Notes on the Course in Divinity

Given by Mary Baker Eddy, The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, and Author of its Textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, at Her Home, Pleasant View, Concord, New Hampshire, During the Years Nineteen Hundred Three, Nineteen Hundred Four, and Nineteen Hundred Seven. Recorded by Lida Fitzpatrick, C.S.D. And Others




Introduction

In the Christian Science Sentinel for August 17, 1935, is an Item of Interest” from the Christian Science Board of Directors in which they state that these notes recorded in Mrs. Eddy’s home by Lida Fitzpatrick, Laura E. Sargent, George H. Kinter, and possibly others, should not be accepted as genuine, or as giving accurate statements by our Leader. They state, “It is neither fair nor loyal to our Leader to attribute to her anything that is not authenticated in a dependable way. Writings said to be hers which did not come directly from her and which do not accord with her printed works in substance and phraseology, may well be regarded as apocryphal, if not downright forgeries.”

In defence of these notes let it be said that the writer of this introduction has discussed the accuracy of the statements attributed to Mrs. Eddy with the following students: Miss Minnie Adelaide Still, Mrs. Caroline Foss Gyger, Calvin C. Hill, and Gilbert C. Carpenter. Miss Still served Mrs. Eddy as her personal maid from early in 1907 until she passed on in 1910. Mrs. Gyger was her maid from April to August, 1906. Mr. Hill served her in many capacities over a long period of years. Mr. Carpenter was her Associate Secretary for the period of one year from 1905 to 1906.

These students are unanimous in declaring the accuracy of the expression and thought in these notes. Those who served in the home declare that they have heard our Leader give just such cryptic pronouncements, day after day. They also declare that she was most insistent on accuracy in quoting, or repeating, whatever they heard her say, or whatever they read in the Bible, or in her writings. For any inaccuracy in quotation they received a severe rebuke. Therefore, we can deduce that whatever these students recorded was set down with the greatest concern for accuracy. Mr. Hill has shown the writer a copy of these notes which he has in his possession, and although not as full as those preserved by Mrs. Fitzpatrick, correspond to them. Mr. Hill received his copy as a gift from Mrs. Laura E. Sargent, Mrs. Eddy’s maid and helper for so many years.

The Christian world accepts as infallible, statements which were made by our Lord and Master, which were not recorded for from thirty to sixty years after he made them. The statements recorded by Mrs. Eddy’s students were written down within a few moments after they were made, a fact which should weigh on the side of proving their accuracy and correctness.

In defence of the point of view taken by the Board of Directors as given in the Sentinel, it can be said that Christian Scientists agree with Paul in I Cor. 3:1,2, that “babes in Christ” are not ready for meat; they are “not able to bear it.” The milk, or “grain,” of Christian Science for which they are ready is the teaching and practice whereby the power of God is brought into human experience to bless, heal, and purify; to resolve the inharmony and discord of material sense into harmony and health.

Beyond this simple healing doctrine is the more profound teaching that indicates the employment of the power of divine Mind to eliminate mortal mind, or matter, in all its phases; to destroy even human harmony, in order to replace it with divine harmony. The milk of Christian Science symbolizes the power of God to improve mortal man’s dream of existence, a primary step that is necessary to destroy fear, and to start him on the road towards salvation. The meat of Christian Science involves the entire dissipation of the Adam dream, in order to awaken man to spiritual reality. This further growth demands of man to “leave all for Christ.”

It is plain that the meat of Christian Science is too strong for babes; it would choke, or chemicalize, them. Therefore, the Christian Science Board of Directors, who have direct charge of the babes, are functioning properly when they take steps to protect the babes, and watch lest they obtain the meat prematurely. They are justified in many of their attempts to discredit the meat in the eyes of the babes, even to the point of asserting that the “milk of the word” is all there is to Christian Science, since, if the babes begin to discover that there is something beyond the milk, before they have taken full advantage of it, they may be tempted to neglect the milk, in an effort to obtain the meat prematurely.

Mrs. Eddy’s own thought in regard to the milk and meat of Christian Science can be gained from a letter she wrote to Mrs. Julia Field-King on March 1, 1895: “Dear Heart: How Mother loves you as she reads your last letter and perceives the experienced woman and babe in Christ combining. How natural that the babe should be fretted with the friction of material history and the error it includes and must go to Mother for the milk of the Word and rest on the bosom of God. Mother has felt all this and a million more struggles for thirty years and walked in the strait and narrow path which lies between harming others and helping them. Giving milk to babes and meat to men, requires great wisdom, great growth, great love. To lead the world wisely means much, hence Jesus’ words: ‘Be ye therefore wise as serpents.’ ”

As a sample of the meat as Mrs. Eddy gave it, consider the words she spoke to her household which are contained in this book under the date March 31, 1907. Then compare them with the talk that may be found on page 232 of the first edition of Lyman P. Powell’s book, “Mary Baker Eddy, A Life Size Portrait.” That the Board of Directors considered this to be meat rather than milk is proven by the fact that in the second edition of this book they omitted the following paragraph: “You must get rid of the ‘old man,’ the old woman; you cannot make them better and keep them. You are not getting rid of the old man if you try to make him better. If you should succeed in making him better, he would stay with you. If you patch up the old and say it is good enough, you do not put it off, but keep it. If you try to make the old satisfactory, you are preparing to keep it, not to put it off.” These words by our Leader, given in her home, would not seem so revolutionary if one substituted the term, mortal mind, for “old man.”

The point at which the babe becomes a man and is ready for such teachings which require the plucking out of the right eye, “knoweth no man, no,…neither the Son, but the Father” (Mark 13:32). The pronouncements our Leader gave in her home were not milk for babes in Christ. God called those who came to her home, because they were ready for this high calling. They were supposed to be men in understanding, and as such she taught and trained them. She did not, however, disregard her own By-law on page 34 of the Manual, which God directed her to give to the people: “The Bible together with Science and Health and other works by Mrs. Eddy, shall be his only textbooks for self-instruction in Christian Science, and for teaching and practicing metaphysical healing”; but she did unfold to students points that were beyond the milk of the word, and one can gain some inkling of these points, or lessons, through a right study of these notes.

It appears that it would break the spirit and the letter of the above By-law if one used these notes for “self-instruction in Christian Science.” Then how can they be used legitimately by a student of Christian Science who is ready for this privilege?

This question can best be answered by discussing the course in Divinity which these notes purport to cover, and which Mrs. Eddy implied (page 68 of the Manual) she would teach students who came to serve her in her home. Students who lived with our Leader assert that she never taught this course in Divinity. But she was a co-teacher with God in preparing them to be taught of Him. Often to an outsider a prizefighter’s training for a coming contest appears to be sketchy, with points unrelated, until the results reveal the importance of them all. Likewise the value of these notes, as well as their metaphysical correctness, cannot be perceived until they are properly digested. Hence no uninspired criticism of them is tenable. Rightly defined the course in Divinity is a God-taught course. No man can teach it. God is teaching continuously; that is, the reflection of His infinite Mind goes on continually. In order for man to receive this teaching, and so be taught of God, his spiritual sense must be restored to where it can receive these holy and sacred teachings, since only spiritual sense receives the things of God.

Christian Science teaches that man is in the kingdom of heaven now; but because his material senses are inadequate to comprehend this fact and his spiritual sense – through which alone this vision can come – lies dormant, he has no way of taking cognizance of his presence in the harmony of God’s spiritual universe now.

It follows that the resurrection of spiritual sense is the only way whereby man can receive the evidence that he is now in the kingdom of heaven, in spite of the false testimony of the material senses; even as the removal of blue glasses gives the man who has been wearing them the evidence that the landscape is not blue. This development of spiritual sense fits man to take the course in Divinity, or from Divinity. Whatever develops spiritual sense in man is of priceless value.

Mrs. Eddy did not make the mistake of trying to teach the course in Divinity, when she knew that God alone could do that. She could not make the explanation to the students, however, because, when students are told in advance that certain things are provided to develop spiritual sense, the good effect is often lost, since part of the development comes from struggling with problems without knowing why. Therefore, Mrs. Eddy lovingly and patiently gave out that which would prepare students to receive the course in Divinity, and she was divinely guided to put such preparation in the wisest possible way. At the same time she referred to the preparation as the course itself, waiting on God to reveal to students that which she could not tell them, because divine wisdom did not permit her to.

How does man develop spiritual sense? By use. Before he can use it he must know he has it, and begin to lose faith in the adequacy and satisfactory nature of the false sense. Thus, when a problem is placed before the student, the solution of which defies his trained human mind, the despair he feels over the inadequacy of the human mind to supply the solution helps to drive him to the use of the divine Mind, which of necessity involves the use and development of spiritual sense.

An example of this was the building of The Mother Church. Mrs. Eddy laid down arbitrary provisions and requirements which made the human mind feel that such requirements could not possibly be fulfilled. The result was that those in charge worked on the problem from the standpoint of demonstration with more determination than perhaps they would have otherwise. To some degree they relinquished the human mind, because they felt it to be inadequate to perform the tasks successfully according to the demands of their Leader. In this wise way did Mrs. Eddy ensure the building of the church being a spiritual development for those engaged in the work, as well as the result of a scientific demonstration of divine Mind, rather than a product of mortal mind, or material sense.

It can be affirmed that whatever our Leader declared, or gave her students to do, that seemed to be beyond their human performance or understanding, was an effort to force them to the use and development of spiritual sense, which would include preparation for the course in Divinity, since, as has been stated, this course is received wholly by spiritual sense.

The deduction is, that the cryptic statements our Leader gave the students in her home in connection with the course in Divinity, were for the purpose of putting before them that which they could not comprehend without spiritual sense. Thus such statements were not given them for purposes of instruction, but development. This was also true of the tasks she gave them to do. Once she gave her personal maid the task of altering a waist. The student said she could not do it, because she had not been trained in that sort of work. Mrs. Eddy did not comment and gave the task to Pauline Mann; but the sadness of her face indicated that she had offered it to this student that she might demonstrate spiritual ability from divine Mind, which she could have done, and thus performed the task successfully. Mrs. Eddy saw it as a lost opportunity for this student. At another time, she gave this same student the task of cutting off to the elbows the sleeves of a suit of underwear and then refused to let her measure her forearm. This might seem strange unless one saw as her purpose to force the student to do it by reflecting divine intelligence, which effort would be correct and mean the development of spiritual sense. Had she permitted her to measure her arm, the impulse to demonstrate would not have been fostered.

If a student today selects a cryptic statement from among these household notes and seeks to discover its true meaning through the listening ear – listening for God’s voice – instead of seeking to discredit the statement given by our Leader simply because he does not understand it humanly, he will be enabled to perceive the divine purpose back of these statements. Too, he will learn how they can be used by an advanced student without breaking the Manual, and will prove them to be of the same value to him that they were to those who heard them directly from our Leader’s lips.

Let us discuss for a moment the fact that a great deal is said in these notes in regard to handling the weather. How does such an effort link up with preparation for the course in Divinity?

It is evident that God is the only cause and creator. But in this Adam dream the so-called human mind has usurped the prerogatives of control. Certainly it is man’s task to dissipate this illusion of false control and once more demonstrate divine Mind “as supreme in the physical realm, so-called, as well as in the spiritual,” as Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health. Of all the tasks that Mrs. Eddy gave the students, that of controlling the weather would seem to be the most far-fetched and most impossible of fulfillment from the subjective human mind standpoint. What can puny mortal man, or mortal mind, do to control in the least that which apparently has complete control over him?

Such a task would automatically drive a student to seek help through spiritual sense, if it did not cause him to relinquish it as an utter impossibility and absurdity. Again we see the wise efforts of our Leader to induce the students to those efforts that develop spiritual sense; for if they could be induced to work on the weather scientifically, they would be developing the very sense through which the course in Divinity is received. Hence, Mrs. Eddy’s insistence that the students work on the weather was not because she desired the pleasure of pleasant days, but because such effort was a definite part of the preparation for being taught of God, which is the goal of all effort in Christian Science. Therefore, when she promised to teach students who came to her home the course in Divinity, she kept her promise; although apparently she did not. However, only those would think she did not who did not understand the nature of this highest course of instruction in metaphysics.

A student can perceive why these notes should not be read for “self-instruction in Christian Science,” but for the purpose of developing spiritual sense. If the student who is ready to do so, takes them and seeks to use them to help him to resurrect spiritual sense through an effort to demonstrate the hidden meaning in them – just as he does with the words of the Bible – he will be making a correct use of them. This use in no way breaks the By-law in the Manual, providing he is advanced in spiritual understanding to a point where he is ready to perceive the “deep things of God.” Nevertheless, he must pledge himself as follows: “I am not going to study this material in order to gain instruction in Christian Science, but to resurrect my spiritual sense.” Then as the true meaning of these statements becomes plain to him and is found to be in exact accordance with the teachings of Science and Health, he may know that he is developing spiritual sense and using these notes according to God’s purpose.

If anyone doubts this interpretation of Mrs. Eddy’s purpose in giving these teachings, let him ask himself why the spiritual meaning of the Bible is stated in such a cryptic form. Why are not its spiritual propositions put in plain language, unless there be some spiritual value in a student taking its cryptic passages and working out the true scientific meaning. Surely, the vast field of the Bible is a grazing place for advanced students, where they may develop spiritual sense through an effort to unfold “the metaphysical rendering” which Mrs. Eddy tells us on page 169 of Miscellaneous Writings is “health and peace and hope for all.” Also on page 181 of the first edition of Science and Health she writes, “The literal meaning of the Scripture is not its highest sense; its spiritual signification is what explains God and man.” The same holds true for all the vast material that has been preserved from our Leader’s lips and pen that is not to be found in her authorized published writings.

Gilbert C. Carpenter, Jr., C.S.B.

Recorded Notes, by Date

MAY 13, 1903

Is there any darkness in light? No.

Is there any evil in good? No.

What tells you there is? Belief; my false sense.

Have you a false sense? No. there.

Is there any belief? No. Then KNOW it.

Sight, hearing, memory, action cannot be lost; they are eternal, of God; eyes do not see, it is Mind; then if I have lost my sight God has lost His; if I have lost my hearing God has lost His.

You do not have to sleep; Mind is always active; cessation of thought is not what is needed, but the ever-presence.

Have you a nose? No.

Then can nose have any secretion or constriction? No.

Then can nose have catarrh? No. There, it is done.

All we have to meet is sin; it is sin to believe a lie and we know it; now you know what to do with sin. A sin to believe you have a nose, catarrh, when you know you haven’t it.

My suffering (Mrs. Eddy’s) is from believing other people’s thoughts affect me; I say, Mary, it is not other people’s sin, it is your own thought; nothing can make you sin, you do it yourself. There is no prenatal belief that can make you believe it, there is nothing but God and His idea. The devil tempted Jesus; said, come down and I will give you all you see; and the devil had not an acre of ground to give; and has nothing to give you. Jesus did not stop to argue with a lie (argument of error); did not say, now Mr. Devil I will argue with you about it; he said, “Get thee behind me, Satan.” He “spake the word and it was done.” Shut it all out. You do not have to argue; know. KNOW God and His idea, and not argue about sin.

It was years before I argued.

In teaching a class I tell some joke to start the thought moving; God tells me to. There must be action; that chair cannot come unless it is moved; I get the thought started. A lady in Lynn was so angry at me she would not speak to me after healing her daughter, because she said I spoke disrespectfully to her dying daughter; the physicians had said there was only a little piece of her lung left and she was dying. I was called and there were Spiritualists around; I tried to reach her thought, but no, could not get at it; so I said, “Get up out of that bed!” Then I called to those in the other room, “Bring her clothes.” The girl got up and was well; never even coughed again; is living yet for all I know; I have never heard otherwise; but her mother has never spoken to me since.

I speak sharply sometimes, but the thought must move.

What is demonstration? Proof.

Well, the proof already is. I never say I have had a demonstration, for it was always done.

A year is a short time for a Divinity Class.

MAY 14, 1903

“EATING my flesh,” etc. That word “eating” has been so misunderstood; as in olden times the plucking out of an eye, etc., taken literally; when we depend upon those things we are against God. When we are asleep we are not the image and likeness of God, for God never sleeps; mortal sense says, you take away eating, sleeping and these things and you take away everything. Now you must look always to Spirit – not matter – for everything.

MAY 18, 1903

I know what is coming. I dare not tell you what I know; you are young yet, and now is the time to experiment. You will know some day.

We are told the world will be destroyed. How? By malice. By cyclones, electricity and be burned up. What is a cyclone? It is a condition of mortal mind – malice; what burns up? Malice. We are told, like Mt. Pelee, there is an internal fire (malice) that will finally burst forth and destroy the world. It is all malice, and our textbook tells us, Christian Scientists will hold such things in check. God never made them and they can be overcome just the same as sickness. It is all within.

Now when there is the claim that the weather is sultry, handle it and you will see a breeze spring up; if it is cold, handle it; it is all in Mind ever the same, harmonious. God did not make sultry weather, etc.; then if we through belief have made it we must unmake it. When it looks like thunder and lightning, handle it; there is no sultry atmosphere to cause thunder and lightning. When I first came to Concord (before hypnotism and mesmerism joined hands to work upon me) there was no snow the first winter at all, and no thunderstorms the first year. When sultry I would close my eyes for a moment, then open them and the leaves would all be stirring; a breeze had sprung up. We make our own atmosphere. These things are easier to handle than sickness. I used to handle them until I forgot about it. Lately I have attended to the work and only kept above the effects. When Clara was here I would speak about the thunderstorms and she would work alone and they would all disappear. You can do this, and if you are not at first successful do not get discouraged; keep on trying. When you have the first indication – forestall it.

MAY 20, 1903

Know that a shock only makes us go higher. Death is fear, and one awakes to find that experience (fear) did not kill him. Now let us know when mortal mind shocks us we can use it to go up higher and so know it cannot catch us there. (This was said after a shock during a drive.)

MAY 21, 1903

The true Science – divine Science – will be lost sight of again unless we arouse ourselves. This demonstrating to make matter build up is not Science. The building up of churches, the writing of articles and the speaking in public is the old way of building up a cause. The way I brought this Cause into sight was through healing; and now these other things would come in and hide it just as was done in the time of Jesus. Now this Cause must be saved and I pray God to be spared for this work. If there is not work done in the line of Spirit – not matter – or overcoming the material way (I have always stood for God alone) if I were not here to still stand, the Catholics and Spiritualists would wipe every Christian Scientist out. Now you see what we have to do for the world; be a transparency for spirit. Things must turn and overturn, until He whose right it is shall reign.

We must show the difference between the healing of Christian Science and quackery.

Healing is demonstration; nothing else is. When I first heard them speak of demonstration I asked – who? I thought someone had been healed. I lectured one time where the Spiritualists tried to break up the meeting; they would jump up and contradict without being asked. A lady in the audience (with whom I boarded) – and the audience was large – was taken with one of her attacks of gallstones; fell on the floor in excruciating pain; I said to the Spiritualists present, “Now is your time to prove what your God will do for you; heal this woman.” They jumped about and did what they could, but she grew worse and worse. I stepped down from the platform, stood beside her a moment and the pain left; she arose and sat in her chair and was healed. This went broadcast, and through the healing this Science was brought to notice. It is lost sight of and must be regained. I have left the word “chemicalization” out of the book (S. & H.) and substituted “chemistry.” Chemicalization denotes a fight, while chemistry denotes the neutralizing process, as Spirit destroying the claim of matter.

MAY 23, 1903

“He that endureth unto the end shall be saved.” Jesus endured; after he disappeared from their view he endured. The Lord delayed his coming so the disciples went back to their nets. He endured; he showed the same nail prints and the same body after as before, showing it was the same Jesus. And so shall we be saved if we endure.

MAY 25, 1903

If you do not understand what words mean they are without power. One was saying, “The law of the spirit of Truth (life) in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” I asked, what is the word? The answer was, “diphtheria”; was asleep mentally; then I said, what is the word? The spirit of Truth (life). Then he saw it meant knowing it; the spirit of it, and the relief was experienced at once. That is the work – knowing what this Science means, and so get out of the sense of apathy. Jesus said, “Can ye not watch with me one hour?” And they were asleep. Now watch. You may sit in your chair all day and say over beautiful words and it does not amount to anything; it is the spirit that is needed.

Our blessed Master did not have the Science of it, that is, did not give the premise, the conclusion and the logical reasoning as this is; he had the spirit of it and gave it to the disciples. You cannot enter eternity until you have broken the law (or sense) of time. There is no collapse, neither is there any relapse.

MAY 26, 1903

If you take up arsenic you will hit it in most of the cases in 1903. “If ye drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt you”; there you have the promise.

A man could not furnish milk because of not having water. Mrs. Eddy took it up and the next day when he came, said he had two feet of water in his cellar and no rain. Rain is good. Clara could bring the clouds and the rain. Just realize harmony; then there will be no tornado and no thunder and lightning.

MAY 26, 1903

Mother’s Lesson on Rain.

The gentle clouds and the gentle rain fall upon the just and the unjust; no electricity, no thunder and no lightning, no cyclone, no tornado, no destruction, for the dear Father’s face looks out from the cloud in love and in harmony. No malice, and no hatred – for there is nothing to interfere with His government in Love. There shall be the gentle and beautiful rain upon the earth to water the whole face of the earth.

MAY 27, 1903

Handle the thought of reversal. You can do it. The reign of harmony is; you can make it rain; it can water the earth. Is there a devil that can reverse God’s government? NO. Then have faith as a grain of mustard seed. You can.

MAY 28, 1903

Do not take up, there is no thunder and lightning; know that God governs the elements and there is nothing destructive or harmful. God sends the rain that watereth the earth. Human will cannot come in and govern.

You would not argue diphtheria if the case was consumption; neither do you argue thunder and lightning when it is sin (malice). If thunder and lightning come then know forces are of God and not destructive. If too much rain realize harmony; if drought – no drought. S. & H. 102:9 (268th edition).

MAY 29, 1903

Anything that comes from the body is human will; that which comes not from the body and can only do good is the Divine. I (Mrs. Eddy) am only a windowpane through which the light comes. You are helping yourselves more than you help me, for I am helping you; the Discoverer has to discover the way to meet these things; you will not have that to do; you are learning now how to meet them; I have had to discover it.

MAY 30, 1903

The circumcision of the flesh – the letter – is what the Jews held to; the circumcision of the heart which takes out of matter, is what Jesus taught. What they were putting into matter Jesus (and Paul) was taking out. There was a nice quiet rain all night and Mrs. Eddy said we brought the rain; this broke the thought of drought.

MAY 31, 1903

Now drop arguing and hold to God. I used to do my healing with – “God is All.”

I never argued until I began teaching students and I had to meet the thought where it stood. Now hold the allness of God, then there is nothing else; if error says arsenic, can’t sleep, can’t eat – can; there is only one God. I have been made the way-shower. The devil said to Jesus, “Others he saved, himself he cannot save.” “Come down from the cross.” “He will send angels to bear thee up,” etc. What did Jesus say? “Get thee behind me, Satan.” It says now, “Come down from the cross.” “You have said you do not have to eat or sleep to nourish the body; come down and prove it.” Jesus told Satan to get behind; he was not ready for that proof yet; when he was he made it.

So will this be; I can eat, I can sleep; when I am ready for that demonstration it will be made. If the students that have passed on had understood this they would have been here today.

Another error which students do not understand is, “Your old beliefs have returned”; meet it by knowing the beliefs are destroyed, rooted up, there is nothing of them to come back, is how I should meet it. Could you believe a corn could come back to a perfectly smooth toe? No.

About twelve or more years ago I (Mrs. Eddy) was working for the world, busy, when a claim came; I did not take time to pay attention to it, but one day a student said she had just met the claim of the sting of death for a patient. I said, “Jesus hath taken away the sting of death”; as I said it the claim all left me.

JUNE 1, 1903

You do not have to wait for your patient to tell you all about what to meet; you should see it and meet it. Break the law that AFTER the treatment is given the patient is worse. Break law that you are worse every hour. You are better every hour; so is everyone in the house.

JUNE 2, 1903

Arouse yourselves and throw off this spell cast upon you. “Choose you this day whom ye will serve,” God or evil suggestions. It is not of any use to talk to a drunken man; rise.

JUNE 3, 1903

After a battle there is a thunderstorm; electricity is made up of zinc and copper – poisons. I have to take that up for myself; now realize there is no electricity but that which God governs; no vital force but God; only the gentle rain can come; no cyclones.

JUNE 4, 1903

God does not come and go; it is the dream that does that; God stands; and we are one with Him; we cannot be shaken.

JUNE 5, 1903

You must have the balance on the right side; a row of ciphers without the numeral 1 is nothing; now have your 1 with God; there is no evil. God is All. There is nothing (cipher) that can weigh against God.

JUNE 12, 1903

In working for the weather, never say: there is no wind, there is no lightning, no rain, etc., for if you do it will act like mesmerism; it will break out in some other phase; but know the elements are in God’s hands (His fists), they are not destructive, but governed by harmony, and express harmony. God gave us dominion over the earth, but it is His dominion; the loving Father gives us what is for us and nothing else can; He is Love and Love controls the elements and all things.

Someone said to Mrs. Eddy, “I love you.” She said, “Don’t love me (person) but love, then you will include me and all, but if you love some person you are shutting out Love; if you were to love a person you would probably love me more than any one else, but if you loved person you would have the result of it. Oh! the infinitude of divine Science.”

If I say to you, “There is no thunder and lightning,” then I say, “Do not say there is no thunder and lightning but know they cannot be destructive,” am I inconsistent? No. If I say to a dyspeptic, “You have no stomach,” then say, “Eat food and it does you good,” am I inconsistent? No. Absolute Science you cannot prove yet; that is, if you try to work that there is no thunder and lightning you will get into trouble for it keeps coming, and others believe it purifies the atmosphere. So you can see it has no power to harm, is not destructive, can only be harmonious. The dyspeptic, if you tell him to eat and the food does him good, will brighten up and be healed; when, if you declared no stomach, no food, you could not prove it yet. S. & H. 442:23 (268th edition.)

We can know that God governs all harmoniously.

JUNE 14, 1903

“Owe no man anything but to love one another.” I (Mrs. Eddy) have all the way in Christian Science, when I wanted to do anything, “sat down and counted the cost.”

Do not be too cheerful, too quick to laugh; this is earnest, sober, vigilant work. I used to be so full of laughter, my mother missed it so much after I was married and went away – “that dear child’s bright laugh has gone out of the house,” she said.

God looks out from the clouds; He is Love and we are His reflection; we have love in our hearts because He is Love and we reflect Him, and we have no clouds.

Why is it a student will be so brave in the work in one direction and not in another? Because there is not enough Love in the heart; it should be ever-present, always ready. If a mother has a beautiful child which she loves, and another deformed, weakly one, can she not love that one, too? If she doesn’t she has not the mother-love. Love not person, but love; it is always present for all occasions.

JUNE 19, 1903

“Lovest thou me?” Yes. “Feed my sheep.” Can you separate the Principle from its idea? No. Can you love the Principle and not its idea? No. Can you love the idea and not the Principle? No. Jesus was teaching this all the way along. It is the same today – that is the handle.

The Babylonish woman in the Apocalypse has thrown wormwood into the waters to turn trusting thoughts to hatred against me, the idea; handle this and you will find your patients healed. Love and its idea are one.

You would declare you love me, when underneath is the hatred nagging; kill it and go on loving.

Mrs. Eddy said a woman to whom she had been kind, was stricken down with disease, but she did not know it until one day a man told her she was dead. Dead, she said, dead? He said, well she was dying when I was there and I suppose she is dead by this time; the next day she was around the house at her work, well, and remained so; she said the family never knew what healed the woman.

Another woman who was ill, used to watch for Mrs. Eddy’s carriage to pass; finally the woman said Mrs. Eddy had healed her by just riding past the house.

When Mrs. Eddy drove by a house and saw a woman on the porch holding a baby bundled up, she knew what that meant – sick baby, wanted her to heal it.

A mother used to send her boy out where Mrs. Eddy would drive by; he was idiotic; his chin would drop down and his eyes had no expression. One day she saw him with gloves on going to church.

JUNE 21, 1903

We can feel encouraged in the overcoming of error, but do not feel satisfied until you “awake in His likeness.” Every spiritualized thought is that much in this direction.

JULY 8, 1903

“Peace be still. peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you; you are in the arms of Love which shields you from everything.” These words must be accompanied by the spirit of them.

This was to show how to handle a case when many minds were at work on a case; which would be like wild beasts fighting, locking horns. This realization of peace is needed at such times; will unlock the horns; will stop the discord. The higher one senses harmony, the more sensitive he is to discord; the same in music. “The greatest wrong is but the supposititious opposite of the highest right.” S. & H.

JULY 12, 1903

When we detect error as unreal, and God as All, we will be immortal.

JULY 15, 1903

If worse after treatment begins, take up, no reversal. If do not help declare, I can help.

JULY 18, 1903

Theosophists profess to make a law that will hold good for six months; they do not sit up nights to work. Now break these laws; then when that is accomplished and you go out from here you are ready for the next that is to be met, and when the need is to come here you will come back again; but if you do not meet it and go out from here you are not ready for the next and so cannot come back. This is the divinity. In healing a patient do not try to regenerate the whole; be like a carpenter, strengthen the weak places first, and while doing so the patient will be helped mentally; you cannot take the whole structure until you have reached that point. I am now doing the work of meeting the sin of the world.

JULY 29, 1903

Break the so-called laws which say you cannot heal, you cannot help the patient; the patient will relapse, etc.; work at it every day until they are destroyed; not wait until you have it to meet with the patient, but work every day just as hard as though the patient were dying, until you have the mastery; then they will never have dominion over your work. Look to God, whose only law is harmony.

JULY 31, 1903

The drunkenness produced by belief in wine is not to be compared with the drunkenness in thought – mental darkness. “Drunken, but not with wine.” Isaiah 51:21.

Keep awake by loving more; love the idea of God and you will love God; you can only love God as far as you love His idea, and love will be expressed. What would you think of one who says he loves but never expresses it? Love does express itself; it heals; if you do not heal you have not enough love. Prove your love. Love is God and expresses itself.

AUGUST 1, 1903

Do not treat the weather as though a storm could go around and let our neighbor have it. When I take it up I face the clouds and see God’s face, Love, shining right through; then the clouds scatter and there is no storm to break upon anyone.

AUGUST 3, 1903

There is a great struggle before us, and it is for Life. What is our Life? “Hid with Christ in God.” Then all there is of man is what is left after animal magnetism has gotten through with him; now measure your height.

AUGUST 7, 1903

It is not enough to smile and look pleasant when talking to the devil; speak with authority, stamp your foot if necessary and command it to come out of him as Jesus did. The smile and pleasantness will be all right when you are out of the flesh, but in the flesh you must strive.

Mesmerism will smile and be pleasant and all the while doing some mischief.

Good is All. Evil is not mind, has no intelligence, is powerless and falls by its own weight.

AUGUST 11, 1903

Humility is the door, honesty is the way and spirituality is the summit.

Oh! If we could only see ourselves in God, “In Him we live and move and have our being,” we would have no other consciousness.

AUGUST 18, 1903

The world is to us as we see it. The five senses (material) are lies and can only repeat lies; now rise above them to Spirit – the real; that is where health is and freedom from limitation; the lies will disperse as we have seen the clouds disappear; there is no such thing; God is All; you do not have to delve into matter, the body, to know how things are. Spirit shows us things as they are.

Keep your thoughts up there; this will heal; it is all that is necessary. When you are “on the house top, do not go down into the house to take anything out.”

AUGUST 19, 1903

Mr. K. asked, “When you reach a place where you have done everything you know how to do or what to do, desiring, striving for divine guidance and it does not seem to come, and discouragement comes in and causes you to doubt your ability to grasp it, what do you do?” Mrs. Eddy replied, “Shut out the senses and take the side with God; if it comes to you that you do not know which is the side with God, turn to Him alone, shutting out everything else; this is the way.”

We must learn that we do not depend upon material food for health and life; Spirit – not matter – sustains us and we must prove it. It is not necessary to eat as much as we do even now.

Mrs. Eddy was called to a case of fever where two physicians present, said the man could not live; he had refused to eat anything for a week; as she went to his door he was saying, “This tastes good and that tastes good,” and he did not have any food in the room. Mrs. Eddy said, “With that consciousness he can live without eating.” The physicians laughed at it. “Well, then he can eat,” she said, and instantly he was in his right mind, recognized someone in the room and called for something to eat; they brought him a bountiful supply and he ate it all; dressed himself, went out in the yard and was entirely well. Mrs. Eddy did not think about the physical, just “God is All,” and shut out what the physicians had said and everything else from the sense side. She at first demonstrated health in the flesh; now she is demonstrating health outside of the flesh, she said.

AUGUST 28, 1903

The students who are called here do not come to this house for glory; when they come here they come to the cross. The first step is willingness to leave all; then the cross; then “Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.” You cannot gain the crown except by “taking up the cross and following.”

SEPTEMBER 8, 1903

We are all drunk without wine, in the senses; sleep is one of its phases, and Spirit will compel us, sometime, to give it up; false gods, etc., must go; cannot enter the kingdom; each has this work to do.

The teaching should be more in the line of showing the student how to overcome the evil, than by cramming with the letter, smoothing over, making things pleasant and taking the money. There must always be the cross before the crown; the cross cannot be smoothed over. It is the plucking out of the eye and cutting off the hand. A student of S. & H., who has the spirit, when he goes to a patient, does not know the letter to gabble over, and is better off than to be filled with the letter and not the spirit.

Each one must work out of matter, for it is wrong in every way, from the hair on the head to the toe. If I were teaching a class now, and there was one in it would get angry if I rebuked her before the others, – her pride would not let her receive it, – I would tell her to walk out of the class; such a one would not be ready to help others out of the same difficulty.

There is no power in evil; the reverse is true, God is the power. He is infinite; then your work is the Christ power against nothingness; hold there, know it and there is nothing else, know it is with power and what else is there? Nothing; then the work is done; God did it.

SEPTEMBER 9, 1903

If you have a patient who does not respond, would you say, I have done the best I could, and give up? No; it is the opportunity to rise higher and meet the demand.

SEPTEMBER 12, 1903

Science does not ameliorate error, it destroys it.

SEPTEMBER 13, 1903

Charity is good and peaceful, but it must not cover iniquity; just as long as you compromise with error, just so long will the error stick to you. In teaching students I have always uncovered the error to them; that is what should be done, and not all the pleasant things said only. “He that covereth iniquity (his sins) shall not prosper.”

The error that is holding them must be uncovered to students so they can overcome it.

SEPTEMBER 15, 1903

The weather expresses our concept of it, and can be handled the same as any claim, if you do not hold it as something apart from you, governed by some other power or almanac, etc. God governs all; this is the way Jesus stilled the tempest. There is no person and no persons that have any control over us; that belief is all illusion; God is All; we must prove this. We learn through suffering as the Scripture reads, “Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” “Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth” (Hebrews 12:6). Am not I an example?

SEPTEMBER 24, 1903

“When you are on the housetop, don’t go down to take anything out of the house.” I am a great way out of the house (body) and it will not do for me to go down into the house (argument); I gain more by holding to God; if you are in the house you will have to heal others (argue) and so get out of the house; one who has suffered sickness or discord, I have always found more tractable in Science than one who has always been well. Do we have to be sick to work out? Not if you can get out without; health in matter must be given up for health in God. If one is a tenant and is satisfied he will remain there; the owner may want him out of the tenement and so takes out the windows, boards up the doors and makes it so uncomfortable for him he finally gets out. God is the owner; if one is comfortable in the material tenement, he must be made uncomfortable in it to get out; but if he gets out without being made uncomfortable (sick, etc.) all right. I have never seen one who did. The Bible continually speaks of tribulation. If you are well, heal the sick and so get out of the material tenement (matter), and learn health in God; do not court sickness but get out of material belief. I have come so far through tribulation.

Do not think you are out because comfortable; do not think you are out when you are not. A pupil may work out an example on the blackboard wrong, and think he is right; the teacher is out of it and sees the mistake; then the pupil must be made to see it in order to get out. Spirit is the way; it will take you out.

SEPTEMBER 25 and 26, 1903

You must watch, as Jesus said, if you would not have the house broken open; you think you are watching, but are you when the house is broken open? What would be thought of a watchman who would let the place watched be burglarized? Would he be the right kind of a watchman? That is just why I named our paper, Sentinel and on it, “Watch.”

Now how should we watch? A guard who was watching on the side of the Union soldiers in time of the war, was walking up and down while on duty, when he suddenly felt the approach of the enemy – danger; so he began to sing, “Jesus, lover of my soul, Let me to thy bosom fly,” etc., and the verse that did the work was, “Other refuge have I none, Hangs my helpless soul on thee,” etc.; he gave up to God. He afterward talked with the man who said he approached with his gun to his shoulder to shoot the guard, and he said his arm fell and the rifle with it; he could not shoot. That was watching; we must feel the danger and lift our thought to God; He will save us.

If we do not feel the danger and go right on as though everything were all right, declaring you are all right, you can not die, etc., when the seeming is all wrong, you will not be watching with God.

When we feel the danger then we earnestly turn to God.

When one is drunk without wine – mesmerism, apathy – he will talk with a thick tongue something like a drunken man; I can always tell it; they must arouse out of such a sense. I (Mrs. Eddy) was in a street car once when a drunken man came in and sat down. I said mentally, “You are a fool and don’t know it.” I kept thinking that and nothing else; in a few moments that man was perfectly sober; it had roused his dormant sense to the situation, and when he saw, that was the end of it. Keep awake – watch; the right kind of watching.

OCTOBER 1, 1903

Do not tell anyone he can’t die, can’t be sick, until you can prove it to him. I (Mrs. Eddy) used to look away from the patient sometimes until I would get the thought, and the patient would vanish right out of my thought, and when I would look back at him, he would be well. I never told them they could not die, until I could see it; then when I spoke it was done. But we must keep at it, declaring it to ourselves until we can see it.

It used to be easy healing sickness – anything, a man all cut to pieces. But now we are meeting sin. I would rather have a man with his head cut off, to heal, than sin. In S. & H. I wrote, “Sin will make deadly thrusts,” etc., and, “Christian Scientists will hold crime in check,” etc. and I knew no more than a babe what it meant when I wrote it; now I do.

DECEMBER, 1903

Mrs. L. repeated lesson given while I was away as follows:

When you can rise above corporeality, see out of the flesh, then you can commune with those who have passed on; not corporeally as in spiritualism, but in Mind.

DECEMBER 7, 1903

What we most need is wisdom.

We must take advantage of time, not time of us. There is a time to do everything; a time to speak to students; a time to speak to the world; and we must have wisdom and know when to speak and act. Jesus said, “Can ye not discern the signs of the times?”

When a student is wrong, if it is not deep sin, I (Mrs. Eddy) walk with them a way to help them out; even when they are working right against me sometimes; walk with them a way and open their eyes to the error; then when they see, the error is gone. Not go at them denouncing them, pouncing upon them.

I love; one will ask, whom do you love? I answer, I love. What do you love? I love.

If you love, you can raise the dead. Love will heal death; that is the way I have raised the dead, by Love. Love that is above the human.

God is Father and Mother – one; the Christ reflects the male and female Principle – one – not two.

The end of the belief in male and female as two, will be when woman stops child-bearing.

The monthly period left me the moment I came to Christian Science and I have never seen anything of the claim since. Change of life is an error. Life never changes and the giving up of an error cannot cause suffering. Sexuality and sensuality of any kind are not of God; now go to work and prove it.*

DECEMBER 9, 1903

The earth is spiritual – not material; a compound idea (S. & H.). Matter is a subjective state of mortal mind – a thought projected.

In teaching I bring out the facts clearly; get down to the bottom of things and not mix them up by comparisons; the distinct line between matter and Spirit must be drawn.

What moves your arm? Mind. What mind? Mortal mind. Is there a mortal mind? No. Then you have to come back to – nothingness. God does not know anything about the moving of your hand. If you can control your hand, move it out and back, can you not control the clouds also? Yes. I am now speaking from the material sense. In immortal Mind there are no clouds and no storms. When the workmen could not finish their work if it rained

* The following may be found in some versions of these notes: In a booklet entitled “Fragment of a Lost Gospel,” published by the Oxford University Press, giving account of sayings of Jesus that are regarded as authentic by scholars, we find the following: “When Salome asked when those things about which she questioned should be made known, the Lord said, ‘When ye trample upon the garment of shame, when the two become one and the male with the female, neither male nor female.’ ” The meaning being that Christ’s kingdom on earth would not be manifested until man had returned to the state of innocence in which sexual ideas and relations had no place. “When Salome asked how long death would prevail, the Lord said, ‘So long as ye women bear children, for I have come to destroy the works of the female.’” Logia of Jesus, Christian Science Journal, Vol. 25, “Jesus was asked, ‘When shall the dominion of death cease?’ Jesus saith, ‘As long as (material) birth continues, for I came to destroy the works of birth.’ See Matt.5:17 and S. & H. 69.”

(and it did not rain for three weeks) and my neighbor could not furnish milk because his well was dry, and the next morning he found three or four feet of water in his well and it had not rained and he asked if we were witches or prophets here, I did not depend on clouds or storms but upon the higher power.

The material senses are lies; the spiritual sense is the real.

The spiritual sense destroys the material.

When you move with human will and think through human will, that is not Christian Science; it is working with the objective instead of the subjective.

The question was asked, “How did I heal, the other day, when I felt so helpless to do for some one who saw so far above me?” The answer was, “Through that helplessness you let Truth in and it was Christian Science which healed the case, not your own exertion.”

You are under no law but God’s law.

When I first came to Christian Science I was lifted right out of the belief of sickness into the belief of perfect health; since then I am working out of that belief in health into the Science of health, and it would have been easier if I had never been in that belief, just as it is with one who sings by ear, which is not the science of music and afterward learns the science of music; it would have been easier to have commenced right in the first place than to have to unlearn and learn over again.

DECEMBER 15, 1903

The preachers speak of Jesus as though he were always so placid, never ruffled, while really he was very stern; the Scriptures speak of him as saying to his disciples, “Get thee behind me, Satan”; and just before he ascended he called them “fools.” I used to be very amiable before coming into Christian Science; was a peacemaker at home when arguments about temperance, politics and philosophy would arise; but now I am stern.

DECEMBER 17, 1903

My students will place themselves in conditions which to carry through would strike at their life; then they will throw it all on to me; then I have to give the master stroke.

It was not the material cross that killed Jesus, but it was the desertion of his students that killed him. This is the reason he gave up quicker than the malefactors with him, knowing the loss that desertion meant to the Cause which was so dear to him; but he did not lose it and he came back and proved that he had not. God was with him.

DECEMBER 22, 1903

The whole of error from the beginning to the end is summed up in one word – talking serpent. In the South they have copperhead, the moccasin and a variety of snakes. The moccasin the Southern people fear the most.

A lady in the South told me something which I will give to illustrate my point: The moccasin will not harm one while that one is asleep; will even try to keep him asleep – charm him, but as soon as that one awakes, then he strikes with his fangs. This lady always carried a dirk with her; she was on the beach one day and lay down and fell asleep; she awakened and saw a moccasin lying right beside her; she quietly reached into her pocket, took her dirk and killed the serpent before it had a chance to attack her. This is the nature of error; it will strike us when we have awakened to see its unreality and we cannot meet it by fighting it, because it (the devil) is larger and more powerful than you are (I should hope so); then we overcome it by seeing its nothingness; then there is nothing to fight; it is killed. We have wakened and the serpent would strike us; it will get the better of us if we fight it because it is more powerful than we are; so if we argue about it and fight it – this would be the beastly way – we will not gain the victory over it; but we must rise above it and so see its nothingness. When Moses saw the rod turn into a serpent he ran before it, but he was commanded to handle it, and when he did (saw its nothingness) it became a staff in his hand upon which to lean. I (Mrs. Eddy) am meeting the serpent in its phases. There is not one belief of sickness that comes from my individuality. I now have to overcome that which says I feel other people’s thoughts; that if it cannot touch you it will work through someone and reach you; this is the theosophical line of work. We are not to fight as beasts but to handle – see the nothingness – and so kill error.

DECEMBER 24, 1903

Let us take “heart” as a token of our Xmas; the great heart of Christ; it is the palpitating presence encircling the universe; it is the only intelligence, and that is what? Love. Could there be anything greater?

DECEMBER 26, 1903

Did God give you dominion over the earth? Yes. He gave you dominion over all. Then you can control the weather.

Your body is of the earth earthy according to the Scripture; you have dominion over that; then you have over the weather.

M.D.’s say the lungs, bowels, etc., have dominion over you; theosophists say the earth currents have dominion over you; one is just as far from Science as the other. You have dominion over all. Elijah made a cloud to come; he made it rain; if he could make it rain, he could make it snow. You can do the same; you can produce a sweat (until there is no need for one); you can do the same with rain or snow.

You are not a Christian Scientist until you do control the weather.

I cannot produce sickness. I experimented one time; a student went into another room and I argued sickness for him as hard as I could; he said he kept feeling better and better. Then he argued for me and I began to feel pain right away. I am working now to overcome sin and not feel others thoughts. You can see by the above I cannot be a malpractitioner. I feel others thoughts mentally but I am trying to work out of that; do not want to feel them.

DECEMBER 27, 1903

My brother George was not a religious man and it troubled my father who was religious; when George was on his dying bed my father asked him to accept Christ. George said, during the intervals of labored breathing, “I have always done as near right as I knew how, the rest I leave with God.” George awakened in heaven and my father awakened disappointed after passing on.

DECEMBER 28, 1903

Now stop the negations in treating and hold to the Truth. If you have disease in your thought, you will transmit it; you say your patient is healed; but he is not if you are holding disease in thought, and it will appear in some other form; you do not want to hold with the witness but against.

Jesus read the minds of his students; he saw their sins, but did not believe it was their mind, and this did the healing.

JANUARY 2, 1904

I never knew anything about relapse until I had a student who was a malpractitioner; look at the weather how it snows then stops, snows and stops – relapse. What is the belief in earth currents, astrals and planetary effects, polarity? Theosophy. The belief is that they work through nerves, nerve centers. What are nerves? Mortal mind. And there is no mortal mind. When you yield to weather as having power – dominion – you yield to nerves; when you yield to nerves you yield to mortal mind – hypnotism; then you cannot heal.

Now have the faith of a little child and prove your dominion over all. (A little child will say – my mamma can do so and so.) Love is the remedy, and what is Love? It is giving, not getting. Love gives. Students who are getting from the book (S. & H.) and from me, when they are put to the test are wanting. Why? Because they have taken it of me instead of God; now what I have given take in usury; use it, and more will be given; like the one who had a talent given him and did not use it, lost it; but to the one who did make use of it more was given. “Unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but unto him that hath not shall be taken away that which he hath.”

JANUARY 3, 1904

I love. What do you love? I don’t know; I love. Do you love all? Yes; all or nothing.

How have I gained what I have? By being honest; being faithful over a few things; and I will make you ruler over many; then, “Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.” These are the steps.

Lida, God loves you. He loves you much. He loves you dearly. You have endured affliction. “Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.” Now you return that love by giving out to others, bringing rest and peace to the world, and yourself.

JANUARY 5, 1904

“The wrath of man shall be made to praise God.” Malpractice is the wrath of man, and it is being made to praise God by driving you out of the tenement (belief in body); if it doesn’t drive you out, it will kill you in it.

The negation will not do the work, i.e. arguing no disease, etc.; it is the Truth that does the work; standing on the right side; keeping the two commandments: “Have no other gods before me,” and “There is no life, truth, intelligence nor substance in matter.”

The moment you are pleasant with or in error, that moment you can do nothing with it. There must be authority. It is not seeking but striving that enables us to conquer.

JANUARY 8, 1904

Jesus said, “Watch and pray.” The watching comes first. You must watch, see the enemy before it comes and strikes; destroy before it approaches.

One present said, “God will raise up someone who will be faithful, as was John at the cross.” Answer, “How do you know? Look within and see who that one should be. It is opium, ether…etc., that would cause you to suggest it should be someone else.”

JANUARY 12, 1904

Is anyone sick? No. Would you tell your patient he is sick? No. Am I suffering from other people’s sins, or my own? No. Would you tell your patient there is sin? No. Was Jesus crucified? Yes, according to belief. Did Jesus die? Belief said he did, but belief is a lie. Is there death any more than sickness? No. Now go and prove it.

You cannot be made to believe you cannot heal; you do heal. There are a few laws to be broken; then we will be free.

JANUARY 17, 1904

Learn what watching means.

Nothing material belongs to Spirit; all materiality must be given up to get into heaven; there is no other way; you cannot take any of it with you. I have watched all these years for you and the world; do you think any one else in the world would have done as I have, held on through everything and not given up? I left everything, father (mother had gone), brother, relatives, everything; and because I held to this my relatives would not speak to me; said I had disgraced them; would ride along in their carriage and I would be on the sidewalk and they would not speak to me. All these have I given up and I work on without a cent for it except from books – although I always advocate, “The laborer is worthy of his hire.” Now you watch; be always on duty – on guard.

If we were to pass on right here now in this room, we would waken right here, and nothing would be changed any more than you see it now.

JANUARY 23, 1904

All is Mind. If you do not heal, it is because you have not reached the realization in your treatment – or reversal. S. & H. 412:16 to 18 and 22, 23, “To prevent disease or to cure it, the power of the divine Spirit must break this dream of the material senses….Conform the argument so as to destroy the evidence of disease.” Also 417:16 and 17, “When you silence the witness against your plea, you destroy the evidence, for the disease disappears.”

JANUARY 29, 1904

Is it necessary that one eat and sleep? No. Then do not talk about eating and sleeping being a normal condition. Know that we depend upon God for everything, and then the emerging gently will take care of itself. Leave that with God. A musician would not call a discord a chord, one time any more than another; neither must we mix Spirit and matter. What is this body you see? A belief of mortal mind. Are there any clouds? No. Any weather? No. Atmosphere? No; simply beliefs. Then haven’t you dominion over the weather and clouds (beliefs) as you have over the body? Yes. Now prove it.

Wrongs are done to me, and yet I turn right around and do them a kindness; not because I intend to do so but I cannot help it; do it without thinking.

JANUARY 31, 1904

I used to heal with a word; I have seen a man yellow because of disease, and the next moment I looked at him and his color was right; was healed.

I knew no more how it was done than a baby; only it was done every time. I never failed; almost always in one treatment; never more than three. Now God is showing me how, and I am showing you.

All we have to do is one thing; keep the First Commandment, “thou shalt have none other gods before (beside) me” – infinite Mind and that is infinite Love. There is no evil mind; that sweeps away error; there is infinite Mind – good. Infinity is all. There is no other intelligence, life or love. Now work out your problem from this standpoint. If we do not keep the First we cannot keep the Second – “to love one another.” If ye love not man (your brother) whom you have seen how can you love God whom you have not seen? You only love God as far as you love man.

FEBRUARY 8, 1904

When I say you are not doing a thing and you contradict, you say you are, when there is no manifestation of it; you think you are but belief is talking the louder and the patient feels the belief instead of the Truth and feels worse. You go right on arguing as fast as you can and think you are doing something; the way to do at such a time is to turn from the mesmerism to God, knowing He is All and there is nothing else. The above described condition of mesmerism is lack of faith in your treatment, and in what I tell you. Know that the treatment is with power, for all power is God.

FEBRUARY 16, 1904

The Bible would seem to contradict itself, but it does not when you know what it means. “Answer not a fool according to his folly.” “Answer a fool according to his folly.” They say my book (S. & H.) contradicts itself, but it does not when you understand it.

The Bible says, “Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long,” etc.; then when it says, Luke 14:26, “If any man come to me, and hate not his father and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” This would look like a direct contradiction of the words just quoted but is not; after we have honored our father and mother, then comes the next step – forsaking the flesh for Spirit.

We must be Christian Scientists and do as we say we believe or else be hypocrites. We say Spirit is All and then when we have to take our choice between Spirit and the flesh we cry, the flesh, the flesh. God is coming very near to us; is making demands upon us. Mr. Frye made his choice twenty-one years ago and since then has been having his experiences, and if he should pass now would waken to glorified being. Those who choose the flesh will yet have all the experience to go through. What is the result of forsaking all for Spirit? Dominion over the earth.

FEBRUARY 20, 1904

God is Love, and Love is infinite; realize this and you are safe from harm; nothing can touch you.

FEBRUARY 21, 1904

God is testing us. Jesus illustrated by the parable about the “owner,” etc.; the servants said, “My lord delayeth his coming; let us eat, drink and be merry,” etc. I pray that my faith may be strengthened by this testing.

FEBRUARY 22, 1904

In the year twenty-one hundred I think will be the end. Then Christian Scientists will have held crime in check as the book (S. & H.) says.

At that time either the world will be saved through universal salvation, or those who now are working against us will burn up as the physical scientists say the world will be burned up, by volcanic action; we know what they call volcanic action is mortal mind destroying itself. All must learn they cannot sin and escape punishment, as they think they can. Those who have worked against this Cause and those who are then doing so will all be burned together. Those who work out now will be saved; the others will be hundreds of years; all the woes Jeremiah predicted will come to pass. God is making demands upon us. (Do not mention this prophecy.)

Do not let self-justification cloud over the Principle of right doing.

FEBRUARY 24, 1904

Do not work against error, but feel the love that dissolves it.

FEBRUARY 26, 1904

If you can do a thing right once, you can every time. Honesty and sincerity God cares for.

When I was doing the healing I went right along performing the remarkable cures; but I, evidently, had not overcome the latent fear altogether, and God has called me to do that. When that is accomplished, I will perform those miracles again and will not have the suffering to go through again.

Have God in your thought and no devil. You and all must have some belief of a devil or the works would show, all God.

FEBRUARY 27, 1904

Repeated through Mrs. L.:

Disease is not in matter, it is a dream; it is in thought. You do not tabernacle in the body, but in Mind, Spirit. Action is harmonious and governs all things harmoniously until you know it through harmonious action. There is no body and you know it.

FEBRUARY 15, 1907

Now arrange things and then go to God, but go to God first. (Then followed the reading of Luke 24:1 to 16 about the resurrection). These things are occurring again. My words seem as “idle tales” to you; but I speak the truth.

FEBRUARY 17, 1907

There are no lies. All is Mind and governs. What is matter? Nothing. Mortal mind is matter; it cannot talk. Then hold to Mind, and the rest will take care of itself – the rest is nothing; this (material) is all nothing.

Life is divine, immortal, and there is no other life. That is all the Life there is and is ours.

FEBRUARY 23, 1907

Stand with God and you will stand with Mother; stand with Mother and you will stand with God.

FEBRUARY 26, 1907

There is but one way through, and only one way through; and that is to unself.

It is my unselfed love that has made a success of this Cause for the world.

Can you get rid of a lie and not get rid of it? No. Is it a lie that there is life, substance and intelligence in matter? Yes. Then unself it. Everyone must do this. There is too much looking out for self instead of others. This is the trouble with the teaching of today, and why there is so much erroneous teaching being done; not unselfed enough.

You cannot teach Christian Science in that way. You can say over the words, but unless you prove it you are not teaching (imparting). Prove it in healing the sick and casting out sin.

I pray and watch in the little details; someone must, as good is expressed in the minutiae of things.

FEBRUARY 28, 1907

Mrs. Eddy told of a colored minister that preached from the text – where the sheep were placed on one side and the goats on the other. At the conclusion of the sermon he said, “Bless the Lord; he knew where the wool grows.” (Sheep and wool of colored people.)*

MARCH 7, 1907

What is the one evil? Animal magnetism? Yes. Is it person? No. Is it anything? No. Then we cannot be harmed by it. That is what I mean by the one evil.

MARCH 8, 1907

God gives us the victory. His plan is made long before we know anything about it; then we have to carry it out. The human heart requires many scourgings sometimes before it falls in line, but it must come. We can help one another and can help ourselves, but God gives the victory. When I used to preach in a hall, I would go there sometimes and the door would be locked; could not get in. Others would be inside in the front seats, laughing and talking. I would have to get a policeman to let me in; then in the room where I would stay until time to go out to speak, there would be cigar stumps lying around.

Then when I had a Church I said, we will not have By-laws; see how I had to give that up? I finally said, there will have to be laws to put a stop to this (mortal mind) work. Then I wrote the Manual. I never had a Church until I had the Manual. See how God led me! I wrote the Manual as I did S. & H.

* George Kinter recorded in 1907 regarding Mrs. Eddy in his statement for Next Friend’s Suit: When I went South as a young bride my gallant husband, Major Glover, took me into the Episcopal church; but I was unacquainted with that service and longed for the simple worship of my New England home, the Congregational. So I asked George, as I always addressed him, to take me over to the colored people’s meeting in the woods. But he demurred. When I insisted, either upon going, or that he should tell me the reason for his objection, he said, “Why, Mary, it is scarcely a fit place for you. They sometimes get the ‘power’ and become very boisterous. You are delicate and nervous, and I don’t want you to go.” But I finally prevailed upon him to take me, and when the old colored preacher discovered white folks in his audience, he decided to take a different text, and started in with a new sermon, “And the shepherd divided the sheep from the goats. Now, my brethren, you all wants to know if you was sheep, or if white folks is the goats and I calculate to explanation of this fact to you to-day so you will never forget it, even if you live forever. Jess let me ask you one question. Who’s got de wool on der heads? Don’t that settle the whole question? It sure do, and we will now take up the collection, not omitting the folks what come in carriages.”

We must not feel too much encouraged over a victory, for everything in mortal mind must be overcome. If you fail in one iota, like an example in mathematics, every figure right but one, the example is incorrect; so it is with our problem. All little things must be overcome. Then we rise above substance matter; and that includes sin, sickness, death.

I used to be a very timid person; did not want to meet people, etc. After I came into Christian Science I overcame timidity, and when I appeared before the audience in Chicago, a man spoke of my carriage as I walked on the stage, etc. What was it? I had overcome timidity. Before going out on the platform I would shut out timidity entirely, and when I went out would not remember that there was an audience there. We must overcome all little things as well as large.

MARCH 9, 1907

What is a way-shower? There is a human and a divine meaning. A way-shower is that which shows the way; it must be some thing or some one. Jesus was the Way-shower, the Christ with him, and if he had not been, where would we be? He showed the way as the masculine idea of Principle, then woman took it up at that point – the ascending thought in the scale – and is showing the way, thus representing the male and female Principle (the male and female of God’s creating).

Is there anything in the world of more importance than holding up the hands of the way-shower? No. If they had all done that with Jesus, we would be in the millennium. We must become unselfed.

Can you heal a disease by holding it or its symptoms before you? No. Then hold to the opposite (absolute Science) which does the healing.

MARCH 10, 1907

From the beginning and all the way along, I got my leading from God, through the Bible. Right in the beginning I got – “Write it in a book and it shall be for all time.”

Today He is speaking to me again, Isaiah 16:14. “But now the Lord hath spoken, saying, Within three years, as the years of an hireling, and the glory of Moab shall be contemned, with all that great multitude; and the remnant shall be very small and feeble.”

I am sure this will be fulfilled, but don’t tell anyone about it.

*While Mrs. Eddy was troubled today at the lawsuit just instituted by her next friend’s (Glover & Baker) she prayed God for direction and opened her Bible to Is. 16:12, 13, 14. This gave her renewed courage. (Calvin A. Frye)

MARCH 12, 1907

Do you believe what the book says about chemicalization, that, “The higher Truth lifts her voice, the louder will error scream,” etc. (Page 97)? Yes. I was just thinking how I am being abused (Glover case and newspaper articles) and I could feel the tears starting to come, when suddenly I thought of two cases of healing I had, and then joy took the place of sorrow. One of them was one of the worst cripples I ever saw. I was walking along the street – I walked because I hadn’t a cent to ride – and I saw this cripple, with one knee drawn up to his chin; his chin resting on his knee. The other limb was drawn the other way, up his back. I came up to him and read on a piece of paper pinned on his shoulder: help this poor cripple. I had no money to give him so I whispered in his ear, “God loves you.” And he got up perfectly straight and well. He ran into the house (told the name of the people – Allen I think) and asked, “Who is that woman?” pointing to Mrs. Glover (afterward Mrs. Eddy). The lady told him, “It is Mrs. Glover.” “No, it isn’t, it’s an angel,” he said. Then he told what had been done for him.

The other case was: I was at a house (told the name and place) and the woman came running into the room as white as ashes, and said, a cripple was at the door and he looked so dreadful she slammed the door in his face. I went to the window, and there was – well, it was too dreadful to describe; his feet did not touch the earth at all; he walked with crutches. I gave him through the window all I had in my pocket – a dollar bill – and he took it in his teeth. He went to the next house and frightened the woman there, but she did not slam the door in his face. He asked her to let him lie down a few minutes; she let him go into a bedroom and lie down. He fell sound asleep, and when he wakened up was perfectly well. Sometime afterward the woman, who was kind to him, was in a store (I think) and this man came rushing up to her and said, “Yes, you are the one, but where is the other woman?” Then he told her he was the one who was healed by me. The papers are writing up my history; the history of my ancestry; writing lies. My history is a holy one.

When I went where the people were not good it produced a chemical. While I was writing S. & H. I moved to eight places. I would no sooner settle down and begin to write, than it would produce such a chemical I would have to go to some other place.

In writing my history they can say nothing against me, so they begin to tell lies. It will do the same by you. Your truth produces the chemical until all is worked out.

MARCH 13, 1907

God talks to me through this book (the Bible) as a person talks to another, and has for forty years.

MARCH 14, 1907

Mrs. L. E. S. repeated.

The true sense of love is to love God – good, then we love all, for God is All. That love is unlimited and flows out freely to all, and all feel it. The human sense of love narrows itself down to a concept, or a person, and shuts out others; that is not love. Really we do not love person; it is the good we love. This true sense of Love brings freedom and an enlarged sense of things. Miscellaneous Writings 312:1.

MARCH 15, 1907

We must be resurrected from the dead; dead in trespasses and sin; the belief of life in the body, of matter, of life, substance and intelligence in matter, the proclivities of the parents manifested through a belief in heredity, etc.; we must be resurrected from all this, for what does Paul say? “Except ye have part in the resurrection my preaching is vain.”

MARCH 16, 1907

The hour is come – the acme of hate against Love, and Love alone can meet it. God demands God. Truth destroys error.

MARCH 17, 1907

In balancing a pencil on the finger, if you put anything on one side you take from the other. God is infinite, All, and has no opposite. Then the way to do is, to hold with God; if not what have we? Nothing. We must give up all for Christ, Truth; and not say, I have bought a farm, or a yoke of oxen, or married a wife and cannot come. One and one are two; you can not deviate from it one iota and have a correct answer; neither can you deviate from the law of God, or take the opposite of what the Scriptures say and have a correct result. Error cannot get into the kingdom, so we must divest ourselves of it. We must hold with God alone.

I used to say before going before an audience: Now, dear God, here I am, use me; I am absent from the body and present with Thee in consciousness. Love uses me in its own good way. I would lift myself right out of the material sense of self and audience and let God use me.

Mrs. L. E. S. repeated:

All there is of us, is what there is of us under the fire of mesmerism. Meaning, what we manifest under the fire of mesmerism is what we are – what we have attained – the test.

MARCH 20, 1907

My revelations for 40 years have come through the Scriptures; study them yourselves.

MARCH 22, 1907

Stop denying error and place all the balance on the right side; the side of God. You can negative error without individualizing it so much. “Answer not a fool according to his folly lest he be wise in his own conceit,” and “Answer a fool according to his folly,” said Solomon. These are exactly two opposites; yet they each have their time. The time is now, “Answer a fool not according to his folly,” – leaving out the “folly.” Suppose you balance a pencil on your finger, what you put on one side takes from the other; if you argue no pain, no catarrh, etc., you are putting weight on the side of error. Take the side with God, and put all of the balance there. This is what is needed. Hold with your Leader and with God.

In the time of Paul was the talk about the crucifixion; if he had left out the crucifixion he would have had all in the balance with God, but he did not. Kept talking about the crucifixion. Now let us have God without the “crucifixion,” and the resurrection of the dead, not dead and the body buried in that sense, but resurrected to the living man of God, – the spiritualized sense.

Hold with your Leader and with God.

MARCH 24, 1907

I have no child. The kingdom of heaven is in our midst. Heaven is harmony, and harmony is peace, love, joy. We must see health and our relations in the spiritual.

MARCH 27, 1907

The disciples followed Jesus up to a certain point, and then deserted him, and darkness followed. Follow the way-shower and you will follow the divine idea; turn away from the way-shower and you turn away from the divine idea; like turning away from the windowpane, you turn away from the light. It is not my personality you are following, or that you love. You are being turned from the person to the idea. When this is accomplished, then you will be free – in health – to go on and do for the world.

Spoke of a certain student as so good that she forgot to do anything for him. If I let you alone you may know it is all right. Isn’t that natural? Yes. “God is the only power,” said a student. Yes, that is true, but wisdom would bid you be wise in working to that demonstration; and meet the things of the hour.

MARCH 29, 1907

Before coming to Christian Science from the time of the belief that I came into the world, I was troubled with sleeplessness; after coming to Science I could drop to sleep at any time. I must yet come out of that belief. Eating, drinking, sleeping, being clothed, are only a human concept; these and the belief of life, substance and intelligence in matter, must all be given up for the immortal. The Christ takes us out of the discord of not eating, sleeping, etc., and gives us the pleasurable side of it; takes us out of the pain and gives us the pleasure, then replaces that with the spiritual. Life is immortal, eternal. There is but one Mind. All is Mind, there is no matter. We must give up all for Christ and Christian Science. We must come to see we do not depend upon eating, sleeping, etc., for life and health, but depend on Mind. The spiritual cannot be touched.

Jesus did not make the demonstration over death, but yielded to it – because of the desertion of his disciples. If they had stood by him we should now be in the millennium.

That demonstration must be made or the world will again be left in darkness. The students must hold up the hands of the way-shower. They will say you have no need, – but you can see the need.

Laura E. S. repeated: –

All there is of personality is the fear of it or the love of it.

MARCH 31, 1907. Easter – Resurrection

We must be resurrected; must put off the old man and put on the new.

If you dress for Easter, your clothes are all in keeping – are clean. You do not put on some clean ones and some soiled ones. Neither can you put on part of the new man and part of the old; you must put on the whole of the new man – the spiritual idea.

If you put a new patch on an old garment, you still have the old garment. There is a time when you take off your old garments before you put on the new. Now if we patch up this body, try to make a better eye, a better limb, etc., we are not putting on the new.

We want to say: eye, you cannot talk to me, I have put you off. Rise to the spiritual sense, then your body will respond; then take no thought what you eat, your clothes, etc. for your heavenly Father knoweth ye have need of these things. This is the resurrection. The resurrection is not to be resurrected from matter – dust. There never was any life in matter to be resurrected. The resurrection is seeing the real man that was never in matter; he never was sick to be made well. That is the way I did the healing. I never saw the material man before me, but the real man, perfect, and this healed instantaneously, and no relapse. This is the way Jesus healed, as in S. & H., it reads, “Jesus beheld the perfect man,” etc. This is the resurrection.

APRIL 1, 1907

When I was introducing this work and they would throw stones at me through the window – and never touch me – and said there was dynamite under the building where I was to speak, I went right along, and I screamed Truth all the louder; if they screamed, I screamed all the louder, until they stopped.

APRIL 5, 1907

“I am the way.” What is that way? Infinite Principle. What is infinite Principle? Truth, Life, Love. Can a lie affect Truth, Life, Love? No. Then hold your thought in Truth, Life, Love; while doing so can you be touched? No. Then hold there. This will destroy all evil. This is the period in which it must be done.

I live with the Bible; I have not another thing on earth to be one with but the Bible and Science and Health. I, the Bible, and S. & H., the trinity, three in one.

APRIL 6, 1907

It is all summed up in a few words. Love, Life, Truth, God, is all there is.

APRIL 8, 1907

In healing you either have to know the allness of God, where there is no sickness, as I used to do, or else you must know what the disease is and argue it down. The same way with healing sin; you heal it with knowing there is no sin, for God is All, or you must know what the sin is and heal it that way.

In healing sickness it is fear back of it; destroy the fear and the case comes right up out of it. In healing sin, hate is back of it (meaning hatred to Truth); so you must destroy the hate, and keep at it and keep at it until it is destroyed.

It is not of any use to want to die to get out of this constant struggle; for if you should do so, you would still have to keep at it until accomplished, and even more so because you would have to overcome not having done it when you could – a lost opportunity.

Lida, you have done beautifully since you have been here; have helped me so much.

APRIL 9, 1907

When we realize the allness of God, that He is Life, Truth, Love, omnipotent, omnipresent, infinite Principle, all will be accomplished.

You have a belief about God – I have a belief about God.

APRIL 11, 1907

The laws which Christian Scientists are under are God’s laws, unchangeable, unbroken, forever. To abide in these laws is not to be touched by any supposed laws – such as theosophists claim they can make – a law that people shall love and that they shall hate. “My times are in thy hands,” said Jesus. He also said, “The works that I do shall ye do, and greater works because I go to the Father,” and, “I and the Father are one.” Materially that has been made doctrinal; but in its spiritual sense it means one with the divine Principle, God, the only I. Not materially through the personality of Jesus, asking in his name, but spiritually – yes; the oneness with the Father; the true individuality. As you rise to spiritually understand that, you lose your sense as an “I” in matter, and gain your true selfhood in Spirit. This brings the divine health, which is not dependent on the body, but is of the Father, forever the same.

I remember reading novels was a great pastime with me when I was young. And now I recall something I read when I was between sixteen and twenty, which was written by Charlotte Bronte and was as follows – “The ties which link the happy may be dear, but those which bind the wretched are tenderness unutterable.”

APRIL 18, 1907

The way-shower must explore the way. You learn that way by that experience. You are learning now from my experience. Old age is just as much of a claim to be overcome as cancer or any other belief. You have not come to it yet, but you will.

Overcome the belief in it now; you have it to do sometime.

When I let my thought down, I can hear the mental arguments of error, or the devil (there is no devil); it cannot hide from me when I want to know what it is doing.

I can lift my thought right above it and shut it all out, or I can find out what it is doing.

If there was an assassin which could overpower you, it would be better for you to know what he was doing, so as to be better prepared to meet it.

If the work had been done in the time of Jesus, it would not have to be done now; but the disciples did not do their part; they were not obedient to him; they questioned what he was doing; did not understand, and it was not done. So it must be done now.

We can enter into immortality here on earth, and now, and overcome death. We must do it. “Bear ye one another’s burdens and so fulfil the law of Christ.”

APRIL 20, 1907

After reading from the Gospel of St. John, said, this talk from the Bible is as plain as though the person, John, were present, speaking to us, because Truth is impersonal.

There are no personalities for God is impersonal and to personalize ourselves, to say I, etc., is to selfishize ourselves. To personalize others is to selfishize others. This is not Christian Science.

The neighbor is one with the Father; so are we; all one in Spirit. The “I” is one, infinite. The one who sees this and abides in it, becomes unselfed and is then ready to do for his neighbor – is a Christian Scientist. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me,” said Jesus. “Bear ye one another’s burdens and so fulfil the law of Christ.”

When you rebuke sin, you cannot be nice to the sinner. Jesus said, “Get thee behind me, Satan,” and called them fools, hypocrites. He did not palaver and smile and be nice to them.

MAY 3, 1907

We must rise above the religion of the Hebrew, the Greek, the Catholic and the Protestant, to Christian Science; you only know as far as you demonstrate, as far as you prove. It is not Science to be too thin nor too fleshy; either is a state of fear, for flesh manifests mind.

MAY 5, 1907

Mr. G. H. K. repeated from Mrs. E.

The way I would teach a child to learn the Bible would be to teach her to love it, and then she would go to the Bible to read for her own entertainment. I would also tell her the Bible in story fashion; it will stick to the memory in that way, and she will become interested to look it up for herself. I would preferably confine myself to the New Testament for a child; but the Old is good, too.

MAY 7, 1907

There is one thing needed all over the field and which is only supplied here, and might not be supplied in the field in centuries; that is, to have but one God, divine Principle and its demonstration. (There is nothing can prevent it.) To have one God, – father, mother, wife, children, lands, can have no claim upon you.

The sense of death everyone wants to get rid of, and can only be done by realizing the sense of Life. You may die a thousand deaths until you realize this, for it is the only way.

Mrs. L. S. repeated: food and sleep belong to sensualism and we must learn to do without them – not depend upon them. Mind is All.

MAY 8, 1907

Mrs. L. S. repeated a prayer given to the early students: O Love! Give me higher, holier, purer, self-abnegated motives and desires, and spiritual inspiration.

MAY 9, 1907

Matthew 26. History repeats itself, but in different forms; now without the crucifixion.

MAY 12, 1907

Handle the weather just as you do any belief of mortal mind.

MAY 14, 1907

I ask myself: in my life-work am I just? Yes. Am I honest? Yes, if I am just. Am I of good report? No, because I am thus. Am I right? Yes, as far as I live up to my highest sense of right.

God has worked through one in this age because He could. The light will come through the window because it will let it, while the wall will not; it would shine through the wall if it could. God is no respecter of persons. Then would you say the wall can let in the light the same as the window? No. Then does one person let in as much light as another? No. Can the one who lets in the light see what is best for the others better than one who does not? Yes. That is the trouble with those outside (the wall); they think they can run things just as well and a little better than I can (the windowpane). How do you know I am a windowpane for the light to shine through? By the works.

MAY 16, 1907

If you are a Christian Scientist and can speak the Word and it is done, all right; but if you have to argue, be very careful what you argue.

MAY 19, 1907

Mrs. L. S. repeated: – You can heal ignorant sin, but willful sin must be suffered out.

MAY 24, 1907

There are three things to keep before us continually: “to have one God” – one Mind; “to love our neighbor as ourselves” and “do unto others as we would have others do unto us.” To have one Mind means for all to work alike; – not you work in your work and I in my work, but work together. It is time for us today to be Christian Scientists and keep these points before us, by asking ourselves these questions every time before doing anything.

MAY 25, 1907

God is All. To have God is to have all – harmony. Discord comes from looking away from all, thinking there is something else. You heal disease by knowing there is none. You heal sin in the same way. The prodigal goes into a far country thinking there is something there. I go after them thinking they have gone after something, and so it goes. But we must look to the spiritual as Paul says – II Corinthians 4:17, 18, “For our light affliction which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; While we look not at the things which are seen, but the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.”

MAY 26, 1907. Divinity Lesson

Reading in the Bible about loaves and fishes, spoke of fishes as floating around, not gathered, and the going out after them to bring them in as the spiritual meaning.

Have you a throat? No. Have you a nose? No. Do you see? No; not through eyes. Do you hear through ears? No. Do you have to eat food? No. Does food sustain you? No. Does food hurt you? No; it only says so. Can food talk? No. What is it that does talk materially? Nothing.

What I am teaching is the spiritual; the material fights it and I fight the material; it will do it to you; the more spiritual the thought, the more will you be fought. That which takes the place of God and creates men and women, and sees everything material, will fight the spiritual. We must see everything spiritual.

To sense I am on the cross. Am I? No. What makes me on the cross? The belief that I am there. If I am I would have to come down. What would come down from the cross? The belief of being on the cross. What would kill? The belief of being killed. See me (and others) all right, as a spiritual idea, and not on the cross; then you will see me as I am.

If Jesus had fully understood himself as wholly spiritual – not on the cross – he would not have died; but would have remained and administered to others.

If I tell the truth of a lie have I lied? Yes. If I tell a lie about the truth have I lied? Yes. We cannot talk aloud Christian Science nor spiritually, for talk is material. I sometimes think argument hinders the work by materializing the thought. Hold to the spiritual.

Knowing you do not depend upon the action of bowls or stomach, eyes to see, ears to hear and sleep for rest, will rest you more than sleep. I have demonstrated this.

Has God accomplished much through me for the world? Yes. How have I made it possible? By giving up all for Christ.

Father, sister, etc.; when my father told me if I disgraced the family with Christian Science, I should never darken his door again; and my sister would not speak to me; I gave them all up. I am now being punished by the fruits (the Glover case now in Court) of my marriage. Only as you give up all for Christ can you be Christian Scientists. If the wife comes to Christian Science she should show the husband so he will help her to do this work and give up all. If a husband comes to Christian Science he should show his wife so she will let him do his duty to this Cause. We are all working together with one aim – the Cause. I am not breaking up families; I am all the time praying for harmony. I only show them what Christian Science is and leave them to make their own decision. We cannot go up the mountain carrying our baggage; we must be free.

MAY 27, 1907

Hold to the omnipotence of God, Truth; evil is not a power; it is the opposite; and by opposite I mean that which is unlike, in quality, quantity and nature.

MAY 30, 1907

God’s laws are eternal; they cannot be reversed; they stand. In your work you declare the Truth about things; know those declarations cannot be reversed. I have for forty years stood with God through all this effort to reverse my work. If I had allowed the devil to reverse my work where would it have been? No. I have stood and carried this Cause in spite of it and all of you can do the same.

Are the laws of health to be relied upon? No. They are material. Are the laws of husbands, wives, sons, etc., to be relied upon? No. Jesus said, “Who are my mother and brethren? They which do the will of my Father.” This does not do to give out, for the world is not ready for it. The papers are already after me on this subject, because I am tearing down their idols by giving the interpretation of Jesus’ words on this subject. He said, “Take up the cross and follow me.” People want to come without taking up the cross. This cannot be accomplished; we have to give up all for Christ, family ties and all.

When I have made a storm disappear I did not argue, – “there are no clouds;” I said, “God’s face is there and I see it;” and the storm would break and disappear.

God is infinite; is there anything else? No. He is the only law-giver. Hold to it. There is but one law and that is the law of Love, Life.

JUNE 2, 1907

The passage from sense to Soul is the one which interests us all and in which we must each take part. In this passage from sense to Soul we have to give up everything for Christ. Cannot carry our baggage with us (our material sense of things), father, mother, wife, children, all things.

God took away everything from me, I had nothing to cling to materially; but I can see some progress spiritually.

I did not understand S. & H. when I wrote it. I would write just as fast as I could; I would have to do so; could not help it. The desire to write would begin in the morning at about a certain time, and leave in the afternoon. I would not stop for dinner when I was writing, and the people where I was boarding used to wonder at it, and would sometimes bring my dinner to me on a tray and set it beside me; but I would not stop.

When we seem to be surrounded by materiality, rise above it for you were never in it, and this will take you out of the belief.

When Christian Scientists come to Pleasant View, I demand of them that they leave their belongings and take up the cross. You cannot win the crown without bearing the cross.

The question was asked – What is the “second death”? The death of every sin you possess. What is the first death? Coming into the belief of life, substance, intelligence, etc., in matter. (The first death is dying to Spirit, or rather coming into the belief in matter. The second death is dying to matter. Dying into matter and dying out of it.)

Mrs. Sargent quoted Mrs. Eddy as saying, “When we go to heaven the book will be there” (Revelation 20:12).

Also while sitting at the dinner table one day Mrs. E. said, “If I should pass on sitting here in this chair now, I would awaken right here in this chair; nothing would be changed.” Mrs. Sargent asked, “Would we be right here also?” She said, “I do not know; that has not been proved yet.” After a Scientist had passed Mrs. E. said, “She is so much better off; she would not come back here.” Mrs. Sargent said, “What do you mean by that when S. & H. says that death causes no change?” Mrs. E. answered, “If you were working out a problem on the blackboard and kept making a mistake, after you had corrected your mistake you would be that much freer to go on with your problem; so it is in waking from the dream (mistake) of death.”

Mrs. Sargent told of two sisters who knew nothing of Christian Science; one was passing while sitting in her chair and said to the other one, “Don’t you see them?” – named father, mother, sister and others; the other one said, “No; why?” She said, “Can’t you hear what sister is saying to you?” “No.” “She is saying for you not to hold me here but let me go; why this is nothing at all,” – and she was gone.

So there is no need of passing through death; the problem of life can be worked out and the interval of death can be bridged over as S. & H. says.