Article April 16, 1955 Issue

OVERCOMING NEGATION

VERNON H. BLAIR

Those fully acquainted with the life of Mary Baker Eddy, the divinely commissioned Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, are familiar with the inexplicable delay she encountered while seeking publication of her revolutionary work, now known as "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." This prolonged period of waiting was turned to advantage, however, for our Leader was led to write for inclusion in her closing chapter of this first edition an explanation of animal magnetism. Events leading up to its inclusion, although inexplicable at the time, were obviously God-directed.

Dealing pointedly and courageously with the deceptive nature of evil, Mrs. Eddy exposes error's subtle, mesmeric claim that it can accomplish ignorant and malicious wrong. A thorough digestion of the truths contained in this chapter increases the student's ability to heal, because God, Mind, is revealed as All-in-all and evil is reduced logically to its native state of impotence —a negation.

What is a negation as this word is understood and used in Christian Science? Our Leader writes in Science and Health (p.186): "Evil is a negation, because it is the absence of truth. It is nothing, because it is the absence of something. It is unreal, because it presupposes the absence of God, the omnipotent and omnipresent."

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