Editorial December 6, 1930 Issue

Essential Differences

Clifford P. Smith

It is a common misapprehension among people who are more acquainted with psychology than with Christian Science that Christian Science healing is effected by means of suggestion. Any such confusion ought to be corrected, especially this one. To correct this confusion, however, requires clear statements, because "suggestion" has different meanings in and out of psychology and because psychologists often seem to use this word vaguely. The following definition of "suggestion" as used in psychology, from the Practical Standard Dictionary, is at least comparatively plain: "Control over a subject with or without hypnosis by means of induced ideas; also, the idea so suggested."

As its sponsors claim, therefore, suggestion is a mental process involving "control over a subject," which may produce hypnosis (an artificial state resembling sleep); also, this control is obtained by means of "induced ideas," which are or may be false. Evidently, this process belongs to the so-called human mind; it is not spiritual or divine. Such a process is not even like the practice of Christian Science. In fact, it is directly contrary to the ethical and spiritual practice of this religion. The basis of Christian Science practice is the truth of being; that is, the absolute truth concerning God, and man, and the law which is the means of divine government. Therefore, one effect of this practice is to annul the possibility of suggestion.

Superficially there is a resemblance between suggestion and the practice of Christian Science because they are mental, as distinguished from operations which are physical or mechanical. Essentially, however, they are different, and even contrary, because one of these practices is only falsely mental and is material, while the other is at once truly mental and spiritual. Suggestion begins and ends with a mental act or concept which is merely human. True consciousness, real understanding, or absolute knowledge, is an effect of divine causation; it springs solely from the infinite Principle, the only real Mind, of which man is the expression.

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