Article November 1, 1913 Issue

A statement made in a recent issue attempts to couple...

Paul Stark Seeley—Portland, Ore.

The Telegram

A statement made in a recent issue attempts to couple Christian Science with will-power and mental suggestion as a means of healing. The statement is entirely erroneous, and I therefore ask leave to correct it. In truth, will-power and mental suggestion are the direct antitheses of Christian Science, and cannot be used in connection with it any more than two objects can occupy the same space at the same time. Neither human will nor the usages of mental suggestion bear any relation to Christian Science, nor can either be coordinated or conjoined with it in practise. They are mutually exclusive, for where the latter is the former cannot be, and vice versa. Indeed, the line of demarcation is so clear that he who runs may read, if he will.

The basis of Christian Science healing is the recognition and realization in individual consciousness of God as infinite good, perfect and eternal, and of the true man, His son, as made in His image and likeness, spiritual and good, thus affirming the spiritual fact stated by John, that man is in truth the son of God. Thus it is seen that healing in Christian Science is accomplished only through an understanding in some measure of spiritual existence, and of the Father, "whom to know aright is Life eternal" (Science and Health, Pref., p. vii). The human will, on the other hand, recognizing no God, acknowledging no law, abjuring all science, utterly forsakes the basis of healing accepted and proved true by the Master and his disciples, and now made the foundation for present-day healing works by Christian Science. Without principle or intelligence, the will of mortal man strives to do that for which no reason exists save its own vacillating impulse. A phase of the carnal mind declared by Paul to be "at enmity against God," it must eventually perish of its own weakness, as man perceives his present and eternal unity and coexistence with God, whose nature he in reality possesses. Then, laying aside all pride, arrogance, personal sense, and self-will, he will be able to say with Jesus, "I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father."

Like will-power, mental suggestion has nothing in common with Christian Science. In fact, it has no more to do with Christian Science than it has to do with God, and its relationship with God is nil. Sometimes practised by a person upon himself, temporarily to remove one form of belief with another, it is more often employed by the hypnotist, with or without the subject's consent, to accomplish through another his own purposes, and wholly without consideration for God or his fellow man. Conceived in ignorance and clothed in a phraseology of modern invention, it carries beneath its mask the mystery, superstition, and sophistry of ages. Seeming at times to do good but in truth doing only evil, it is double-edged and Janus-faced, divided against itself. Without God it is without hope, and loses its temporary place in the practises of mankind as consciousness becomes enlightened and men turn from the testimony of material sense to spiritual sense, from the mortal to the immortal, from the temporal to the eternal. Both will-power and mental suggestion are of the mortal or human mind. Writing of this mind in Science and Health (p. 151), Mrs. Eddy says: "The human mind has no power to kill or to cure, and it has no control over God's man."

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