Address by Martine Blacker to the CSNA(UK) Conference, April 2023

In her message to The Mother Church for 1902, our Leader states:

LOVING CHORDS SET DISCORDS IN HARMONY.
(Message to The Mother Church for 1902, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 9:14)

LOVING CHORDS….
She goes on:
…’ Every condition implied by the great Master, every promise fulfilled, was
loving and spiritual, urging a state of consciousness that leaves the minor tones
of so-called material life and abides in Christlikeness.’
(Message to The Mother Church for 1902, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 9:13)

“ Leaves the minor tones of so called material life, and abides in Christlikeness…”
There was one in the Bible who did abide in Christlikeness, who was never given
the recognition she deserved:
Imagine you are in Biblical times, about 32 AD, at the house of Simon the
Pharisee, an invited guest at a banquet arranged in honour of Jesus of Nazareth.
In the middle of this prestigious event, a woman enters uninvited.
She has long hair, loose about her shoulders, dressed as a prostitute of the day,
wearing the infamous ‘toga muliebris’, the woman’s toga, and no veil . This leaves
no doubt as to her station. This is forbidden territory.
Undeterred, the uninvited guest goes to the feet of Jesus of Nazareth, who, as in
the custom of the day, reclines on a low couch with his feet facing away from the
low table. She ignores the murmurs of the other guests, and takes out of her
scrip, a jar of costly spikenard ointment. She kneels at the feet of Jesus, who does
nothing to stop her, and with her tears, she bathes the feet of the Master. She
then anoints his feet with the costly ointment. She uses her hair to wipe his feet
when she is done. She does all this without looking at the Master, silently adoring
him. Jesus knows the murmuring dissent all around him, and begins to tell the
guests of a parable where a man owing 500 pence and a man owing 50 pence
were both forgiven of their debt to their master. Which one, he asks, would love
the master most? Simon the Pharisee answers: “Him to whom he forgave most”.

Jesus approves the answer, and then goes on to tell the guests how this woman
has bathed his feet with her tears, anointed him with costly ointment which the
host did not do. He forgives Mary, for so she is named, he does not judge her,
and she for the first time makes eye contact with this gentle, loving, man, and is
told: “Thy faith hath made thee whole”.

This story of Mary Magdalene, in Luke 7, is the deepest and most emphatic
statement of healing, of forgiveness, of unselfed love, of gentleness, of
obedience, of humility, of gratitude, and of yielding in the Bible.
It is immensely powerful in that it shows the power of Love over hate, Truth over
error.
This story, epitomizes stillness and strength, and a deep unselfed yearning on
the part of Mary, to dismiss the clamouring and grating cacophony of mortal
discord, judgmental attitudes, hatred, contempt, malpractice, around her. Her
loving chords set discords in harmony.
She changes the tone of that banquet. The parable Jesus narrates of the debtors
and forgiveness, must have reset the tone of this banquet, with its materially
minded patrons and host, keen to show he had a guest who was the talk of the
day.
We are told in Luke 8, that this was not the first time Mary had met Jesus. He had
healed her of ‘seven devils’, we are not told what they were.
So, when she appeared at that banquet hall, she was already changed, healed,
transformed.
The people who were guests at that banquet, did not know her story.
Why did she come?
To acknowledge her healing, to express the deep transformational love and
gratitude that had healed her, to give back some of what she had received.
She absolutely rejected the minor tones of discord, which would have taken an
inordinate amount of courage , and focused only on divine harmony, the concord
she had felt when touched by the Christ.

She understood that she was not drawing from a finite mortal sense of strength
and courage, but from that infinite source of divine Love. The Love that is infinite,
abundant, without the confines or limitations of a net.(Luke 5). The Love that
sees through Spirit, from Spirit, and is never unanswered.

She was obeying a higher command. The chord of divine Love. The way the Truth
and the Life of Christ Jesus.

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall
he do also; (John 14:12)

Mary Magdalene, was putting into practice, the ‘enabling’ of the Lord’s Prayer , as
Mrs Eddy interprets it. That whole scene with Jesus, that was efficacious prayer.
She was being obedient to her Christ principle.
Being obedient is an important quality of the Christian Science nurse. It also
requires that inner stillness. Being obedient requires compliance, yielding to
divine authority, a willingness to put aside person and personal sense. It is not
forced labour! It requires a deep listening for that harmonious chord.

‘Learn to obey; but learn first what obedience is’.

Our Leader tells us….
‘ When God speaks to you through one of His little ones, and you obey the
mandate but retain a desire to follow your own inclinations, that is not
obedience. I sometimes advise students not to do certain things which I know it
were best not to do, and they comply with my counsel; but, watching them, I
discern that this obedience is contrary to their inclination. Then I sometimes
withdraw that advice and say: “You may do it if you desire.” But I say this not
because it is the best thing to do, but because the student is not willing —
therefore, not ready — to obey.’
(Message to The Mother Church for 1900, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 8:26)

Praying is yielding. Praying is obedience that is not forced. Prayer is willingness to
serve.

When we pray, we also experience that core stillness, the inner peace that comes
from yielding everything to our Father /Mother God, that obedience, that
compliance, to the higher law of Principle.
If you have raised or are raising children you will know that forced obedience is
never productive. You might make the child obey, but he will not remember the
outcome, only the method.
But: gently coaxing compliance from the small miscreant will always be
productive and remain in play . Obedience is never a force of matter, but a divine
demand.
Being compliant is to adhere to a standard, in this case God. Our standard is
always God, never anything less.
And we are given the assurance in Science and Health with key to the Scriptures,
that reason and conscience is our ‘inalienable right’. (p106 SH).
Stillness is not doing nothing. It is God’s action not the action of man.
Stillness is deep prayer, the kind of prayer that excoriates every material feeling,
sense, thought, action, prediction. It is the kind of prayer that does not ask, it
does not supplicate: it yields. It is the kind of prayer that allows us to be asleep in
the back of that small boat, with the Christ, and the storm is not within us, nor is
it in the sea, but in the fears and predictions of gloom and doom which the Christ
shows ,us dissipate like chaff before the wind ,before that inner stillness and
peace.
These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the
world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the
world.
(John 16:33)

That in ME ye might have peace: In me you might have that inner core of stillness,
refuge, because the Christ has already overcome the world, and that promise
stands the test of time.
Let us remain in that ‘ME’, in all that we do, and work from Mind not up to Mind
from a personal sense of the ‘me’ which sets itself up as a medium between God
and ourselves.
Mrs Eddy tells us: “Jesus’ promise is perpetual.”
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 328:28
(only))
That promise is our ‘chord’, which is the underlying refrain in every case we
handle, every situation we face, every aggressive suggestion that seems to be.
As one of our beloved hymns tells us:

Through the harsh noises of our day,

A low sweet prelude finds its way;

(Hymn 238. Christian Science hymnal.)

See God. Hear God. Allow the ‘ME ‘ melody which is the healing Christ, to be the
music which drives our day.

And that, is the melody, that a Christian Science nurse needs to hear, to be able
to carry out the Manual based activity of healing.
It allows The Christian Science nurse to see and hear, God’s plan in action for
man, not the pushing and shoving of prioritizing man’s plans for God to carry out.
‘ Loving chords set discords in harmony.’

That core stillness which only accepts ONE. Testimony infers a witness, one to see
and one to witness. God and His idea is one. There is your stillness, not human
stillness but Mind:

…its presence felt in eternal stillness and immovable Love.
(Retrospection and Introspection, Mary Baker Eddy, pp. 88:28–1)

It is that stillness which allows patience, order, punctuality, cheerfulness and
receptivity to Truth and Love to come to the fore, and listen to that harmonious
chord.
Patience is also efficacious prayer. It is that removal of resentment, person,
personal sense, and the quiet certainty that God is the only I AM.
Then you can be:

‘Swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.. ’ (James 1:19)

Punctuality has nothing to do with the clock: it is described in the dictionary as
being at the right place at the right time, doing God’s work. It is not restricted by
mortal time. It is order in that it obeys, it is compliant, to the divine demand to
be:

‘charged with the conveyance or execution of orders’ (Oxford dictionary.)

The conveyance: we are the conduit of those divine orders, straight from God to
man . It is not a two way traffic: we do not tell God what we want, or what we
think . The only Communicator is God. The only Communication is the Word. The
only receiver is the manifestation of God, man.
And then that Word does not return void, but accomplishes whatever is right in
God’s way.

Each of the precious qualities, needed by a Christian Science nurse, described by
Mrs Eddy in Science and Health, p 395, are God qualities not good character traits
that are encouraged by other mortal minds. Those qualities are the ultimate
receiver. They are the fertile ground where healing can take place, and Love
reigns supreme.

Mary Magdalene, in the Bible, is the only one who never asked Jesus for anything.
She did not ask for healing, she was already whole. She did not petition for a
loved one, or ask for respect from others, or beg for alms. She asked for nothing.
She came to give, yield herself, to worship at the feet of the Christ, her lap piled
high with humility, grace, love, gratitude, and a driving desire to do good , to
repent, in the presence of the Christ. She shed all her mortal so called sins, her
past, her present and her future in a material world, in a society that rejected her,
to see only :

Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.
(Hebrews 13:8)

She continually heard the chord of harmony, Love, Life, Truth, ringing like a
continuous refrain through the discord and suffering all around her.
She discounted mortal time, mortal history and mortal predictions. She was in
fact the ultimate Christian Science Nurse. She was punctual,in God’s time, ‘at the
right place at the right time’ doing her Father’s bidding, she was cheerful in that
she brought cheer with her to lavish it on her Lord, and that cheer would bless all
in that banquet hall; she was orderly in that she was under direct orders from her
Father/Mother, to be at the place of healing at the feet of the Christ. She was full
of faith, as Jesus told her :’Thy faith has saved thee’. She was ‘patient,’ waiting on
God to show her how best to serve Him.

Waiting on God: Not waiting for mortal minds to catch up to her spiritual
elevated thought! You could wait a long time for that to happen!
It took a tremendous amount of courage for her to be at the house of a man, a
Pharisee, who she knew despised her as did every other guest at that gathering.
She was dressed as the custom of the time decided, as a prostitute; she wore her
hair loose, as the custom demanded of women of her lowly rank. She literally flew
the banner of her class in the face of all these elevated leaders of society. Yet she
persevered, with her precious costly gift of oil and ointment for the Master’s feet ,
her gift of humility and gratitude and infinite love.

And the most precious of all balms, were the tears she shed, tears of repentance
and love, which she lavished on the Master, and washed away all her past present
and future material sins in a baptism of spiritual understanding.
She was the broken hearted, truly repentant.
And the balm for the Master’s feet?
This was supposed to be a tradition only reserved for the dead, and she must
have known this, yet she brought the costly spikenard balm and ointment to use
on a man very much alive.
In this simple act, she was telling the Master, that to her there was no death. She
recognized his sonship as the son of God, immortal and eternal. She was
anointing him in a simple ritual of her own. And he understood the silent
message.

This was the reason she was chosen to be first at the tomb site to see her risen
Lord.
Christ Jesus on an unspoken level recognized her deep devotion and what she was
trying to tell him in her way.
She used her tears to bathe his feet, and wiped them with her long hair.
In Jewish tradition, a woman’s tears were considered especially sacred, if they
were the tears of a ‘good ‘ woman. Mary was not considered a ‘good’ woman, by
mortal society, but her goodness was recognized by Christ Jesus. Her true value
was the chord and not the discord.
Mary Baker Eddy tells us she had:

…the oil of gladness and the perfume of gratitude, (Science and Health with Key
to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 367:10)

Our precious Christian Science Nurses have the same. They do not ask for
healing, they do not petition the Christ, they sit at the feet of the Christ, with that
oil of gladness and that perfume of gratitude, the centre and circumference of

God. They are the centre and circumference of God, they are not ‘in’ the centre
and circumference of God. They listen in absolute stillness to the voice of the
Christ , the chord of harmony, telling them how best to gently care for the
humanity before them with the divinity of the Christ. And that brings healing, and
upliftment to all. They do not endure the vagaries of mortal discords, the often
‘in your face’ suffering of a patient mesmerized by his dream, they wait on God ,
like our Leader, like Mary Magdalene, with self forgetful, patient, unfaltering
tenderness. (My p 247).
They do not as we often hear ‘soldier on’, in spite of obstructions and negativity.
They are tuned to the Christ, not in spite of but because God is All.
Being ‘stoic’, is in fact worshipping an idol, not being patient, because Stoicism is
another one of the ‘isms’ that our Leader warns us about. Stoic in fact in the
Websters 1828, means a porch. Yes, you heard correctly, a porch in Athens where
a Greek philosopher by the name of Zeno, preached that man should be
insensitive to pleasures and pains of the flesh, enduring all.
Any time we feel, and Christian Scientists often do, that we should endure pain
and suffering, we are actually following a cult, not God. Christian Science and
Christian Science nursing is about seeing the perfection and allness of God, the
perfection of man, not enduring error. Longsuffering is actually a military term,
when military leaders chose to patiently look for a solution that did not require
the deaths of their soldiers. Longsuffering does not mean to endure error.

Christian Science nurses do not empathise or sympathise with their patients.
Both are human, both have nothing to do with the Christ or Christian Science
healing. When you empathise, you dive into the dream with your patient. When
you sympathise, you see his suffering, acknowledge his suffering, but do not see
his suffering as unreal.
Our Leader tells us :

The sick are not healed merely by declaring there is no sickness, but by knowing
that there is none.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 447:27)

By understanding the allness of God and the nothingness of anything not God.

The divinity of the Christ was made manifest in the humanity of Jesus.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 25:31)

The divinity of the Christ was and still is, the refrain of harmony that rings true
even in the cacophony of mortal jangling demands, human will, self justification,
self love.
Jesus never empathized or sympathized, he saw perfect man where the unreality
of the suffering man seemed to be. And that healed. And that was his humanity.

That harmony, the divinity of the Christ, is the true refrain which we need to
nurse, look for, to retain, to cherish and nurture. (The word ‘nurse’ means
nurture, nourish). In that harmony we:

‘abide in Christlikeness.’ Message 1902:9

Abiding in that Christlikeness, every decision comes from a well of divine Love,
not from a sense of discord, human strife,human decisions, rivalry or anger, or
fear.
But, what about the negative qualities that Mrs Eddy gives as detrimental to a
Christian Science nurse?

An ill-tempered, complaining, or deceitful person should not be a nurse.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 395:17)

I think one can actually just take one word in that sentence: person.
Mrs Eddy is telling us here, that being ill-tempered, complaining or deceitful are
not the qualities of the spiritual representation of God.
These are PERSONAL traits, which have their source in mortal thought, not in
Mind.

And please note that she does not dignify the description with the title Christian
Science nurse: just ‘nurse’.
These character traits are not part of a nurturing loving nature, one that like Mary
Magdalene, gives of herself with no backward thought, no desire of wordly
enrichment, no desire for self aggrandizement, to the Christ.
Christian Scientists are all nurturing and loving representations of the Christ.
Our Leader makes provision in our Manual of The Mother Church, for us to testify
to the power of the healing Christ in our Wednesday meetings. She knew that to
openly acknowledge the healing power of the Christ in our lives, consolidates our
faith in God, removes anything not of God, and emphatically shows the Christ in
the room as did Mary Magdalene so long ago.
She ‘acknowledged’, as it tells us to do in four of our six Tenets. Acknowledging
infers that we need to assent. The dictionaries tell us that it means to accept the
existence of truth. We can capitalize that to mean we accept the existence of
Truth.

Christian Scientists love their fellow man, not as Mary Baker Eddy says for ‘the
loaves and fishes’, not from a sense of duty, or in anticipation of rewards, not
from a sense of laboriously climbing up to the spiritual but:

… from the summit of devout consecration, with the oil of gladness and the
perfume of gratitude, with tears of repentance and with those hairs all
numbered by the Father.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 367:13
from)

This citation above, is actually an entire Christian Science treatment right there. It
handles the fear of not being healed, of not healing from that summit of devout
consecration. It shows humility and absolute repentance, absolute divine Love,
not its human counterfeit, and shows the ALLNESS of God and the protection of
God by the hairs all numbered by the Father. It protects the patient and the
practitioner /Christian Science nurse. It enfolds absolutely in divine Love all those
that reside on that summit. It absolutely expresses the nurturing, caring,
spiritually uplifting Christian devotion.
Start from the summit, and interestingly enough, that summit starts with
humbling ourselves before God.

What Mary was expressing in that banquet hall was the commitment, the
willingness to serve, the deep well of infinite Love given and received of Christ
Jesus. She was the ultimate Christian Science nurse.
As she cleansed and anointed the feet of the Master, she was actually purifying
her own thought, anointing her own understanding, and with each tear each of
her sins accumulated from a material world, dissolved.
She was already healed , she just needed to acknowledge the healing and testify
to the gratitude she felt. This was her Wednesday meeting! This was the
obedience to those Tenets.
When she left that banquet hall, she was free, had put off ‘the old man with his
deeds,’ (Colossians 3:9 )and put on the ‘new man.’
“Loving chords set discords in harmony.” Transformation, upliftment, reversal of
all imposed beliefs,
…’urging a state of consciousness that leaves the minor tones of so-called
material life and abides in Christlikeness.’ (Message for 1902:9.)

Is that not what the Christian Science nurse does?
His or her presence in a sickroom urges the state of consciousness that leaves the
minor tones of so called material life…
He/she corrects those minor tones of discord, abiding in Christlikeness, changing
that discordant song of sickness to the glorious tones of harmony and health:
harmony with the Christ, harmony with God. It is a gentle urging, not a strident
call!
How ?

Firstly: by removing all personal sense, all preconceived notions of mortal
planning or mortal concepts, by not seeing with human eyes, not ‘making a
covenant with his eyes to belittle Deity,’ but by letting God see through his/her
eyes.

Mortal man has made a covenant with his eyes to belittle Deity with human
conceptions.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 255:11–12)

Mrs Eddy tells us that eyes are:

EYES. Spiritual discernment, — not material but mental.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 586:3)

And those are the eyes that the Christian Science nurse uses. The spiritual sense,
one sense, not the multiple material counterfeits. In Miscellaneous Writings
1883-1896, Mrs Eddy tells us the ‘Way’.
She mentions knowing ourselves as the first and foremost duty of man, then
humility then love.
And we know how vital it is for a Christian Science nurse to know his or her own
thinking.

THE WAY …

… Hold thy gaze to the light, and the iris of faith, more beautiful than the
rainbow seen from my window at the close of a balmy autumnal day, will span
thy heavens of thought.
(Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 355:1, 28)

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To do this one has to know oneself, and see oneself through the ‘iris of faith’.
“Ignorance of self is the most stubborn belief to overcome, for apathy,
dishonesty, sin follow in its train.” (First Church of Christ and Miscellany page
232:19.)
Why does she put so much emphasis on knowing oneself? Because everything we
see, everything we experience, the patients we encounter, the so called diseases
and dramas of material living, the sinful and criminal acts we encounter: all come
to us through our own thinking. And we cannot practice that golden rule and love
our neighbour if we do not know and love ourselves first.

Nothing happens ‘out there’, it is all in our thinking. As we know ourselves, as we
explore the ‘deterrents to truth and Love’(My p 128), we will see more of God and
less of error, and learn how to counter false beliefs , coming as Mrs Eddy says
from a: ‘supposititious mortal consciousness’, which is the only place they
actually exist. (SH p 278).
This takes effort and consistent effort on all our parts.

Secondly: By removing all human volition, all opinion, to humbly sit at the feet of
the Master and hearing the underlying harmony of man who has always been
perfect, never been in that bed, always been able to hear the same strain of
harmony the Christian Science nurse hears.
Thirdly:
… love that is irrespective of self, rank, or following.
(Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 357:20–21 love)

Human pride is human weakness. Self-knowledge, humility, and love are divine
strength.
(Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 358:13).
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Mary had that love that was irrespective of self, rank or following. In mortal terms
she was probably the weakest of creatures, but in spiritual terms, she had divine
strength.
She was armed with self knowledge, the knowledge that her spiritual real nature
would be recognized by Jesus, and that she would not be rejected.
In this we find an echo in another Mary, the one born in Bow New Hampshire,
and destined to become the Discoverer and Founder of the Christian Science
Movement, publisher of many writings , editor of her own publications, founder
of a the world class Christian Science Monitor.
She too was armed with love, unselfed love, forgiveness for others who treated
her, and are still treating her, so badly. She gave and asked for nothing. She too
waited on God.
She was using those ‘loving chords’ and setting discords in harmony.

Mary Baker Eddy wrote to her adopted son, Ebenezer Foster Eddy:
‘Practise mentally not against the discord- but for the chord. If you tell nothing
(that) it is destroying itself, you are making something of it to
yourself.’1893/01/31
L01813 :

Mary Magdalene’s value ? She did not deal with the discord of her social
situation, she did not argue or confront, she saw the harmonious chord and
steadfast good which she received from Christ Jesus.
Later on when she was faced with the crucifixion, she was the first to see the
resurrected Jesus, because of her willingness to love, to put off the old man and
embrace the new man. In the discord of grief and anger, she heard the chord of
resurrection and Love.
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When the other Mary was faced with the crucifixion of her life’s work in the Next
Friend’s Suit in 1908, she also was the first to see the resurrected thought, she
also had the willingness to love, to forgive, wasting no time in resentment or
acrimony, and embraced the new man so completely she gave the world a brand
new international publication called the Christian Science Monitor, respected
world wide even today.
The ultimate Christian Science nurse.
Why was Mary Magdalene the ultimate Christian Science nurse?
1. She was already healed. She expected nothing from Jesus. She was wanting
to give all, to relinquish all :
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.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 249:1)
Seeing one God and His manifestation in the Christ, she accepted Truth Life and
Love, the triune Principle, with no contestation.
2. She heard only the harmonious chord of divine Love, not the discord of
material sense. She was:
Undisturbed amid the jarring testimony of the material senses, (Science and
Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 306:25)
3. She felt the power of the Word, in that Christly representation which Jesus
demonstrated. Having put off her past, her material present and her
material future, she placed all her faith in the Word of God which she knew
would be explained by this man. He was and still is ‘the way’.
4. With the perfume of gratitude, she negated:
….the snare of the fowler, and ( from) the noisome pestilence.
(Psalms 91:3)
5. She touched the feet of the Christ, and anointed him with the costly
ointment, expressing the spiritual in an act of deep devotion, humility,
gratitude, in a way all could experience. She made ‘practical’ her
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demonstration of Love, Life, truth. That costly ointment had been
purchased with funds she had earned from her illicit trade, but translated
into this act of devotion and love, it was transformed into spiritual
repentance. She did not use a towel or water to bathe the Master’s feet,
but her own hair, and her tears. She obviously had planned her entrance to
that banquet, yet did not bring a towel or water or a basin to bathe the
Master’s feet. She was telling him that she was giving her innermost self to
the Christ. There was no ‘tool’, or medium, such as water or towel, or
basin, no separation between herself and her God. She actually pre
empted two of the basic commandments of Jesus:
She bathed his feet as he did in the book of John, bathe the feet of his
disciples.(John 13).
She anointed him as one would a man dead, yet she did this while he was very
much alive.
And in the book of John we are told:

…. and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment.
(John 12:3)
See, hear, feel, smell, touch…….all the so called material senses translated to the
spiritual .
Divine Science, rising above physical theories, excludes matter, resolves things
into thoughts, (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy,
p. 123:12).

When I said she made practical her demonstration of Love, Truth, Life, this does
not mean she filtered the spiritual into the material and then demonstrated ‘fixed
matter’.
Mary Baker Eddy uses the word ‘practical’ several times in her works, but never
does it mean making the spiritual into a material model which man can accept.
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Practical is defined in the Oxford dictionary as derived from the Greek ‘praktikos’,
meaning : ‘concerned with action’.
It does not say this action has to be materially manifested.

In the Manual of the Mother Church, our Leader expands further on the practical
nature of Christian Science nursing: She mentions the ‘practical wisdom
necessary in a sickroom’. (p 49:7 Manual of The Mother Church).
Does this mean the CS nurse filters Spirit through matter to make it accessible and
practical?
That would never be in keeping with being ‘entirely separate from the belief and
dream of material living’ mentioned on page 14 of SH.
The key word is in the line above: demonstrable: to demonstrate the healing
power of the Christ ,not by dragging Spirit down to matter but by knowing the
allness of Spirit and dismissing the nothingness of matter.
Dismiss error. Don’t negotiate, argue, or try to change error. ‘Get thee behind me
Satan’, in Luke 4, that Jesus declared ,meant that he dismissed error, and knew it
had no further power over him to push him over that cliff.

Mary Magdalene demonstrated her obedience to the Christly command:
Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall
he do also; (John 14:12)

That is demonstration, and by turning things into thought, spiritualizing every
element of the case he or she is presented with, the Christian Science nurse
demonstrates ‘practical wisdom’, the practice of Christian Science. It is never
adapting a spiritual and sacred form of care so that it becomes mundane, trivial,
and a chore.

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A member of The Mother Church who represents himself or herself as a
Christian Science nurse shall be one …. who thoroughly understands the
practical wisdom necessary in a sick room, and who can take proper care of the
sick….says our Leader.
(Manual of The Mother Church, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 49:7 A)
Why practical wisdom?
Wisdom is described in Websters as the faculty of discerning. So our Christian
Science nurses are not in the business of personal wisdom or personal sense.
They are however in the business of discerning the chords of harmony , tuning
their ear to God and not to material discord, and they never place love on a false
basis. That is wisdom.
To an ill-attuned ear, discord is harmony; so personal
sense, discerning not the legitimate affection of Soul,
may place love on a false basis and thereby lose it.
(Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 287:8–10)
Wisdom is from God, not from man. “The wisdom of man is not sufficient to
warrant him in advising God.” SH p 3.
So when Mrs Eddy talks of practical wisdom, it is never man making that wisdom
accessible or ‘practical’ to matter. It is God manifesting Himself.

Mrs Eddy did not use the word ‘practicable’, which meant to put into material
practice a concept or an idea.
Christian Science nursing does not make Christian Science ‘practicable.’
From the Websters 1828: Practicable: that may be done, effected or performed
only by human means. Practicable is limited in its application to things which are
to be performed by limited means.
The wisdom of the Christian Science nurse hears the chord, not the discord of
material testimony. He/she dismisses:
19

….the fables of mortal mind, whose flimsy and gaudy pretensions, like silly
moths, singe their own wings and fall into dust.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 103:25).
Fables. From the archaic meaning, this word meant to invent an incident or story.
Fables cannot become practical in the sense of putting them into action. They do
not exist. They are the imagination, invention, of mortal belief, not the Truth of
immortal being.
They are the discord, not the loving chord.
How comforting to know that discord or any error or disease or sin for that
matter, is a fable, invented maintained and perpetrated by a lie. As such it has no
principle, person, place or thing.

She also tells us:
‘The higher one senses harmony, the more sensitive he is to discord; the same
[is true] in music. ‘
Letter to Lida Fitzpatrick July 8
th
1903: We Knew Mary Baker Eddy Volume II p
116.
We can right now sense the harmony, and dismiss the discord. In our daily lives,
as we practice to hear the harmony, the discord will become so glaringly obvious,
it will be dismissed completely. Not negotiated with, argued against or
belaboured. It will be :

“unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.”
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 441:11–12)

Never absent from your post, never off guard, never ill-humored, never unready
to work for God, — is obedience; being “faithful over a few things.”
(Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 116:26–29)
20

Like the two Marys.

Then may we be immersed in that infinite space :

Where there is always room
For every lovely, Godlike grace
To come to perfect bloom.

And where the :
….final obedience to spiritual law.
(Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 116:15–19)
….is our melody. The music is God. The lyrics is the Christ. The harmony is man.
I leave you with one thought. Mrs Eddy mentions Mary Magdalene on page 362 of
Science and Health, and she adds these words: “As she has since been called…”
Our Leader never saw Mary as a person, or a name in the Bible. She saw her as
the representation of unselfed Love, forgiveness, obedience, humility, devotion to
truth. The ultimate Christian Scientist. The ultimate Christian Science Practitioner.
The ultimate Christian Science nurse.