AUGUST 1, 2018
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Readings from the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy
PSALMS
54:1 Save me, O God, by thy name, and judge me by thy strength.
64:8 … cause me to know the way wherein I should walk;
10 Teach me to do thy will; for thou art my God:
ISAIAH
31:1 Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help; and stay on horses, and trust in chariots, because they are many; and in horsemen, because they are very strong; but they look not unto the Holy One of Israel, neither seek the Lord!
3 Now the Egyptians are men, and not God; and their horses flesh, and not spirit.
JOSHUA
22:19 … if the land of your possession be unclean, then pass ye over unto the land of the possession of the Lord, wherein the Lord’s tabernacle dwelleth, and take possession among us: but rebel not against the Lord, nor rebel against us, in building you an altar beside the altar of the Lord our God.
SH 355:11
Let discord of every name and nature be heard no more, and let the harmonious and true sense of Life and being take possession of human consciousness.
SH 387:27
The history of Christianity furnishes sublime proofs of the supporting influence and protecting power bestowed on man by his heavenly Father, omnipotent Mind, who gives man faith and understanding whereby to defend himself, not only from temptation, but from bodily suffering.
SH 576:23
In divine Science, man possesses this recognition of harmony consciously in proportion to his understanding of God.
MARK
9:17 … one of the multitude … said, Master, I have brought unto thee my son, which hath a dumb spirit;
18 And wheresoever he taketh him, he teareth him: and he foameth, and gnasheth with his teeth, and pineth away: and I spake to thy disciples that they should cast him out; and they could not.
19 He answereth him, and saith, O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? bring him unto me.
21 And he asked his father, How long is it ago since this came unto him? And he said, Of a child.
22 And ofttimes it hath cast him into the fire, and into the waters, to destroy him: but if thou canst do any thing, have compassion on us, and help us.
25 When Jesus saw that the people came running together, he rebuked the foul spirit, saying unto him, Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee, come out of him, and enter no more into him.
26 And the spirit cried, and rent him sore, and came out of him:
SH 395:6-10
Like the great Exemplar, the healer should speak to disease as one having authority over it, leaving Soul to master the false evidences of the corporeal senses and to assert its claims over mortality and disease.
SH 391:7-9
Instead of blind and calm submission to the incipient or advanced stages of disease, rise in rebellion against them.
SH 218:24
Treat a belief in sickness as you would sin, with sudden dismissal. Resist the temptation to believe in matter as intelligent, as having sensation or power.
SH 421:15-18 (to 2nd .)
Insist vehemently on the great fact which covers the whole ground, that God, Spirit, is all, and that there is none beside Him. There is no disease.
JOHN
5:2 Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches.
3 In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water.
4 For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.
5 And a certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty and eight years.
6 When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole?
7 The impotent man answered him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me.
8 Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.
9 And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked: and on the same day was the sabbath.
MARK
3:1 And he entered again into the synagogue; and there was a man there which had a withered hand.
2 And they watched him, whether he would heal him on the sabbath day; that they might accuse him.
3 And he saith unto the man which had the withered hand, Stand forth.
5 And when he had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, he saith unto the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he
stretched it out: and his hand was restored whole as the other.
AND AGAIN FROM JOHN
8:21 Then said Jesus again unto them, I go my way, and ye shall seek me, and shall die in your sins:
42 … If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God;
44 Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.
SH 554:20-22
Jesus defined this opposite of God and His creation better than we can, when he said, “He is a liar, and the father of it.”
SH 234:31-3
Evil thoughts and aims reach no farther and do no more harm than one’s belief permits. Evil thoughts, lusts, and malicious purposes cannot go forth, like wandering pollen, from one human mind to another, finding unsuspected lodgment, if virtue and truth build a strong defence.
SH 144:14-18
Human will-power is not Science. Human will belongs to the so-called material senses, and its use is to be condemned. Willing the sick to recover is not the metaphysical practice of Christian Science, but is sheer animal magnetism.
SH 103:18-23 (to 1st .)
As named in Christian Science, animal magnetism or hypnotism is the specific term for error, or mortal mind. It is the false belief that mind is in matter, and is both evil and good; that evil is as real as good and more powerful. This belief has not one quality of Truth.
SH 471:18-19
God is infinite, therefore ever present, and there is no other power nor presence.
SH 228:26-27 to
… to acknowledge any other power is to dishonor God.
EPHESIANS
4:7 … unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ.
13 Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ:
14 That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive;
17 This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind,
18 Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart:
20 But ye have not so learned Christ;
21 If so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus:
SH 234:9-12
We should become more familiar with good than with evil, and guard against false beliefs as watchfully as we bar our doors against the approach of thieves and murderers.
SH 390:29-2
Meet the incipient stages of disease with as powerful mental opposition as a legislator would employ to defeat the passage of an inhuman law. Rise in the conscious strength of the spirit of Truth to overthrow the plea of mortal mind, alias matter, arrayed against the supremacy of Spirit.
SH 393:8-13, 16-21
Mind is the master of the corporeal senses, and can conquer sickness, sin, and death. Exercise this God-given authority. Take possession of your body, and govern its feeling and action. Rise in the strength of Spirit to resist all that is unlike good.
Be firm in your understanding that the divine Mind governs, and that in Science man reflects God’s government. Have no fear that matter can ache, swell, and be inflamed as the result of a law of any kind, when it is self-evident that matter can have no pain nor inflammation.
SH 390:20-23
Suffer no claim of sin or of sickness to grow upon the thought. Dismiss it with an abiding conviction that it is illegitimate, because you know that God is no more the author of sickness than He is of sin.
FIRST CORINTHIANS.
16:13 Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.
MARK
12:30 … love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength:
PHILIPPIANS
3:14 …press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
COLOSSIANS
3:2 Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.
16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom;
17 And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him.
JAMES
5:6 The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.
SH 406:19-25
Resist evil — error of every sort — and it will flee from you. Error is opposed to Life. We can, and ultimately shall, so rise as to avail ourselves in every direction of the supremacy of Truth over error, Life over death, and good over evil, and this growth will go on until we arrive at the fulness of God’s idea, and no more fear that we shall be sick and die.
SH 410:14-17
Every trial of our faith in God makes us stronger. The more difficult seems the material condition to be overcome by Spirit, the stronger should be our faith and the purer our love.
SH 11:27
Prayer cannot change the unalterable Truth, nor can prayer alone give us an understanding of Truth; but prayer, coupled with a fervent habitual desire to know and do the will of God, will bring us into all Truth. Such a desire has little need of audible expression. It is best expressed in thought and in life.
SUPPLEMENTAL READING
From “Safe in Spirit”
A Conversation with Ann Stewart
Christian Science Journal
November 2006
… thought comprises the body and that’s why the body responds to prayer. If the body were an objective physical substance, how could a mental treatment heal it? It couldn’t. The body is the substance of Soul and therefore is innocent.
Every day we can and must defend ourselves by challenging the constant flow of negative thoughts and images presented to consciousness. The body is innocent, and according to our textbook, not only innocent, but helpless. Why helpless? Because body is never self-acting (see Science and Health, p. 162).
In the Science of being, the word body identifies spiritual qualities, not physical problems. Body is neither a container nor a conveyance. It’s simply a convenience. Body says that you are, not what you are. It’s a question of identity—it’s how we recognize each other.
Science and Health tells us: “Take possession of your body, and govern its feeling and action.” In other words, take possession, don’t vacate the premises every time mortal mind suggests you may have what you just saw in that commercial. Govern the body’s feeling and action. And for goodness sake, stop looking up symptoms on the Internet.
Years ago, I became aware of an abnormal skin condition. Right then and there, I decided not to accept it as any part of my identity. I remember thinking something along these lines: This is my skin. It doesn’t belong to fear. It doesn’t belong to medical theory. It belongs to me. And I belong to God.
I saw my entire being as pure and wholesome and innocent. I remember standing there thinking, Why on earth would you be afraid of your own skin? It just struck me as funny. I realized later that I was following Mrs. Eddy’s instruction that I mentioned earlier: “Take possession of your body, and govern its feeling and action.”
I realized I needed to think of my body as innocent all the time. Once I clearly established in my mind the thought of my complete innocence, the condition was cleared up within a few days.
The body is really a symbol of your spiritual identity. So when you pray to defend yourself against any kind of threat or disease or evil, you’re defending your highest sense of identity here on this earth. And this identity is under God’s government.