Christian Science and Occultism

EVELYN M. S. DUCKETT

Sometimes people tend to confuse Christian Science with occultism, but the two are completely opposite, both in standpoint and in application. Christian Science is Christian, as its name indicates. It explains the spiritual law behind the life and healing work of Christ Jesus. It shows God to be all-power, wholly beneficent divine Love, whom Jesus called Father. And it shows man to be the child, or expression, of divine Love—of good only.

In contrast, occultism is the exploitation of mankind's superstitious belief that hidden, mortally mental powers exist, capable of producing what purport to be good as well as evil material effects. Even when its practice is free from sinister undertones, it often involves the attempt to gain power and control over the individual through mental manipulation. Mrs. Eddy writes: "The march of mind and of honest investigation will bring the hour when the people will chain, with fetters of some sort, the growing occultism of this period. The present apathy as to the tendency of certain active yet unseen mental agencies will finally be shocked into another extreme mortal mood,—into human indignation; for one extreme follows another."^{Science and Health, p. 570;}

People sometimes suppose that witchcraft belongs to the past, and that occultism is something that no longer concerns us much. But thought processes don't change unless their purpose and motive and method are understood. Only when these are brought out into the open so that everyone can see what seems to be at work can both apathy and indignation be left behind and ignorance and superstition be replaced by understanding and reason.

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