Article December 22, 1923 Issue

Christian Science employs in its healing ministry nothing...

Theodore Burkhart, Committee on Publication for the State of Oregon,—Portland

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Christian Science employs in its healing ministry nothing that is evil or is capable of producing evil. In speaking of the power of Mind over matter being employed in the practice of Christian Science, it is the divine Mind that is meant, and not the human or mortal mind. Paul calls the latter the "carnal mind," which, he says, "is enmity against God."

Christian Science maintains, as did Jesus and his apostles, that all that is genuinely and permanently good comes from God, and from Him alone, whose being contains no element capable of doing harm. "Every good gift and every perfect gift," James tells us, "is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." In answering the charge that he healed by the aid of "Beelzebub the chief of the devils,"

Jesus characterized the belief that evil can cast out evil as a house divided against itself, which, he said, "cannot stand;" and human experience with suggestion and hypnotism confirms the truth of his teaching. It must be clear that hypnotism and suggestion no more enter into the practice of Christian Science than they did into that of the master Christian. The admission that selfish thinking affects a person physically as well as mentally, emphasizes the vital importance of controlling the character of our thoughts. Here is where Christian Science is so eminently practical and helpful, not only bringing about healtheir conditions of mind and body by improving the character of one's thinking, and thus proving the truth of its teachings, but also enabling its followers to distinguish accurately between the only healing method that is Scriptural and Christianly scientific, and its many counterfeits. The one is permanently satisfying, being productive of nothing but unadulterated good. Opposing human systems and their effects are necessarily like their origin,—imperfect, changeable, temporal, and embracing both good and evil; and any seeming good resulting therefrom must ultimately prove unsatisfying, because deceptive and unenduring; for, as Jesus says of the effect of hypnotic evils, "the last state of that man is worse than the first."

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