Is identity material or spiritual?

Wednesday Readings List

June 21, 2017

062017 – Is identity material or spiritual?

 

Hymn 382

What is thy birthright, man,
Child of the perfect One;
What is thy Father’s plan
For His beloved son?

Thou art Truth’s honest child,
Of pure and sinless heart;
Thou treadest undefiled
In Christly paths apart.

Vain dreams shall disappear
As Truth dawns on the sight;
The phantoms of thy fear
Shall flee before the light.

Take then the sacred rod;
Thou art not error’s thrall;
Thou hast the gift of God—
Dominion over all.

 

THE HOLY BIBLE

 

Gen. 1:1-4, 26-28, 31; 2:1

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: So God created man in his own image, . . . male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply,.. . And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished.

 

Eccl. 3:14

I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it: and God doeth it, that men should fear before him.

 

Ps. 139:14, 16

I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. … Thine eyes did see my substance, . . . and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.

 

Ps. 18:30, 32

As for God, his way is perfect:. … It is God that girdeth me with strength, and maketh my way perfect.

 

Ps. 71:3, 1

Thou hast given commandment to save me; . . . In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust: let me never be put to confusion.

 

Gen. 2:6, 7, 16-17, 21-22, 25

But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

 

Gen. 3:8-11, 16, 17, 19

And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children;. .. . And unto Adam he said, . . . cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. . . for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

 

Isa. 2:22

Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of?

 

Eccl. 7:29

Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.

 

Matt. 19:1-2, 4-5

Jesus . . . came into the coasts of Judea beyond Jordan; And great multitudes followed him . . . . he said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?

 

Matt 7:21

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

 

Matt. 5:48

Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

 

Luke 4:33-36

In the synagogue there was a man, which had a spirit of an unclean devil, and cried out with a loud voice, Saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? . . . . 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. 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.

 

John 8:31-36

If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. They answered him, We be Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free? Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. And the servant abideth not in the house for ever: but the Son abideth ever. If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.

 

John 1:12, 13

As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

 

Luke 8:26-29, 30, 33, 34, 35

And they arrived at the country of the Gadarenes, which is over against Galilee. And when he went forth to land, there met him out of the city a certain man, which had devils long time, and ware no clothes, neither abode in any house, but in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he cried out, and fell down before him, and with a loud voice said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God most high? I beseech thee, torment me not. (For he had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. .. ) And Jesus asked him, saying, What is thy name? And he said, Legion: because many devils were entered into him. . . .. And there was there an herd of many swine feeding on the mountain: . . . . Then went the devils out of the man, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the lake, and were choked. When they that fed them saw what was done, they . .. came to Jesus, and found the man, out of whom the devils were departed, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind:

 

Ps. 144:11-12, 15

Deliver me from the hand of strange children, whose mouth speaketh vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of falsehood: That our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth; that our daughters may be as corner stones, polished after the similitude of a palace: … Happy is that people, that is in such a case: yea, happy is that people, whose God is the Lord.

 

SCIENCE & HEALTH WITH KEY TO THE SCRIPTURES, by Mary Baker Eddy

 

SH 502:29

There is but one creator and one creation. This creation consists of the unfolding of spiritual ideas and their identities, which are embraced in the infinite Mind and forever reflected. These ideas range from the infinitesimal to infinity, and the highest ideas are the sons and daughters of God.

 

SH 508:13 (only), 19 (only)

God determines the gender of His own ideas.

 

SH 550:5-7

God is the Life, or intelligence, which forms and preserves the individuality and identity of animals as well as of men.

 

SH 477:20-26

Identity is the reflection of Spirit, the reflection in multifarious forms of the living Principle, Love. Soul is the substance, Life, and intelligence of man, which is individualized, but not in matter. Soul can never reflect anything inferior to Spirit. Man is the expression of Soul.

 

SH 475:5-22

Man is not matter; he is not made up of brain, blood, bones, and other material elements. The Scriptures inform us that man is made in the image and likeness of God. Matter is not that likeness. The likeness of Spirit cannot be so unlike Spirit. Man is spiritual and perfect; and because he is spiritual and perfect, he must be so understood in Christian Science. Man is idea, the image, of Love; he is not physique. He is the compound idea of God, including all right ideas; the generic term for all that reflects God’s image and likeness; the conscious identity of being as found in Science, in which man is the reflection of God, or Mind, and therefore is eternal; that which has no separate mind from God; that which has not a single quality underived from Deity; that which possesses no life, intelligence, nor creative power of his own, but reflects spiritually all that belongs to his Maker.

 

SH 551:17-26

Naturalists ask: “What can there be, of a material nature, transmitted through these bodies called eggs, — themselves composed of the simplest material elements, — by which all peculiarities of ancestry, belonging to either sex, are brought down from generation to generation?” The question of the naturalist amounts to this: How can matter originate or transmit mind? We answer that it cannot. Darkness and doubt encompass thought, so long as it bases creation on materiality.

SH 472:24

All reality is in God and His creation, harmonious and eternal. That which He creates is good, and He makes all that is made. Therefore the only reality of sin, sickness, or death is the awful fact that unrealities seem real to human, erring belief, until God strips off their disguise. They are not true, because they are not of God. We learn in Christian Science that all inharmony of mortal mind or body is illusion, possessing neither reality nor identity though seeming to be real and identical.

 

SH 262:27-28; 263:1

The foundation of mortal discord is a false sense of man’s origin. Mortals are egotists. They believe themselves to be independent workers, personal authors, and even privileged originators of something which Deity would not or could not create. The creations of mortal mind are material. Immortal spiritual man alone represents the truth of creation.

 

SH 280:25-5

Rightly understood, instead of possessing a sentient material form, man has a sensationless body; and God, the Soul of man and of all existence, being perpetual in His own individuality, harmony, and immortality, imparts and perpetuates these qualities in man, — through Mind, not matter. The only excuse for entertaining human opinions and rejecting the Science of being is our mortal ignorance of Spirit, — ignorance which yields only to the understanding of divine Science, the understanding by which we enter into the kingdom of Truth on earth and learn that Spirit is infinite and supreme. Spirit and matter no more commingle than light and darkness.

 

SH 476:21-22

Learn this, O mortal, and earnestly seek the spiritual status of man, which is outside of all material selfhood.

 

SH 397:28-30

Give up the belief that mind is, even temporarily, compressed within the skull, and you will quickly become more manly or womanly.

 

SH 476:28-32

When speaking of God’s children, not the children of men, Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is within you;” that is, Truth and Love reign in the real man, showing that man in God’s image is unfallen and eternal.

 

SH 65:13-16

The broadcast powers of evil so conspicuous to-day show themselves in the materialism and sensualism of the age, struggling against the advancing spiritual era.

 

SH 82:31-2

In a world of sin and sensuality hastening to a greater development of power, it is wise earnestly to consider whether it is the human mind or the divine Mind which is influencing one.

 

SH 272:19-25

It is the spiritualization of thought and Christianization of daily life, in contrast with the results of the ghastly farce of material existence; it is chastity and purity, in contrast with the downward tendencies and earthward gravitation of sensualism and impurity, which really attest the divine origin and operation of Christian Science.

 

SH 270:31

The life of Christ Jesus was not miraculous, but it was indigenous to his spirituality, — the good soil wherein the seed of Truth springs up and bears much fruit. Christ’s Christianity is the chain of scientific being reappearing in all ages, maintaining its obvious correspondence with the Scriptures and uniting all periods in the design of God. Neither emasculation, illusion, nor insubordination exists in divine Science.

 

SH 305:20-22, 29-30

The inverted images presented by the senses, the deflections of matter as opposed to the Science of spiritual reflection, are all unlike Spirit, God. These mortal dreams are of human origin, not divine.

 

SH 43:27

The divine must overcome the human at every point. The Science Jesus taught and lived must triumph over all material beliefs about life, substance, and intelligence, and the multitudinous errors growing from such beliefs.

 

SH 216:28

When you say, “Man’s body is material,” I say with Paul: Be “willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.” Give up your material belief of mind in matter, and have but one Mind, even God; for this Mind forms its own likeness. The loss of man’s identity through the understanding which Science confers is impossible; and the notion of such a possibility is more absurd than to conclude that individual musical tones are lost in the origin of harmony.

 

SH 70:12-13

The divine Mind maintains all identities, from a blade of grass to a star, as distinct and eternal.

 

SH 265:23-24, 31-2

Who that has felt the loss of human peace has not gained stronger desires for spiritual joy? . . . The pains of sense are salutary, if they wrench away false pleasurable beliefs and transplant the affections from sense to Soul, where the creations of God are good, “rejoicing the heart.”

 

SH 265:10

This scientific sense of being, forsaking matter for Spirit, by no means suggests man’s absorption into Deity and the loss of his identity, but confers upon man enlarged individuality, a wider sphere of thought and action, a more expansive love, a higher and more permanent peace.

 

SH 264:15-20

When we realize that Life is Spirit, never in nor of matter, this understanding will expand into self-completeness, finding all in God, good, and needing no other consciousness. Spirit and its formations are the only realities of being.

________________________

 

Hymn 416

Be true and list the voice within,
Be true unto thy high ideal,
Thy perfect self, that knows no sin,
That self that is the only real.

God is the only perfect One:
My perfect self is one with Him;
So man is seen as God’s own son,
When Truth dispels the shadows dim.

True to our God whose name is Love,
We shall fulfill our Father’s plan;
For true means true to God above,
To self, and to our fellow-man.

 

Hymn 66

From these Thy children gathered in Thy name,
From hearts made whole, from lips redeemed from woe,
Thy praise, O Father, shall forever flow.
Alleluia! Alleluia!

O perfect Life, in Thy completeness held,
None can beyond Thy omnipresence stray;
Safe in Thy Love, we live and sing alway
Alleluia! Alleluia!

O perfect Mind, reveal Thy likeness true,
That higher selfhood which we all must prove,
Joy and dominion, love reflecting Love.
Alleluia! Alleluia!

Thou, Soul, inspiring—give us vision clear,
Break earth-bound fetters, sweep away the veil,
Show the new heaven and earth that shall prevail.
Alleluia! Alleluia!

 

 

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