THE weekly Lesson-Sermon, outlined in the Christian Science Quarterly, is a sermon fraught with untold blessings and prosperity for the world. Mrs. Eddy emphasizes its importance in these words in the Church Manual (Art. Ill, Sect. 1): "The Readers of The Mother Church and of all its branch churches must devote a suitable portion of their time to preparation for the reading of the Sunday lesson,—a lesson on which the prosperity of Christian Science largely depends."
While this rule is specifically applicable to Readers in churches, most earnest Christian Scientists prayerfully study the Lesson-Sermon each day. The result is that they listen to the reading of the Lesson-Sermon on Sunday with deeper understanding and with fresh inspiration.
Animal magnetism, or mortal mind, would, if it could, occasionally deceive even an experienced student. For a patient sometimes says to a practitioner: "I don't seem to be getting anything out of the Lesson-Sermon anymore. I read it nearly every day, but I'm just reading words." Usually such a one is complaining of lack of health, lack of harmony, lack of supply, or lack of prosperity. The lack all of us need to eliminate is the lack of the conviction of the ever-presence of God, good.
"A lesson on which the prosperity of Christian Science largely depends" surely furthers the prosperity and well-being of Christian Scientists, individually and collectively. Therefore obedience to the Rule requiring careful preparation of this lesson on the part of Readers is also essential to the harmonious existence and prosperity of all Christian Scientists.
Students have often been encouraged in their study and appreciation of these lessons by finding and writing out the topic of each section and noting the distinct correlation of the passages from the Bible and from Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy. This study is enhanced by the consistent use of the Concordances to all of Mrs. Eddy's writings.
Such study of the lesson brings a plentiful and an actual realization of God's completeness and ever-presence with man. It stimulates a continuous awareness that there is no other God before Him. It helps to maintain a permanent antidote for discouragement. Discouragement is one of the devil's most insidious tools, a tool mortal mind frequently uses. But we can destroy discouragement if we understand that there is no hopeless condition, nor any situation beyond God's control. No circumstance can resist Mind, Love, Truth: Mind directs; Love protects; Truth prevails. There is always a spiritual fact which governs and controls every situation, no matter how difficult it may seem to be. Is there anything too difficult for God?
I can testify to uninterrupted health and an ever-unfolding professional and business prosperity throughout more than forty years of never having yielded to discouragement. I have every reason to attribute health and prosperity to the daily study of the Lesson-Sermon without having missed a day and to its application in human experience throughout these years.
Discouragement and fear were successfully resisted at one time during my business experience as an owner and operator of a chain of motion picture theaters when a large capital investment was needed to save the business from failure. It was during the financial depression of the early thirties, and investment capital was scarce, especially for theaters, because several of the largest theater circuits were in bankruptcy at the time. Our borrowing capacity had been exhausted; and, according to human estimates, only a specified amount of investment capital could meet the need.
I gave diligent study daily to the weekly Lesson-Sermon and prayed to become more aware that fundamentally one's real and only business is to express God's business, and I worked to realize that His business is always good. Good never fluctuates and is not subject to depression or recession. Good is never off-season. When we have business troubles, it is because more of good needs to be expressed. Troubles are merely signals that we have something more to know of God, of His wisdom and judgment as applicable to the current human need. We have a little farther to go, a little farther to grow, in bringing the particular experience into alignment or conformity with the divine will for us, a conclusion joyously to be desired and sought. Eventually, we can review the trials with gratitude that each step of the way was essential to our spiritual growth.
I knew that we don't demonstrate things. In God's business we don't deal with things but with ideas. We may seem to need more things, but in reality we need more right ideas. Needed things are borne on needed wings, wings of thought, before they are manifested outwardly.
I was certain that the ethics so eloquently expressed by Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians must govern the transaction with any prospective investor. He wrote (8: 12—14): "If there be first a willing mind, it is accepted according to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not. For I mean not that other men be eased, and ye burdened: but by an equality, that now at this time your abundance may be a supply for their want, that their abundance also may be a supply for your want: that there may be equality."
All ordinary channels for the supply of the capital seemed closed. But suddenly, while I was holding persistently to an expectancy of good, the amount sought was offered without solicitation on my part from a previously unknown and unexpected source. The firm which made the offer sent in an auditor to inspect our accounts; and on completion of the audit, he advised his employers, the prospective investors, against the investment, saying that the amount of capital requested by us was not enough, since we needed twice as much capital to stay solvent. His employers without hesitation immediately doubled their offer of capital investment, and the transaction was harmoniously completed.
Instantaneous healings in emergencies have followed the proper observance of the following instruction often found among the references from Science and Health in the Lesson-Sermon. It reads (p. 201), "The way to extract error from mortal mind is to pour in truth through flood-tides of Love."
This truth is indeed always at hand. It is as available today as it was in Jesus' day. Strict adherence to the truth as taught in Christian Science will enable us to glow with the perpetual radiance of well-being and well-doing. This radiance can be seen in the lives of faithful, loyal Christian Scientists, who are daily studying and appreciating the Lesson-Sermon—"a lesson on which the prosperity of Christian Science largely depends."
