Editorial July 22, 1916 Issue

The Word

William D. McCrackan

John tells us that "the Word was with God, and the Word was God," thus declaring that the Word is of the same quality as God. This Word, or Logos, is described in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy as "demonstrably Christian Science, the natural law of harmony which overcomes discord" (p. 134). How important then that the Word should not be counterfeited in human thought! The Logos understood and practised is equal to every emergency. It destroys secret sin, unwinds the cords of habitual evil, exterminates the subtlest pretenses, dissolves hardened misconceptions, pricks the growths of pompous pride, sets free the enslaved senses, cures distracted mentalities, and operates better than any surgeon's knife upon diseased physical organs. Moreover, this same Logos stands ready to save nations as well as individuals from the necessity of further chemicalization through the application of lawful and disciplinary activity.

The student of Christian Science is familiar with the metaphysical phenomenon of words perverted from their true meaning and so used to perpetrate further evils. What havoc in human experience has not been caused by the misuse of such words for instance as love, church, state, organization, body, peace, heaven, and the like! As the military methods of today have uncovered the deliberately planned intent to destroy human life by poisonous gases, so prevailing mental struggles have unmasked batteries sending forth perverted words to asphyxiate the unwary and somnolent. Words represent thoughts, and a poisoned word stands for a poisoned thought. Among such poison-carriers the scientific Christian will do well to watch with special care the word neutrality. Used as equivalent to "apathy," this word has been projected into human consciousness, and has seemingly produced the intended effect of inducing millions of human beings to believe that they cannot tell the difference between right and wrong.

Mrs. Eddy states, "Sleep and apathy are phases of the dream that life, substance, and intelligence are material" (Science and Health, p. 249). This dream of material life is the outcome of the material or mortal mind, which is further defined in Christian Science as animal magnetism. Of the operation of this supposititious force we read in Science and Health (p. 102), "So secret are the present methods of animal magnetism that they ensnare the age into indolence, and produce the very apathy on the subject which the criminal desires." Thus the perverted sense of the term neutrality, which induces men and nations to believe that they do not know the distinction between good and evil, takes one step further and becomes agnosticism, or that state of mind which keeps declaring in constant and vain repetition, I do not know. Now agnosticism is the negation of Science.

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