To the writer, as to many others, the following statement from the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, has been a source of much enlightenment (p. 162): "Christian Science acts as an alterative, neutralizing error with Truth." The paragraph in which this sentence occurs ends with these words: "The effect of this Science is to stir the human mind to a change of base, on which it may yield to the harmony of the divine Mind." This is one of a number of passages in which our beloved Leader refers to the action of Truth in terms of mental and moral chemicalization.
The scientific term "neutralizing" first arrested the writer's attention. Several years before, she had been employed in an establishment where optical glass was ground. Often broken lenses were brought in to be duplicated. If the firm had not made the lenses in the beginning and so had no record of their measurements, it was necessary to neutralize the broken pieces in order to determine the power of the glass. To neutralize an optical lens one holds it toward the light, between the thumb and forefinger of one hand, and in the other hand a lens of approximately the opposite refractive power is held. The latter is then exchanged for progressively stronger or weaker lenses until there is no longer any trace of distortion noticeable when the two lenses are focused on an object and slowly passed before the eyes. In other words, the refractive power of the first lens is neutralized by the second, the power of which will of course be reciprocal to that of the broken lens.
To neutralize means to make of no effect. Then to neutralize error would be to strip it of all pretense to power, activity, and reality. In order to neutralize anything, its counterfact, or direct opposite, must be found and used. Error being the counterfeit or lie about God and man, then the true idea of God and man revealed in Christian Science, as it is understood and practiced, is the alterative which will destroy the lie.
