It is a common misconception among people who ought to know better, that Christian Science involves the use of suggestion. In a recent magazine article a doctor of divinity credited Christian Science with beneficent results, but accounted for them in this way. He said, "Mrs. Eddy's practical end is the inculcation of a special form of immediate knowledge of God."
Again, the doctor writes: "The knowledge of God becomes a diffused glow radiating to all corners of the mind. ... It is not a wrought up emotional sense of God's presence; it is not a rapt exaltation of one's personality; it has nothing of the ecstatic, need have nothing of the emotional; it is strictly an organization of the body of consciousness so that all radiates from the center 'God' in full, rich content of that supreme concept. In the light of the fact God, thus conceived and made to dominate consciousness, the ills and discords of the body—but now insistent as centers of consciousness, clamoring for exclusive recognition, forcing themselves on the mind—become indifferent, impertinent, impossible."
This is what the author of the article in question called suggestion; that is, the knowledge of God by which ills and discords of the body become impossible. Surely the reverend gentleman has proposed a novel definition for this term.
