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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.
We also ask that you keep your postings as concise as possible. If you quote the Bible, please use The King James Version, as this is what Mrs. Eddy used. Thank you!
Grace White wrote four poems, one for each season, from the perspective of life at Pleasant View. Since there is no history that has surfaced about her connection with Pleasant View, I have to think that she traveled there with the purpose of recording the seasons, as they would have been witnessed by those, who called Pleasant View their home, in order to share with those who read the Journal.
POEM MAY 6, 1905 ISSUE
[Written for the Sentinel.]
Pleasant View in Spring
GRACE WHITE.
Broad meadows clothed with tenderest green,
And patient trees their leaves just showing.
The little ice-bound pond awake,
All sun-kissed ripples from soft breezes blowing.
From distant tree-tops gaily ringing
The song of homing birds is flowing;
While high above in sunny skies
Are stately full-rigged cloud-ships going.
Thank you for the tribute to Mark Ruble. It brought attention to his work. I met him in 2010 and he was my Christian Science “Teacher,” the one I had searched all of my years to know. He traveled to wherever there was an interest in Christian Science practice. He loved Africa and spread the practice of Christian Science in Zambia and Zimbabwe, his real loves. He also traveled to Europe and Asia in response to calls from Christian Scientists to come and speak. Yes, he was called upon by people he knew, holding positions in governments in different parts of the world, to pray. Wherever he went, he spread the seed of Truth and nurtured the seed until it bore fruit. When he read at the Church I attended, before the Mother Church excommunicated him, every word read, uplifted thought to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to bear in all of our hearts because no word was spoken without it being encased with love for God, Christ Jesus, Mrs. Eddy, the congregation and the world. He was persecuted by the Church he loved, but refused to hold any thought but love towards them. I admired him, respected him as a man, who was true to God and the work he was sent to do. He lives in my heart and his work will continue.
Thank you for your post. This post along with a letter read from a Ukrainian soldier, at this morning’s Round Table Discussion, prompted me to submit this post and join in sharing one of the ways I have been praying this week about the war in Ukraine. The story of Hezekiah, in our Lesson, wonderfully illustrates what happens to the tyrant and one of my favorite verses is something Hezekiah says, “With him is an arm of flesh; but with us is the LORD our God to help us, and to fight our battles.” (II Chronicles 32:8) It puts things into perspective. Mrs. Eddy states in Science and Health in the Chapter on Genesis (page 508) that the “seed is in itself” and “The only intelligence or substance of a thought, a seed, or a flower is God, the creator of it. Mind is the Soul of all. Mind is Life, Truth, and Love which governs all.” So armed with Hezekiah and Mrs. Eddy, my prayer takes shape in knowing that ‘the seed’ in all men respond to messages from their Father-Mother; thoughts of goodness; thoughts of righteousness; thoughts of brotherly love; and thoughts about what is just and right. Those messages are the great reformers and restorers of right, representing God with us, ‘fighting our battles’ by uplifting thought.
I found this to be helpful and open up the story as I had never seen before. Hope this Bible Commentary answers questions.
MacLaren’s Expositions
Mark
CHILDREN AND LITTLE DOGS
Mark 7:24 – Mark 7:30.
(Excerpt)
“Our Lord desired to withdraw from the excited crowds who were flocking after Him as a mere miracle-worker and from the hostile espionage of emissaries of the Pharisees, ‘which had come from Jerusalem.’ Therefore He sought seclusion in heathen territory. He, too, knew the need of quiet, and felt the longing to plunge into privacy, to escape for a time from the pressure of admirers and of foes, and to go where no man knew Him. How near to us that brings Him! And how the remembrance of it helps to explain His demeanour to the Syrophcenician woman, so unlike His usual tone! Naturally the presence of Jesus leaked out, and perhaps the very effort to avoid notice attracted it. Rumour would have carried His name across the border, and the tidings of His being among them would stir hope in some hearts that felt the need of His help. Of such was this woman, whom Mark describes first, generally, as a ‘Greek’ {that is, a Gentile}, and then particularly as ‘a Syrophcenician by race’; that is, one of that branch of the Phoenician race who inhabited maritime Syria, in contradistinction from the other branch inhabiting North-eastern Africa, Carthage, and its neighbourhood. Her deep need made her bold and persistent, as we learn in detail from Matthew, who is in this narrative more graphic than Mark. He tells us that she attacked Jesus in the way, and followed Him, pouring out her loud petitions, to the annoyance of the disciples. They thought that they were carrying out His wish for privacy in suggesting that it would be best to ‘send her away’ with her prayer granted, and so stop her ‘crying after us,’ which might raise a crowd, and defeat the wish. We owe to Matthew the further facts of the woman’s recognition of Jesus as ‘the Son of David,’ and of the strange ignoring of her cries, and of His answer to the disciples’ suggestion, in which He limited His mission to Israel, and so explained to them His silence to her. Mark omits all these points, and focuses all the light on the two things-Christ’s strange and apparently harsh refusal, and the woman’s answer, which won her cause.
Certainly our Lord’s words are startlingly unlike Him, and as startlingly like the Jewish pride of race and contempt for Gentiles. But that the woman did not take them so is clear; and that was not due only to her faith, but to something in Him which gave her faith a foothold. We are surely not to suppose that she drew from His words an inference which He did not perceive in them, and that He was, as some commentators put it, ‘caught in His own words.’ Mark alone gives us the first clause of Christ’s answer to the woman’s petition: ‘Let the children first be filled.’ And that ‘first’ distinctly says that their prerogative is priority, not monopoly. If there is a ‘first,’ there will follow a second. The very image of the great house in which the children sit at the table, and the ‘little dogs’ are in the room, implies that children and dogs are part of one household; and Jesus meant by it just what the woman found in it,-the assurance that the meal-time for the dogs would come when the children had done. That is but a picturesque way of stating the method of divine revelation through the medium of the chosen people, and the objections to Christ’s words come at last to be objections to the ‘committing’ of the ‘oracles of God’ to the Jewish race; that is to say, objections to the only possible way by which a historical revelation could be given. It must have personal mediums, a place and a sequence. It must prepare fit vehicles for itself and gradually grow in clearness and contents. And all this is just to say that revelation for the world must be first the possession of a race. The fire must have a hearth on which it can be kindled and burn, till it is sufficient to bear being carried thence.”
For me also. There seems to always be a hunger within me to read whatever I can find on Mrs. Eddy’s life and teachings. It’s all about learning directly from her.
Here is more on the significance of the Sabbath (this time by Henry Ward Beecher), with a new perspective on what is required of us during the week. (Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) was a Congregationalist clergyman. He is quoted in a June 20, 1901 Sentinel article.)
“Henry Ward Beecher once said: “A week filled up with selfishness and a Sabbath stuffed full of religious exercises will make a good Pharisee but a poor Christian. There are many persons who think Sunday is a sponge with which to wipe out the sins of the week. Now God’s altar stands from Sunday to Sunday, and the seventh day is no more for religion than any other. It is for rest. The whole seven are for religion and one of them for rest.””
Thank you for sharing your experience and the way this verse spoke to you. I can see how the people who helped, taught and showed you how to pray played their parts in “planting the seeds” which resulted in God’s great blessings for you. Very beautiful.
This Journal article from May 1900, Planting by M.J.A expands on a citation in this week’s Lesson from I Corinthians 3: 6 – “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.” (Paul founded the Church; Apollos followed Paul as an instructor)
“At one time I was in a part of the country where the land was fertile, but, owing to fires and drouth, there were no trees. My mother, being very much interested in the country, felt it to be her duty to prove that trees could be grown successfully there. She spent much time, labor, and money in proving it. One season she had a quantity of black walnuts to plant. The man she engaged to do the work, said to her one day, “Don’t you think it very foolish and a waste of time for you to plant these walnuts? They are of very slow growth and you are not young; you will never live to see them trees.” My mother answered him, saying, “Don’t you think I shall do pretty well if I live to plant them? that is my work.” That answer made a lasting impression upon me, and ever since then I have been interested in watching people plant seed, and especially the seed of Christian Science.”
“Let us be up and doing, planting faithfully, honestly, loyally the seed our beloved Leader has given us, the seed of Christian Science. Some may fall by the wayside, some on stony ground, yet there is good, well-prepared soil ready and waiting to receive it. If we do the planting, God will give the increase, whether we ever see the full-grown tree or not. Our work is to plant.”
I am so grateful to be reminded that we are all “engaged in the one design” and that it is God who brings all work to fruition. His grace abounds.
Thank you for posting on this citation and Mrs. Eddy’s comments on it. I also found it interesting when I read of the circumstances of Jesus’ rebuke to the nine disciples. The disciples had not been in earnest prayer – they had been having a good time, while Jesus, John, Peter, and James were away. When suddenly thrust into a situation which required not only a strong rebuke and also required that they be in a state of spiritual connection with God, so that His Truth could be demonstrated to heal, they failed like the virgins, who brought no oil with them when waiting to meet the bridegroom and were left out, with the moral of Jesus’ story being to “ keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.” (Mathew 25:13)
Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
“It seems that Christ not only suggests, that faith was greatly wanting in his disciples; for which reason they could not cast out the devil, and heal the lunatic; but they had been wanting in prayer to God, to assist them in the exercise of their miraculous gifts; and that whilst Christ, and the other three disciples were on the mount, they had been feasting and indulging themselves with the people, and so were in a very undue disposition of mind, for such extraordinary service, for which our Lord tacitly rebukes them.”
I too, thank you for sharing this excerpt from Collectanea and want to include something from Mrs. Eddy’s “Christ and Christmas.”
“FAST circling on, from zone to zone, –
Bright, blest, afar, –
O’er the grim night of chaos shone
One lone, brave star. (STAR OF BETHLEHEM)
In tender mercy, Spirit sped
A loyal ray To rouse the living, wake the dead,
And point the Way –
The Christ-idea, God anoints-
Of Truth and Life;
The Way in Science He appoints,
That stills all strife. (CHRIST HEALING)
I found something in the Barnes Notes on the Bible:
“Behold, I will add unto thy days fifteen years – This is perhaps the only instance in which any man has been told exactly how long he would live. Why God specified the time cannot now be known. It was, however, a full answer to the prayer of Hezekiah, and the promise is a full demonstration that God is the hearer of prayer, and that he can answer it at once.”
I found something in the Barnes Notes on the Bible:
“Behold, I will add unto thy days fifteen years – This is perhaps the only instance in which any man has been told exactly how long he would live. Why God specified the time cannot now be known. It was, however, a full answer to the prayer of Hezekiah, and the promise is a full demonstration that God is the hearer of prayer, and that he can answer it at once.”
That wonderful excerpt is from Charles Spurgeon.
Thank you for being inspired to look into the word, “hymn.” That word never jumped out at me for attention but now, because of your investigation into this, a well known and simple story of The Last Supper has an abundance of new meaning for me. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you for your post and powerful treatment. It has given me much needed food for thought.
All it takes is a change in thinking. It speaks through a child. My thanks also for finding this to share.