Article May 30, 1953 Issue

BREAKING ERROR'S SPELL

[Of Special Interest to Children]

JANE KIRK HUNTLEY

Last year Holly went with her older brother to see a play called "Hansel and Gretel." In it a witch cast a magic spell on Gretel so that Gretel would help her in her plans to put Hansel into her oven. It made Holly very unhappy to see Gretel, who always had expressed so much love for her brother, now treat him unkindly. Hansel, however, never stopped loving his sister, for he knew that it was the witch's spell that made her act that way. He told her he forgave her and even gave her a kiss to prove he still loved her. This kiss broke the magic spell; Gretel became herself again, and everything ended happily.

The week after the play Holly's mother was reading to her the Lesson-Sermon from the Christian Science Quarterly on "Ancient and Modern Necromancy, alias Mesmerism and Hypnotism, Denounced." It was full of big words that Holly did not know how to pronounce.

When she asked about hypnotism, her mother explained that it is something like the magic spell which the witch cast on Gretel in the play. It is error making someone do wrong and making him think he likes to do it. Then Holly saw that whenever any of her friends seemed to express error, she would have to keep right on loving the child of God in order to prove that error was not fooling her. And this love would free her friends just as in the play it had freed Gretel.

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