Article October 12, 1940 Issue

Mastering Mesmerism

W. STUART BOOTH

For many centuries men have been told that God is good, omnipresent, and omnipotent; and in the same breath with these benedictions scholastic theology has sounded the maledictory statement that evil is real, influential, attractive, and even unescapable. How revolutionary, then, was the declaration voiced by Mary Baker Eddy that the Science of Christianity taught by Christ Jesus consistently posits and proves the omnipotence of God and divine Love, and the consequent impotence of evil and all discord! God's revelation to Mrs. Eddy of the nature and infinite power of divine Mind and law carried with it the blessed assurance that whatever is unlike divine Truth must be false, baseless, unattractive, nonintelligent, powerless.

These declarations are directly in line with the spiritual teachings of the Master, who not only taught the truth about God, but stated that Satan was a liar and the father of lies, and who proved this statement by annulling the claims of sin and sickness, and by breaking the bonds of fear and limitation with which material theories and scholasticism had frightened and fettered men. Those, however, who had no other sense of mind than the human belief in both good and evil, accused Jesus of healing by Beelzebub, which may be regarded as the first century designation of mesmerism.

In the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mrs. Eddy has a chapter entitled "Animal Magnetism Unmasked," in which she deals scientifically and thoroughly with the human belief in mortally mental influence and human will, which now carries the name of the man who brought it into prominent notice in Germany in 1775. The fact that Christ Jesus had to reckon with this phase of evil shows that it is not to be associated with any particular people or place. Mesmerism cannot be localized and personalized, even though certain people, and even nations, seem to be proud of their acceptance and use of its diabolical methods.

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