christian Science. "A new book introduces new thoughts, but it cannot make them speedily understood." We, each of us, has to think through our own spiritual journey.

The two key phrases that stick out to me are: "Contentment with the past and the cold conventionality of materialism are crumbling away." and "Theology and physics teach that both Spirit and matter are real and good, whereas the fact is that Spirit is good and real, and matter is Spirit's opposite." Materialism, matter on one hand. God (Spirit with a capital S) on the other hand. It's that simple. We always want to say its more complicated than that when we are in the crises of some moment. But going back to that simplicity is the key.

I did have to use the dictionary to look up "Antediluvians". I never remember that word; no one uses it anymore. It means the people before the great flood. The flood Noah built the ark for.

The last paragraph on page viii discusses another book of Mary Baker Eddy's: Restrospection and Introspection, which she wrote as her biography. She also mentioned earlier drafts of S&H as crude compositions. It's hard for me to grasp how much she wrote both in producing S&H, revising over and over again, and in general with her other books, newspaper, magazines, letters to friends and associates. She did it without a computer and she did it well.

Tomorrow: Preface page ix - page x