Article April 18, 1936 Issue

In the article "Medicine and Superstition" published in...

Meinrad Schnewlin, Committee on Publication for German-speaking Switzerland,—Berne, Switzerland (translation)

Der Bund

In the article "Medicine and Superstition" published in the supplement of Der Bund of April 25, the author writes of the "dull consciousness of the healing power of suggestion, to which Coue and Christian Science owe their success." It must be stated here that suggestion and Christian Science are separated by an impassable gulf. Suggestion—stated in popular language—is influencing, even controlling one human will by another human will, whereby evil is believed to be as great a power as good, because both good and evil are regarded as real powers. Christian Science is at the opposite standpoint, attributing all power to Spirit alone, as Jesus did. He said, "I can of mine own self do nothing: . . . because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me." Not merely the healing of physical disease is the emphatic purpose of Christian Science, but the overcoming of sin, the reformation of character, that it may become more and more like the divine image and likeness—"till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." Thereby physical healings come to pass as the "signs following" promised by Jesus. They are, however, not brought about by the influence of human will, but by a spiritual understanding of God—Mind, Love, Truth—before which the evil in human consciousness disappears as darkness before the light, or a dream at the awakening.

Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes in the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (pp. 105, 106), "To go in healing from the use of inanimate drugs to the criminal misuse of human will-power, is to drop from the platform of common manhood into the very mire of iniquity, to work against the free course of honesty and justice, and to push vainly against the current running heavenward."

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