Article April 28, 1923 Issue

Kindly allow me to make this comment in your columns...

Judge Clifford P. Smith, Committee on Publication for The Mother Church,—Quincy, Mass.

Patriot-Ledger

Kindly allow me to make this comment in your columns on the recent editorial in which you said, "The suggestion method is considered by many to be the basis of healing by a great religious organization." Doubtless the statement here quoted is true as far as it goes, but I believe that the information it contains is quite incomplete without the further information that Christian Scientists, and most other people, regard the practice of Christian Science as utterly different from the use of suggestion or self-suggestion.

The practice of Christian Science is so different from the use of suggestion or self-suggestion that a full statement of the difference involves the difficulty of stating the differences between practices which are fundamentally unlike each other, and hardly have even superficial resemblances. Nevertheless, here are two differences that ought to be entirely clear. Self-suggestion usually is practiced by the insistent repetition of formulas. Christian Science depends on spiritual understanding, spontaneously expressed, and positively forbids the use of formulas.

The main difference, however, between the practice of Christian Science and the use of suggestion is the difference between that which is divine and that which is merely human. The practice of Christian Science ascribes no power at all to the so-called human mind, but depends entirely on the action, law, and power of God, the divine Mind, in accordance with such precepts as the following from Christ Jesus: "I can of mine own self do nothing."

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