Editorial September 26, 1914 Issue

No Other Cause or Effect

Archibald McLellan

One of the many misconceptions of Christian Science which have found credence with those who have not studied this subject, and therefore are not in a position to judge its teachings fairly, is the belief that Mrs. Eddy taught her followers a process by which they may injure other persons, or may in turn themselves be injured. This supposed process, all the more mysterious and fearful because not understood, is believed to be somewhat akin to witchcraft, and is commonly known as animal magnetism. The tree is known by its fruit, and that the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, one whose own rule of life was to return good for evil, could ever have devised or taught such a pernicious doctrine, is not to be credited by those who are familiar with the actual teachings of Christian Science. They do not hesitate, therefore, to stamp the claim that she did lend herself to such practices as untrue.

Mrs. Eddy, by making use of the term animal magnetism in characterizing evil, simply classified in a convenient way "the voluntary or involuntary action of error in all its forms" (Science and Health, p. 484). As to its supposed power she writes: "Animal magnetism has no scientific foundation, for God governs all that is real, harmonious, and eternal, and His power is neither animal nor human. Its basis being a belief and this belief animal, in Science animal magnetism, mesmerism, or hypnotism is a mere negation, possessing neither intelligence, power, nor reality ... 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" (pp. 102, 103).

Throughout her writings Mrs. Eddy is insistent upon the fact that God is good, and that He is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. This being true, it is only common sense to recognize that there can be neither place nor power in the universe of God's creating for anything so wholly unlike Himself as evil. It is through an unfaltering faith in the allness of God,—to Him alone all things are possible,—that we come to see the consequent nothingness and impotence of evil and can bid it depart. For Christian Scientists, therefore, to believe that there is any other power than God, who is good and only good, would be entirely inconsistent with Christianity as taught and practised by Christ Jesus. We must be alert, as was he, to the insidiousness of the claims which evil puts forth, trying to find a weak spot in our armor. It may appeal to the desire for revenge, the pride of place and power, the thirst of mad ambition, and clothe itself ever so skilfully in the guise of good, but back of it all is the scheme to set itself up in opposition to the one power, God. When this is uncovered, and we see it in all its hideousness, we shall declare as did our Master, "Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve."

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