Watching Point 412

412 — WATCH lest you accept a feeling of repulsion or antagonism against any expression of animal magnetism, since in so doing you make a reality of it. On page 369 of Science and Health we read, “It is error even to murmur or to be angry over sin.” Mrs. Eddy also once wrote, “Any sense of repulsion is making a reality of whatever it may be.”

Students who feel antagonistic towards the Jews, the Germans, the Japs, or the Catholics, expose the fact that they are not handling error as Mrs. Eddy teaches. They are holding these people in an attitude which they can feel. Should we ever give the Catholics an occasion to declare that they feel an antagonism on the part of Christian Scientists toward them? Material sense is always material sense, no matter what it calls itself; it is never man.

The question might be asked: Is this watching point consistent with Mrs. Eddy’s statement on page 277 of Miscellaneous Writings, “I cannot help loathing the phenomena of drunkenness produced by animality”? Would not such loathing be making a reality of evil?

The answer is yes, but that learning to loathe sin is a necessary step to its destruction. Mrs. Eddy’s own words solve the dilemma: “There is no sin, and consequently no sinner in Science. True, there is not; but of two evils this is the least when working out the problem of suppositional error, to condemn sin as a claim in order to destroy this false claim. To condemn it, you must see its claim, acknowledge it and loathe it. This action of mortal mind brings the next step, that you will find yourself loving Truth and good in the proportion that you have hated the claims of error and evil, and thus obtained some victory over them.”