Article April 24, 1965 Issue

"Cast it in the waste basket"

ELIZABETH BICE LUERSSEN

In the book "Mary Baker Eddy: A Life Size Portrait" (1950 Edition) by Lyman P. Powell is related an incident that occurred in a class taught by the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. Dr. Powell quotes a student in this class as saying (p. 151), "'What would you do,' [Mrs. Eddy] once inquired, 'if you knew that some one was trying to kill you through mental arguments?'...After waiting a few moments for an answer, Mrs. Eddy said, 'Cast it in the waste basket.' This light remark concerning the error, and her realization of the powerlessness and nothingness of the highest form of error, destroyed my sense of fear and left with me a great sense of peace and fearlessness of the claim of error to harm."

Is not casting "it in the waste basket" the appropriate solution for all threats and suggestions of evil? The very name wastebasket suggests a container for waste, for that which is discarded, superfluous, unwanted. The belief in and the fear of evil need to be daily discarded.

All spurious suggestions of fear, lack, decrepitude, impairment, criticism, imposition, discouragement, self-pity, and the like, should be discarded. Why let such unnecessary, unwelcome, and unhealthy suggestions fill the chambers of consciousness, where they may clutter up thought and from which they may be taken out periodically to produce their ill effects?

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