Day 221: Notes from the Trial

436:15-438:17

It was Fear who handcuffed Mortal Man and would now punish him.

the Court of Error construed obedience to the law of divine Love as disobedience to the law of Life.

One of the principal witnesses, Nerve, testified that he was a ruler of Body, in which province Mortal Man resides. He also testified that he was on intimate terms with the plaintiff, and knew Personal Sense to be truthful

I proclaim this witness, Nerve, to be destitute of intelligence and truth and to be a false witness.

Man self-destroyed; the testimony of matter respected; Spirit not allowed a hearing; Soul a criminal though recommended to mercy; the helpless innocent body tortured,--these are the terrible records of your Court of Error, and I ask that the Supreme Court of Spirit reverse this decision.

Then Christian Science proved the witness, Nerve, to be a perjurer. Instead of being a ruler in the Province of Body, in which Mortal Man was reported to reside, Nerve was an insubordinate citizen, putting in false claims to office and bearing false witness against Man.

2010

Day 219: Erroneous Statements in the Trial

432:9-434:7

These statements are wrong and should be contradicted with statements of Truth:

• Mortality is the governor of the body.
• A disease’s person can be punished with death.
• A good deed can be punished.
• Laws of nature render disease homicidal.
• We must regard the evidence of Personal Sense.
• Because he has loved his neighbor as himself, Mortal Man has been guilty of benevolence in the first degree. For this crime Mortal Man is sentenced to be tortured until he is dead.

"Delay the execution; the prisoner is not guilty."

2010

Day 218: Trial btwn Divine Mind & Supposed laws of Matter and Hygiene

430:13-432:8

The Trial Participants

The trial is set up as an antagonistic fight between the accused, Mortal Man, and the plaintiff, Personal Sense. This reading calls the following witnesses: health laws, coated tongue, sallow skin, nerve, mortality.

I smiled when I read this. It is funny but it is also true. I check with these very witnesses sometimes when I’m not well and I know I shouldn’t. They aren’t speaking for me.

2010

Day 153: Finite sense

298:8-300:8

Material sense expresses the belief that mind is in matter. This human belief, alternating between a sense of pleasure and pain, hope and fear, life and death, never reaches beyond the boundary of the mortal or the unreal.

Finite sense has no true appreciation of infinite Principle, God, or of His infinite image or reflection, man.

2010

Day 68:

128:4-130:6

We must look deep into realism instead of accepting only the outward sense of things.

I’ve been challenging myself with this for a few days now but it is nice to have the idea so succinctly stated.

2010

Day 65: Evidence of the Physical Senses

122:1-124:2

The evidence of the physical senses often reverses the real Science of being, and so creates a reign of discord,--assigning seeming power to sin, sickness, and death; but the great facts of Life, rightly understood, defeat this triad of errors, contradict their false witnesses, and reveal the kingdom of heaven,--the actual reign of harmony on earth.

2010

Day 42: Purgatory

76:6-77:32

Mary Baker Eddy mentions that spiritism, the belief in spirits,

consigns the so-called dead to a state resembling that of blighted bugs, –to a wretched purgatory, where the chances of the departed for improvement narrow into nothing and they return to their old standpoints of matter.

How funny we, as people, don’t want change. We don’t want it for our selves and we don’t want it for our ghosts, real or imagined. A change in the spirit requires a change in us.

I have a friend who is very much into her ghosts. They are personal to her as if for her alone. She talks of her own angels as well. It’s so much easier to believe in a personal deity, angel, or ghost than it is to believe in the all-loving. It’s almost like an impersonal, although complete love from God, can’t possibly be as powerful as personal love which we all have at least had a taste of.

2010

Day 39: Spiritualism

70-71:32

Spiritualism is an odd type of materiality since it is dealing with relatively non-material things. Sometimes I think Mary Baker Eddy could have stated it more succinctly if she had said the material experience of  spiritualism is just as false and erroneous as the material experience of sin and disease.

Day 17: Principle and principles

26:1-27:32

I've been thinking about what principles I live by in my life. They are in direct contrast to someone else's principles in my life. This isn't usually a problem because we are far from each other and the evidence of our choices isn't constantly in the middle of our friendship. But in a few months, I will be asked to bend my principles to meet the situation. Or put them aside altogether.

Comparing this to Jesus's principles, Mary Baker Eddy wrote:

Our Master taught no mere theory, doctrine, or belief. It was the divine Principle of all real being which he taught and practiced. 

I will have to do the same and put self aside.

2010

Day 7: False Claims

7:1-9:4

In the first paragraph, Mary Baker Eddy writes

The relinquishment of error deprives material sense of is false claims.

This is stated so succinctly that I wanted to remember it here.

2010

Day 239: Is there no sin?

472:23-475:4

Two things immediately jumped into my mind with this question, before I read the answer. The first was the Trial where Personal Sense, and his attorney, False Belief, are trying to have Mortal Man committed to death. The second is the third tenet of Christian Science:

3. We acknowledge God’s forgiveness of sin in the destruction of sin and the spiritual understanding that casts out evil as unreal. But the belief in sin is punished so long as the belief lasts.

Before I started this year, I didn’t have a feel for false belief and personal sense in terms of Christian Science. I never focused on it before. The readings, broken up the way they are, unraveled that for me. So I probably never understood the 3rd tenet as much as I do now.

The last line of this reading stood out as the premise of the formula and the formula itself where sin is concerned:

To infinite Spirit there is no matter, – all is Spirit, divine Principle and its idea.

I also learned a lot about matter this year that I glossed over in years past. I think my teacher, during class instruction, tried to point this out but there was so much to learn that this point was lost on me.

Day 220: The Trial (day 3)

434:8-436:14

I feel I must apologize for my irregular posts. August is the month where I live and material life (gardening, trips to the beach, house projects) are front and center. Soon the weather will turn and I’ll be more consistent with my posts.

The trial is moved from the Court of Error to the Court of Spirit.

I liked (and will come back to when I need it):

Mortal Man has had no proper counsel in the case. All the testimony has been on the side of Personal Sense

acting within the limits of the divine law, and in obedience thereto. Upon this statute hangs all the law and testimony. Giving a cup of cold water in Christ’s name, is a Christian service. Laying down his life for a good deed, Mortal Man should find it again. Such acts bear their own justification, and are under the protection of the Most High.