Evidences of progress and of spiritualization greet us on every hand.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Day 82:
Christian Science deals wholly with the mental cause in judging and destroying disease. It succeeds where homeopathy fails, solely because its one recognized Principle of healing is Mind, and the whole force of the mental element is employed though Science of Mind, which never shares its rights with inanimate matter.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Monday, March 28, 2011
Day 80: Authorial Honesty
This is one of the readings where Mary Baker Eddy’s authorial honesty in her own path may have sparked debate or even been used against her but I think the reading is spiritually significant. We get to see what she tried, why, and how it worked.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Day 79: Free Moral Agency
Mary Baker Eddy uses the term free moral agency in this section.
Don’t confuse this with free will. People usually use free will to say they have a choice about something as opposed to man imposing on other men. At some point human will moves from an individual right to a personal corruption where we no longer have to listen or be advised. We can just do because we have free will.
That has nothing to do with free moral agency. If you are listening to God, your moral compass is properly attuned and you act accordingly. Human will or free will lets you be your own God.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Friday, March 25, 2011
Day 77: The Example
He prescribed no drugs, urged no obedience to material laws, but acted in direct disobedience to them.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Day 76: Healing
Scientific healing has this advantage over other methods, – that in it Truth controls error.
If there is any mystery in Christian healing, it is the mystery which godliness always presents to the ungodly, – they mystery always arising from ignorance of the laws of eternal and unerring Mind.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Day 74: Healing
Lots of good instruction in this reading about theology today.
We worship spiritually, only as we cease to worship materially.
Few understand or adhere to Jesus’ divine precepts for living and healing. Why? Because his precepts require the disciple to cut off the right hand and pluck out the right eye, – that is, to set aside even the most cherished beliefs and practices, to leave all for Christ.
In healing the sick and sinning, Jesus elaborated the fact that the healing effect followed the understanding of the divine Principle and of the Christ-spirit which governed the corporeal Jesus.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Day 73: Christian Miracles
From beginning to end, the Scriptures are full of accounts, of the triumph of Spirit, Mind over matter. Moses proved the power of Mind by what men called miracles; so did Joshua, Elijah, and Elisha.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Day 72: Christianity Explained
This reading explains Christian Science from a historical perspective. Jesus had to eventually explain it:
Christianity … [is] the demonstration of divine Love casting out error and healing the sick, not merely in the name of Christ, or Truth but in demonstration of Truth, as must be the case in the cycles of divine light.
He asked his disciples who or what he was? Simon replied:
Thou are the Christ, the Son of the living God!
His method for healing:
He showed that diseases were cast out neither by corporeality, by materia medica, nor by hygiene, but by the divine Spirit, casting out the errors of mortal mind.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Day 71: Miracles
Yesterday’s reading was about faith, today’s reading is about miracles.
Denial of the possibility of Christian healing robs Christianity of the very element, which gave it divine force and its astonishing and unequalled success in the first century.
The miracle introduces no disorder, but unfolds the primal order, establishing the Science of God’s unchangeable law. Spiritual evolution alone is worthy of the exercise of divine power.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Day 70: Faith
Today’s reading is about faith in God as opposed to faith in established theology, or material beliefs.I think the word faith muddles the discussion because, these days, it has taken on a different theological flavor in some ways. A better word might be trust. Do we trust God? How much? All the way?
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Day 69: Material belief & False evidence
While looking for the perfectibility of man, I came across these:
Christian Science, properly understood, would disabuse the human mind of material beliefs which war against spiritual facts; and these material beliefs must be denied and cast out to make place for truth. You cannot add to the contents of a vessel already full.
When once destroyed by divine Science, the false evidence before the corporeal senses disappears.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Day 68:
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.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Day 67: Thought
All Science is divine. Human thought never projected the least portion of true being. Human belief has sought and interpreted in its own way the echo of Spirit, and so seems to have reversed it and repeated it materially; but the human mind never produced a real tone nor sent forth a positive sound.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Day 66: Belief
Physical science (so-called) is human knowledge,--a law of mortal mind, a blind belief, a Samson shorn of his strength.
In a word, human belief is a blind conclusion from material reasoning. This is a mortal, finite sense of things, which immortal Spirit silences forever.
The elements and functions of the physical body and of the physical world will change as mortal mind changes its beliefs.
Thus matter will finally be proved nothing more than a mortal belief, wholly inadequate to affect a man through its supposed organic action or supposed existence.
…mortality will cease when man beholds himself God's reflection, even as man sees his reflection in a glass.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Day 65: Evidence of the Physical Senses
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.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Day 64: Testify
it to be impossible for aught but Mind to testify truly or to exhibit the real status of man.
Science shows appearances often to be erroneous, and corrects these errors by the simple rule that the greater controls the lesser.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Day 63: Spiritual vs. Material Law
Material law, defined by science, theology, and medicine, is all around us. It seems to be getting more pervasive and more complicated all the time. While new laws are still be considered, and then freshly installed into society (coughing into your elbow – oy), they are usually not in our thought much unless they are controversial. But once the law finds a place, then the people find the law. Beliefs, theories, opinions – these start to build on top of the law. Then the law eventually becomes part of our community and personal sense. We change our behavior to fit it and we get afraid, then angry when others don’t change their behavior.
Then there is spiritual law. It doesn’t change or grow more complicated. By comparison, it seems to become more simple. Love.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Day 62: Individuality
I can only guess at the times and circumstance that Mary Baker Eddy felt the need to make this declaration which to me seems obvious:
The term individuality is also open to objections, because an individual may be one of a series, one of many, as an individual man, an individual horse; whereas God is One,--not one of a series, but one alone and without an equal.
Day 61: Mind, not mind
The nice thing about the web is that I can display Mary Baker Eddy’s words in an arrangement that is meaningful to me. So here goes:
| Mind | mind |
| In Science, Mind is one, including noumenon and phenomena, God and His thoughts. In divine Science, the universe, including man, is spiritual, harmonious, and eternal. | The spiritually unscientific definition of mind is based on the evidence of the physical senses, which makes minds many and calls mind both human and divine. |
| Scientific Translation of Immortal Mind | Scientific Translation of | ||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Monday, March 7, 2011
Day 60:
The four propositions of Christian Science:
- God is All-in-All.
- God is good. Good is Mind.
- God, Spirit, being all, nothing is matter.
- Life, God, omnipotent good, deny death, evil, sin, disease.
These echo the first story of creation in Genesis. When looking for a mental argument, remember her mathematical usage of the propositions at the bottom of this page:
The divine metaphysics of Christian Science, like the method in mathematics, proves the rule by inversion. For example: There is no pain in Truth, and Metaphysical inversions no truth in pain; no nerve in Mind, and no mind in nerve; no matter in Mind, and no mind in matter; no matter in Life, and no life in matter; no matter in good, and no good in matter.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Day 59: Good versus Evil
These two pages have a line drawn. On the side of God is: man’s perfectibility and divine metaphysics. On the other side is: will defined as sensuous reason, and unreality called evil.
I know from my reading of this book last year what part human will plays (or more accurately doesn’t play) in Christian Science. I’m eager to learn how man’s perfectibility is explained in the book. I know some of it but I expect more since it is right here in these particular pages.
If you have a favorite phrase about man’s perfectibility in the book, please leave the page and line reference in the comments.
Day 58: Christian Science on 1 Page
Mary Baker Eddy presents a complete picture of Christian Science with two separate paragraphs.
It was the divine law of Life and Love, unfolding to me the demonstrable fact that matter possesses neither sensation nor life, that human experiences show the falsity of all material things, and that immortal cravings, “the price of learning love,” establish the truism that the only sufferer is mortal mind, for the divine Mind cannot suffer.
…the opposite of Truth, – called error, sin, sickness, disease, death, – is the false testimony of false material sense, of mind in matter; that this false sense evolves, in belief, a subjective state of mortal mind which this same so-called mind names matter, thereby shutting out the true sense of Spirit.
Friday, March 4, 2011
Day 57: Self-government
Man is properly self-governed only when he is guided rightly and governed by his Maker, divine Truth and Love.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Day 55: Despotic Control
Indolence, apathy, and despotic control. Wow. No one wants to be on the wrong end of that. The consistent care to look through these to God is needed. Standing porter when the enemy is attacking is much easier than when you invite him in.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Day 54:
What if Mesmer got it all wrong from the beginning? What if the mutual power he saw was actual us reflecting God’s love but he didn’t know or understand it so he took it in a different direction.
What if these other theories (outside C.S.) are people who where on the cusp of something spiritual (truly God inspired), but they just couldn’t figure it out?
What if that happens everyday?
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