A virgin shall conceive

What if we turned to the Bible like we do our phones? 

Open it to any page and the ideas are intensely incisive. They make us slow down, and require thoughtful responses.

Matthew's Gospel ("gospel" comes from the Greek, euangelion, meaning good story or good news) was probably written around 65-70 AD. Just think forward 70 years from 2026: 2096! What will a writer in 2096 be noticing about our times?

This gospel begins with a carefully negotiated lineage of Christ Jesus - 14 generations from Abraham through to Jesse's son David, 14 generations to "the carrying away into Babylon" (the Babylonian exile); and another 14 generations to Christ. (See Matthew 1:17). At this point, we have been introduced to roughly 50 ancestors, as well as Jesus' mother Mary.

I love the way the next paragraph (1:18) begins with "now". The preliminaries are over. Now we begin the real story. "Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise..."

By verse 22, Matthew is assuring his readers that "all this was done, that it might be FULFILLED which was spoken ... by the prophet" (emphasis added). Is the writer referring to Isaiah 7:14 - "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel"?

Julie Swannell 

Aglow

I love this sentence: “There is something inexpressibly sweeter about the approval of one’s own than all the praise the world can give." (See top of page 41 Mary Baker Eddy: Her Mission and Triumph by Julia Michael Johnston.) I feel I may have come across this thought expressed somewhere else in my extended reading about Christian Science and its students. I wonder if that other offering was a repetition of this? Perhaps I will come across it again and my wonder will be satisfied.

Page 44 has another “glow.” “While her body had to be satisfied with frugal living, and occasionally with rooms so cold in winter that her fingers became stiff while writing, her thought soared in freedom, aglow with revelation.”

Page 47. Speaking of the development of the United States of America, our author says, “While men fathered the general growth of a nation, women mothered ideas and contributed to the moral and spiritual development of the country.”

Page 60 brings us this about Mrs. Eddy's book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures:

“The reader finds that he cannot close this book and leave the words between the covers. They take root in his consciousness and begin his transformation, whether he will or not. They impel each one, who understands them to discover his true sonship with God. Thus he becomes his own physician and minister. Each proof of the Science which this book contains reveals the possibility of greater works. The student of Science and Health does not come to a point of saturation in his reflection and demonstration of the truths presented by this “key” to the Scriptures, but gradually associates himself with the unfolding of eternal Truth. And who would, or can, deny Truth?”

It makes one’s heart glow!

One more pencil mark on page 84. “About Mary Baker Eddy: Her exalted discernment was ever blessed with compassion for sin-sick humanity. She never mentally stooped to the distressing beliefs of those who came to her for help, but lifted them on wings of healing to feel the altitude of her vision. The truth which she declared, demanded and received her full allegiance.”

Joyce Voysey

Lovely phrasing

I have to report that I have finished reading Julia Michael Johnston's book, Mary Baker Eddy: Her Mission and Triumph. As I read, I put pencil marks next to things I wished to comment on.

The first one was on page 2. Speaking of the coming of what was to become to be known as Christian Science, Johnston says:

This fulfillment came to the reappearing of Christianity in its primitive strength of the first centuries when the sick as well as the sinning were healed by divine means, and the raising of the dead, in the words of Gibbon, “was very far from being esteemed as an uncommon event” (The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon).

I read Gibbon’s book many years ago. It is referred to in the Christian Science periodicals.  (See for instance “The Divine Origin of Christian Science” by Lewis R. Works, in the June 15, 1907, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.)

The book was published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788. Through the Internet, I have purchased and received a copy of the abridged edition (Penguin Classics) of Gibbon’s work. (This is the same edition as came to me among my brother’s things following his death in World War II.) It is quite a thick book, but the part about Christianity is quite easily found from the Index. It’s Chapter VIII: “The progress of the Christian Religion, and the sentiments, manners, numbers, and condition of the primitive Christians – Persecutions of the primitive Christians”.

So… In the subheading “The Miraculous Powers of the Early Church", we find this:

“...from the time of the apostles and their first disciples, [Christianity] has claimed an uninterrupted succession of miraculous powers, the gift of tongues, of vision, and of prophecy, the power of expelling demons, of healing the sick, and of raising the dead.”

Students of Christian Science will see a connection in those attributes. Do we not find on the “logo” of Christian Science, the Cross and Crown, the words:

·  Heal the sick · Raise the dead · Cleanse the lepers · Cast out demons · 

 My next pencil mark emphasises the word “glow.” On page 6 we are told that when Mary Baker recovered from a fever as a child, as she later recalled: “...a soft glow of ineffable joy came over me…” And on page 11 we have the phrase “In the glow of evening firelight”. I love it.

 Our author has given us some lovely phrasing. At one point I wrote “evaluating.” The sentence is on pages 123-124: “Her human achievements announced the triumph of her spiritual knowing.”

Page 22: “In proportion to her weaning from human dependence came the necessity for leaning upon the divine.” This thought has been immortalised in the very first words of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: “To those leaning on the sustaining infinite, to-day is big with blessings.” And her teaching has her students loving the hymn which Jill Gooding gave us in praise of it. (See hymn 519 in the Christian Science Hymnal: Hymns 430-605.)

Joyce Voysey