Article October 10, 1914 Issue

Will you permit me to point out once more that there is no...

Frederick Dixon

Newcastle (England) Weekly Chronicle

Will you permit me to point out once more that there is no connection between suggestion of any sort and Christian Science? I am driven to this because of an article recently published in your paper, entitled "How to Get On," which argues that Christian Science is a phase of "self-hypnotism." There are, of course, about as many definitions of suggestion as Huxley once said there were of religion, that is to say, there is a definition for each definer. Ultimately, however, the thing comes to this, that suggestion is the attempt to instill certain beliefs into the consciousness which will produce a change of thought. Self-hypnotism, then, is really largely a form of self-deception, but inasmuch as a person acts in accordance with that self-deception, it has a very pronounced effect. Under the influence of self-hypnotism, that is to say, all sorts of changes may be rung on the gamut of effect, but the causes remain absolutely untouched. That is one of the numerous dangers connected with it.

Christian Science, on the other hand, relegates effects to their proper place, and scientifically deals with causes. You may, by a process of hypnotism, turn a patient's thought temporarily into a new channel, but you will not affect the cause of disease. In Christian Science you attack the cause of disease itself, through a scientific understanding of the absolute fact of its non-existence. It is here that the necessity arises for an understanding of the unreality of matter, as taught in Christian Science, and generously perverted by the critics of that teaching.

When once the scientific theory of the unreality of matter, as really taught in Christian Science, is grasped, a basis is afforded for the destruction of all phases of inharmony which exist in matter. Now, if matter itself is nothing but the subjective condition of mortal mind, and that is the common basis of all idealistic philosophy, then the cause of every phase of inharmony  must be a mental one, and can only be permanently destroyed through Mind. It is not in the least the case of suggesting a new line of thought to a patient, it is a question of realizing for and teaching the patient the absolute truth which Jesus declared would make the world free from those mistaken beliefs which constitute its ignorance.

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