Article September 18, 1976 Issue

Witchcraft Has No Power

MAUREEN MARTIN

Our defense against the belief that suggestion has an evil power able to influence harmfully is the spiritual understanding that man is exempt from suggestion; that there is no manipulating mind able to control or influence erroneously and no mind vulnerable to such influence; and that no power is able to attract through suggestion for any evil purpose. The only valid communications to us are God's angel thoughts, which sustain and maintain us.

Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, gives us this wise counsel: "Watch, and pray daily that evil suggestions, in whatever guise, take no root in your thought nor bear fruit."^{The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 128;} What exactly are these evil suggestions?

Mrs. Eddy describes them in her article "Ways that are Vain" in these words: "Animal magnetism, in its ascending steps of evil, entices its victim by unseen, silent arguments. Reversing the modes of good, in their silent allurements to health and holiness, it impels mortal mind into error of thought, and tempts into the committal of acts foreign to the natural inclinations. The victims lose their individuality, and lend themselves as willing tools to carry out the designs of their worst enemies, even those who would induce their self-destruction." And in the next paragraph she continues, "The state induced by this secret evil influence is a species of intoxication, in which the victim is led to believe and do what he would never, otherwise, think or do voluntarily."^{ibid., pp. 211-212;}