Article October 31, 1925 Issue

It has been stated that according to M. Coué, an idea...

Mrs. Caroline Getty, Committee on Publication for France,—Paris (translation)

Mercure de France

It has been stated that according to M. Coué, an idea put out by the operator is accepted by the subject. According to Christian Science, all right ideas emanate from divine Mind, God, and mankind gains a knowledge of God and comes under His government by discerning His ideas and utilizing them. Note that in Christian Science an idea is not put out by the operator and directed towards the subject, who accepts it. Every right idea comes from God and is available to all. A right idea is a spiritual and eternal fact; the human mind has nothing to do with it. The human mind can only produce notions, beliefs, sometimes good, sometimes bad. From this so-called mind come fashionable ailments, fashionable modes of cure, remedies, serums, suggestion, autosuggestion, and the like. The divine Mind is the creator of ideas; and these ideas, emanating from God, are like God. These ideas are eternal facts, true everywhere and always; and those who learn them as Christian Science teaches, learn also how to utilize them so as to demonstrate this harmony, goodness, health, this affluence of good which obtains in the kingdom of heaven, the realm of divine Mind. This supersensible or metaphysical realm, discerned, becomes the ideal of the Christian Scientist; and henceforth he strives to reach this ideal, where all is God and His idea; and at every step towards the fulfillment of his ideal, he gains the proof that he is on the right road, for he notices that his health improves as he turns away from mortal thinking, such as disease, worry, accident, hatred, war, lack, and so on, and thinks health, joy, love, peace, abundance, and understands the law of God, which allows of no accident.

This, then, is the difference between suggestion and Christian Science. In the former an idea is claimed to be put out by the operator and accepted by the subject. Christian Science shows man to be governed solely by God, whom we learn to know through His ideas. In the former, everything is going on in the human or mortal mind, which is capable of evil as well as of good. In the latter, everything is going on in the divine Mind, which knows good only, which is infinite and supreme good. This is why the results of the two treatments are so different. Suggestion does not improve the patient morally, because the mental cause has not been healed. Christian Science heals the mentality of the patient by teaching him the Science of being, and by making him able to apprehend and demonstrate the harmony of real being. It is a pity that the critic should have gleaned his knowledge of the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, from books written by the enemies of this grand woman. She was healed in 1866, at the age of forty-five years, through divine power, after an accident the results of which no doctor could heal; and she later discovered the divine law which had healed her. Her study of the Bible and her great desire to help mankind revealed this law to her. Between then and 1910, when she passed on, she founded the movement known as the Christian Science movement, which has several millions of followers, more than two thousand churches and societies, and thousands of practitioners the world over.

The few remarks made by a critic on the subject of Christian Science do not touch the grand point, namely, that God is the divine Principle of man, and that when life is lived according to this divine Principle, it is beautiful and harmonious. Those who desire really to know Christian Science will learn of it in the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy. On page 227 of this book it is written: "Christian Science raises the standard of liberty and cries: 'Follow me! Escape from the bondage of sickness, sin, and death!' Jesus marked out the way. Citizens of the world, accept the 'glorious liberty of the children of God,' and be free! This is your divine right. The illusion of material sense, not divine law, has bound you, entangled your free limbs, crippled your capacities, enfeebled your body, and defaced the tablet of your being."

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