Responsive Reading: Malachi 3 : 6, 7  •  Psalm 103 : 1-4

6.     For I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.

7.     Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of hosts.

1.     Bless the Lord, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name.

2.     Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits:

3.     Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases;

4.     Who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies.

1. II Chronicles 16 : 1, 6-13

1     In the six and thirtieth year of the reign of Asa Baasha king of Israel came up against Judah, and built Ramah, to the intent that he might let none go out or come in to Asa king of Judah.

6     Then Asa the king took all Judah; and they carried away the stones of Ramah, and the timber thereof, wherewith Baasha was building; and he built therewith Geba and Mizpah.

7     And at that time Hanani the seer came to Asa king of Judah, and said unto him, Because thou hast relied on the king of Syria, and not relied on the Lord thy God, therefore is the host of the king of Syria escaped out of thine hand.

8     Were not the Ethiopians and the Lubims a huge host, with very many chariots and horsemen? yet, because thou didst rely on the Lord, he delivered them into thine hand.

9     For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him. Herein thou hast done foolishly: therefore from henceforth thou shalt have wars.

10     Then Asa was wroth with the seer, and put him in a prison house; for he was in a rage with him because of this thing. And Asa oppressed some of the people the same time.

11     And, behold, the acts of Asa, first and last, lo, they are written in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel.

12     And Asa in the thirty and ninth year of his reign was diseased in his feet, until his disease was exceeding great: yet in his disease he sought not to the Lord, but to the physicians.

13     And Asa slept with his fathers, and died in the one and fortieth year of his reign.

2. Deuteronomy 18 : 9-15

9     When thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations.

10     There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch,

11     Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer.

12     For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord: and because of these abominations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee.

13     Thou shalt be perfect with the Lord thy God.

14     For these nations, which thou shalt possess, hearkened unto observers of times, and unto diviners: but as for thee, the Lord thy God hath not suffered thee so to do.

15     The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken;

3. Luke 4 : 14 (to :), 31-36, 38, 39

14     And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee:

31     And came down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee, and taught them on the sabbath days.

32     And they were astonished at his doctrine: for his word was with power.

33     And in the synagogue there was a man, which had a spirit of an unclean devil, and cried out with a loud voice,

34     Saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art; the Holy One of God.

35     And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of him. And when the devil had thrown him in the midst, he came out of him, and hurt him not.

36     And they were all amazed, and spake among themselves, saying, What a word is this! for with authority and power he commandeth the unclean spirits, and they come out.

38     And he arose out of the synagogue, and entered into Simon’s house. And Simon’s wife’s mother was taken with a great fever; and they besought him for her.

39     And he stood over her, and rebuked the fever; and it left her: and immediately she arose and ministered unto them.

4. Galatians 5 : 16-25

16     This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.

17     For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.

18     But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law.

19     Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,

20     Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,

21     Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

22     But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,

23     Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.

24     And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.

25     If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.

5. Psalm 117 : 1, 2

1 O praise the Lord, all ye nations: praise him, all ye people.

2     For his merciful kindness is great toward us: and the truth of the Lord endureth for ever. Praise ye the Lord.

1. 339 : 7 (Since)-10

Since God is All, there is no room for His unlikeness. God, Spirit, alone created all, and called it good. Therefore evil, being contrary to good, is unreal, and cannot be the product of God.

2. 447 : 20-29

Expose and denounce the claims of evil and disease in all their forms, but realize no reality in them. A sinner is not reformed merely by assuring him that he cannot be a sinner because there is no sin. To put down the claim of sin, you must detect it, remove the mask, point out the illusion, and thus get the victory over sin and so prove its unreality. The sick are not healed merely by declaring there is no sickness, but by knowing that there is none.

3. 128 : 27 (Science)-29 next page

Science relates to Mind, not matter. It rests on fixed Principle and not upon the judgment of false sensation. The addition of two sums in mathematics must always bring the same result. So is it with logic. If both the major and the minor propositions of a syllogism are correct, the conclusion, if properly drawn, cannot be false. So in Christian Science there are no discords nor contradictions, because its logic is as harmonious as the reasoning of an accurately stated syllogism or of a properly computed sum in arithmetic. Truth is ever truthful, and can tolerate no error in premise or conclusion.

If you wish to know the spiritual fact, you can discover it by reversing the material fable, be the fable pro or con, — be it in accord with your preconceptions or utterly contrary to them.

Pantheism may be defined as a belief in the intelligence of matter, — a belief which Science overthrows. In those days there will be "great tribulation such as was not since the beginning of the world;" and earth will echo the cry, "Art thou [Truth] come hither to torment us before the time?" Animal magnetism, hypnotism, spiritualism, theosophy, agnosticism, pantheism, and infidelity are antagonistic to true being and fatal to its demonstration; and so are some other systems.

We must abandon pharmaceutics, and take up ontology, — "the science of real being." We must look deep into realism instead of accepting only the outward sense of things. Can we gather peaches from a pine-tree, or learn from discord the concord of being? Yet quite as rational are some of the leading illusions along the path which Science must tread in its reformatory mission among mortals. The very name, illusion, points to nothingness.

4. 178 : 18-31

Mortal mind, acting from the basis of sensation in matter, is animal magnetism; but this so-called mind, from which comes all evil, contradicts itself, and must finally yield to the eternal Truth, or the divine Mind, expressed in Science. In proportion to our understanding of Christian Science, we are freed from the belief of heredity, of mind in matter or animal magnetism; and we disarm sin of its imaginary power in proportion to our spiritual understanding of the status of immortal being.

Ignorant of the methods and the basis of metaphysical healing, you may attempt to unite with it hypnotism, spiritualism, electricity; but none of these methods can be mingled with metaphysical healing.

5. 104 : 13-18

Christian Science goes to the bottom of mental action, and reveals the theodicy which indicates the rightness of all divine action, as the emanation of divine Mind, and the consequent wrongness of the opposite so-called action, — evil, occultism, necromancy, mesmerism, animal magnetism, hypnotism.

6. 490 : 31-16

Under the mesmeric illusion of belief, a man will think that he is freezing when he is warm, and that he is swimming when he is on dry land. Needle-thrusts will not hurt him. A delicious perfume will seem intolerable. Animal magnetism thus uncovers material sense, and shows it to be a belief without actual foundation or validity. Change the belief, and the sensation changes. Destroy the belief, and the sensation disappears.

Material man is made up of involuntary and voluntary error, of a negative right and a positive wrong, the latter calling itself right. Man's spiritual individuality is never wrong. It is the likeness of man's Maker. Matter cannot connect mortals with the true origin and facts of being, in which all must end. It is only by acknowledging the supremacy of Spirit, which annuls the claims of matter, that mortals can lay off mortality and find the indissoluble spiritual link which establishes man forever in the divine likeness, inseparable from his creator.

7. 106 : 15-29

Let this age, which sits in judgment on Christian Science, sanction only such methods as are demonstrable in Truth and known by their fruit, and classify all others as did St. Paul in his great epistle to the Galatians, when he wrote as follows:

"Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law."

8. 492 : 22-28

The notion that mind and matter commingle in the human illusion as to sin, sickness, and death must eventually submit to the Science of Mind, which denies this notion. God is Mind, and God is infinite; hence all is Mind. On this statement rests the Science of being, and the Principle of this Science is divine, demonstrating harmony and immortality.

9. 490 : 11 (all)

…all power belongs to God, good.