Article June 28, 1924 Issue

An item in a recent issue of Facts quotes the Jewish Sentinel...

Douglas L. Edmonds, Committee on Publication for Southern California,—Redlands

Facts

An item in a recent issue of Facts quotes the Jewish Sentinel as mentioning Christian Science in connection with the doctrines of psychoanalysis as developed by Freud. It should be understood, however, that these have nothing in common, and are essentially different in theory and in practice. According to the New International Encyclopedia, the method of psychoanalysis is highly technical, and consists of the employment of the patient's free association as an aid to the subsequent recall of the forgotten or submerged group of ideas. Christian Science, on the other hand, is the simple teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. It has nothing to do with human opinions or human will, but accepts with exact literalness his promise that "these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." And this is being accomplished, not through any operation of the so-called human mind, but as the signs following the knowledge of that understanding of God which Jesus demonstrated.

For three hundred years after the time of Jesus, the early Christians followed his teachings, and the Acts of the Apostles and the writings of Paul record the progress of their work. Then humanity turned away from that Mind which was in Christ Jesus, to creed and doctrine. The result of this was an entire loss of spiritual healing until Mary Baker Eddy, in 1866, again made possible the same works which Jesus accomplished, through her understanding that God, the divine Principle, is ever with men, and is just as available here and now as when Jesus taught the simple folk of Palestine on the shores of Galilee. As she has said in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (Pref., p. xi): "The physical healing of Christian Science results now, as in Jesus' time, from the operation of divine Principle, before which sin and disease lose their reality in human consciousness and disappear as naturally and as necessarily as darkness gives place to light and sin to reformation. Now, as then, these mighty works are not supernatural, but supremely natural. They are the sign of Immanuel, or 'God with us,'—a divine influence ever present in human consciousness and repeating itself, coming now as was promised aforetime.

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