Editor's Note: Mr.
John Lawrence Sinton was a founding member of Fifth Church of Christ, Scientist
in Manchester, England. A Class–taught student of John Doorly's; he went
on to become a Teacher himself, taking The Normal Class of 1937. After
resigning from The Mother Church in 1946 he held summer schools in, Harrogate
England , as well as coming to America, to conduct classes. In his
book—"Harrogate Summer School 1952 — a Verbatim Report of Classes on
The Glossary of 'Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures' by Mary Baker
Eddy"—he takes up the subject of electricity—his remarks are repeated
here.
Analysis of Electricity
On previous occasions I have discussed an aspect of
metaphysics which, at the moment, I am only going to touch upon; that is to
say, the transition between the claim of abstract evil, which is wholly mental,
and its evolution into this subjective condition called matter. It is the
phenomenon of electricity which bridges the apparent interval between the
mental and the physical: Mrs. Eddy summarizes the whole process perfectly in
the following reference.
UNITY or Good 35: 23-I. "A molecule, as matter,
is not formed by Spirit; for Spirit is spiritual consciousness alone. Hence
this spiritual consciousness can form nothing unlike itself Spirit, and Spirit
is the only creator. The material atom is an outlined falsity of consciousness,
which can gather additional evidence of consciousness and life only as it adds
lie to lie." What is the nuclear physicist dealing with to-day in his
manipulation of the material atom and its constituent particles? In Mrs. Eddy's
day it was not yet realized that the atom could be further sub-divided into
constituent particles, and what the physicist is doing to-day, whether he knows
it or not, is just this: he is manipulating the infinitesimal falsities of
mortal mind; he is manipulating primitive mortal mind in the domain that lies
between abstract evil and its phenomenon or subjective condition called matter.
This primitive mortal mind appears vividly real to his own physical senses,
just as the destruction following an atomic explosion appears to be
terrifyingly real to the physical senses; and yet the whole phenomenon is
within mortal mind, and from the standpoint of Spirit is unreal and
suppositional.
You remember the statement: "The good
which the material senses see not is the only absolute good; the evil which
these senses see not is the only absolute evil" (Mis. 299: 15-17). Such
absolute or abstract evil evolves, through this process of adding lie to lie, a
subjective condition, which appears to the physical senses of mortal mind as
matter. Electricity,-the atom and its particles,-lies in that interval between
abstract evil and phenomenal evil, and the physicist is manipulating the
infinitesimal particles, of abstract evil. If that process can be used as a
servant to give us light and heat, to replace the toil of getting coal,. and
other hard physical labour, if it can be made to drive our ships, our
locomotives, and our power stations, and if it can be used constructively in
accord with Mrs. Eddy's statement that human invention must have its day, well
and good.The evil of it is when it is inverted further to the destruction of
human life and all the promise of good that human life holds. In one sense we
are faced with a dilemma, in that abstract evil generates and constitutes its
infinitesimals in the first place, and then at a much later stage of
development it brings along what we call the human mind with its physical
senses, which goes to work upon those same infinitesimals, and the process can
easily become a round of evil. For if aggressive evil takes hold of that
process and through avarice, greed, ambition, lust for power, seeks to dominate
mankind, then we see how this same abstract evil becomes a self-consuming,
self-destroying proposition. That is the situation in which we find ourselves
to-day.
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