Article October 20, 1917 Issue

It seems unfortunate that a periodical of such high standing...

George R. Lowe

Toronto (Ontario) Saturday Night

It seems unfortunate that a periodical of such high standing as Saturday Night should have been betrayed into such a pitfall of loose expression as to say, "Mrs. Eddy's theory of malicious animal magnetism," when dealing lightly with the psychology of shopping.

Mrs. Eddy did not invent a new devil named "m. a. m.," as might be inferred from your statement; she did not propound a new theory of magnified evil and thus add to the terrors of the human mind. She did practice and teach the omnipotence of absolute good, God, and the consequent impotence of evil. In pursuing this scientific practice of overcoming evil, sin, disease, in human experience, thus following the example of Christ Jesus, she demonstrated her discovery to be worthy of the designation Christian Science. In dealing with evil from this standpoint she detected and uncovered its exceeding sinfulness, exposed the harmfulness of hypnotic suggestion as capable of any crime, and used the term "malicious animal magnetism" to describe evil at its worst. Could there be any more expressive term for the source of the horrors prepetrated in our day on land and sea?

Mrs. Eddy's thought and work are beneficent in purpose. Her analysis of evil was to destroy it; not to ignore or cover it up, but to expose its wrongness, lawlessness, and falsity, and thus to annul it as something which has no part in God's creation. By this spiritual process hundreds of thousands have overcome in some measure the fear of evil, and have been healed of diseases induced by the fear of evil.

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