Article August 19, 1911 Issue

In discussing the question of mental suggestion, hypnotism,...

Frederick Dixon

Lewisham (Eng.) Borough News

In discussing the question of mental suggestion, hypnotism, or any other of its various aliases, the one thing it is necessary to keep perpetually in the foreground is the fact of the utter unreality and powerlessness of evil. The necessity for this arises from the fact that for centuries the world has been educated into a belief that evil is real and constitutes power. Of late years, however, there has grown up a body of people who, under the teaching of Mrs. Eddy, have been learning to relegate evil to its true, and consequently scientific, position in the economy of human thought. These people have grasped the theory of the unreality of evil, and are beginning with ever increasing success to demonstrate this in practice. They realize that evil is unreal; that is to say, that it is the negation of divine Principle, or, as Jesus expressed it, a lie. At the same time, they realize that a lie exercises a temporary effect on those who are deceived by it, and therefore that it needs to be exposed in order that its powerlessness may be proved. They do not, therefore, content themselves with mere blank denials, they exert themselves to know the absolute truth, conscious that, as Jesus told them, the acquirement of this knowledge will free them from the effect of any false belief in evil as a reality, and conscious also that the way to break the bondage of others is first to gain their own complete liberty. It was because Jesus had entirely mastered evil himself that he was able to loose the woman Satan had bound, and therein lies the secret of those words of his, which he addressed to the disciples on the road to Gethsemane: "In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." That victory was for all time.

All occult working is a species of mental manipulation. The witch of Endor did not reincarnate Samuel, but she did superinduce in Saul the belief that he was in the presence of the prophet; the vagabond Jews, the exorcists of Ephesus, certainly produced in the minds of those over whom they exercised their incantations some impression which expressed itself in a physical result. The whole process was one of mental suggestion, and that process, whether under the name of necromancy or exorcism, of astrology or divination, of enchantment or witchcraft, of mesmerism or hypnotism, is simply the result of that conscious or unconscious belief in animal magnetism which Mrs. Eddy has explained on page 103 of Science and Health in saying, "As named in Christian Science, animal magnetism or hypnotism is the specific term for error, or mortal mind. It is the false belief that mind is in matter, and is both evil and good; that evil is as real as good and more powerful. This belief has not one quality of Truth."

Christian Science is founded entirely on the Bible, and anybody who will compare the words of Jesus with Science and Health will see how completely they agree. Mortal mind, Mrs. Eddy says, contradicts itself, and this is exactly what Jesus explained by describing it as a house divided against itself.

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