Blog topic for March, 2021 – The Reforming Power of the Scriptures
This is not an easy book to start reading, I found. I don’t think I have ever read it before – and I read most books that come from the Christian Science Publishing Society to help us in our spiritual journey.
(It is interesting that a book from someone’s personal library with a similar theme was left at our Reading Room recently – The Bible: Beacon Light of History by Albert Field Gilmore, one time editor of the Christian Science periodicals.)
The first matter of note that caught my attention was this: “...about 1750 BC a warlike northern European people swept through the Kyber Pass. These conquerors mingled with the indigenous people of the Indus Valley (in India), imposed their tribal religious beliefs on them, and gradually developed a new “Hindu” culture. And out of the poetic hymns that these North Europeans brought with them into their new homeland grew the first scriptures of the “Hindu people.””
Page 9 gives us a definition of “Scriptures.” There have always been questions asked by humankind such as, Who am I? Why am I here? Who created me? What maintains my life? How can I be a better man or woman? Our book tells us that, “Various answers to these questions have been recorded and passed on from generation to generation as “scriptures” – the scriptures of the world.”
Moses enters the story on page 14. I am taken with the idea that one man can listen to God and lead a whole people out of slavery. Mary Baker Eddy’s writings are leading humankind in our age. People have not accepted that fact at this time. I find that there was a period of 500 years between the Old and New Testament. Will there be a similar period before Christian Science is universally acknowledged? Mrs. Eddy does say that centuries will intervene before this happens. (See her Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896 p. 92:4-6 and Retrospection and Introspection p/ 84:1.)
Around 1360, Wycliffe stood against the Catholic pope for the right of the people to have the Bible in their own language, English. He and his followers were translating the holy book. We are told he became seriously ill and was visited by the friars who called on him to acknowledge his errors and accept the teaching of the pope. “Their chastisement, though, served only to rouse Wycliffe...he sat up in bed and retorted with these words from Scripture: “I shall not die, but I shall live, and declare the works of the Lord.’’” With that, he was healed. That quote from Psalm 118:17 is precious to me for it raised me from glum thoughts not too long ago.
Our authors say that Wycliffe was the first of the reformers of the Protestant Revolution. A student of Christian Science cannot read of Wycliffe’s protesting campaign without recognising that Christian Science is in a direct line of inspiration from Wycliffe’s teaching. Why did it take till the mid 1860s for this final step of progress to come to man? In 1866 Mrs. Eddy discovered, or perhaps, uncovered, the Science of Christianity.
Joyce Voysey
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