5 Smooth Stones

Isa. 57:6 (to .)
6Among the smooth stones of the stream is thy portion; they, they are thy lot: even to them hast thou poured a drink offering, thou hast offered a meat offering.


I Sam. 17:21-26 Israel (to 1st ?), 27-36 (to :), 37-50
21Israel and the Philistines had put the battle in array, army against army.
22And David left his carriage in the hand of the keeper of the carriage, and ran into the army, and came and saluted his brethren.
23And as he talked with them, behold, there came up the champion, the Philistine of Gath, Goliath by name, out of the armies of the Philistines, and spake according to the same words: and David heard them.
24And all the men of Israel, when they saw the man, fled from him, and were sore afraid.
25And the men of Israel said, Have ye seen this man that is come up? surely to defy Israel is he come up: and it shall be, that the man who killeth him, the king will enrich him with great riches, and will give him his daughter, and make his father’s house free in Israel.
26And David spake to the men that stood by him, saying, What shall be done to the man that killeth this Philistine, and taketh away the reproach from Israel?
27And the people answered him after this manner, saying, So shall it be done to the man that killeth him.
28¶ And Eliab his eldest brother heard when he spake unto the men; and Eliab’s anger was kindled against David, and he said, Why camest thou down hither? and with whom hast thou left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know thy pride, and the naughtiness of thine heart; for thou art come down that thou mightest see the battle.
29And David said, What have I now done? Is there not a cause?
30¶ And he turned from him toward another, and spake after the same manner: and the people answered him again after the former manner.
31And when the words were heard which David spake, they rehearsed thembefore Saul: and he sent for him.
32¶ And David said to Saul, Let no man’s heart fail because of him; thy servant will go and fight with this Philistine.
33And Saul said to David, Thou art not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him: for thou art but a youth, and he a man of war from his youth.
34And David said unto Saul, Thy servant kept his father’s sheep, and there came a lion, and a bear, and took a lamb out of the flock:
35And I went out after him, and smote him, and delivered it out of his mouth: and when he arose against me, I caught him by his beard, and smote him, and slew him.
36Thy servant slew both the lion and the bear:
37David said moreover, The Lord that delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear, he will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine. And Saul said unto David, Go, and the Lord be with thee.
38¶ And Saul armed David with his armour, and he put an helmet of brass upon his head; also he armed him with a coat of mail.
39And David girded his sword upon his armour, and he assayed to go; for he had not proved it. And David said unto Saul, I cannot go with these; for I have not proved them. And David put them off him.
40And he took his staff in his hand, and chose him five smooth stones out of the brook, and put them in a shepherd’s bag which he had, even in a scrip; and his sling was in his hand: and he drew near to the Philistine.
41And the Philistine came on and drew near unto David; and the man that bare the shield went before him.
42And when the Philistine looked about, and saw David, he disdained him: for he was but a youth, and ruddy, and of a fair countenance.
43And the Philistine said unto David, Am I a dog, that thou comest to me with staves? And the Philistine cursed David by his gods.
44And the Philistine said to David, Come to me, and I will give thy flesh unto the fowls of the air, and to the beasts of the field.
45Then said David to the Philistine, Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the Lordof hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied.
46This day will the Lord deliver thee into mine hand; and I will smite thee, and take thine head from thee; and I will give the carcases of the host of the Philistines this day unto the fowls of the air, and to the wild beasts of the earth; that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel.
47And all this assembly shall know that the Lord saveth not with sword and spear: for the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give you into our hands.
48And it came to pass, when the Philistine arose, and came and drew nigh to meet David, that David hasted, and ran toward the army to meet the Philistine.
49And David put his hand in his bag, and took thence a stone, and slang it,and smote the Philistine in his forehead, that the stone sunk into his forehead; and he fell upon his face to the earth.
50So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone, and smote the Philistine, and slew him; but there was no sword in the hand of David.

Luke 8:41-48 behold; 9:43-48, 57-62
41behold, there came a man named Jairus, and he was a ruler of the synagogue: and he fell down at Jesus’ feet, and besought him that he would come into his house:
42For he had one only daughter, about twelve years of age, and she lay a-dying. But as he went the people thronged him.
43¶ And a woman having an issue of blood twelve years, which had spent all her living upon physicians, neither could be healed of any,
44Came behind him, and touched the border of his garment: and immediately her issue of blood stanched.
45And Jesus said, Who touched me? When all denied, Peter and they that were with him said, Master, the multitude throng thee and press thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me?
46And Jesus said, Somebody hath touched me: for I perceive that virtue is gone out of me.
47And when the woman saw that she was not hid, she came trembling, and falling down before him, she declared unto him before all the people for what cause she had touched him, and how she was healed immediately.
48And he said unto her, Daughter, be of good comfort: thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace.
43¶ And they were all amazed at the mighty power of God. But while they wondered every one at all things which Jesus did, he said unto his disciples,
44Let these sayings sink down into your ears: for the Son of man shall be delivered into the hands of men.
45But they understood not this saying, and it was hid from them, that they perceived it not: and they feared to ask him of that saying.
46¶ Then there arose a reasoning among them, which of them should be greatest.
47And Jesus, perceiving the thought of their heart, took a child, and set him by him,
48And said unto them, Whosoever shall receive this child in my name receiveth me: and whosoever shall receive me receiveth him that sent me: for he that is least among you all, the same shall be great.
57¶ And it came to pass, that, as they went in the way, a certain man said unto him, Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest.
58And Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.
59And he said unto another, Follow me. But he said, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father.
60Jesus said unto him, Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the kingdom of God.
61And another also said, Lord, I will follow thee; but let me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house.
62And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.


Luke 11:5-10
5And he said unto them, Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves;
6For a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him?
7And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee.
8I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth.
9And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.
10For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

James 4:1-3, 7, 8
1From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?
2Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not.
3Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume itupon your lusts.
7Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
8Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, yesinners; and purify your hearts, ye double-minded.


Rev. 3:14-20 These; 4:1, 2
14These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God;
15I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.
16So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.
17Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:
18I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eye-salve, that thou mayest see.
19As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.
20Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.
1After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will shew thee things which must be hereafter.
2And immediately I was in the spirit; and, behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne.

Isa. 1:11-19
11To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats.
12When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts?
13Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it isiniquity, even the solemn meeting.
14Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them.
15And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.
16¶ Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil;
17Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.
18Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.
19If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land:



SH 385:17-18
Whatever it is your duty to do,
you can do without harm to yourself.

SH 252:23-24 How
How
sin succeeds, where the good purpose waits!

SH 419:2
Lurking error, lust, envy, revenge, malice, or hate will
perpetuate or even create the belief in disease. Errors
of all sorts tend in this direction. Your true course is
to destroy the foe, and leave the field to God, Life, Truth,
and Love, remembering that God and His ideas alone
are real and harmonious.

SH 457:19
Backsliders and mistakes    Christian Science is not an exception to the general
rule, that there is no excellence without labor in a direct
line. One cannot scatter his fire, and at the
same time hit the mark. To pursue other
vocations and advance rapidly in the demonstration of
this Science, is not possible. Departing from Christian
Science, some learners commend diet and hygiene.
They even practise these, intending thereby to initiate
the cure which they mean to complete with Mind, as if
the non-intelligent could aid Mind! The Scientist’s
demonstration rests on one Principle, and there must
and can be no opposite rule. Let this Principle be ap-
plied to the cure of disease without exploiting other
means.


SH 288:20, 31-1
The chief stones in the temple    The chief stones in the temple of Christian Science are
to be found in the following postulates: that Life is God,
good, and not evil; that Soul is sinless, not
to be found in the body; that Spirit is not, and
cannot be, materialized; that Life is not subject
to death; that the spiritual real man has no birth, no ma-
terial life, and no death.
    The eternal Truth destroys what mortals seem to have
learned from error, and man’s real existence as a child
of God comes to light.


SH 45:16
The stone rolled away    Glory be to God, and peace to the struggling hearts!
Christ hath rolled away the stone from the door of hu-
man hope and faith, and through the reve-
lation and demonstration of life in God, hath
elevated them to possible at-one-ment with the spiritual
idea of man and his divine Principle, Love.


SH 248:12-4
Mental sculpture    The sculptor turns from the marble to his model in
order to perfect his conception. We are all sculptors,
working at various forms, moulding and chisel-
ing thought. What is the model before mortal
mind? Is it imperfection, joy, sorrow, sin, suffering?
Have you accepted the mortal model? Are you repro-
ducing it? Then you are haunted in your work by vicious
sculptors and hideous forms. Do you not hear from all
mankind of the imperfect model? The world is holding
it before your gaze continually. The result is that you
are liable to follow those lower patterns, limit your life-
work, and adopt into your experience the angular outline
and deformity of matter models.
Perfect models
    To remedy this, we must first turn our gaze in the right
direction, and then walk that way. We must form perfect
models in thought and look at them continually,
or we shall never carve them out in grand and
noble lives. Let unselfishness, goodness, mercy, justice,
health, holiness, love — the kingdom of heaven — reign
within us, and sin, disease, and death will diminish until
they finally disappear.

    Let us accept Science, relinquish all theories based on
sense-testimony, give up imperfect models and illusive
ideals; and so let us have one God, one Mind, and that
one perfect, producing His own models of excellence.

SH 323:9-29
Beholding the infinite tasks of
truth, we pause, — wait on God. Then we push onward,
until boundless thought walks enraptured, and concep-
tion unconfined is winged to reach the divine glory.
Need and supply
    In order to apprehend more, we must put into prac-
tice what we already know. We must recollect that
Truth is demonstrable when understood, and
that good is not understood until demonstrated.
If “faithful over a few things,” we shall be made rulers
over many; but the one unused talent decays and is lost.
When the sick or the sinning awake to realize their need
of what they have not, they will be receptive of divine
Science, which gravitates towards Soul and away from
material sense, removes thought from the body, and ele-
vates even mortal mind to the contemplation of some-
thing better than disease or sin. The true idea of God
gives the true understanding of Life and Love, robs the
grave of victory, takes away all sin and the delusion that
there are other minds, and destroys mortality.
Childlike receptivity
    The effects of Christian Science are not so much seen
as felt.

SH 504:23
The rays of infinite Truth, when gathered into
the focus of ideas, bring light instantaneously, whereas
a thousand years of human doctrines, hypotheses, and
vague conjectures emit no such effulgence.

SH 596:12
    The rabbins believed that the stones in the breast-
plate of the high-priest had supernatural illumination,
but Christian Science reveals Spirit, not matter, as the
illuminator of all. The illuminations of Science give us
a sense of the nothingness of error, and they show the
spiritual inspiration of Love and Truth to be the only fit
preparation for admission to the presence and power of
the Most High.

SH 428:32
Careful guidanceIt is a sin to believe
that aught can overpower omnipotent and eternal Life,
and this Life must be brought to light by the understand-
ing that there is no death, as well as by other
graces of Spirit. We must begin, however,
with the more simple demonstrations of control, and
the sooner we begin the better. The final demonstration
takes time for its accomplishment. When walking, we
are guided by the eye. We look before our feet, and if
we are wise, we look beyond a single step in the line of
spiritual advancement.

SH 262:10
We
must reverse our feeble flutterings — our efforts to find
life and truth in matter — and rise above the testimony
of the material senses, above the mortal to the immortal
idea of God. These clearer, higher views inspire the God-
like man to reach the absolute centre and circumference
of his being.

SH 21:8-22 that (np)
that they shall reach his harmony and reward.

    If the disciple is advancing spiritually, he is striv-
ing to enter in. He constantly turns away from ma-
terial sense, and looks towards the imperishable things
of Spirit. If honest, he will be in earnest from the
start, and gain a little each day in the right direction,
till at last he finishes his course with joy.
Inharmonious travellers
    If my friends are going to Europe, while I am en
route for California, we are not journeying together.
We have separate time-tables to consult,
different routes to pursue. Our paths have
diverged at the very outset, and we have little oppor-
tunity to help each other. On the contrary, if my
friends pursue my course, we have the same railroad
guides, and our mutual interests are identical; or, if I
take up their line of travel, they help me on, and our
companionship may continue.
Zigzag course
    Being in sympathy with matter, the worldly man is at
the beck and call of error, and will be attracted thither-
ward. He is like a traveller going westward
for a pleasure-trip. The company is alluring
and the pleasures exciting. After following the sun for
six days, he turns east on the seventh, satisfied if he can
only imagine himself drifting in the right direction. By-
and-by, ashamed of his zigzag course, he would borrow
the passport of some wiser pilgrim, thinking with the aid
of this to find and follow the right road.
Moral retrogression
    Vibrating like a pendulum between sin and the hope
of forgiveness, — selfishness and sensuality causing con-
stant retrogression, — our moral progress will
be slow. Waking to Christ’s demand, mortals
experience suffering. This causes them, even as drown-
ing men, to make vigorous efforts to save themselves; and
through Christ’s precious love these efforts are crowned
with success.
Wait for reward
    “Work out your own salvation,” is the demand of
Life and Love, for to this end God worketh with you.
“Occupy till I come!” Wait for your re-
ward, and “be not weary in well doing.” If
your endeavors are beset by fearful odds, and you receive
no present reward, go not back to error, nor become a
sluggard in the race.

    When the smoke of battle clears away, you will dis-
cern the good you have done, and receive according to
your deserving. Love is not hasty to deliver us from
temptation, for Love means that we shall be tried and
purified.


SH vii:17-18
Ignorance of God is no longer the stepping-
stone to faith.

SH 136:29
Doubting disciples    The disciples apprehended their Master better than
did others; but they did not comprehend all
that he said and did, or they would not have
questioned him so often. Jesus patiently persisted in
teaching and demonstrating the truth of being. His stu-
dents saw this power of Truth heal the sick, cast out evil,
raise the dead; but the ultimate of this wonderful work
was not spiritually discerned, even by them, until after the
crucifixion, when their immaculate Teacher stood before
them, the victor over sickness, sin, disease, death, and
the grave.