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The Bulletin Board is for gratitude for Christian Science and the Church, as well as timely excerpts from the Bible, the works of Mrs. Eddy, and the early workers that help and encourage. We are very grateful for all posts that conform to these guidelines, but will edit or remove anything that the Practitioners feel is not in complete accord with pure Christian Science or in any way disrespectful of it.
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I was curious about this as well.
It seems it was her humility and acceptance of the Christ that Jesus saw.
This is from Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary:
“Yet the dogs under the table are allowed to eat of the children’s crumbs—the droppings from their master’s full table: Give me that, and I am content: One crumb of power and grace from Thy table shall cast the devil out of my daughter.”
So beautifully said. Thank you for this post!
I love this!
“Christian Science calculus teaches me that self-subtraction automatically activates the principle of multiplication of God’s benefits, blessings, and increase of God’s presence in my life. Christ-radiation intensifies to the degree in which self-absorption subsides.
At the beginning of his reign, Solomon grew by self-subtraction. And Solomon said….O Lord my God…I am but a little child: I know not how to go out or come in. (1 Kings 3:6.).
But as time passed, Solomon grew in matter-mindedness, self-enlargement, moving in the very opposite direction of the footsteps of his youth.”
This morning I was reading the following from Christian Science Versus Pantheism, p 11: 16-19, and it seems to fit what happened to Solomon and what he needed to do:
“If man is spiritually fallen, it matters not what he believes; he is not upright, and must regain his native spiritual stature in order to be in proper shape, as certainly as the man who falls physically needs to rise again.”
Spiritualism “is presented as harmless entertainment, a comfort, spiritual solution, helpful, and sometimes a religion. When broken down you find this false system focuses on death and tragedy, separation from good, magnifies personality and ego, many creators, mind in matter with many minds and souls, relies on mortal mind reading, gives evil power, godless, and falls under occult.”
Thank you for pointing this out. A family member likes to watch a TV show where “ghost hunters” explore so-called paranormal activities in spooky locations. I have watched a couple episodes recently since I happen to be in the room, and I end up rolling my eyes. However, just the other day, I told this family member that if he were to watch this show, I would remove myself and not be in the same room. It came to me that it is not in my best interest to even watch it for entertainment reasons because it is so foreign to everything I am learning.
“Between Christian Science and all forms of superstition a great gulf is fixed, as impassable as that between Dives and Lararus.” S&H, p. 83
Thank you. There are many citations on reflection in the lesson this week, and coincidentally, I have been reading Martha Wilcox’s The Word Made Flesh. In this address, she includes a section titled “The Function of Man Is Reflection,” which is also helpful to understand what reflection means.
“Man, as the idea of Mind, receives all that he is from the Mind that constitutes him, and gives back to that Mind the facts of Mind’s own being. A reflection always does two things: it receives and it gives back what it receives. In this way, reflection establishes the divine Mind to itself as a great fact or entity. Just as, humanly, your idea of yourself gives back to you the fact or your own being, and establishes you to yourself as an entity.
If we could only remember that “I can of mine own self do nothing,” then we could better understand that we are a living conscious reflection. We should know the tremendous importance of our function and our divine purpose – that of being reflection.”
Thank you for posting this!
This also struck me from the article:
“One right thought has more activity, power, and impulsion
than any number of wrong thoughts, no matter how often
or how vehemently expressed.”
Thank you for these very helpful posts!
Thanks for this post. I, too, have been thinking about the word reconciliation. I have read it in S&H but never really tried to understand it until now.
This paragraph from the Bible commentary from Barnes helps me to understand what is needed more clearly:
Reconciliation “conveys the idea of producing a change so that one who is alienated should be brought to friendship. Of course, all the change which takes place must be on the part of man, for God will not change, and the purpose of the plan of reconciliation is to effect such a change in man as to make him in fact reconciled to God, and at agreement with him.”
Thank you for bringing MBE’s explanation to this!
Much is written from the Bible commentaries about this verse, and I thought these paragraphs from MacLaren’s Expositions – about listening silently to God and waiting on him with all our energy – expressed it beautifully:
“As the flowers follow the sun, and silently hold up their petals to be tinted and enlarged by his shining, so must we, if we would know the joy of God, hold our souls, wills, hearts, and minds still before Him, whose voice commands, whose love warms, whose truth makes fair, our whole being. God speaks for the most part in such silence only. If the soul be full of tumult and jangling noises, His voice is little likely to be heard….
The silence of the soul before God is no mere passiveness. It requires the intensest energy of all our being to keep all our being still and waiting upon Him. So put all your strength into the task, and be sure that your soul is never so intensely alive as when in deepest abnegation it waits hushed before God.”
Yes, thank you, Jeremy.
I grew up in Science and didn’t really question or look into other religions or “systems,” so it’s refreshing to hear the perspective from one who did look into them and found why they didn’t work and why Science does.
From “Mary Baker Eddy: Her Spiritual Footsteps” by Gilbert Carpenter
It requires a well-developed spiritual thought to be able to trace the mental cause from its human manifestation. No one without it could have detected any difference between the offerings brought by Cain and Abel. Yet, the Lord, or spiritual perception, had no respect unto Cain’s offering because it was discerned that back of it was the human, and not the divine Mind. This fact was exposed to be true because of the murder of Abel by Cain which followed…
What use would it be to try to unfold spiritual facts to one who insisted that the offerings of Cain and Abel were alike in value because of their outward appearance? The greater works which the Master promises, and which follow when man’s thought goes to the Father, can alone convince one’s beclouded sense of the true divinity of the thought back of the works, since beclouded sense sees no further than the surface from which to judge. If mind is causation, then every effect must follow a mental cause. Only as this is understood can the importance be recognized of replacing the human mind with the divine. Otherwise, one will judge effects at their face value, regardless of the cause back of them. The standard Mrs. Eddy presented is, that no matter how wonderful effect may appear to be, it is to be cast aside as worthless unless the cause is spiritual and therefore right.
This lesson definitely resonated with me.
Several citations remind us to seek God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with a whole desire.
“…if from thence thou shalt seek the Lord thy God, thou shalt find him, if thou seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul.” (Deuteronomy 4: 29)
“And they entered into a covenant to seek the Lord God of their fathers with all their heart and with all their soul” (2 Chronicles 15: 12)
“And all Judah rejoiced at the oath: for they had sworn with all their heart, and sought him with their whole desire; and he was found of them:” (2 Chronicles 15: 15)
There was no half-hearted seeking. It was full-blown, energetic, and earnest. Not “Well, maybe I’ll turn to God today because I have a problem.”
Thanks for this lesson!