Monday, February 8, 2010

Day 39

70-71:32

Today is the first page of this chapter. It's always seemed like an irrelevant chapter because I've never confused these two topics. It must have been confused in Mary Baker Eddy's day since she wrote about it. Spiritualism, as noted here, has three definitions from 1913. I believe the third definition is the one MBE is referring to in this chapter. Please comment if you disagree or have insight on her understanding of spiritualism.

"Spiritualism: A belief that departed spirits hold intercourse with mortals by means of physical phenomena, as by rappng, or during abnormal mental states, as in trances, or the like, commonly manifested through a person of special susceptibility, called a medium; spiritism; the doctrines and practices of spiritualists."
I've also thought of this as the ghost chapter.

On reading the first two pages, I felt MBE's usually stiff writing was gone. The pages are easy to read; they could have been written last year instead of over a hundred years ago.

The two sentences I marked are:

The testimony of the corporeal senses cannot inform us what is real and what is delusive, but the revelations of Christian Science unlock the treasures of Truth.

There is but one Spirit.

These sum up this chapter. My goal for this chapter is to read deeper into the writing instead of thinking the chapter is irrelevant.

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