An Important Issue

Statistics on the amount of alcoholic beverages used in the world show the degree to which mortals succumb to self-deception in regard to matter. No form of matter has power in itself to intoxicate, to stimulate, to depress, or to give pleasure. The drinker must be thoroughly hypnotized by the general belief of mortals that liquor is a stimulant before it can have the slightest effect upon him. The stimulation occurs only in the mind. This has been proved when hypnotists have made men drunk on water and occasionally when individuals, by resisting any stimulation in tests regarding alcohol, have remained free from its effects.

The present-day tendency is to make alcoholism a physical rather than a moral problem; to consider it a disease. The Christian Scientist knows it is even more than a physical or a moral issue; it is a scientific one, an issue that can be dealt with effectively only by means of spiritually scientific power. He knows that the worldwide belief in the intoxicating effect of liquor is a solid conviction, and he knows that a solid conviction of something that is untrue is an aspect of human will. Not drugs, not moralizing, but the spiritual demonstration of the truth that the divine will is the only will and the only stimulating power can overcome the false, hypnotic suggestion that alcohol has power over the mind and that the repentant drinker is helpless before it.

A person who submits to the influence of the general belief of the effect of alcohol is just as much hypnotized as the person who has consciously put himself in the hands of a professional hypnotist for any reason. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mary Baker Eddy explains the Christianly scientific method which corrects such situations. She says (pp. 185, 186 ), "A patient under the influence of mortal mind is healed only by removing the influence on him of this mind, by emptying his thought of the false stimulus and reaction of will-power and filling it with the divine energies of Truth."

Divine energies are all that anyone needs in order to heal either alcoholism or sickness. The attributes of God are divine energies, and because they act ceaselessly to control God's man— individual, spiritual consciousness —they operate as laws of God. The writer of Proverbs spoke of "the law of kindness" (31:26 ). We can speak of the law of purity, the law of love or of intelligence, always referring to the constant energies which constitute real identity and govern it.

To help empty the thought of a patient of the effects of willpower, the Scientist realizes that his patient is not a mortal but an immortal, the perfect likeness of God, whose attributes are manifested through man.

Jesus was constantly bringing to light the real man, perpetually governed by the will of God. He was interpreting his own ministry when he said (John 6:38 ), "I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me."

One cannot demonstrate the will of God in obtaining freedom from wrong desire if he tries to compromise with mortal mind by using alcoholic drinks, even mildly. Mrs. Eddy says in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 289 ): "Strong drink is unquestionably an evil, and evil cannot be used temperately: its slightest use is abuse; hence the only temperance is total abstinence. Drunkenness is sensuality let loose, in whatever form it is made manifest." In this context one can see that wine is as firmly forbidden as the strongest liquor is.

One hears in dismay of thoughtless people who think it more important to please a social or business group by drinking than to please God by standing for true stimulation alone, the energizing spirit of Truth. Whoever uses alcohol in any degree is supporting an institution which has cursed the race since its earliest times by crowding out of human thought the natural energies of Spirit.

A constant demand of the Christ, God's ideal, is to sacrifice the false sense of self. Whatever diabolically increases a person's mortal sense of himself is doing exactly the opposite of what Christ's Christianity demands. To stimulate the physical self or the material senses through unnatural excitement is to delay the demonstration of the spiritual self, whose senses are spiritual alone and whose attraction is to the divine Mind.

The true escape from the distresses and tensions of daily experience is found not in liquor but in recourse to the real self. The kingdom of God, the mental state which is available to every individual—in fact, is within him, as Jesus said—can always be found. In this normal, spiritual state God's will is the natural, the satisfying, the health-bestowing energy which all may demonstrate. No issue before the public is more important than that of restoring to mankind the spiritual energies, which come from God and which direct all mankind into the kingdom, where Spirit satisfies all.