First Church of Christ, Scientist, La Cañada Flintridge, California
Wednesday Meeting Readings
- Ps. 10:12 2nd O, 17, 18
O God, lift up thine hand: forget not the humble.
... 17Lord, thou hast heard the desire of the humble: thou wilt prepare their heart, thou wilt cause thine ear to hear:
18To judge the fatherless and the oppressed, that the man of the earth may no more oppress.
- Ps. 13:5, 6
5But I have trusted in thy mercy; my heart shall rejoice in thy salvation.
6I will sing unto the Lord, because he hath dealt bountifully with me.
- Ps. 15:1-3, 4 but (to 1st .)
1Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in thy holy hill?
2He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart.
3He that backbiteth not with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his neighbour, nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbour.
... but he honoureth them that fear the Lord.
- Mark 6:34 Jesus
Jesus, when he came out, saw much people, and was moved with compassion toward them, because they were as sheep not having a shepherd: and he began to teach them many things.
- Matt. 13:1-11, 13-23, 31, 32, 53, 54
1The same day went Jesus out of the house, and sat by the sea side.
2And great multitudes were gathered together unto him, so that he went into a ship, and sat; and the whole multitude stood on the shore.
3And he spake many things unto them in parables, saying, Behold, a sower went forth to sow;
4And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up:
5Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth:
6And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away.
7And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them:
8But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold.
9Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.
10And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables?
11He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.
... 13Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.
14And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive:
15For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.
16But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear.
17For verily I say unto you, That many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear and have not heard them.
18¶ Hear ye therefore the parable of the sower.
19When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart. This is he which received seed by the way side.
20But he that received the seed into stony places, the same is he that heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it;
21Yet hath he not root in himself, but dureth for a while: for when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, by and by he is offended.
22He also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word; and the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful.
23But he that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word, and understandeth it; which also beareth fruit, and bringeth forth, some an hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.
31¶ Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field:
32Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.
53¶ And it came to pass, that when Jesus had finished these parables, he departed thence.
54And when he was come into his own country, he taught them in their synagogue, insomuch that they were astonished, and said, Whence hath this man this wisdom, and these mighty works?
- Ezek. 17:1-8
1And the word of the Lord came unto me, saying,
2Son of man, put forth a riddle, and speak a parable unto the house of Israel;
3And say, Thus saith the Lord God; A great eagle with great wings, longwinged, full of feathers, which had divers colours, came unto Lebanon, and took the highest branch of the cedar:
4He cropped off the top of his young twigs, and carried it into a land of traffic; he set it in a city of merchants.
5He took also of the seed of the land, and planted it in a fruitful field; he placed it by great waters, and set it as a willow tree.
6And it grew, and became a spreading vine of low stature, whose branches turned toward him, and the roots thereof were under him: so it became a vine, and brought forth branches, and shot forth sprigs.
7There was also another great eagle with great wings and many feathers: and, behold, this vine did bend her roots toward him, and shot forth her branches toward him, that he might water it by the furrows of her plantation.
8It was planted in a good soil by great waters, that it might bring forth branches, and that it might bear fruit, that it might be a goodly vine.
Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy
- SH 270:31-5
The life of Christ Jesus was not miraculous, but it was indigenous to his spirituality, — the good soil wherein the 271 271:1seed of Truth springs up and bears much fruit. Christ’s Christianity is the chain of scientific being reappearing 3in all ages, maintaining its obvious correspondence with the Scriptures and uniting all periods in the design of God.
- SH 272:3-8, 13-16, 19-25
The spiritual sense of truth must be gained before Truth can be understood. This sense is assimilated only Spirituality of Scriptureas we are honest, unselfish, loving, and meek. 6In the soil of an “honest and good heart” the seed must be sown; else it beareth not much fruit, for the swinish element in human nature uproots it.
Jesus’ parable of “the sower” shows the care our Master took not to impart to dull ears and gross hearts 15the spiritual teachings which dulness and grossness could not accept.
It is the spiritualization of thought and Christianization of daily life, in contrast with the results of the ghastly farce 21Unspiritual contrastsof material existence; it is chastity and purity, in contrast with the downward tendencies and earthward gravitation of sensualism and impurity, 24which really attest the divine origin and operation of Chris-tian Science.
- SH 225:14-16
- SH 180:9
- SH 183:8
Can the agriculturist, according to belief, produce a 9crop without sowing the seed and awaiting its germina-tion according to the laws of nature? The answer is no, and yet the Scriptures inform us that sin, or error, first 12caused the condemnation of man to till the ground, and indicate that obedience to God will remove this necessity. Truth never made error necessary, nor devised a law to 15perpetuate error.
- SH 236:28-14
Jesus loved little children because of their freedom from wrong and their receptiveness of right. While 30age is halting between two opinions or battling with false beliefs, youth makes easy and rapid strides towards Truth.
237237:1 A little girl, who had occasionally listened to my ex-planations, badly wounded her finger. She seemed not 3to notice it. On being questioned about it she answered ingenuously, “There is no sensation in matter.” Bound-ing off with laughing eyes, she presently added, “Mamma, 6my finger is not a bit sore.”
It might have been months or years before her parents would have laid aside their drugs, or reached the mental 9Soil and seedheight their little daughter so naturally at-tained. The more stubborn beliefs and theo-ries of parents often choke the good seed in the minds of 12themselves and their offspring. Superstition, like “the fowls of the air,” snatches away the good seed before it has sprouted.
- SH 237:23-5
Some invalids are unwilling to know the facts or to 24hear about the fallacy of matter and its supposed laws. Deluded invalidsThey devote themselves a little longer to their material gods, cling to a belief in the life and 27intelligence of matter, and expect this error to do more for them than they are willing to admit the only living and true God can do. Impatient at your explanation, unwill-30ing to investigate the Science of Mind which would rid them of their complaints, they hug false beliefs and suffer the delusive consequences.
238238:1 Motives and acts are not rightly valued before they are understood. It is well to wait till those whom you would 3Patient waitingbenefit are ready for the blessing, for Science is working changes in personal character as well as in the material universe.
- SH 238:12-13, 15, 23
To fall away from Truth in times of persecution, shows that we never understood Truth. ... Unimproved op-portunities will rebuke us when we attempt to claim the benefits of an experience we have not made our own, try 18to reap the harvest we have not sown, and wish to enter unlawfully into the labors of others. Truth often remains unsought, until we seek this remedy for human woe be-21cause we suffer severely from error.
He who leaves 24all for Christ forsakes popularity and gains Christianity.
- SH 239:11
- SH 459:24-31
To mortal sense Christian Science seems abstract, but the process is simple and the results are sure if the Science Certainty of resultsis understood. The tree must be good, which 27produces good fruit. Guided by divine Truth and not guesswork, the theologus (that is, the student — the Christian and scientific expounder — of the divine 30law) treats disease with more certain results than any other healer on the globe.
- SH 297:12-31
Erroneous belief is destroyed by truth. Change the evidence, and that disappears which before seemed real Self-improvement to this false belief, and the human conscious-15ness rises higher. Thus the reality of being is attained and man found to be immortal. The only fact concerning any material concept is, that it is neither 18scientific nor eternal, but subject to change and dis-solution.
Faith is higher and more spiritual than belief. It is 21a chrysalis state of human thought, in which spiritual Faith higher than beliefevidence, contradicting the testimony of mate-rial sense, begins to appear, and Truth, the 24ever-present, is becoming understood. Human thoughts have their degrees of comparison. Some thoughts are better than others. A belief in Truth is better than a 27belief in error, but no mortal testimony is founded on the divine rock. Mortal testimony can be shaken. Until belief becomes faith, and faith becomes spiritual under-30standing, human thought has little relation to the actual or divine.
- SH 106:15-29
Let this age, which sits in judgment on Christian Science, sanction only such methods as are demonstrable Right methodsin Truth and known by their fruit, and classify 18all others as did St. Paul in his great epistle to the Galatians, when he wrote as follows:
“Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are 21these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, 24revellings and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But 27the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.”
Hymn 423: “Give me, O Lord, an understanding heart”
Hymn 317: “…Dawns the sweet consciousness, I am with Thee”
Hymn 459: “…Plant joy in every heart”
