Article December 2, 1911 Issue

"There may be methods of treating such a disease...

W. E. Fell—Sheffield, Eng.

Yorkshire Telegraph and Star

"There may be methods of treating such a disease (nerves) by suggestion, and this is at the foundation of the doctrines of the so-called Christian Science." This opinion, which I quote, I am well aware is somewhat generally held, but incorrectly, since Christian Science has nothing whatever in common with suggestion. The basic discovery in the Science of Christianity is that all causation is mental, all cause and effect are mental, and as such the modus of thought directly influences the phenomena of existence. The Bible gives utterance to this basic truth in the words "As he [a man] thinketh in his heart, so is he." "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so" (Shakespeare). Jesus declared, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

Christian Science is the Science of right thinking, which brings out the right result or manifestation. The study of this Science instructs the student how to differentiate between right thoughts and wrong thoughts, and to apply this knowledge in the destruction of discordant conditions. The right thought is, of course, "the truth" spoken of by Jesus, that "makes free" from the error, the wrong thought that has superinduced the sin, the sickness, or the disease. We see, therefore, that suggestion can have nothing in common with the above process of knowing "the truth," the freedom-bringing truth.

A knowledge of the spiritual, or the absolute, frees us, as Jesus said it would, from the merely relative sense of things, the discords that obtain in the human sense of life. The truth must be good, wholly good from the very nature of its source, and this brings us quite naturally to the consideration of the question of suggestion, and we at once see that Christian Science and suggestion have no common basis. Manifestly if a sick-headache can be removed by suggestion, it can also be produced by suggestion, and herein lies the latter's menace to a defenseless public. It claims to be productive of good and evil, the fruit of that tree of which God said in the beginning, "In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." Christian Science, from its very nature, is absolutely incapable of working aught but good. It cannot injure, but must benefit and bless the receptive thought, manifesting its Christliness in better health, improved morals, higher ideals, and a sense of happiness and freedom from care undreamed of by the thought uninstructed in the Principle and rule of scientific Christianity.

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