Far from being in any way allied to witchcraft, Christian Science...

E. M. Ramsay

Edinburgh (Scot.) Dispatch

Far from being in any way allied to witchcraft, Christian Science is the only system which knows how to raise men entirely above the fear of it. The belief in witchcraft has appeared again and again in history, because its opponents have never heretofore succeeded in explaining its nature and showing up its methods. Men have either made too much of it or too little; they have either been afraid of it or ignorant of its claims. It starts from the almost universally accepted error that each one of us has a private mind of his own with which he can influence and control, or be himself controlled by, the minds of others. That on the surface this appears to be a fact, no one would for a moment deny; but we believe that the time is not far distant when this view will be discarded by the majority of thinkers, and the Christian Science position be accepted in its stead.

Christian Science is no new religion; it is rather a return to primitive Christianity; it turns men's attention away from human theories and doctrines to the statements of truth recorded in the Bible. It points out that if, as the Scriptures aver, God is the only creator, is Father, Love, lawgiver, then He must also be Mind, intelligence. All Christians believe God to be infinite and ever present; then Mind, intelligence, must be infinite and ever present. God is infinite, ever-present intelligence. Whence, then, is man's mind, man's intelligence? Man is, in his essence, God's child, made in His image and likeness. All of truth which man knows he receives from God, since God is infinite intelligence, absolute Truth. Our Lord never spoke of having a mind of his own. He did the will of the Father. Christian Science teaches that there is but one Mind, God, and that the intelligence expressed by man is the reflection of that one Mind.

That this is not apparent is largely due to the extraordinary confusion which makes men believe that intelligence is something different from Truth and Life and Love; that we can separate intelligence and purity. In order to reflect more of this pure and infinite intelligence, the Christian Science student is daily striving to get rid of personal bias and pride, to cease exercising will-power, to renounce the tyranny of personal influence. Thus it will be plain that every step along the path of Christian Science is a step away from witchcraft and its more fashionable brethren hypnotism and mental suggestion.

Recently in your columns you quoted at length from an article on this subject by the Bishop of Bloemfontein. I confess to have read these paragraphs with deep regret. As one who was long a zealous member of the Scottish Episcopal church, I feel grieved to find men holding important positions in the Anglican church giving their support to any form of mesmeric treatment. While people may appear to be benefited by suggestion, I believe the remedy to be worse than the disease, and the practice to be injurious both to healer and to patient. Christian Science, however, shows the way by which men can be freed from the confusion of mental suggestion, and that is through the understanding that there is but one Mind, and that infinite, ever present, and good.

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