Theme: Acceptance
Hymn 70
Elizabeth C. Adams
God giveth light to all
Who ask with prayer sincere;
He doth not fail to hear that call;
His Truth is ever near.
Plain shall His guidance be,
If thou but seek the right;
Clearly thy pathway thou shalt see,
A line of purest light.
God is thy light and health;
No death nor darkness there;
Turn but to Him, accept His wealth,
And all His glory share.
Readings from the Bible.
Deuteronomy 33:11 (to :)
Bless, Lord, his substance, and accept the work of his hands:
Psalms 24:1‑5,7‑10 (to 1st .)
The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods. Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation.
Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory.
Proverbs 1:3‑9 receive
receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment, and equity; To give subtilty to the simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion. A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels: To understand a proverb, and the interpretation; the words of the wise, and their dark sayings. #The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction. My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother: For they shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head, and chains about thy neck.
Proverbs 2:1‑11
My son, if thou wilt receive my words, and hide my commandments with thee; So that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom, and apply thine heart to understanding; Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures; Then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God. For the Lord giveth wisdom: out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding. He layeth up sound wisdom for the righteous: he is a buckler to them that walk uprightly. He keepeth the paths of judgment, and preserveth the way of his saints. Then shalt thou understand righteousness, and judgment, and equity; yea, every good path. #When wisdom entereth into thine heart, and knowledge is pleasant unto thy soul; Discretion shall preserve thee, understanding shall keep thee:
Proverbs 4:10‑15,18,20‑23,25‑27
Hear, O my son, and receive my sayings; and the years of thy life shall be many. I have taught thee in the way of wisdom; I have led thee in right paths. When thou goest, thy steps shall not be straitened; and when thou runnest, thou shalt not stumble. Take fast hold of instruction; let her not go: keep her; for she is thy life. #Enter not into the path of the wicked, and go not in the way of evil men. Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and pass away.
But the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.
#My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart. For they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh. #Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.
Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee. Ponder the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established. Turn not to the right hand nor to the left: remove thy foot from evil.
Ezekiel 20:39‑43 thus (to 2nd ,)
thus saith the Lord God; Go ye, serve ye every one his idols, and hereafter also, if ye will not hearken unto me: but pollute ye my holy name no more with your gifts, and with your idols. For in mine holy mountain, in the mountain of the height of Israel, saith the Lord God, there shall all the house of Israel, all of them in the land, serve me: there will I accept them, and there will I require your offerings, and the firstfruits of your oblations, with all your holy things. I will accept you with your sweet savour, when I bring you out from the people, and gather you out of the countries wherein ye have been scattered; and I will be sanctified in you before the heathen. And ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall bring you into the land of Israel, into the country for the which I lifted up mine hand to give it to your fathers. And there shall ye remember your ways, and all your doings,
Matthew 21:21,22
Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done. And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.
Mark 11:24 I say
I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.
Hebrews 10:35‑37
Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward. For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise. For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry.
James 1:12
Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.
Readings from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy.
39:18
"Now," cried the apostle, "is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation,"‑‑meaning, not that now men must prepare for a future‑world salvation, or safety, but that now is the time in which to experience that salvation in spirit and in life. Now is the time for so‑called material pains and material pleasures to pass away, for both are unreal, because impossible in Science. To break this earthly spell, mortals must get the true idea and divine Principle of all that really exists and governs the universe harmoniously. This thought is apprehended slowly, and the interval before its attainment is attended with doubts and defeats as well as triumphs.
92:32
Do you say the time has not yet come in which to recognize Soul as substantial and able to control the body? Remember Jesus, who nearly nineteen centuries ago demonstrated the power of Spirit and said, "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also," and who also said, "But the hour cometh, and ^now is^, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth." "Behold, ^now^ is the accepted time; behold, ^now^ is the day of salvation," said Paul.
129:22
We must look deep into realism instead of accepting only the outward sense of things. Can we gather peaches from a pine‑tree, or learn from discord the concord of being? Yet quite as rational are some of the leading illusions along the path which Science must tread in its reformatory mission among mortals. The very name, illusion, points to nothingness.
202:3‑14
The scientific unity which exists between God and man must be wrought out in life‑practice, and God's will must be universally done.
If men would bring to bear upon the study of the Science of Mind half the faith they bestow upon the so‑called pains and pleasures of material sense, they would not go on from bad to worse, until disciplined by the prison and the scaffold; but the whole human family would be redeemed through the merits of Christ,‑‑through the perception and acceptance of Truth. For this glorious result Christian Science lights the torch of spiritual understanding.
249:1
Let us accept Science, relinquish all theories based on sense‑testimony, give up imperfect models and illusive ideals; and so let us have one God, one Mind, and that one perfect, producing His own models of excellence.
266:6
Would existence without personal friends be to you a blank? Then the time will come when you will be solitary, left without sympathy; but this seeming vacuum is already filled with divine Love. When this hour of development comes, even if you cling to a sense of personal joys, spiritual Love will force you to accept what best promotes your growth. Friends will betray and enemies will slander, until the lesson is sufficient to exalt you; for "man's extremity is God's opportunity." The author has experienced the foregoing prophecy and its blessings. Thus He teaches mortals to lay down their fleshliness and gain spirituality. This is done through self‑abnegation. Universal Love is the divine way in Christian Science.
315:29
Wearing in part a human form (that is, as it seemed to mortal view), being conceived by a human mother, Jesus was the mediator between Spirit and the flesh, between Truth and error. Explaining and demonstrating the way of divine Science, he became the way of salvation to all who accepted his word. From him mortals may learn how to escape from evil. The real man being linked by Science to his Maker, mortals need only turn from sin and lose sight of mortal selfhood to find Christ, the real man and his relation to God, and to recognize the divine sonship. Christ, Truth, was demonstrated through Jesus to prove the power of Spirit over the flesh,‑‑to show that Truth is made manifest by its effects upon the human mind and body, healing sickness and destroying sin.
330:19‑332:3
God is what the Scriptures declare Him to be,‑‑Life, Truth, Love. Spirit is divine Principle, and divine Principle is Love, and Love is Mind, and Mind is not both good and bad, for God is Mind; therefore there is in reality one Mind only, because there is one God.
The notion that both evil and good are real is a delusion of material sense, which Science annihilates. Evil is nothing, no thing, mind, nor power. As manifested by mankind it stands for a lie, nothing claiming to be something,‑‑for lust, dishonesty, selfishness, envy, hypocrisy, slander, hate, theft, adultery, murder, dementia, insanity, inanity, devil, hell, with all the etceteras that word includes.
God is divine Life, and Life is no more confined to the forms which reflect it than substance is in its shadow. If life were in mortal man or material things, it would be subject to their limitations and would end in death. Life is Mind, the creator reflected in His creations. If He dwelt within what He creates, God would not be reflected but absorbed, and the Science of being would be forever lost through a mortal sense, which falsely testifies to a beginning and an end.
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.
God is individual, incorporeal. He is divine Principle, Love, the universal cause, the only creator, and there is no other self‑existence. He is all‑inclusive, and is reflected by all that is real and eternal and by nothing else. He fills all space, and it is impossible to conceive of such omnipresence and individuality except as infinite Spirit or Mind. Hence all is Spirit and spiritual.
Life, Truth, and Love constitute the triune Person called God,‑‑that is, the triply divine Principle, Love. They represent a trinity in unity, three in one,‑‑the same in essence, though multiform in office: God the Father‑Mother; Christ the spiritual idea of sonship; divine Science or the Holy Comforter. These three express in divine Science the threefold, essential nature of the infinite. They also indicate the divine Principle of scientific being, the intelligent relation of God to man and the universe.
469:12‑24
Question.‑‑What is Mind?
Answer.‑‑Mind is God. The exterminator of error is the great truth that God, good, is the only Mind, and that the supposititious opposite of infinite Mind ‑‑called devil or evil‑‑is not Mind, is not Truth, but error, without intelligence or reality. There can be but one Mind, because there is but one God; and if mortals claimed no other Mind and accepted no other, sin would be unknown. We can have but one Mind, if that one is infinite. We bury the sense of infinitude, when we admit that, although God is infinite, evil has a place in this infinity, for evil can have no place, where all space is filled with God.
494:15‑29
The miracle of grace is no miracle to Love. Jesus demonstrated the inability of corporeality, as well as the infinite ability of Spirit, thus helping erring human sense to flee from its own convictions and seek safety in divine Science. Reason, rightly directed, serves to correct the errors of corporeal sense; but sin, sickness, and death will seem real (even as the experiences of the sleeping dream seem real) until the Science of man's eternal harmony breaks their illusion with the unbroken reality of scientific being.
Which of these two theories concerning man are you ready to accept? One is the mortal testimony, changing, dying, unreal. The other is the eternal and real evidence, bearing Truth's signet, its lap piled high with immortal fruits.
Silent prayer, followed by the audible repetition of the Lord’s prayer.
Hymn 254
Christ My Refuge – Mary Baker Eddy
O'er waiting harpstrings of the mind
There sweeps a strain,
Low, sad, and sweet, whose measures bind
The power of pain,
And wake a white‑winged angel throng
Of thoughts, illumed
By faith, and breathed in raptured song,
With love perfumed.
Then His unveiled, sweet mercies show
Life's burdens light.
I kiss the cross, and wake to know
A world more bright.
And o'er earth's troubled, angry sea
I see Christ walk,
And come to me, and tenderly,
Divinely talk.
Thus Truth engrounds me on the rock,
Upon Life's shore,
'Gainst which the winds and waves can shock,
Oh, nevermore!
From tired joy and grief afar,
And nearer Thee,‑‑
Father, where Thine own children are,
I love to be.
My prayer, some daily good to do
To Thine, for Thee;
An offering pure of Love, whereto
God leadeth me.
Sharing of experiences, testimonies and remarks by members of the congregation.
Hymn 269
Frederic W. Root
Our God is Love, unchanging Love,
And can we ask for more?
Our prayer for Love's increase is vain;
'Twas infinite before.
Ask not the Lord with breath of praise
For more than we accept;
The open fount is free to all,
God's promises are kept.
Our God is Mind, the perfect Mind,
Intelligence divine;
Shall mortal man ask Him to change
His infinite design?
The heart that yearns for righteousness,
With longing unalloyed,
In such desire sends up a prayer
That ne'er returneth void.
O loving Father, well we know
That words alone are vain,
That those who seek Thy will to do,
The true communion gain.
Then may our deeds our pure desire
For growth in grace express,
That we may know how Love divine
Forever waits to bless.
