Article December 3, 1927 Issue

A contributor writing for your recent issue, under the...

Hugh Stuart Campbell, Committee on Publication for the State of Illinois,—Chicago

Comet

A contributor writing for your recent issue, under the heading, "Heard at the Club," reports what he calls a successful case of suggestion, or manipulation of the human mind, practiced facetiously by a medical doctor on a relative at luncheon, with the result that the subject of the doctor's experiment left the table under the impression that a palatable dish of oysters was unfit for food. This medical doctor is reported to have explained the seeming phenomenon by affirming that he "worked on his imagination in accordance with the psychological principle of suggestion—very much like Christian Science, that teaches us that the mind is superior to and independent of the body." While I am inclined to agree with the person at the table who fittingly described the foregoing experiment as a "clear case of diabolical science," nevertheless I only desire to explain to your readers, through this letter, that the teaching or practice of Christian Science is utterly unlike the use of suggestion or the practice of mesmerism.

To comprehend fully the difference between Christian Science and the practice of will-power or suggestion, it is necessary to distinguish between divine Mind, or God, and the human or carnal mind, which Paul declared, in his epistle to the Romans, "is enmity against God." Will power, suggestion, or self-suggestion is a product of the human mind. Christian Science, on the other hand, is of divine origin, and ascribes its precepts and practice wholly to God, the divine Mind, in which what is known as the human or mortal mind has no part. Relative to this subject, in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy we read (pp. 103, 104): "In reality there is no mortal mind, and consequently no transference of mortal thought and will-power. Life and being are of God. In Christian Science, man can do no harm, for scientific thoughts are true thoughts, passing from God to man."

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