IN THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE BIBLE LESSON February 8, 2010 ISSUE

A SONG OF PRAISE

VIRGINIA STOPFEL

HOW APPROPRIATE to begin this Christian Science Bible Lesson, titled "Soul," with a song of thanksgiving and praise to God, who is Soul, for His saving deeds among us all. The citations from Psalms in the Responsive Reading catch the Biblical sense of man's relation to Soul: God holds our identity and every aspect of our life in His grasp. This sense of oneness of being—what we are and how we live—runs through this Lesson.

Section I takes us straight to a central point: "Soul is synonymous with Spirit, God, the creative, governing, infinite Principle outside of finite form, which forms only reflect" (Science and Health, p. 71, citation 4). This, together with the assurance that "God expresses in man the infinite idea forever developing itself, broadening and rising higher and higher from a boundless basis" (p. 258, cit. 5), resonates with the Hebraic view of Soul as a way to be, not something to have.