Article September 10, 1910 Issue

The theory of mental suggestion, whether worked out in...

Frederick Dixon

Bedford and County (Eng.) Record

The theory of mental suggestion, whether worked out in mesmerism, hypnotism, or any of its other phases, is as old as the human mind. It is based on the belief that it is possible for one person to influence another person by some process of mental manipulation. The Old Testament is full of the records of these workers, who were known sometimes as magicians or necromancers, sometimes as diviners, and between whom and the priests and prophets of Israel there was waged a perpetual and relentless war. Now, as no one has ever dared to pretend that the human mind is not largely actuated by evil, it follows that the claim of this mind to do good is inseparable from its claim to do evil. The author of the Jehovistic document of the book of Genesis made use of his allegory to express this very fact, when he declared that those who ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would surely die.

Centuries later, Jesus made use of a somewhat similar image. "A good tree," he said, "cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit." The human mind, impregnated with its animal passions, is certainly a tree capable of bringing forth evil fruit. In those words, therefore, Jesus once and for all set aside the recognition of the human mind as a possible factor in Christian healing. "But," he went on to say, "if I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you." The kingdom of God, he made it clear in these words, never could come to any man through suggestion from a mind believing in good and evil. The kingdom of God comes to a man precisely in the proportion in which he attains the Mind which was in Christ Jesus, and exactly as he gains this Mind, he gains necessarily the knowledge of the truth which Jesus said would make the world free.

A great English scholar and churchman has dwelt upon the distinction always drawn, in the Greek text of the Fourth Gospel, between the absolute and the relative. The writer, in the words just quoted, was referring to absolute Truth, the knowledge of which is the most scientific thing in the world, and which is referred to in the epistles in a phrase translated knowledge of God, but which should, of course, be translated exact, or scientific knowledge of God, and so of Truth. "Jesus of Nazareth," writes Mrs. Eddy, on page 313 of Science and Health, "was the most scientific man that ever trod the globe. He plunged beneath the material surface of things, and found the spiritual cause." Because, as the writer of the Fourth Gospel points out, Truth is absolute, he knew it was necessarily scientific, and being scientific was, equally necessarily, demonstrable. When, therefore, he sent out his disciples into the world, it was not merely to preach the gospel, but to heal the sick, for he declared those who believed in him would be able to do the works which he had done. The question, therefore, necessarily arises, what did this faith amount to, or in plain English, what is to be understood from the Bible use of the words belief and faith?

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