The Leaven of True Understanding

August 15, 2018
Hymns: 2, 109, 65
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The Bible & Science & Health with Key to the Scriptures By Mary Baker Eddy

HABAKKUK
2:14 the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.

MARK
16:15…Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.

ROMANS (New English Translation)
10:17 faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the preached word of Christ.
18 But I ask, have they not heard? Yes, they have: Their voice has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.

SH 559:8-10
The “still, small voice” of scientific thought reaches over continent and ocean to the globe’s remotest bound.

MATTHEW
13:33…The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.

GALATIANS
5:9 A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.

PSALMS
51:6 …in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.

SH 454:5-9
The understanding, even in a degree, of the divine All-power destroys fear, and plants the feet in the true path, — the path which leads to the house built without hands “eternal in the heavens.”

II CORINTHIANS
5:17 if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

ROMANS (Good News Translation)
16:25 Let us give glory to God! He is able to make you stand firm in your faith, according to the Good News I preach about Jesus Christ and according to the revelation of the secret truth which was hidden for long ages in the past.
26 Now, however, that truth has been brought out into the open through the writings of the prophets; and by the command of the eternal God it is made known to all nations,…

SH 505:16-28
Spirit imparts the understanding which uplifts consciousness and leads into all truth. The Psalmist saith: “The Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the sea.” Spiritual sense is the discernment of spiritual good. Understanding is the line of demarcation between the real and unreal. Spiritual understanding unfolds Mind, — Life, Truth, and Love, — and demonstrates the divine sense, giving the spiritual proof of the universe in Christian Science. This understanding is not intellectual, is not the result of scholarly attainments; it is the reality of all things brought to light.

SH 258:13-15
God expresses in man the infinite idea forever developing itself, broadening and rising higher and higher from a boundless basis.

EPHESIANS
4:23 be renewed in the spirit of your mind;

SH 241:13-14
The Bible teaches transformation of the body by the renewal of Spirit.

I CORINTHIANS
5:7-8 Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

ROMANS (J.B. Phillips)
12:2 Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-mould your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all his demands and moves towards the goal of true maturity.

SH 123:12-15
Divine Science, rising above physical theories, excludes matter, resolves things into thoughts, and replaces the objects of material sense with spiritual ideas.

SH 117:29-9
Jesus bade his disciples beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees, which he defined as human doctrines. His parable of the “leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened,” impels the inference that the spiritual leaven signifies the Science of Christ and its spiritual interpretation, — an inference far above the merely ecclesiastical and formal applications of the illustration. Did not this parable point a moral with a prophecy, foretelling the second appearing in the flesh of the Christ, Truth, hidden in sacred secrecy from the visible world?

SH 118:13
In their spiritual significance, Science, Theology, and Medicine are means of divine thought, which include spiritual laws emanating from the invisible and infinite power and grace. The parable may import that these spiritual laws, perverted by a perverse material sense of law, are
metaphysically presented as three measures of meal, — that is, three modes of mortal thought. In all mortal forms of thought, dust is dignified as the natural status of men and things, and modes of material motion are honored with the name of laws. This continues until the leaven of Spirit changes the whole of mortal thought, as yeast changes the chemical properties of meal.

SH 322:3-7
When understanding changes the standpoints of life and intelligence from a material to a spiritual basis, we shall gain the reality of Life, the control of Soul over sense, and we shall perceive Christianity, or Truth, in its divine Principle.

SH 102:16-23
The mild forms of animal magnetism are disappearing, and its aggressive features are coming to the front. The looms of crime, hidden in the dark recesses of mortal thought, are every hour weaving webs more complicated and subtle. So secret are the present methods of animal magnetism that they ensnare the age into indolence, and produce the very apathy on the subject which the criminal desires.

SH 540:5
In Isaiah we read: “I make peace, and create evil. I the Lord do all these things;” but the prophet referred to divine law as stirring up the belief in evil to its utmost, when bringing it to the surface and reducing it to its common denominator, nothingness. The muddy river-bed must be stirred in order to purify the stream. In moral chemicalization, when the symptoms of evil, illusion, are aggravated, we may think in our ignorance that the Lord hath wrought an evil; but we ought to know that God’s law uncovers so-called sin and its effects, only that Truth may annihilate all sense of evil and all power to sin.

SH 168:30
Here let a word be noticed which will be better understood hereafter, — chemicalization. By chemicalization I mean the process which mortal mind and body undergo in the change of belief from a material to a spiritual basis.

SH 95:19-23,32-1 (to;), 96:5
We welcome the increase of knowledge and the end of error, because even human invention must have its day, and we want that day to be succeeded by Christian Science, by divine reality. Midnight foretells the dawn. … Humanity advances slowly out of sinning sense into spiritual understanding; … Before error is wholly destroyed, there will be interruptions of the general material routine. Earth will become dreary and desolate, but summer and winter, seedtime and harvest (though in changed forms), will continue unto the end, — until the final spiritualization of all things. “The darkest hour precedes the dawn.”

SH 422:5, 14
If the reader of this book observes a great stir throughout his whole system, and certain moral and physical symptoms seem aggravated, these indications are favorable. Continue to read, and the book will become the physician, allaying the tremor which Truth often brings to error when destroying it.
As when an acid and alkali meet and bring out a third quality, so mental and moral chemistry changes the material base of thought, giving more spirituality to consciousness and causing it to depend less on material evidence. These changes which go on in mortal mind serve to reconstruct the body. Thus Christian Science, by the alchemy of Spirit, destroys sin and death.

SH 401:18
Mental chemicalization brings sin and sickness to the surface, forcing impurities to pass away, as is the case with a fermenting fluid.

MATTHEW
9:16-17 No man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment, for that which is put in to fill it up taketh from the garment, and the rent is made worse. Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved.

SH 275:25-26
Our material human theories are destitute of Science. The true understanding of God is spiritual.

SH 593:9
Resurrection. Spiritualization of thought; a new and higher idea of immortality, or spiritual existence; material belief yielding to spiritual understanding.

SH 548:13
Every agony of mortal error helps error to destroy error, and so aids the apprehension of immortal Truth. This is the new birth going on hourly, by which men may entertain angels, the true ideas of God, the spiritual sense of being.

SH 83:6
In a world of sin and sensuality hastening to a greater development of power, it is wise earnestly to consider whether it is the human mind or the divine Mind which is influencing one. … Science only can explain the incredible good and evil elements now coming to the surface. Mortals must find refuge in Truth in order to escape the error of these latter days. Nothing is more antagonistic to Christian Science than a blind belief without understanding, for such a belief hides Truth and builds on error.

SH 442:30
Christian Scientists, be a law to yourselves that mental malpractice cannot harm you either when asleep or when awake.

LUKE
17:21…the kingdom of God is within you.

SH 192:4-7
We are Christian Scientists, only as we quit our reliance upon that which is false and grasp the true. We are not Christian Scientists until we leave all for Christ. Human opinions are not spiritual.

SH 329:5-7
A little leaven leavens the whole lump. A little understanding of Christian Science proves the truth of all that I say of it.

SH 162:9
The effect of this Science is to stir the human mind to a change of base, on which it may yield to the harmony of the divine Mind.

I JOHN
5:20 we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true,

II CORINTHIANS (Amplified Bible)
3:18 we all, with unveiled face, continually seeing as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are progressively being transformed into His image from [one degree of] glory to [even more] glory, which comes from the Lord, [who is] the Spirit.

SH 576:21
This kingdom of God “is within you,” — is within reach of man’s consciousness here, and the spiritual idea reveals it. In divine Science, man possesses this recognition of harmony consciously in proportion to his understanding of God.

SH 264:15
When we realize that Life is Spirit, never in nor of matter, this understanding will expand into self-completeness, finding all in God, good, and needing no other consciousness.

SH 90:5-23
This material world is even now becoming the arena for conflicting forces. On one side there will be discord and dismay; on the other side there will be Science and peace. The breaking up of material beliefs may seem to be famine and pestilence, want and woe, sin, sickness, and death, which assume new phases until their nothingness appears. These disturbances will continue until the end of error, when all discord will be swallowed up in spiritual Truth. Mortal error will vanish in a moral chemicalization. This mental fermentation has begun, and will continue until all errors of belief yield to understanding.

REVELATION
2:17…To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.

SH 191:4, 13
As mortals give up the delusion that there is more than one Mind, more than one God, man in God’s likeness will appear, and this eternal man will include in that likeness no material element. … Thus the whole earth will be transformed by Truth on its pinions of light, chasing away the darkness of error.

SH 118:10
Ages pass, but this leaven of Truth is ever at work. It must destroy the entire mass of error, and so be eternally glorified in man’s spiritual freedom.

SUPPLEMENTAL READINGS
“The Leaven is at Work”
By The Editors
Christian Science Sentinel, September 2013
When a baker puts yeast in a batch of bread dough, he has full faith that the whole batch will be leavened—once the yeast is properly mixed with the other ingredients, it spreads throughout the dough. It cannot be removed and its leavening effect comes into play. When Christ Jesus preached the kingdom of God, he proclaimed it to be “at hand,” “within you,” and “like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.”
Likewise, Mary Baker Eddy spoke of the divine Science of Christ, Truth, as the leaven destined to change “the whole of mortal thought, as yeast changes the chemical properties of meal.” Like the baker, Jesus and Mrs. Eddy each had full faith in the spiritual “yeast,” or leaven, God has placed in the dough of human consciousness—that nothing could remove it, stop its spread, or halt its leavening effect.
So if, and when we have any concerns about the future of Christian Science, it’s important to look for signs of the leaven at work in individual and collective human thought—as evidence that God Himself is bringing about changes that ensure eventual salvation for the whole of humanity from sin, disease, and death. As Mrs. Eddy said: “Ages pass, but this leaven of Truth is ever at work. It must destroy the entire mass of error, and so be eternally glorified in man’s spiritual freedom.” … Nothing can stop this forward movement.