Article January 15, 1910 Issue

Christian Science does not plead in behalf of any form...

Alfred Farlow

St. Louis (Mo.) Republic

Christian Science does not plead in behalf of any form of superstition or irrationality, but it affords a scientific method for uncovering these and a demonstrable method for destroying them. We must not mistake the uncovering of evil's false pretenses for an indorsement of those pretenses. Moreover, the blind, futile, and unchristian effort to exert evil mental influence is not a product nor a consequence of Christian Science. It is its counterfeit. It is simply a more aggressive form of the latent falsity of the supposed "carnal mind" which Christian Science exposes, and which seeks to maintain its position in self-defense as it writhes under the doom of divine Science.

Christian Science is uncovering and destroying evil's hidden forms and is establishing the peace and harmony of omnipotent good. In Christian Science it is understood that malicious animal magnetism has no power. It is at most only deception, and can only affect the unwary, those who fail to understand the eternal spiritual truth. Mrs. Eddy does not believe that malicious mental malpractice is a power. She has discovered that certain persons do believe in such a power and seek to exercise it, and she has taught her students how to defend themselves against such deception by keeping their thought filled with that which is pure and good. To do evil one is obliged to make a complete departure from the teachings of Christian Science and resort to unchristian subterfuge, and he thus becomes the victim of deception, not a practitioner of Christian Science. Every thought, word, and deed of the consistent Christian Scientist is an effort in behalf of good as the only exterminator of evil.

Christian Science teaches that there is in reality but one power or force; that is, God, Spirit, Mind, Truth, Love; and that, therefore, the Christian warfare is the human effort to become subject to the Mind which was in Christ—to become submissive to the divine Mind and thus silence human will, which the Scriptures denominate the "carnal mind." St. Paul describes this warfare in the following words: "For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other." Science always settles the battle on the side of Spirit, because Spirit is the "real and eternal" and "matter [flesh] is the unreal and temporal" (Science and Health, p. 468). Since Science has introduced the proposition that God is the only real Mind, the "carnal mind" in all its varied manifestations is naturally, in the interest of self-preservation, arrayed against it. Therefore, every wilful phase of the supposed human opposition which is aroused by the introduction of Science is malicious. Hence the use of the term "malicious animal magnetism." It is called magnetism because it refers to a supposed power independent of God; and malicious in keeping with the Scriptural declaration, "The carnal mind is enmity against God."

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