Theme: Dream
Hymn 6
William H. Burleigh – Adapted
Abide not in the realm of dreams,
O man, however fair it seems;
But with clear eye the present scan,
And hear the call of God and man.
Think not in sleep to fold thy hands,
Forgetful of thy Lord's commands:
From duty's claims no life is free,
Behold, today hath need of thee.
The present hour allots thy task,
For present strength and patience ask;
And trust His love whose sure supply
Meets all thy need abundantly.
Readings from the Bible.
Deuteronomy 13:1‑8
If there arise among you a
prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, And the
sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go
after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them; Thou shalt
not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams: for the
Lord your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the Lord your God with all
your heart and with all your soul.
Ye
shall walk after the Lord your God, and fear him, and keep his commandments,
and obey his voice, and ye shall serve him, and cleave unto him. And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams,
shall be put to death; because he hath spoken to turn you away from the Lord
your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed you out of
the house of bondage, to thrust thee out of the way which the Lord thy God
commanded thee to walk in. So shalt thou
put the evil away from the midst of thee.
If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or
the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee
secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known,
thou, nor thy fathers; Namely, of the gods of the people which are round about
you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth even
unto the other end of the earth; Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken
unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither
shalt thou conceal him:
I Kings 3:5‑15
In Gibeon the Lord appeared
to Solomon in a dream by night: and God said, Ask what I shall give thee. And Solomon said, Thou hast shewed unto thy
servant David my father great mercy, according as he walked before thee in
truth, and in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart with thee; and thou
hast kept for him this great kindness, that thou hast given him a son to sit on
his throne, as it is this day. And now,
O Lord my God, thou hast made thy servant king instead of David my father: and
I am but a little child: I know not how to go out or come in.
And thy servant is in the midst of thy people
which thou hast chosen, a great people, that cannot be numbered nor counted for
multitude. Give therefore thy servant an
understanding heart to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and
bad: for who is able to judge this thy so great a people?
And the speech pleased the Lord, that Solomon
had asked this thing. And God said unto
him, Because thou hast asked this thing, and hast not asked for thyself long
life; neither hast asked riches for thyself, nor hast asked the life of thine
enemies; but hast asked for thyself understanding to discern judgment; Behold,
I have done according to thy words: lo, I have given thee a wise and an
understanding heart; so that there was none like thee before thee, neither
after thee shall any arise like unto thee.
And I have also given thee that which thou hast not asked, both riches,
and honour: so that there shall not be any among the kings like unto thee all
thy days.
And if thou wilt walk in my
ways, to keep my statutes and my commandments, as thy father David did walk,
then I will lengthen thy days. And
Solomon awoke; and, behold, it was a dream. And he came to Jerusalem, and stood
before the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and offered up burnt offerings, and
offered peace offerings, and made a feast to all his servants.
Jeremiah 23:28‑32
The prophet that hath a
dream, let him tell a dream; and he that hath my word, let him speak my word
faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord. Is not my word like as a fire? saith the Lord; and like a hammer that
breaketh the rock in pieces?
Therefore, behold, I am against the prophets,
saith the Lord, that steal my words every one from his neighbour. Behold, I am against the prophets, saith the
Lord, that use their tongues, and say, He saith. Behold, I am against them that prophesy false
dreams, saith the Lord, and do tell them, and cause my people to err by their
lies, and by their lightness; yet I sent them not, nor commanded them:
therefore they shall not profit this people at all, saith the Lord.
Daniel 2:1‑3 in,16,19‑21
in the second year of the
reign of Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar dreamed dreams, wherewith his spirit was
troubled, and his sleep brake from him.
Then the king commanded to call the magicians, and the astrologers, and
the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans, for to shew the king his dreams. So they came
and stood before the king. And the king
said unto them, I have dreamed a dream, and my spirit was troubled to know the
dream.
Then Daniel went in, and
desired of the king that he would give him time, and that he would shew the
king the interpretation.
#Then was the secret revealed
unto Daniel in a night vision. Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven. Daniel answered and said, Blessed be the name
of God for ever and ever: for wisdom and might are his: And he changeth the
times and the seasons: he removeth kings, and setteth up kings: he giveth
wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding:
Joel 2:21‑28
#Fear not, O land; be glad
and rejoice: for the Lord will do great things.
Be not afraid, ye beasts of the field: for the pastures of the
wilderness do spring, for the tree beareth her fruit, the fig tree and the vine
do yield their strength. Be glad then,
ye children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God: for he hath given you
the former rain moderately, and he will cause to come down for you the rain,
the former rain, and the latter rain in the first month. And the floors shall be full of wheat, and
the fats shall overflow with wine and oil.
And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the
cankerworm, and the caterpiller, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent
among you. And ye shall eat in plenty,
and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God, that hath dealt
wondrously with you: and my people shall never be ashamed.
And ye shall know that I am in the midst of
Israel, and that I am the Lord your God, and none else: and my people shall never
be ashamed. #And it shall come to pass
afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and
your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men
shall see visions:
Acts 2:17‑21
And it shall come to pass in
the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your
sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams: And on my servants and on my handmaidens I
will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy: And I will
shew wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood, and fire,
and vapour of smoke: The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into
blood, before that great and notable day of the Lord come: And it shall come to
pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Readings from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy.
14:25
Entirely separate from the belief and dream
of material living, is the Life divine, revealing spiritual understanding and
the consciousness of man's dominion over the whole earth. This understanding casts out error and heals
the sick, and with it you can speak "as one having authority."
42:5‑14
The universal belief in death is of no
advantage. It cannot make Life or Truth
apparent. Death will be found at length
to be a mortal dream, which comes in darkness and disappears with the
light.
The "man of sorrows" was in no
peril from salary or popularity. Though
entitled to the homage of the world and endorsed pre‑eminently by the approval
of God, his brief triumphal entry into Jerusalem was followed by the desertion
of all save a few friends, who sadly followed him to the foot of the
cross.
71:5‑20
The identity, or idea, of all reality
continues forever; but Spirit, or the divine Principle of all, is not in Spirit's formations. Soul is synonymous with Spirit, God, the
creative, governing, infinite Principle outside of finite form, which forms
only reflect.
Close your eyes, and you may dream that you
see a flower,‑‑that you touch and smell it.
Thus you learn that the flower is a product of the so‑called mind, a
formation of thought rather than of matter.
Close your eyes again, and you may see landscapes, men, and women. Thus you learn that these also are images,
which mortal mind holds and evolves and which simulate mind, life, and
intelligence. From dreams also you learn
that neither mortal mind nor matter is the image or likeness of God, and that
immortal Mind is not in matter.
75:29‑21
In the vestibule through
which we pass from one dream to another dream, or when we awake from earth's
sleep to the grand verities of Life, the departing may hear the glad welcome of
those who have gone before. The ones
departing may whisper this vision, name the face that smiles on them and the
hand which beckons them, as one at Niagara, with eyes open only to that wonder,
forgets all else and breathes aloud his rapture.
When being is understood, Life will be
recognized as neither material nor finite, but as infinite,‑‑as God, universal
good; and the belief that life, or mind, was ever in a finite form, or good in
evil, will be destroyed. Then it will be
understood that Spirit never entered matter and was therefore never raised from
matter. When advanced to spiritual being
and the understanding of God, man can no longer commune with matter; neither
can he return to it, any more than a tree can return to its seed. Neither will man seem to be corporeal, but he
will be an individual consciousness, characterized by the divine Spirit as
idea, not matter.
Suffering, sinning, dying beliefs are
unreal. When divine Science is
universally understood, they will have no power over man, for man is immortal
and lives by divine authority.
188:11‑21
Mortal existence is a dream of pain and
pleasure in matter, a dream of sin, sickness, and death; and it is like the
dream we have in sleep, in which every one recognizes his condition to be
wholly a state of mind. In both the
waking and the sleeping dream, the dreamer thinks that his body is material and
the suffering is in that body.
The smile of the sleeper indicates the
sensation produced physically by the pleasure of a dream. In the same way pain and pleasure, sickness
and care, are traced upon mortals by unmistakable signs.
196:6
Better the suffering which awakens mortal
mind from its fleshly dream, than the false pleasures which tend to perpetuate
this dream. Sin alone brings death, for
sin is the only element of destruction.
218:27
The Scriptures say, "They that wait upon
the Lord . . . shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not
faint." The meaning of that passage
is not perverted by applying it literally to moments of fatigue, for the moral
and physical are as one in their results.
When we wake to the truth of being, all disease, pain, weakness,
weariness, sorrow, sin, death, will be unknown, and the mortal dream will
forever cease. My method of treating
fatigue applies to all bodily ailments, since Mind should be, and is, supreme,
absolute, and final.
250:6‑27 (to 2nd .)
Mortal existence is a dream; mortal existence
has no real entity, but saith "It is I." Spirit is the Ego which never dreams, but
understands all things; which never errs, and is ever conscious; which never
believes, but knows; which is never born and never dies. Spiritual man is the likeness of this
Ego. Man is not God, but like a ray of light
which comes from the sun, man, the outcome of God, reflects God.
Mortal body and mind are one, and that one is
called man; but a mortal is not man, for man is immortal. A mortal may be weary or pained, enjoy or
suffer, according to the dream he entertains in sleep. When that dream vanishes, the mortal finds
himself experiencing none of these dream‑sensations. To the observer, the body lies listless,
undisturbed, and sensationless, and the mind seems to be absent.
Now I ask, Is there any more reality in the
waking dream of mortal existence than in the sleeping dream? There cannot be, since whatever appears to be
a mortal man is a mortal dream. Take
away the mortal mind, and matter has no more sense as a man than it has as a
tree. But the spiritual, real man is
immortal.
282:28
Whatever indicates the fall of man or the
opposite of God or God's absence, is the Adam‑dream, which is neither Mind nor
man, for it is not begotten of the Father.
The rule of inversion infers from error its opposite, Truth; but Truth
is the light which dispels error. As
mortals begin to understand Spirit, they give up the belief that there is any
true existence apart from God.
306:32
The parent of all human discord was the Adam‑dream,
the deep sleep, in which originated the delusion that life and intelligence
proceeded from and passed into matter.
This pantheistic error, or so‑called serpent,
insists still upon the opposite of Truth, saying, "Ye shall be as
gods;" that is, I will make error as real and eternal as Truth.
311:14
Through false estimates of soul as dwelling
in sense and of mind as dwelling in matter, belief strays into a sense of
temporary loss or absence of soul, spiritual truth. This state of error is the mortal dream of
life and substance as existent in matter, and is directly opposite to the
immortal reality of being. So long as we
believe that soul can sin or that immortal Soul is in mortal body, we can never
understand the Science of being. When
humanity does understand this Science, it will become the law of Life to man,‑‑even
the higher law of Soul, which prevails over material sense through harmony and
immortality.
347:26
The dream that matter and error are something
must yield to reason and revelation.
Then mortals will behold the nothingness of sickness and sin, and sin
and sickness will disappear from consciousness.
The harmonious will appear real, and the inharmonious unreal. These critics will then see that error is
indeed the nothingness, which they chide us for naming nothing and which we
desire neither to honor nor to fear.
412:16
To prevent disease or to cure it, the power
of Truth, of divine Spirit, must break the dream of the material senses. To heal by argument, find the type of the
ailment, get its name, and array your mental plea against the physical. Argue at first mentally, not audibly, that
the patient has no disease, and conform the argument so as to destroy the
evidence of disease. Mentally insist
that harmony is the fact, and that sickness is a temporal dream. Realize the presence of health and the fact
of harmonious being, until the body corresponds with the normal conditions of
health and harmony.
418:12
It must be clear to you that sickness is no
more the reality of being than is sin.
This mortal dream of sickness, sin, and death should cease through
Christian Science. Then one disease
would be as readily destroyed as another.
Whatever the belief is, if arguments are used to destroy it, the belief
must be repudiated, and the negation must extend to the supposed disease and to
whatever decides its type and symptoms.
Truth is affirmative, and confers harmony. All metaphysical logic is inspired by this
simple rule of Truth, which governs all reality. By the truthful arguments you employ, and
especially by the spirit of Truth and Love which you entertain, you will heal
the sick.
494:15
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.
530:26‑29
The history of error is a dream‑narrative. The dream has no reality, no intelligence, no
mind; therefore the dreamer and dream are one, for neither is true nor real.
Silent prayer followed by the audible repetition of the Lord’s Prayer.
Hymn 412
Rosa M. Turner
O dreamer, leave thy dreams for joyful waking,
O captive, rise and sing, for thou art free;
The Christ is here, all dreams of error
breaking,
Unloosing bonds of all captivity.
He comes to bless thee on his wings of
healing;
To banish pain, and wipe all tears away;
He comes anew, to humble hearts revealing
The mounting footsteps of the upward way.
He comes to give thee joy for desolation,
Beauty for ashes of the vanished years;
For every tear to bring full compensation,
To give thee confidence for all thy fears.
He comes to call the dumb to joyful singing;
The deaf to hear; the blinded eyes to see;
The glorious tidings of salvation bringing.
O captive, rise, thy Saviour comes to thee.
Sharing of experiences, testimonies and remarks by members of the congregation.
Hymn 382
Emily F. Seal
What is thy birthright, man,
Child of the perfect One;
What is thy Father's plan
For His beloved son?
Thou art Truth's honest child,
Of pure and sinless heart;
Thou treadest undefiled
In Christly paths apart.
Vain dreams shall disappear
As Truth dawns on the sight;
The phantoms of thy fear
Shall flee before the light.
Take then the sacred rod;
Thou art not error's thrall;
Thou hast the gift of God‑‑
Dominion over all.
