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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