First Church of Christ, Scientist, La Cañada Flintridge, California
Wednesday Meeting Readings
- Ps. 31:1-3, 5, 6, 18, 23 (to 2nd ,), 24
1In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust; let me never be ashamed: deliver me in thy righteousness.
2Bow down thine ear to me; deliver me speedily: be thou my strong rock, for an house of defence to save me.
3For thou art my rock and my fortress; therefore for thy name’s sake lead me, and guide me.
... 5Into thine hand I commit my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth.
6I have hated them that regard lying vanities: but I trust in the Lord.
... 18Let the lying lips be put to silence; which speak grievous things proudly and contemptuously against the righteous.
... 23O love the Lord, all ye his saints: for the Lord preserveth the faithful,
... 24Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the Lord.
- Isa. 58:6-9 (to .), 10, 11, 14
6Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?
7Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?
8¶ Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the Lord shall be thy rereward.
9Then shalt thou call, and the Lord shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am.
10And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noon day:
11And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.
14Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.
- Luke 1:1-22, 24, 25, 50-55 his, 57-63 (to 1st .), 64-69, 76, 79
1Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us,
2Even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word;
3It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus,
4That thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed.
5¶ There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judæa, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the course of Abia: and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elisabeth.
6And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.
7And they had no child, because that Elisabeth was barren, and they both were now well stricken in years.
8And it came to pass, that while he executed the priest’s office before God in the order of his course,
9According to the custom of the priest’s office, his lot was to burn incense when he went into the temple of the Lord.
10And the whole multitude of the people were praying without at the time of incense.
11And there appeared unto him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense.
12And when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him.
13But the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias: for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John.
14And thou shalt have joy and gladness; and many shall rejoice at his birth.
15For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother’s womb.
16And many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God.
17And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.
18And Zacharias said unto the angel, Whereby shall I know this? for I am an old man, and my wife well stricken in years.
19And the angel answering said unto him, I am Gabriel, that stand in the presence of God; and am sent to speak unto thee, and to shew thee these glad tidings.
20And, behold, thou shalt be dumb, and not able to speak, until the day that these things shall be performed, because thou believest not my words, which shall be fulfilled in their season.
21And the people waited for Zacharias, and marvelled that he tarried so long in the temple.
22And when he came out, he could not speak unto them: and they perceived that he had seen a vision in the temple: for he beckoned unto them, and remained speechless.
24And after those days his wife Elisabeth conceived, and hid herself five months, saying,
25Thus hath the Lord dealt with me in the days wherein he looked on me, to take away my reproach among men.
... his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation.
51He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
52He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree.
53He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.
54He hath holpen his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy;
55As he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed for ever.
... 57Now Elisabeth’s full time came that she should be delivered; and she brought forth a son.
58And her neighbours and her cousins heard how the Lord had shewed great mercy upon her; and they rejoiced with her.
59And it came to pass, that on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child; and they called him Zacharias, after the name of his father.
60And his mother answered and said, Not so; but he shall be called John.
61And they said unto her, There is none of thy kindred that is called by this name.
62And they made signs to his father, how he would have him called.
63And he asked for a writing table, and wrote, saying, His name is John.
... 64And his mouth was opened immediately, and his tongue loosed, and he spake, and praised God.
65And fear came on all that dwelt round about them: and all these sayings were noised abroad throughout all the hill country of Judæa.
66And all they that heard them laid them up in their hearts, saying, What manner of child shall this be! And the hand of the Lord was with him.
67And his father Zacharias was filled with the Holy Ghost, and prophesied, saying,
68Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people,
69And hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David;
... 76And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways;
... 79To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.
Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures
by Mary Baker Eddy
- SH 271:20
- SH 298:8-17 (np)
What is termed material sense can report only a mor-9tal temporary sense of things, whereas spiritual sense can Truth’s witnessbear witness only to Truth. To material sense, the unreal is the real until this sense is corrected 12by Christian Science.
Spiritual sense, contradicting the material senses, in-volves intuition, hope, faith, understanding, fruition, real-15ity. Material sense expresses the belief that mind is in matter. This human belief, alternating between a sense of pleasure and pain, hope and fear, life and death, never 18reaches beyond the boundary of the mortal or the unreal. When the real is attained, which is announced by Science, joy is no longer a trembler, nor is hope a cheat. Spirit-21ual ideas, like numbers and notes, start from Principle, and admit no materialistic beliefs. Spiritual ideas lead up to their divine origin, God, and to the spiritual sense 24of being.
Angels are not etherealized human beings, evolving animal qualities in their wings; but they are celestial 27Thought-angelsvisitants, flying on spiritual, not material, pinions. Angels are pure thoughts from God, winged with Truth and Love, no matter what their indi-30vidualism may be. Human conjecture confers upon angels its own forms of thought, marked with superstitious out-lines, making them human creatures with suggestive 299 299:1feathers; but this is only fancy. It has behind it no more reality than has the sculptor’s thought when he carves 3his “Statue of Liberty,” which embodies his concep-tion of an unseen quality or condition, but which has no physical antecedent reality save in the artist’s own ob-6servation and “chambers of imagery.”
My angels are exalted thoughts, appearing at the door of some sepulchre, in which human belief has buried 9Our angelic messengersits fondest earthly hopes. With white fin-gers they point upward to a new and glo-rified trust, to higher ideals of life and its joys. Angels 12are God’s representatives. These upward-soaring beings never lead towards self, sin, or materiality, but guide to the divine Principle of all good, whither every real indi-15viduality, image, or likeness of God, gathers. By giving earnest heed to these spiritual guides they tarry with us, and we entertain “angels unawares.”
- SH 126:22
I have set forth Christian Science and its application to the treatment of disease just as I have discovered them. 24Biblical basisI have demonstrated through Mind the effects of Truth on the health, longevity, and morals of men; and I have found nothing in ancient or in modern 27systems on which to found my own, except the teachings and demonstrations of our great Master and the lives of prophets and apostles. The Bible has been my only au-30thority. I have had no other guide in “the straight and narrow way” of Truth.
- SH 225:5-227:2
You may know when first Truth leads by the few-6ness and faithfulness of its followers. Thus it is that Truth’s ordealthe march of time bears onward freedom’s banner. The powers of this world will fight, 9and will command their sentinels not to let truth pass the guard until it subscribes to their systems; but Science, heeding not the pointed bayonet, marches on. There is 12always some tumult, but there is a rallying to truth’s standard.
The history of our country, like all history, illustrates 15the might of Mind, and shows human power to be propor-Immortal sentencestionate to its embodiment of right thinking. A few immortal sentences, breathing the omnipo-18tence of divine justice, have been potent to break despotic fetters and abolish the whipping-post and slave market; but oppression neither went down in blood, nor did the 21breath of freedom come from the cannon’s mouth. Love is the liberator.
Legally to abolish unpaid servitude in the United 24States was hard; but the abolition of mental slavery is Slavery abolisheda more difficult task. The despotic tenden-cies, inherent in mortal mind and always ger-27minating in new forms of tyranny, must be rooted out through the action of the divine Mind.
Men and women of all climes and races are still in 30bondage to material sense, ignorant how to obtain their freedom. The rights of man were vindicated in a single section and on the lowest plane of human life, when Afri-226226:1can slavery was abolished in our land. That was only prophetic of further steps towards the banishment of a 3world-wide slavery, found on higher planes of existence and under more subtle and depraving forms.
The voice of God in behalf of the African slave was 6still echoing in our land, when the voice of the herald of Liberty’s crusadethis new crusade sounded the keynote of uni-versal freedom, asking a fuller acknowledg-9ment of the rights of man as a Son of God, demanding that the fetters of sin, sickness, and death be stricken from the human mind and that its freedom be won, not 12through human warfare, not with bayonet and blood, but through Christ’s divine Science.
God has built a higher platform of human rights, and 15He has built it on diviner claims. These claims are not Cramping systemsmade through code or creed, but in demonstra-tion of “on earth peace, good-will toward men.” 18Human codes, scholastic theology, material medicine and hygiene, fetter faith and spiritual understanding. Divine Science rends asunder these fetters, and man’s birthright 21of sole allegiance to his Maker asserts itself.
I saw before me the sick, wearing out years of servi-tude to an unreal master in the belief that the body gov-24erned them, rather than Mind.
The lame, the deaf, the dumb, the blind, the sick, the sensual, the sinner, I wished to save from the slavery of 27House of bondagetheir own beliefs and from the educational systems of the Pharaohs, who to-day, as of yore, hold the children of Israel in bondage. I saw be-30fore me the awful conflict, the Red Sea and the wilder-ness; but I pressed on through faith in God, trusting Truth, the strong deliverer, to guide me into the land 227 227:1of Christian Science, where fetters fall and the rights of man are fully known and acknowledged.
Hymn 541: “O God, my friend and Guardian”
Hymn 599: “Whither shall I go from Thy spirit?”
Hymn 598: “Where you're going, Love will lead you”
