Chapter 15: “A Fad Of Belief Is The Fool Of Mesmerism”

WHOSO READETH LET HIM UNDERSTAND - Chapter 15

“A FAD OF BELIEF
IS THE
FOOL OF MESMERISM”
MARY BAKER EDDY

MRS. EDDY made the statement in Questions Answered, in Miscellany, “A fad of belief is the fool of mesmerism.”
What a world of truth is therein! What mortal is not in one sense a bundle of fads? How he prides himself on these fads, little dreaming that they are simply the effort of evil to make him the fool of its mesmerism. Nothing serves as a more prolific soil for malicious mind’s activity than a fad.
What mortal will not fight for his fad and even be tempted to think those lacking in intelligence who disagree with him. You need only observe a faddist to discover not only his intoler-

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ant attitude toward interference, but also his determination to proselytize his associates.
What the fad may be makes little difference. Whether it is a course of action, a diet, a healthful exercise or any other notion among all the innumerable complexities of daily life, his attitude is the same. The most absurd subject can constitute a fad, but it is never absurd to the one indulging in it. To him it is a solid fact, to be adhered to under all circumstances,—until a wiser and better sense obtains.
No fad is worth consideration. What you think about anything is of no moment, when that thinking is based on personal sense. When based on God, it is eternal and therefore is not a fad but a fact. As Mrs. Eddy says in her Miscellaneous Writings, “No human hypotheses, whether in philosophy, medicine, or religion, can survive the wreck of time; but whatever is of God, hath life abiding in it.”
The utter foolishness of fads is perfectly stated in Christian Science versus Pantheism: “Christian Science is irrevocable—unpierced by bold conjecture’s sharp point, by bald philosophy, or by man’s inventions.” And that is what every fad of belief is, an invention of mortal man, the mouth-piece of malicious mind.
Remember, so-called individual ambitions,

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tastes, appetites, indulgences and so forth are ready avenues for malicious suggestion to use for the propagation of its hypnotic influence.
The Christian Scientist in his ignorance may imagine that some little indulgence that he enjoys, seemingly of a harmless nature, has no effect on him. In one sense of the word this is true, but in another it is not true. Let him ask himself why he indulges in a particular habit and he will find it is because he is endowing matter, which really is malicious mind, with power to give him pleasure. Is it not true that if malicious mind can give one pleasure, it can, also, through an opposite suggestion give one pain? Shakespeare caught a glimpse of this when he wrote “And of our pleasant vices make instruments to scourge us.”
The remedy is to base all on God, the one causation, and starting from God, find pleasure, because He is the essence of joy and joy is in Him and not in the expression or thing enjoyed. Then all desires, appetites, ambitions, tastes will be found as qualities of God—governed by God, not one loved more than another.
Thus malicious mind can no longer use such activities of good as its channels for evil suggestion, for it cannot deal with cause but always deals with effect; and the Christian Scientist finds

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his freedom. Gladly he abandons fads, finding God and His presence his all absorbing passion.
In this way malicious mind is disarmed and is no longer able to use its victim’s mistaken sense of good whereby to operate.

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