Description
Laura Sargent attended two Primary Classes and one Normal Class with Mrs. Eddy, and taught her first class in 1887, but she is best remembered for her dedicated service to Mrs. Eddy as housekeeper and companion. Soon after Mrs. Eddy left Boston to live in Concord, New Hampshire, she asked Mrs. Sargent to become a member of her household. Mrs. Sargent was her constant companion throughout the remainder of Mrs. Eddy’s days.
These Notes from one of Mrs. Sargent’s classes reflect Mrs. Eddy’s highest teachings — those given to students in her home. They focus almost entirely on the pure sense of God’s allness and man’s oneness with Him, and this oneness necessarily excludes the presence and power of evil. Again and again, Mrs. Sargent emphasizes that Truth is an unfoldment, the inner coming to light of the spiritual understanding that is already present in consciousness.
In the Notes we find the following statements:
“Divine Mind is forever manifesting itself and man is the forever manifestation. The divine idea is divine understanding. The true nature of man is synonymous with the Word of God. I am the Word of God. That which is taking place is a further revelation of what I already am. It is a welling up from within. Divine ideas do not come to me. They originate within. No inspiration can come from outside. I am not a person receiving the Truth. I am the activity of Truth itself. Truth never comes from outside, but is an inner subjective unfoldment. . . .”
“Receptivity formerly appeared as a person having a mind of his own receptive to Truth coming from outside. But now it means that the revelation of Mind is my own understanding. It is the recognition that the infinite range of Truth is already mine. The purpose of Christian Science is to behold everything from the standpoint of Truth itself, and thereby reject all limited sense. Every fact of divine reality is already included in man’s true being. This removes restriction and limitation. The purpose of teaching is liberation from misconception. It is to lead out from a mortal sense.”