MARY BAKER EDDY LETTER

Letter Number One, February, 1997

Welcome to the first edition of the Mary Baker Eddy Letter. Whether you are a dedicated Christian Scientist pursuing a deeper understanding of Mary Baker Eddy's teachings or a seeker looking for answers in a new corner, we invite you to join us on a journey of discovery concerning your oneness with the infinite good we name God. "To one born of the flesh ...[Truth] must be a discovery." (Ret. 26:22)

The Open Door

"Dear ones, realize for yourselves and all each day, clear and strong, that the Christ, Truth, does not merely open 'the windows of heaven' for us, or promise us heaven, but the knowledge of the Christ in Christian Science IS heaven here and now. This knowledge of Truth as it is taught in Science is heaven's open door for all." -Mary Baker Eddy

A New Era Is Dawning

It's front-page news! People everywhere are seeking the spiritual! Time magazine recently featured Jesus on its front cover. U.S. News and World Report has published several articles on religion this year; so has the Reader's Digest. An editor-at-large for Publisher's Weekly, quoted in a major article on religion in the January 1997 issue of Forbes, notes: "There's huge interest in religious material and spirituality. It's been the fastest growing segment in adult publishing the last two years."

The trend is evident in the electronic media as well. The number of religious radio stations has almost quadrupled over the past few years and the number of religious T.V. shows has increased four-fold in the past decade, in response to the growing interest in religion.

People everywhere are feeling a deep spiritual hunger. The world's hold is loosening. The seductive promises of drugs, promiscuity, money, and glamour have proven empty. People are searching for their true home, longing to know their true identity.

This augers well that mankind will soon begin to understand the spiritual facts about itself, facts St. John learned from Jesus (Rev. 21: 1-4): "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.

"And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

"And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.

"And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away."

This is not a prophecy. It is the present fact concerning you and me, needing only to be understood, since the mind we now have is the divine Mind when free from hypnotic suggestion, illusion, animal magnetism. The spiritual hunger so evident in the world today can be satisfied. The "Comforter," promised by Jesus is at hand, to "teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance." Mary Baker Eddy fulfilled Jesus' promise and prophecy when she brought the "Comforter," the Second Coming of the Christ, which reveals our true identity as one with the infinite good we call God.

In Christian Science we learn that the greatest lie about man is that he has a material origin. This is the Adam dream. Science lifts the veil that says man was born of the flesh. It reveals our true being as "never born and never dying."

When Mary Baker Eddy told her first class, "You, my students, are God," many students thought she was overdoing it a bit. Never was she more in earnest. Indeed, everything she wrote was an effort to teach us this great truth. In the first edition she tells us repeatedly that we are Spirit, we are Soul, we are Principle, we are Life, Truth and Love when we understand them. Seeing that people could not yet accept the forthright statement of this most fundamental fact, she hid it in her textbook, Science and Health, and throughout her other writings, waiting for the moment when we would finally be ready to understand her saying, "You, my students, are God." "God is individual Mind" (Mis. 101:31) You are Mind, the Mind that is Love.

This is the territory we will explore in the Mary Baker Eddy Letter. To most of us it is still unfamiliar ground. Only with the advent of Mary Baker Eddy, the Second Coming of the Christ, are we learning that God, infinite good, is our own real true Mind which expresses itself, not as matter, but as qualities of Mind, qualities of infinite good. Matter must be seen as shadow.

Only now, through Mary Baker Eddy's great discovery and revelation, is mankind finally learning how to heal itself of its age-old wrong belief that man is separated from the infinite good we have called God, which is really our true Mind. Only now is mankind learning that God, our real Mind, infinite good, is All. Only now, through Mary Baker Eddy's great revelation are we learning that evil, error of any kind, is unreal, is merely illusion, mesmerism, hypnotic suggestion, or, as she sometimes called it, "animal magnetism."

Mary Baker Eddy's writings have opened the door to the "kingdom of God" that lies latent in our consciousness awaiting the instrucion that gives understanding. Because of her work in bringing the Second Coming of the Christ, the greatest mental upheaval ever to take place on earth is happening today.

We are experiencing a spiritual makeover. "No man putteth new wine into old bottles, but new wine must be put into new bottles" (Mark 2:22).

Through spiritual education we drop the human mortal mind and put on the Mind of Christ. We have to develop a whole new consciousness. We begin by giving up material sense. As spiritual consciousness develops, mortal mind drops its false beliefs. Spiritual education involves a complete change; as spiritual consciousness finally becomes the all and only, mortal mind beliefs have "passed away."

Change can be frightening, but we need to welcome change, to see the angel of God in every spiritually-directed change, even if it seems to be shaking up our whole world. Without change there is no growth.

Mary Baker Eddy's writings challenge us to change. They call us from chasing too many rabbits at the same time, to seeking only the kingdom of God. They instruct us how to lift from around our neck the albatross that keeps us listening to error's urges. Mary Baker Eddy's writings unveil the truth and show us our true Christ-expressing selfhood. They urge us to follow the voice of Truth as it speaks in the words of Jesus: "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." They remind us that evil will triumph if good people remain silent. They tune our ears to the "still, small voice" until we finally hear infinite good speaking the words of Love and Truth as our own real Mind.

Allowing our understanding to be changed in this way, it is as a light breaking through on a "new creation." Yet, as breathtakingly new as our dawning understanding seems to us, we are not learning something new, but only that which "was and is and ever shall be." Our present perfection has always been true.

Why?

Because, as Jesus said, "the kingdom of God is within you." You don't have to make anything true. It already is true and real, just as 2x2=4 is true and real and has already forever been in existence; and just as the round earth was in existence and ever-present when everyone thought of it as flat. The only change today is that the kingdom of God has been put within reach of each one's consciousness through the Second Coming of the Christ, through Mary Baker Eddy's great revelation and monumental work as the scribe of infinite good.

How do we reach the kingdom?

Through LEARNING. Learning is the open door to the kingdom of God latent within our consciousness. The kingdom is there now, just as the multiplication table was latent within your consciousness before you went to school, or you could not have learned it. The "kingdom within" is understanding.

How do we learn what we already are and have always been? Through study and practice of what Mary Baker Eddy has written. Through this study we become aware of the omnipresence of present perfection.

Jesus confirmed the everpresence of present perfection when he said, "When ye stand praying, believe that ye already have that for which [in your ignorance of spiritual reality] ye are asking." The kingdom of heaven, latent within your consciousness, your own real Mind, already contains every blessing you could ever desire, just as your mind contains every truth about the multiplication table.

As we study we will find that "every material belief hints the existence of spiritual reality, and if mortals are instructed in spiritual things, it will be seen that material belief, in all its manifestations, reversed, will be found the type and representative of verities priceless, eternal, and just at hand. The education of the future will be instruction in spiritual Science, against the material symbolic counterfeit sciences. All the knowledge and vain strivings of mortal mind, that lead to death...will be swallowed up by the reality and omnipotence of Truth over error, and Life over death" (Mis. 60:29).

Our work is to learn the truth about ourselves. "Know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." In this work, "true prayer is not asking God [infinite good] for love; it is learning to love, and to include all mankind in one affection. Prayer is the utilization of the love wherewith [infinite good] loves us.... It shows us more clearly than we saw before, what we already have and are; and most of all it shows us what God [our own real Mind] is [and how it forever expresses itself in Love in infinite goodness]" (No & Yes, p. 39:17).

Through Mary Baker Eddy's divine discovery and revelation we are all destined to learn, and to claim, our infinite, harmonious, Christ-expressing selfhood, as we "dwell in the consciousness of Love forever."

As this is learned we will again be enabled to heal as Jesus and Mary Baker Eddy healed. The healing demonstration-with millions of healings by Mrs. Eddy and her students, which continued for three decades after Mrs. Eddy's leaving (on the momentum she had built up)- will be renewed.

Learning opens the door to understanding your present perfection.

It is our hope that the Mary Baker Eddy Letter will inspire people to more carefully consider everything Mary Baker Eddy, in the Second Coming of the Christ, has written, as she fulfilled Jesus' promise and prophecy of the "Comforter" that would reveal all things, and be with us forever.

These Letters will tell a true story about our Leader's great spiritual discovery, a story that is already changing the face of all our tomorrows. We hope that by bringing out important and perhaps overlooked aspects of Mary Baker Eddy's teachings, and by fostering a true appreciation of what Mary Baker Eddy was, as the Second Coming of the Christ, we can help our readers (indeed help us all) realize our present perfection and our oneness with the infinite good we call God.

True or False?

From the comics: "What's the leading cause of death?" "Birth!"

From a schoolchild's report on Genesis: "Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree."

Children's Section

Mary Baker Eddy writes (S&H 62:4), "The entire education of children should be such as to form habits of obedience to the moral and spiritual law, with which the child can meet and master the belief in so-called physical laws, a belief which breeds disease."

Because of the raging materiality and immorality so prevalent today, not only in America but in the world, there was never a time when teaching children moral and spiritual values was more needed. The more materialistic the age, the more necessary it is to teach a child things of value and lasting worth. Only grounding children in moral and spiritual principles can ensure their lasting happiness and self-worth.

In today's climate, with its seemingly uncertain future, it is vital to give children values that can never be taken from them, values such as responsibility, gratitude, truthfulness, courage, patience, humility, joy, love, generosity. These qualities must be taught, along with those Mary Baker Eddy lists on page 115 in Science and Health, namely: "humanity, honesty, affection, compassion, hope, faith, meekness, temperance."

As children begin to learn and exercise these moral qualities they will be led to the spiritual, to "wisdom, purity, spiritual understanding, spiritual power, love, health, holiness." These crown the power of Mind, of your very own real true Mind. They lead to the great reality that only good is real, that evil and error of every nature is totally unreal. Learning to substitute the right for the wrong reveals the kingdom of heaven within one's own consciousness, and shows that "all consciousness is Mind," infinite good.

As we cultivate and make these spiritual qualities our own, our way of life, and teach them to our children, these qualities will reverse the evidence before the corporeal human senses, and we will see as Jesus and Mary Baker Eddy saw, as they looked out into the world.

It was because Mrs. Eddy saw what was really there, that she could bring the Second Coming of the Christ, and so fulfill Jesus' promise and prophecy of the "Comforter" who would reveal all things; who would reveal truths people two thousand years ago were not ready for. Spiritual and moral guidance will open our children's eyes and prepare them to understand these deepest truths. What greater gift can we give our children than to unveil to them their oneness with the infinite good we name God?

(A children's section will be included in future issues.)

Mary Baker Eddy and the Second Coming of the Christ...On the Internet!

As we have already said, the greatest mental upheaval in the history of mankind is today taking place. Why? Because of the advent of Mary Baker Eddy which brought the Second Coming of the Christ.

In the gathering storm of this great upheaval, people are turning to the spiritual. They sense that their ignorance of God, infinite good, can hurt them. Their search for Truth is helped onward by the almost universal use of computers and the coming in of the Internet, which has allowed the Mary Baker Eddy Institute to put all of Science and Health and all of Mary Baker Eddy's Prose Works on the Internet where it can be read by every spiritually-minded reader in the entire world. Computer access will help the spread of Christian Science just as five hundred years ago the printing press helped the spread of Christianity.

If you would like to view these works by Mary Baker Eddy, you can find them, her Church Manual, as well as our other publications at our web site:

http://www.mbeinstitute.org/healing/

Watch our web site for updates. Please feel free to email us at: healing@mbeinstitute.org

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