Article August 7, 1915 Issue

In a recent issue of the News, a contributor whose good...

Charles E. Jarvis

El Cajon (Cal.) Valley News

In a recent issue of the News, a contributor whose good intentions are obvious, unfortunately attempted an explanation of Christian Science which might create with your readers the impression that autosuggestion is the most efficient factor in its healing work, whereas it would be difficult to find two subjects more diametrically opposed to each other. It should be remembered that autosuggestion, hypnotism, and mesmerism, all of which are closely allied, are but slightly varying phases of the belief that one human mind can control another for good or evil. They therefore not only become unstable agencies, but dangerous to human welfare.

On the other hand, Christian Science, in consonance with the Scriptures, teaches that man is created and governed by an infinite, eternal, omnipotent God, who, because of His infinity, can only be comprehended by human sense as divine intelligence or Mind, and it is this Mind which enabled Jesus to perform the works which he said his followers should do also. Jesus did not merely look on the bright side of things, nor was it because of faith in himself that he attained his results; rather was it by reason of his clear understanding of the operation of God's unerring law. When he said, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. ... I can of mine own self do nothing ... I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me," he made it perfectly clear that neither autosuggestion, mesmerism, nor self-will entered into his inspired undertakings.

On page 469 of the Christian Science text-book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," to which we would refer those who seek further light on this subject, Mrs. Eddy tells us: "The exterminator of error is the great truth that God, good, is the only Mind, and that the supposititious opposite of infinite Mind—called devil or evil—is not Mind, is not Truth, but error, without intelligence or reality. There can be but one Mind, because there is but one God; and if mortals claimed no other Mind and accepted no other, sin would be unknown. We can have but one Mind, if that one is infinite. We bury the sense of infinitude, when we admit that, although God is infinite, evil has a place in this infinity, for evil can have no place, where all space is filled with God."

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