Wednesday Readings for April 14th, 2022

From The Bible

Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. ...

Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; ...
(Psalms 51:10, 12 (to ;))

The LORD possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old.

... or ever the earth was. ...

When he prepared the heavens, I was there: ...

... rejoicing always before him; ...

Now therefore hearken unto me, O ye children: ...

Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, ...

For whoso findeth me findeth life, ...
(Proverbs 8:22, 23 or, 27 (to 1st :), 30 rejoicing, 32 (to :), 34 (to 2nd ,), 35 (to ,))

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do his commandments: ...
(Psalms 111:10 (to 2nd :))

Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
(Exodus 20:3)

Ye shall make you no idols nor graven image, ... to bow down unto it: for I am the LORD your God.
(Leviticus 26:1 (to 1st ,), 1 to)

... Now Israel went out against the Philistines to battle, ...

... ¶ And ... the elders of Israel said, ... Let us fetch the ark of the covenant of the LORD out of Shiloh unto us, that, ... it may save us out of the hand of our enemies. ...

... ¶ And the Philistines fought, and Israel was smitten, ...

And the Philistines took the ark of God, and ...

... they brought it into the house of Dagon, and set it by Dagon. ¶ And when they of Ashdod arose early on the morrow, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the earth before the ark of the LORD. And they took Dagon, and set him in his place again. And when they arose early on the morrow morning, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the ground before the ark of the LORD; and the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands were cut off upon the threshold; only the stump of Dagon was left to him. ...

And when the men of Ashdod saw that it was so, they said, ...

... Send away the ark of the God of Israel, and let it go again to his own place, that it slay us not, ...
(I Samuel 4:1 Now (to ,), 3 (to And), 3 3rd the (to 2nd ,), 3 Let (to 4th ,), 3 2nd it, 10 (to 2nd ,); 5:1 (to 2nd and), 2–4 they, 7 (to 2nd ,), 11 Send (to 5th ,))

Knowest thou not this of old, since man was placed upon earth, That the triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment? Though his excellency mount up to the heavens, and his head reach unto the clouds; ...

He shall fly away as a dream, and shall not be found: yea, he shall be chased away as a vision of the night. The eye also which saw him shall see him no more; neither shall his place any more behold him. ...

Because he hath oppressed and hath forsaken the poor; because he hath violently taken away an house which he builded not; Surely he shall not feel quietness in his belly, he shall not save of that which he desired. ...

The heaven shall reveal his iniquity; and the earth shall rise up against him. The increase of his house shall depart, and his goods shall flow away in the day of his wrath.
(Job 20:4–6, 8, 9, 19, 20, 27, 28)

... thus saith the LORD; We have heard a voice of trembling, of fear, and not of peace. ...

... fear thou not, O my servant Jacob, ...

For I am with thee, ... to save thee: ...

... I will restore health unto thee, ...
(Jeremiah 30:5 thus, 10 fear (to 2nd ,), 11 (to 1st ,), 11 to (to 1st :), 17 I (to 1st ,))

And Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him. ...

... ¶ And Jacob said, O God of my father Abraham, ... the LORD which saidst unto me, Return unto thy country, and to thy kindred, ...

Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau: ...

... ¶ And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, ...

And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me. And he said unto him, ...

... Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed. ...

And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.
(Genesis 32:1, 9 (to 2nd ,), 9 the (to 6th ,), 11 (to :), 24, 25 (to 1st ,), 26, 27 (to 1st ,), 28 Thy, 30)

The LORD is my rock, ... and my deliverer; ...

He restoreth my soul: ...
(Psalms 18:2 (to 1st ,), 2 2nd and (to 1st ;); 23:3 (to :))

And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: ...

... and taught them, saying, ...

Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. ...

Ye are the light of the world. ...

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven. ...

Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
(Matthew 5:1 (to 1st :), 2 2nd and, 4, 14 (to 1st .), 16, 48)

And when Jesus was passed over again by ship unto the other side, ...

... there cometh one of the rulers of the synagogue, ...

... besought him greatly, saying, My little daughter lieth at the point of death: I pray thee, come and lay thy hands on her, that she may be healed; ...

And he cometh to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and seeth the tumult, ...

And when he was come in, he saith unto them, Why make ye this ado, and weep? the damsel is not dead, but sleepeth.

... But when he had put them all out, he ... entereth in where the damsel was lying. And he took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Talitha cumi; ... Damsel, I say unto thee, arise. And straightway the damsel arose, and walked; ...
(Mark 5:21 (to ,), 22 there (to 3rd ,), 23 besought (to ;), 38 (to 2nd ,), 39, 40 But (to 2nd he), 40 entereth, 41 (to ;), 41 2nd Damsel, 42 (to ;))

And he entered again into the synagogue; and there was a man there which had a withered hand. ...

And he saith unto the man which had the withered hand, Stand forth. And he saith unto them, Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath days, or to do evil? ...

And ... he saith unto the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it out: and his hand was restored whole as the other.
(Mark 3:1, 3, 4 (to 1st ?), 5 (to 1st And), 5 2nd he)

For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. ...

I have seen his ways, and will heal him: I will lead him also, and restore comforts unto him and to his mourners.
(Isaiah 57:15, 18)

Selections from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy

The foundation of mortal discord is a false sense of man's origin. To begin rightly is to end rightly. Every concept which seems to begin with the brain begins falsely. Divine Mind is the only cause or Principle of existence. Cause does not exist in matter, in mortal mind, or in physical forms.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 262:27)

Genesis i. 3. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 503:18)

Immortal and divine Mind presents the idea of God: first, in light; second, in reflection; third, in spiritual and immortal forms of beauty and goodness. ... this Mind creates no element nor symbol of discord and decay. God creates neither erring thought, mortal life, mutable truth, nor variable love.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 503:20–22, 23 this)

So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; ...
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 516:24–25 So (to ;))

Man is the family name for all ideas, — the sons and daughters of God. All that God imparts moves in accord with Him, reflecting goodness and power.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 515:21 Man)

Adhesion, cohesion, and attraction are properties of Mind. They belong to divine Principle, ...

... Human knowledge calls them forces of matter; but divine Science declares that they belong wholly to divine Mind, are inherent in this Mind, and so restores them to their rightful home and classification.

The elements and functions of the physical body and of the physical world will change as mortal mind changes its beliefs. ...

As human thought changes from one stage to another of conscious pain and painlessness, sorrow and joy, — from fear to hope and from faith to understanding, — the visible manifestation will at last be man governed by Soul, not by material sense.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, pp. 124:20–21 (to ,), 27–2; 125:12–16)

We cannot deny that Life is self-sustained, and we should never deny the everlasting harmony of Soul, simply because, to the mortal senses, there is seeming discord. It is our ignorance of God, the divine Principle, which produces apparent discord, and the right understanding of Him restores harmony.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 390:4–9)

Then Jacob questioned his deliverer, “Tell me, I pray thee, thy name;” but this appellation was withheld, for the messenger was not a corporeal being, but a nameless, incorporeal impartation of divine Love to man, which, to use the word of the Psalmist, restored his Soul, — gave him the spiritual sense of being and rebuked his material sense.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 308:32)

The substance, Life, intelligence, Truth, and Love, which constitute Deity, are reflected by His creation; and when we subordinate the false testimony of the corporeal senses to the facts of Science, we shall see this true likeness and reflection everywhere.

God fashions all things, after His own likeness. Life ...
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 516:4–9 (to Life))

As a cloud hides the sun it cannot extinguish, so false belief silences for a while the voice of immutable harmony, but false belief cannot destroy Science armed with faith, hope, and fruition.

What is termed material sense can report only a mortal temporary sense of things, whereas spiritual sense can bear witness only to Truth. To material sense, the unreal is the real until this sense is corrected by Christian Science.

Spiritual sense, contradicting the material senses, involves intuition, hope, faith, understanding, fruition, reality. Material sense expresses the belief that mind is in matter. This human belief, alternating between a sense of pleasure and pain, hope and fear, life and death, never reaches beyond the boundary of the mortal or the unreal. ... Spiritual ideas lead up to their divine origin, God, and to the spiritual sense of being.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 298:4–18, 22)

The Christian Scientist, understanding scientifically that all is Mind, commences with mental causation, the truth of being, to destroy the error.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 423:8–10)

The exterminator of error is the great truth that God, good, is the only Mind, and that the supposititious opposite of infinite Mind — called devil or evil — is not Mind, is not Truth, but error, without intelligence or reality. There can be but one Mind, because there is but one God; and if mortals claimed no other Mind and accepted no other, sin would be unknown. We can have but one Mind, if that one is infinite. We bury the sense of infinitude, when we admit that, although God is infinite, evil has a place in this infinity, for evil can have no place, where all space is filled with God.

... The supposed existence of more than one mind was the basic error of idolatry. This error assumed the loss of spiritual power, the loss of the spiritual presence of Life as infinite Truth without an unlikeness, and the loss of Love as ever present and universal.

Divine Science explains the abstract statement that there is one Mind by the following self-evident proposition: If God, or good, is real, then evil, the unlikeness of God, is unreal. ... How can good lapse into evil, when God, the Mind of man, never sins? ...

God is the creator of man, and, the divine Principle of man remaining perfect, the divine idea or reflection, man, remains perfect. ...

The relations of God and man, divine Principle and idea, are indestructible in Science; and Science knows no lapse from nor return to harmony, but holds the divine order or spiritual law, in which God and all that He creates are perfect and eternal, ...
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, pp. 469:13 The; 470:5–14, 16–18 How, 21–23, 32–4 (to ,))

Understanding this, Jesus said: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 259:19)

The “man of sorrows” best understood the nothingness of material life and intelligence and the mighty actuality of all-inclusive God, good. These were the two cardinal points of Mind-healing, or Christian Science, which armed him with Love. ...

... In witness of his divine commission, he presented the proof that Life, Truth, and Love heal the sick and the sinning, and triumph over death through Mind, not matter.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, pp. 52:19–23; 54:13–16)

To the synagogue ruler's daughter, whom they called dead but of whom he said, “she is not dead, but sleepeth,” he simply said, “Damsel, I say unto thee, arise!” To the sufferer with the withered hand he said, “Stretch forth thine hand,” and it “was restored whole, like as the other.”
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 398:10)

Our Master treated error through Mind. ... There is a law of God applicable to healing, and it is a spiritual law instead of material.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 463:24–25, 27–28)

His consummate example was for the salvation of us all, but only through doing the works which he did and taught others to do. His purpose in healing was not alone to restore health, but to demonstrate his divine Principle.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 51:19–23)

The Bible contains the recipe for all healing. “The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.” Sin and sickness are both healed by the same Principle. The tree is typical of man's divine Principle, which is equal to every emergency, offering full salvation from sin, sickness, and death. Sin will submit to Christian Science when, ... the power of God is understood and demonstrated in the healing of mortals, both mind and body. ...

The Science of being unveils the errors of sense, and spiritual perception, aided by Science, reaches Truth. Then error disappears.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 406:1–7 (to ,), 8–9 the, 11–13)

Christian Science brings to the body the sunlight of Truth, which invigorates and purifies. Christian Science acts as an alterative, neutralizing error with Truth. It changes the secretions, expels humors, dissolves tumors, relaxes rigid muscles, restores carious bones to soundness. The effect of this Science is to stir the human mind to a change of base, on which it may yield to the harmony of the divine Mind.

... Mind governs the body, not in one instance, but in every instance. ... Working out the rules of Science in practice, the author has restored health in cases of both acute and chronic disease in their severest forms. Secretions have been changed, the structure has been renewed, shortened limbs have been elongated, ankylosed joints have been made supple, and carious bones have been restored to healthy conditions. I have restored what is called the lost substance of lungs, and healthy organizations have been established where disease was organic.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 162:4, 12–13 Mind, 16–25)

Critics should consider that the so-called mortal man is not the reality of man. Then they would behold the signs of Christ's coming. ... Is it error which is restoring an essential element of Christianity, — namely, apostolic, divine healing? No; it is the Science of Christianity which is restoring it, and is the light shining in darkness, which the darkness comprehends not.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 347:12–14, 17)

I long to see the consummation of my hope, namely, the student's higher attainments in this line of light.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 367:27)

Hymnals

Hymn No. 593

We gather together to ask the Lord's blessing, / To sing of God's goodness as year turns to year. / We gather professing Your grace and Your blessing, / With thanks for the gospel that gathers us here.

Your Spirit consoles us. We're safe in Your keeping. / When roads are uncharted, Your love shows the way. / Where new hope is springing You fill us with singing; / Your presence delights us with each dawning day.

What, then, can we give You in praise for our journey, / When all the earth's treasures were Yours from the start? / We offer our labor, our love for our neighbors, / Our gifts and the worship of each hand and heart.
(Christian Science Hymnal, No. 593)

Hymn No. 176
Long hast thou stood, O church of God, / Long mid the tempest's assailing, / Founded secure on timeless rock / Rises thy light, never failing; / Shining that all may understand / What has been wrought by God's command, / O'er night and chaos prevailing.

Let there be light, and light was there, / Clear as the Word that declared it; / Healing and peace to all it gave, / Who in humility shared it. / Ah, they were faithful, they who heard, / Steadfast their trust in God's great Word, / Steadfast the Love that prepared it.

Let there be light, the Word shines forth, / Lo, where the new morning whitens; / O church of God, with Book unsealed, / How its page beacons and brightens. / Living stones we, each in his place, / May we be worthy such a grace, / While Truth the wide earth enlightens.
(Christian Science Hymnal, No. 176)

Hymn No. 207
O gentle presence, peace and joy and power; / O Life divine, that owns each waiting hour, / Thou Love that guards the nestling's faltering flight! / Keep Thou my child on upward wing tonight.

Love is our refuge; only with mine eye / Can I behold the snare, the pit, the fall: / His habitation high is here, and nigh, / His arm encircles me, and mine, and all.

O make me glad for every scalding tear, / For hope deferred, ingratitude, disdain! / Wait, and love more for every hate, and fear / No ill,—since God is good, and loss is gain.

Beneath the shadow of His mighty wing; / In that sweet secret of the narrow way, / Seeking and finding, with the angels sing: / “Lo, I am with you alway,”—watch and pray.

No snare, no fowler, pestilence or pain; / No night drops down upon the troubled breast, / When heaven's aftersmile earth's tear-drops gain, / And mother finds her home and heav'nly rest.
(Christian Science Hymnal, No. 207)