Article May 13, 1911 Issue

Mental suggestion is entirely foreign to Christian Science

Ezra W. Palmer—Denver, Col.

Rocky Mountain News

Mental suggestion is entirely foreign to Christian Science. The two are as far apart as the poles. Christian Science healing is accomplished through prayer to God, prayer in which God is recognized as infinite Spirit; "of purer eyes than to behold evil," as the prophet declares, and man is seen as the perfect child of God, pure, sinless, unfallen. The patient is led to see his God-given right to health and harmony, and that when he is governed by divine Mind, wholesomeness of mind and body inevitably follows. In this work mental suggestion has no part.

Mental suggestion, as the name implies, is the attempted control of the thoughts of one person by another, the subjection of one will to another, in other words, hypnotism. Since the human mind may be governed by evil as well as good motives, the effect of mental suggestion may be as conducive to evil as to good. In fact, experience has shown that its continued use is disastrous both to the operator and to the patient. So fully awake are Christian Scientists to the evil of mental suggestion, that not only do they not employ it, but its use is prohibited by the Manual of The Mother Church in Boston.

Christian Science teaches that God is personal, but not anthropomorphic; that He is not corporeal, but infinite personality—all-inclusive Mind. Christian Science does not teach that God is impersonal. The existence of evil in the material world Christian Science recognizes, but it denies that evil is a part of the kingdom of heaven. Sin, disease, and death are the evanescent, transient phenomena of mortal existence, not the eternal things of God's spiritual universe.

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