Subject: Unreality
The scriptural selection is from Matthew
Matthew 7:7,8,12-20 all,24 whosoever,25
#Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:
For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shallbe opened.
all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the
law and the prophets. #Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way,
that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. #Beware of false
prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.
whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man,
which built his house upon a rock: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds
blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.
Solo:
Golden Text: Prov 12:19
The lip of truth shall be established for ever: but a lying tongue is but for a moment.Responsive Readings: Ps 120:2;31:1,3,5,13-15 (to :), 19, 23, 24
Deliver my soul, O Lord, from lying lips, and from a deceitful tongue.
In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust; let me never be ashamed: deliver me in thy righteousness.
For thou art my rock and my fortress; therefore for thy name's sake lead me, and guide me.
Into thine hand I commit my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth.
For I have heard the slander of many: fear was on every side: while they took counsel together against me, they devised to take away my life. But I trusted in thee, O Lord: I said, Thou art my God. My times are in thy hand:
Oh how great is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee; which thou hast wrought for them that trust in thee before the sons of men!
O love the Lord, all ye his saints: for the Lord preserveth the faithful, and plentifully rewardeth the proud doer. Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the Lord.
Lesson Sermon
The BibleI
I Cor. 2:10 the
the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.
Rom. 11:33, 36 (to :)
O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!
For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things:
Rom. 9:14 Is
Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid.
PS. 5:4
For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness: neither shall evil dwell with thee.
Ps. 36:5, 7, 9
Thy mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens; and thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds.
How excellent is thy lovingkindness, O God! therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings.
For with thee is the fountain of life: in thy light shall we see light.
Ps. 37:1, 2, 10, 11, 18
Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity. For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb.
For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be. But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.
The Lord knoweth the days of the upright: and their inheritance shall be for ever.
Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy
331:11, 20-22
V. The Scriptures imply that God is All-in-all. From this it follows that nothing possesses reality nor existence except the divine Mind and His ideas. The Scriptures also declare that God is Spirit. Therefore in Spirit all is harmony, and there can be no discord; all is Life, and there is no death. Everything in God's universe expresses Him.
He is all-inclusive, and is reflected by all that is real and eternal and by nothing else.
186:15
Every mortal must learn that there is neither power nor reality in evil.
480:23
Evil is a false belief. God is not its author. The supposititious parent of evil is a lie.
277:2
To all that is unlike unerring and eternal Mind, this Mind saith, "Thou shalt surely die;" and elsewhere the Scripture says that dust returns to dust. The non-intelligent relapses into its own unreality. Matter never produces mind. The immortal never produces the mortal. Good cannot result in evil. As God Himself is good and is Spirit, goodness and spirituality must be immortal. Their opposites, evil and matter, are mortal error, and error has no creator. If goodness and spirituality are real, evil and materiality are unreal and cannot be the outcome of an infinite God, good.
474:24-29
Despite the hallowing influence of Truth in the destruction of error, must error still be immortal? Truth spares all that is true. If evil is real, Truth must make it so; but error, not Truth, is the author of the unreal, and the unreal vanishes, while all that is real is eternal.
II
I Cor. 3:18, 19 (to 1st .)
Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.
Gen. 11:1, 4-9 (to :)
And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.
And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth:
Ps. 33:10, 11
The Lord bringeth the counsel of the heathen to nought: he maketh the devices of the people of none effect. The counsel of the Lord standeth for ever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations.
Zeph. 3:9, 20
For then will I turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord, to serve him with one consent.
At that time will I bring you again, even in the time that I gather you: for I will make you a name and a praise among all people of the earth, when I turn back your captivity before your eyes, saith the Lord.
581:17-22
BABEL. Self-destroying error; a kingdom divided against itself, which cannot stand; material knowledge.
The higher false knowledge builds on the basis of evidence obtained from the five corporeal senses, the more confusion ensues, and the more certain is the downfall of its structure.
312:1
How true it is that whatever is learned through material sense must be lost because such so-called knowledge is reversed by the spiritual facts of being in Science. That which material sense calls intangible, is found to be substance. What to material sense seems substance, becomes nothingness, as the sense-dream vanishes and reality appears.
117:14-15
Ear hath not heard, nor hath lip spoken, the pure language of Spirit.
286:21-26
God's thoughts are perfect and eternal, are substance and Life. Material and temporal thoughts are human, involving error, and since God, Spirit, is the only cause, they lack a divine cause. The temporal and material are not then creations of Spirit. They are but counterfeits of the spiritual and eternal.
318:9-13
The material senses originate and support all that is material, untrue, selfish, or debased. They would put soul into soil, life into limbo, and doom all things to decay. We must silence this lie of material sense with the truth of spiritual sense.
298:13-15, 22
Spiritual sense, contradicting the material senses, involves intuition, hope, faith, understanding, fruition, reality.
Spiritual ideas lead up to their divine origin, God, and to the spiritual sense of being.
III
Job 14:1, 2
Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not.
Ps. 61:1, 2
Hear my cry, O God; attend unto my prayer. From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed: lead me to the rock that is higher than I.
Ps. 40:1-3 (to :)
I waited patiently for the Lord; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God:
Ps. 100:1, 3, 5
Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands.
Know ye that the Lord he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.
Matt. 23:9 call
call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven.
Matt. 6:9
After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
256:5
All things are created spiritually. Mind, not matter, is the creator. Love, the divine Principle, is the Father and Mother of the universe, including man.
552:13-19
Human experience in mortal life, which starts from an egg, corresponds with that of Job, when he says, "Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble." Mortals must emerge from this notion of material life as all-in-all. They must peck open their shells with Christian Science, and look outward and upward.
337:5-6, 10, 20-24
Material personality is not realism; it is not the reflection or likeness of Spirit, the perfect God.
According to divine Science, man is in a degree as perfect as the Mind that forms him. The truth of being makes man harmonious and immortal, while error is mortal and discordant.
XXVII. The true idea of man, as the reflection of the invisible God, is as incomprehensible to the limited senses as is man's infinite Principle. The visible universe and material man are the poor counterfeits of the invisible universe and spiritual man.
69:2-10
The scientific fact that man and the universe are evolved from Spirit, and so are spiritual, is as fixed in divine Science as is the proof that mortals gain the sense of health only as they lose the sense of sin and disease. Mortals can never understand God's creation while believing that man is a creator. God's children already created will be cognized only as man finds the truth of being. Thus it is that the real, ideal man appears in proportion as the false and material disappears.
IV
Ps. 119:12 (to :), 18
Blessed art thou, O Lord:
Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.
James 1:16, 17
Do not err, my beloved brethren. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
John 9:1-7
And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay, And said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is by interpretation, Sent.) He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing.
269:5
Jesus' demonstrations sift the chaff from the wheat, and unfold the unity and the reality of good, the unreality, the nothingness, of evil.
227:30-10
If God had instituted material laws to govern man, disobedience to which would have made man ill, Jesus would not have disregarded those laws by healing in direct opposition to them and in defiance of all material conditions.
The transmission of disease or of certain idiosyncrasies of mortal mind would be impossible if this great fact of being were learned,--namely, that nothing inharmonious can enter being, for Life is God. Heredity is a prolific subject for mortal belief to pin theories upon; but if we learn that nothing is real but the right, we shall have no dangerous inheritances, and fleshly ills will disappear.
228:14
Mortals will some day assert their freedom in the name of Almighty God. Then they will control their own bodies through the understanding of divine Science. Dropping their present beliefs, they will recognize harmony as the spiritual reality and discord as the material unreality.
485:19-24
The belief that life can be in matter or soul in body, and that man springs from dust or from an egg, is the result of the mortal error which Christ, or Truth, destroys by fulfilling the spiritual law of being, in which man is perfect, even as the "Father which is in heaven is perfect."
V
John 9:14, 16, 24, 25, 31, 33-40
And it was the sabbath day when Jesus made the clay, and opened his eyes.
Therefore said some of the Pharisees, This man is not of God, because he keepeth not the sabbath day. Others said, How can a man that is a sinner do such miracles? And there was a division among them.
Then again called they the man that was blind, and said unto him, Give God the praise: we know that this man is a sinner. He answered and said, Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not: one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see.
Now we know that God heareth not sinners: but if any man be a worshipper of God, and doeth his will, him he heareth.
If this man were not of God, he could do nothing. They answered and said unto him, Thou wast altogether born in sins, and dost thou teach us? And they cast him out. Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when he had found him, he said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God? He answered and said, Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him? And Jesus said unto him, Thou hast both seen him, and it is he that talketh with thee. And he said, Lord, I believe. And he worshipped him. And Jesus said, For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind. And some of the Pharisees which were with him heard these words, and said unto him, Are we blind also?
13:29
The world of error is ignorant of the world of Truth,--blind to the reality of man's existence,--for the world of sensation is not cognizant of life in Soul, not in body.
18:10
Jesus acted boldly, against the accredited evidence of the senses, against Pharisaical creeds and practices, and he refuted all opponents with his healing power.
132:20-24
To-day, as of yore, unconscious of the reappearing of the spiritual idea, blind belief shuts the door upon it, and condemns the cure of the sick and sinning if it is wrought on any but a material and a doctrinal theory.
359:29-21
A Christian Scientist and an opponent are like two artists. One says: "I have spiritual ideals, indestructible and glorious. When others see them as I do, in their true light and loveliness,--and know that these ideals are real and eternal because drawn from Truth,--they will find that nothing is lost, and all is won, by a right estimate of what is real."
The other artist replies: "You wrong my experience. I have no mind-ideals except those which are both mental and material. It is true that materiality renders these ideals imperfect and destructible; yet I would not exchange mine for thine, for mine give me such personal pleasure, and they are not so shockingly transcendental. They require less self-abnegation, and keep Soul well out of sight. Moreover, I have no notion of losing my old doctrines or human opinions."
Dear reader, which mind-picture or externalized thought shall be real to you,--the material or the spiritual? Both you cannot have. You are bringing out your own ideal. This ideal is either temporal or eternal. Either Spirit or matter is your model. If you try to have two models, then you practically have none. Like a pendulum in a clock, you will be thrown back and forth, striking the ribs of matter and swinging between the real and the unreal.
323:32-4
Willingness to become as a little child and to leave the old for the new, renders thought receptive of the advanced idea. Gladness to leave the false landmarks and joy to see them disappear,--this disposition helps to precipitate the ultimate harmony.
VI
I John 4:1, 4
Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.
Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.
I John 2:15-17
Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.
I Pet. 2:1, 2
Wherefore laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings, As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby:
Phil. 4:4-6, 8
Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice. Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand. Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.
Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.
277:24 (only)
The realm of the real is Spirit.
71:1-2 (to 2nd .)
Nothing is real and eternal,--nothing is Spirit,--but God and His idea. Evil has no reality.
485:7-17
If the unimportant and evil appear, only soon to disappear because of their uselessness or their iniquity, then these ephemeral views of error ought to be obliterated by Truth. Why malign Christian Science for instructing mortals how to make sin, disease, and death appear more and more unreal?
Emerge gently from matter into Spirit. Think not to thwart the spiritual ultimate of all things, but come naturally into Spirit through better health and morals and as the result of spiritual growth.
4:3-5, 17-22
What we most need is the prayer of fervent desire for growth in grace, expressed in patience, meekness, love, and good deeds.
Simply asking that we may love God will never make us love Him; but the longing to be better and holier, expressed in daily watchfulness and in striving to assimilate more of the divine character, will mould and fashion us anew, until we awake in His likeness.
480:26-2
The Bible declares: "All things were made by Him [the divine Word]; and without Him was not anything made that was made." This is the eternal verity of divine Science. If sin, sickness, and death were understood as nothingness, they would disappear. As vapor melts before the sun, so evil would vanish before the reality of good. One must hide the other. How important, then, to choose good as the reality!
Solo:
Benediction
Psalms 119:103,104
How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth! Through thy
precepts I get understanding: therefore I hate every false way.
Hymn 46
Josiah Conder*
Day by day the manna fell:
O, to learn this lesson well.
Still by constant mercy fed,
Give me, Lord, my daily bread.
Day by day the promise reads,
Daily strength for daily needs:
Cast foreboding fears away;
Take the manna of today.
Lord, my times are in Thy hand:
All my sanguine hopes have planned,
To Thy wisdom I resign,
And would mold my will to Thine.
Thou my daily task shalt give;
Day by day to Thee I live;
So shall added years fulfill
Not my own, my Father's will.
Hymn 161
Satisfied – Mary Baker Eddy
It matters not what be thy lot,
So Love doth guide;
For storm or shine, pure peace is thine,
Whate'er betide.
And of these stones, or tyrants' thrones,
God able is
To raise up seed--in thought and deed--
To faithful His.
Aye, darkling sense, arise, go hence!
Our God is good.
False fears are foes--truth tatters those,
When understood.
Love looseth thee, and lifteth me,
Ayont hate's thrall:
There Life is light, and wisdom might,
And God is All.
The centuries break, the earth-bound wake,
God's glorified!
Who doth His will--His likeness still--
Is satisfied.
Hymn 115
John M. Neale
Adapted
Holy Father, Thou hast taught us
We should live to Thee alone;
Year by year, Thy hand hath brought us
On through dangers oft unknown.
When we wandered, Thou hast found us;
When we doubted, sent us light;
Still Thine arm has been around us,
All our paths were in Thy sight.
We would trust in Thy protecting,
Wholly rest upon Thine arm,
Follow wholly Thy directing,
Thou our only guard from harm.
Keep us from our own undoing,
Help us turn to Thee when tried,
Still our strength in Thee renewing,
Keep us ever at Thy side.
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