Article November 18, 1916 Issue

Our Daily Study

MARGARETTE J. ROOT

The importance of the Lesson-Sermon in the Christian Scientist's study can hardly be overestimated, for regardless of the particular phase of the Christian Science movement in which it may be one's privilege to work, whether as Sunday school teacher, as officer, or as obedient member, each one resorts daily to the Lesson-Sermon for his mental refreshment. It becomes, therefore, a vital question for each earnest Scientist, whether he is progressing in this respect.

After having spent years in this daily study, one may be tempted to lapse into a mechanical method of taking it as a matter of course, as a burdensome duty which must be performed before beginning the daily routine, or as a study quite apart from one's own experience, much as a Latin student might translate a given lesson and then set it aside as something unrelated to his moral progress. If such a temptation comes, it is high time to awake to the truth of the sentence on page 233 of Science and Health, which reads, "Every day makes its demands upon us for higher proofs rather than professions of Christian power."

Having reread a particular Lesson-Sermon for several days, the student may become satisfied with his familiarity with the letter of the word and fail to delve beneath for the spiritual sense which should be his essential food for that specific day. Then may it not be said that he is in a certain sense taking the name of divine Truth in vain? Perhaps as the last of the week comes he may be unconsciously passing glibly over the then familiar passages, attempting in vain to use again yesterday's substance. Called aside by this or that demand, pressed by this or that "important problem," how often does he hurriedly set aside the Lesson-Sermon, unaware of the truth voiced in one of our hymns, "Beneath thy feet, Life's pearl is cast" (Hymnal, p. 12). Beneath the very words which he is reading lies the spiritual substance which, if imbibed, would furnish the exact vision needed to dispel his mental darkness, the very corrective necessary to solve his pressing problem.

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