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Your Questions & Answers

Following the example set by the question-and-answer columns in the early Journals, when Mary Baker Eddy was Editor, this column will respond to general queries from Journal readers with responses from Journal readers. You’ll find information at the end of the column about how to submit questions. Readers are also encouraged to go to Chapter III of Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, by Mary Baker Eddy — “Questions and Answers.”

Can you explain if "lower powers" are real?

From the October 2012 issue of The Christian Science Journal


Q: In Science and Health Mary Baker Eddy writes, “If Mind is foremost and superior, let us rely upon Mind, which needs no cooperation from lower powers, even if these so-called powers are real” (p. 144). From all that I’ve learned in Christian Science, these “lower powers” couldn’t possibly be real. Obviously I am not reading this correctly or am missing something. Can you explain? —A reader in Shelter Island Heights, New York, US

A: As she did so often in her writings, Mary Baker Eddy needed to confront a commonly held misconception through logical reasoning—by addressing a question human consciousness might have, and then answering it.

Even as devoted Christian Scientists, we can be lured into seeing challenges that come up as “real.” So in her compassion, you could say she is acknowledging the biblical dictate “Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him” (Matthew 5:25). 

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