These Readings are comprised of selections from the Bible and the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. Breaking through the clouds of darkness Ps. 112:4 KJV 4Unto the upright there ariseth light in the darkness: Isaiah 40:28-31 Contemporary English Version (CEV) 28 Don’t you know? Haven’t you heard? The Lord is the eternal God, Creator of the earth. He never gets weary or tired; his wisdom cannot be measured. 29 The Lord gives strength to those who are weary. … those who trust the Lord will find new strength. They will be strong like eagles soaring upward on wings; they will walk and run without getting tired. Prov. 23:18 KJV 18For surely there is an end; and thine expectation shall not be cut off. Gen. 7:1–8:16 CEB 7 The Lord said to Noah, “Go into the ark with your whole household, because among this generation I’ve seen that you are a moral man. 10 After seven days, the floodwaters arrived on the earth. 12 It rained on the earth forty days and forty nights. The waters rose, lifted the ark, and it rode high above the earth. 18 The waters rose and spread out over the earth. The ark floated on the surface of the waters. 20 The waters rose twenty-three feet high, covering the mountains. 24 The waters rose over the earth for one hundred fifty days. 8:1 God remembered Noah, all those alive, and all the animals with him in the ark. God sent a wind over the earth so that the waters receded. 2 The springs of the deep sea and the skies closed up. The skies held back the rain. 3 The waters receded gradually from the earth. After one hundred fifty days, the waters decreased; 4 and in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day, the ark came to rest on the Ararat mountains. 5 The waters decreased gradually until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the mountain peaks appeared. 6 After forty days, Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made. 7 He sent out a raven, and it flew back and forth until the waters over the entire earth had dried up. 8 Then he sent out a dove to see if the waters on all of the fertile land had subsided, 9 but the dove found no place to set its foot. It returned to him in the ark since waters still covered the entire earth. Noah stretched out his hand, took it, and brought it back into the ark. 10 He waited seven more days and sent the dove out from the ark again. 11 The dove came back to him in the evening, grasping a torn olive leaf in its beak. Then Noah knew that the waters were subsiding from the earth. 12 He waited seven more days and sent out the dove, but it didn’t come back to him again. Noah removed the ark’s hatch and saw that the surface of the fertile land had dried up. Gen. 9:12–15 CEB 2 God said, “This is the symbol of the covenant that I am drawing up between me and you and every living thing with you, on behalf of every future generation. 13 I have placed my bow in the clouds; it will be the symbol of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow appears in the clouds, 15 I will remember the covenant between me and you and every living being. John 5:1-9 Common English Bible (CEB) In Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate in the north city wall is a pool with the Aramaic name Bethsaida. It had five covered porches, 3 and a crowd of people who were sick, blind, lame, and paralyzed sat there. 5 A certain man was there who had been sick for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there, knowing that he had already been there a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?” 7 The sick man answered him, “Sir, I don’t have anyone who can put me in the water when it is stirred up. When I’m trying to get to it, someone else has gotten in ahead of me.” 8 Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” 9 Immediately the man was well, and he picked up his mat and walked. Luke 8:42 As–48 CEB As Jesus moved forward, he faced smothering crowds.43 A woman was there who had been bleeding for twelve years. She had spent her entire livelihood on doctors, but no one could heal her. 44 She came up behind him and touched the hem of his clothes, and at once her bleeding stopped. 45 “Who touched me?” Jesus asked. When everyone denied it, Peter said, “Master, the crowds are surrounding you and pressing in on you!” 46 But Jesus said, “Someone touched me. I know that power has gone out from me.” 47 When the woman saw that she couldn’t escape notice, she came trembling and fell before Jesus. In front of everyone, she explained why she had touched him and how she had been immediately healed. 48 “Daughter, your faith has healed you,” Jesus said. “Go in peace.” Isaiah 9:2 Common English Bible (CEB) 2 The people walking in darkness have seen a great light. On those living in a pitch-dark land, light has dawned Isaiah 60:1-3 Common English Bible (CEB) Arise! Shine! Your light has come; the Lord’s glory has shone upon you. 2 Though darkness covers the earth and gloom the nations, the Lord will shine upon you; Ephesians 5:8-14 Common English Bible (CEB) 8 You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord, so live your life as children of light. Instead, 13…everything exposed to the light is revealed by the light. 14 Everything that is revealed by the light is light. Therefore, it says, Wake up, sleeper! Get up from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. 1 John 2:8 Contemporary English Version (CEV) You can see the darkness fading away and the true light already shining.

SCIENCE AND HEALTH SH 215:15 We are sometimes led to believe that darkness is as real as light; but Science affirms darkness to be only a mortal sense of the absence of light, at the coming of which darkness loses the appearance of reality. So sin and sorrow, disease and death, are the suppositional absence of Life, God, and flee as phantoms of error before truth and love. SH 548:9–13 How little light or heat reach our earth when clouds cover the sun's face! So Christian Science can be seen only as the clouds of corporeal sense roll away. Earth has little light or joy for mortals before Life is spiritually learned. SH 299:26 Corporeal sense, or error, may seem to hide Truth, health, harmony, and Science, as the mist obscures the sun or the mountain; but Science, the sunshine of Truth, will melt away the shadow and reveal the celestial peaks. SH 188:28–24 When darkness comes over the earth, the physical senses have no immediate evidence of a sun. The human eye knows not where the orb of day is, nor if it exists. Astronomy gives the desired information regarding the sun. The human or material senses yield to the authority of this science, and they are willing to leave with astronomy the explanation of the sun's influence over the earth. If the eyes see no sun for a week, we still believe that there is solar light and heat. Science (in this instance named natural) raises the human thought above the cruder theories of the human mind, and casts out a fear. In like manner mortals should no more deny the power of Christian Science to establish harmony and to explain the effect of mortal mind on the body, though the cause be unseen, than they should deny the existence of the sunlight when the orb of day disappears, or doubt that the sun will reappear. SH 67:14 Hoping and working, one should stick to the wreck, until an irresistible propulsion precipitates his doom or sunshine gladdens the troubled sea. SH 162:4 Christian Science brings to the body the sunlight of Truth, which invigorates and purifies. Christian Science acts as an alterative, neutralizing error with Truth. It changes the secretions, expels humors, dissolves tumors, relaxes rigid muscles, restores carious bones to soundness. The effect of this Science is to stir the human mind to a change of base, on which it may yield to the harmony of the divine Mind. SH 557:16 Divine Science rolls back the clouds of error with the light of Truth, and lifts the curtain on man as never born and as never dying, but as coexistent with his creator. SH 297:32 A mortal belief fulfils its own conditions. Sickness, sin, and death are the vague realities of human conclusions. Life, Truth, and Love are the realities of divine Science. They dawn in faith and glow full-orbed in spiritual understanding. As a cloud hides the sun it cannot extinguish, so false belief silences for a while the voice of immutable harmony, but false belief cannot destroy Science armed with faith, hope, and fruition. SH 417: 10 Maintain the facts of Christian Science, — that Spirit is God, and therefore cannot be sick; that what is termed matter cannot be sick; that all causation is Mind, acting through spiritual law. Then hold your ground with the unshaken understanding of Truth and Love, and you will win. When you silence the witness against your plea, you destroy the evidence, for the disease disappears. The evidence before the corporeal senses is not the Science of immortal man. SH 480:29–2 If sin, sickness, and death were understood as nothingness, they would disappear. As vapor melts before the sun, so evil would vanish before the reality of good. One must hide the other. How important, then, to choose good as the reality! SH 191:8 As a material, theoretical life-basis is found to be a misapprehension of existence, the spiritual and divine Principle of man dawns upon human thought, and leads it to “where the young child was,”— even to the birth of a new-old idea, to the spiritual sense of being and of what Life includes. Thus the whole earth will be transformed by Truth on its pinions of light, chasing away the darkness of error. SH 412:23 Mentally insist that harmony is the fact, and that sickness is a temporal dream. Realize the presence of health and the fact of harmonious being, until the body corresponds with the normal conditions of health and harmony. SH 421:15 Insist vehemently on the great fact which covers the whole ground, that God, Spirit, is all, and that there is none beside Him. SH 418:5, 22 Stick to the truth of being in contradistinction to the error that life, substance, or intelligence can be in matter. Plead with an honest conviction of truth and a clear perception of the unchanging, unerring, and certain effect of divine Science. Then, if your fidelity is half equal to the truth of your plea, you will heal the sick. ... By the truthful arguments you employ, and especially by the spirit of Truth and Love which you entertain, you will heal the sick. SH 249:6–10 Let us feel the divine energy of Spirit, bringing us into newness of life and recognizing no mortal nor material power as able to destroy. Let us rejoice that we are subject to the divine “powers that be. ”Such is the true Science of being. SH 78:28 Spirit blesses man, but man cannot “tell whence it cometh.” By it the sick are healed, the sorrowing are comforted, and the sinning are reformed. These are the effects of one universal God, the invisible good dwelling in eternal Science. SH 95:19 We welcome the increase of knowledge and the end of error, because even human invention must have its day, and we want that day to be succeeded by Christian Science, by divine reality. SH 96:4 Love will finally mark the hour of harmony, and spiritualization will follow, for Love is Spirit. Earth will become dreary and desolate, but summer and winter, seedtime and harvest (though in changed forms), will continue unto the end, — until the final spiritualization of all things. “The darkest hour precedes the dawn.” SH vii:1To those leaning on the sustaining infinite, to-day is big with blessings. The wakeful shepherd beholds the first faint morning beams, ere cometh the full radiance of a risen day.

HYMNS

29 Breaking through the clouds of darkness, Black with error, doubt, and fear; Lighting up each somber shadow, With a radiance soft and clear; Filling every heart with gladness, That its holy power feels, Comes the Christian Science gospel, Sin it kills and grief it heals.

Christlike in its benedictions, Godlike in its strength sublime; Conquering every subtle error, With a meekness all divine, It has gone across the ocean, It is known in every land, And our sisters and our brothers Are united in one band. (The Christian Science Hymnal, No. 29:1, 2)

453 Brood o'er us with Thy shelt'ring wing, 'Neath which our spirits blend Like brother birds, that soar and sing, And on the same branch bend. The arrow that doth wound the dove Darts not from those who watch and love.

If thou the bending reed wouldst break By thought or word unkind, Pray that his spirit you partake, Who loved and healed mankind: Seek holy thoughts and heavenly strain, That make men one in love remain.

Learn, too, that wisdom's rod is given For faith to kiss, and know; That greetings glorious from high heaven, Whence joys supernal flow, Come from that Love, divinely near, Which chastens pride and earth-born fear,

Through God, who gave that word of might Which swelled creation's lay: “Let there be light, and there was light.” What chased the clouds away? 'Twas Love whose finger traced aloud A bow of promise on the cloud.

Thou to whose power our hope we give, Free us from human strife. Fed by Thy love divine we live, For Love alone is Life; And life most sweet, as heart to heart Speaks kindly when we meet and part.

238 O, sometimes gleams upon our sight, Through present wrong, th' eternal right; And step by step, since time began, We see the steady gain of man.

For all of good the past has had Remains to make our own time glad, Our common, daily life divine, And every land a Palestine.

Through the harsh noises of our day, A low sweet prelude finds its way; Through clouds of doubt and creeds of fear A light is breaking, calm and clear.

Henceforth my heart shall sigh no more For olden time and holier shore: God's love and blessing, then and there, Are now and here and everywhere.