CITATIONS ON THE BEATITUDES AND SERMON ON THE MOUNT
FROM THE WRITINGS OF MARY BAKER EDDY

"If ever I wear out from serving students, it shall be in the effort to help them to
obey the Ten Commandments and imbibe the spirit of Christ's Beatitudes."
(Miscellaneous Writings, 303)

"Lean not too much on your Leader. Trust God to direct your steps. Accept my
counsel and teachings only as they include the spirit and the letter of the Ten
Commandments, the Beatitudes, and the teachings and example of Christ Jesus."
(Miscellany, 129)

"The thunder of Sinai and the Sermon on the Mount are pursuing and will
overtake the ages, rebuking in their course all error and proclaiming the
kingdom of heaven on earth. Truth is revealed. It needs only to be practiced."
(Science and Health, 174)

"Our Master said, 'But the Comforter . . . shall teach you all things.' When the
Science of Christianity appears, it will lead you into all truth. The Sermon on the
Mount is the essence of this Science, and the eternal life, not the death of Jesus, is
its outcome." (S&H 271)

"The present is ours; the future, big with events. Every man and woman should be
to-day a law to himself, herself, -- a law of loyalty to Jesus' Sermon on the Mount."
(Mis. 12)

"Christian Science begins with the First Commandment of the Hebrew Decalogue,
'Thou shalt have no other gods before me.' It goes on in perfect unity with Christ's
Sermon on the Mount, and in that age culminates in the Revelation of St. John, who,
while on earth and in the flesh, like ourselves, beheld 'a new heaven and a new
earth,' -- the spiritual universe, whereof Christian Science now bears testimony."
(Mis. 21)

"In divine Science it is found that matter is a phase of error, and that neither one
really exists, since God is Truth, and All-in-all. Christ's Sermon on the Mount,
in its direct application to human needs, confirms this conclusion." (Mis. 25)

"Sin punishes itself, because it cannot go unpunished either here or hereafter.
Nothing is more fatal than to indulge a sinning sense or consciousness for even
one moment. Knowing this, obey Christ's Sermon on the Mount, even if you suffer
for it in the first instance, -- are misjudged and maligned; in the second, you will
reign with him." (Mis. 93)

"The teachers of Christian Science . . . must themselves practice, and teach
others to practise, the Hebrew Decalogue, the Sermon on the Mount, and the
understanding and enunciation of these according to Christ." (Mis. 114)

"The parable of 'the prodigal son' is rightly called 'the pearl of parables,' and our
Master's greatest utterance may well be called 'the diamond sermon.' No purer and
more exalted teachings ever fell upon human ears than those contained in what is
commonly known as the Sermon on the Mount, -- though this name has been given it
by compilers and translators of the Bible, and not by the Master himself or by the
Scripture authors. Indeed, this title really indicates more the Master's mood, than
the material locality." (Ret. 91)

"Genuine Christian Scientists will no more deviate morally from that divine digest
of Science called the Sermon on the Mount, than they will manipulate invalids,
prescribe drugs, or deny God." (Rud. 3)

"The lecturer, teacher, or healer who is indeed a Christian Scientist . . . keeps
unbroken the Ten Commandments, and practices Christ's Sermon on the Mount."
(Rud. 11)

"True, I have made the Bible, and 'Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,'
the pastor for all the churches of the Christian Science denomination, but that does
not make it impossible for this pastor of ours to preach! To my sense the Sermon
on the Mount, read each Sunday without comment and obeyed throughout the week,
would be enough for Christian practice. The Word of God is a powerful preacher,
and it is not too spiritual to be practical, nor too transcendental to be heard and
understood. Whosoever saith there is no sermon without personal preaching,
forgets what Christian Scientists do not, namely, that God is a Person, and that
he should be willing to hear a sermon from his personal God!" ('01 11)

"The lives of those old-fashioned leaders of religion explain in a few words a
good man. They fill the ecclesiastic measure, that to love God and keep His
commandments is the whole duty of man. Such churchmen and the Bible,
especially the First Commandment of the Decalogue, and Ninety-first Psalm,
the Sermon on the Mount, and St. John's Revelation, educated my thought many
years, yea, all the way up to its preparation for and reception of the Science of
Christianity. I believe, if those venerable Christians were here to-day, their
sanctified souls would take in the spirit and understanding of Christian Science
through the flood-gates of Love; with them Love was the governing impulse of
every action; their piety was the all-important consideration of their being, the
original beauty of holiness that to-day seems to be fading so sensibly from our
sight." ('01 32)

"The ever-recurring human question and wonder, What is God? can never be
answered satisfactorily by human hypotheses or philosophy. Divine metaphysics
and St. John have answered this great question forever in these words: 'God is
Love.' This absolute definition of Deity is the theme for time and for eternity; it
is iterated in the law of God, reiterated in the gospel of Christ, voiced in the
thunder of Sinai, and breathed in the Sermon on the Mount. Hence our Master's
saying, 'Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not
come to destroy, but to fulfill." ('02 5)

"Whosever understands Christian Science knows beyond a doubt that its
life-giving truths were preached and practised in the first century by him who
proved their practicality, who uttered Christ's Sermon on the Mount, who taught
his disciples the healing Christianity which applies to all ages, and who dated
time. A spiritual understanding of the Scriptures restores their original tongue
in the language of Spirit, that primordial standard of Truth." (My 180)


The First Beatitude: "Blessed are the poor in spirit"