Extracts from Vision of September 10, 1887 MARY BAKER EDDY as recorded by her secretary, Calvin A. Frye, CSD          After I had seen my way in Truth, I had to go back to teach them the error, and to do that I had to go back to the first chapter of the Old Testament, where I found my first explanation of all as the opposite of Truth. I then thought the Truth — the Truth as applied to sickness — was all that is necessary. I was then in perfect health.          Step by step I began to learn that the remedy of sin must be searched out. ...          Here I find that I must learn through the Old Testament the way of sin and that the power of the Egyptian necromancy must be met over again with the power of Truth in divine Science, and that we must know how to conquer through Truth and Love the belief of hate...          Now your teacher is learning her way in divine Science through suffering, through the rule of sin, just as over half a century ago she was learning her way through suffering and by God's guidance up to her final discovery of her way out of the physical rule of sickness, namely, that physical disease is produced by physical causes. Twenty years ago when she had mastered the physical cause of disease, no circumstances material could produce a cold or catarrh upon her. ...          All the beliefs of sin and their methods of destroying the peace of mind, filling the body with disease, administering poison through mind with more effect than the doctors could administer it through matter, have to be met and overcome through divine Science by every mortal here or hereafter.          Mrs. Eddy is learning the way for her students and the world. Help her; follow her directions; and turn not aside from this path in Science, or you will have to learn it all over again through suffering magnified tenfold by the error you commit in not learning your way while she is with you to show the way. All who make the mistake of disbelieving her sayings, or, believing them, of turning aside from following them when the gospel of healing has been uttered to them, will experience what the Jews had to learn when the gospel of healing was taught to them by Jesus. Because they turned away from it their temples were demolished, their cities were fenced about with armies and all the inhabitants were burned up within the cities. The history of this period will be the metaphysical facts regarding health and life, namely, that their bodies will be surrounded and mortal minds rendered helpless by the laws of sin. They will burn up with the fear of disease and sin that they know not how to meet and are unable to defend themselves against. There will be necromancers as of old that will oppress them as the children of Israel were oppressed in Egypt in their darkness. They will have tasks imposed through the laws of sin that will keep them at work day and night. They will visit nameless plagues upon them that they will be unable to meet until the inhabiters of the earth are engulfed in darkness and death.          Gilbert C. Carpenter, Jr, CSB, comments on this vision:          ...One who has a thorough knowledge of the absolute nature of Mrs. Eddy's revelation of divine metaphysics as excluding all evil from the scheme of existence on the basis of God as All, might question the scientific correctness of this last unfoldment from the standpoint that it emphasizes the dreadful nature of evil, making it seem almost inevitable and inescapable. If Mrs. Eddy had revealed to her the nothingness of the claim of evil and that the divine and scientific method of eliminating it is to gain this recognition, why should she record as a divine vision from God such fear-arousing statements as those predicting disease as being so difficult to heal when coming from sin, or those foretelling terrible suffering for those who disbelieve her sayings or turn away from them?          The doctrine put forth by Christian Science that all evil is unreal is not intended to take from man a sense of the awfulness of the claims of evil, if not met and destroyed. The sum total of evil's attainment is to establish in man the belief that he is separated from God, and no more terrible result than that can be conceived of. Animal magnetism may be a simple thing to handle as cause, but in effect it is deadly and serious, because it drives man down into Egypt and keeps him there. It is an aphorism in Christian Science that no one is ready for the supreme disclosure that animal magnetism is unreal, until he has attained the point of progress where the recognition of its unreality will not retard or lessen his active efforts to overcome it. The teaching that evil is unreal is not intended to interrupt man's struggles with the belief of evil, but to aid him so that he will wage a successful warfare.          Let no student of Christian Science fear to emphasize the claims of evil and their effects when unhandled, if such emphasis is needed to rouse students from human lethargy, in order that they may engage in an active warfare against evil. It was an absolute necessity in the orderly progress of Mrs. Eddy's thought that she be roused to a full recognition of the awfulness of evil, and its effect upon man's heavenly aspirations to the point where, when the consciousness of evil's scientific unreality flooded her thought, she had so pledged herself to war against it that she would in no way lessen her warfare against its claims because of this heavenly disclosure. ...   Extracts from "Visions of Mary Baker Eddy" compiled by Gilbert C. Carpenter, Jr, CSB, pp. 66-69

 

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