Arizona republican., 1917-09-03
Suggestion
The Christian Science Monitor

never halts between two oplnlolio' IL is never in doubt as to what IS ScleH- tific, for it is absolute Truth. rms does not of course, mean that the human being struggling toward clearer understanding of prlnclple IS likely to grasp in moment the absoluteness of the absolute, what, Tn other words the Greek text of the New Testament terms a scientlrlc knowledge of God. Mrs. Eddy IS particularly careful to avoid giving any such impression. During the sensual ages" she writes, on page Zo4 of Science and Health, absolute Christian Science may not be achieved prior to the change called death, TOT we have not the power to demon strate what we do not understand. Nevertheless, absolute Truth, the truth of being, exists as the eternal reallty
 Science does not suggest it, It pro claims it. And it is the business and duty of every Christian Sclentlst to endeavor to so gain the Mind that was in Christ Jesus as to be able to demonstrate the truth of what ne breaches, or, to put it little differ ently, to let his light shine before men. This surely was exactly what Ms. Eddy meant when she declared on page 355 of Miscellaneous Writ ings:" Less teaching and good heal ing is today the acme of well done; healing that is not guesSWork- chronic recovery ebbing and flowing but instantaneous cure. This ab- solute demonstration of science must be revived
 Now it is just because humanity is 50 much mcIe ready to listen to the suggestions of material sense than to live in obedience to the law or ! principle that there is so much spas modic falling in and out of what IS : termed good and bad health, in this world It is ali part of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and comes entirely from accepting suggestions from mortal mind, which is itself the supreme liar and father of lies. If the human child of this mind would only reject the parental suggestions, he would es- cape the parental rod. As it is. mortal mind hides the powder or mental and physical suffering in the jam of sensual qualification, and whispers to the victim, "eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil" This, it need scarcely be
  ! theology has bestowed upon mankind. It contains the extraordinary phil osophic claim that infinite Mind must be conscious of the existence of evil or it would be ignorant of some thing. It is founded on the spurious scientific postulate that the contra d4ctions of good and evil have or iginated in a common First Cause, described as good And it avoids the demonstration of the law of cause and effect by insisting that the proof of spiritual premises can only be ! reached miraculousiy, by which it means supernaturally.
 Now Christian Science has come to restore the teaching of Jesus the Christ to the world To insist that the argument of mental suggestion is a lie uttered by a liar. And to place in the hands of mankind the | hammer of principle with which it may shatter the mental letters which are binding it in the dungeon of spiritual ignorance. What does any person suppose was the angel which came to Peter in prison, so that the chains fell from him. and the doors | opened, save a spiritual realization of the unreality of matter, which dis solved the suggestions of the senses, i so that the material apostle became | for the time being conscious of his
 true estate as the freeman of God
 Peter in prison had reached, that
 is to say, the mental height demanded
 of Christian Scientists, by Mrs. Eddy
 on page 42 of the Church Manual, in | the words, Tt shall be the duty of
 every member of this church to de-
 fend himself daily against aggressive
 mental suggestion, and not be made
 to forget nor to neglect his duty to God, to his Leader, and to man. kind"
 For the fact is that the individua believes in suggestion, and so 1T nal practice, because he believes il
 practitioner The world may
 rest assured that Peter never walked out of Herods prison, so long as he
 believed in the power of Herod tC
 entrap him, and to keep him there
 In the same way Paul might have
 been released by Agrippa and Festus
 if he had not appealed to Caesar But he had appealed to Caesar, ap- pealed not. as the freeman of God to principle, but, as the freeman oi | Rome, to Caesar. "Civis Romanu!
 sum-" he cried, in the pride of his material privilege, 'I am Roman
 citizen,' with the result that he was
 sent a prisoner to Rome, ultimately
 to suffer death at the hands of tho
 emperor to whom he had appealed He appealed in short, from his owr
 spiritual demonstration, which hat
 raised up Eutychus, in the street al
 Troas; which had opened the prisor
 doors at Philippi; and which hat
 preserved his life when he wal
 dragged through the gate of Lystra
 by the stoners who believed that they
 had killed him; and appealed t
 what? to the clemency of a pagar materialist, with a result that wa: inevitable from the first.
 So long as Peter denied the reality
 of matter he was safe, but then came
 the hour of testing when he denied
 the Christ and yielded to the sug- gestion of sleep. So long as Pau trusted to spiritual demonstration ht
 was safe, but then came the day. il
 that terrible valley of decision, whe1
 he yielded to a sense of the import | ance of his Roman citizenship, ant
 appealed to Caesar John, on th other hand, so far as we know, stood undismayed through all the detona tions of hell upon earth, and came unscathed out of the veritable gehennf
 of Patmos. Such are the examples for the consideration of men today The suggestions of the human sense: fell thick about Peter and Paul. Sus gestions of anger and of fear, of ex- | haustion and of vanity, and the. yielded to them sufficiently to be
 come servants to those whom the,