Mary Baker Eddy Institute Treatments 2307 July 2023

ATTRACTION, noun
by Noah Webster, 1828 Dictionary

1. The power in bodies which is supposed to draw them together; or the tendency or principle which inclines them to unite or cohere; called by Copernicus, appetence.
2. The act of attracting; the effect of the principle of attraction
Attraction may be performed by impulse or other means.
3. The power or act of alluring, drawing to, inviting or engaging; as the attraction of beauty or eloquence.
4. Elective attraction in chemistry, is otherwise called affinity.
 
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Science & Health with key to the scriptures ~ 7 Other writings ~ 5  
Mary Baker Eddy 

1. SH 57:4 ~ MENTAL ELEMENTS

Union of the masculine and feminine qualities constitutes completeness. The masculine mind reaches a higher tone through certain elements of the feminine, while the feminine mind gains courage and strength through masculine qualities. These different elements conjoin naturally with each other, and their true harmony is in spiritual oneness. Both sexes should be loving, pure, tender, and strong. The attraction between native qualities will be perpetual only as it is pure and true, bringing sweet seasons of renewal like the returning spring.

2. SH 73:8 ~ ONE GOVERNMENT

The belief that one man, as spirit, can control another man, as matter, upsets both the individuality and the Science of man, for man is image. God controls man, and God is the only Spirit. Any other control or attraction of so-called spirit is a mortal belief, which ought to be known by its fruit, — the repetition of evil.

3. SH 102:9-15 ~ ONE REAL ATTRACTION

There is but one real attraction, that of Spirit. The pointing of the needle to the pole symbolizes this all embracing power or the attraction of God, divine Mind.

The planets have no more power over man than over his Maker, since God governs the universe; but man, reflecting God's power, has dominion over all the earth and its hosts.

4. SH 124:20-31 ~ PROPERTIES OF MIND

Adhesion, cohesion, and attraction are properties of Mind. They belong to divine Principle, and support the equipoise of that thought-force, which launched the earth in its orbit and said to the proud wave, “Thus far and no farther.”

Spirit is the life, substance, and continuity of all things. We tread on forces. Withdraw them, and creation must collapse. Human knowledge calls the forces of matter; but divine Science declares that they belong wholly to divine Mind, are inherent in this Mind, and so restores them to their rightful home and classification.

5. SH 213:6 ~ GOOD INDEFINABLE

Mortal mind conceives of something as either liquid or solid, and then classifies it materially. Immortal and spiritual facts exist apart from this mortal and material conception. God, good, is self-existent and self-expressed, though indefinable as a whole. Every step towards goodness is a departure from materiality, and is a tendency towards God, Spirit. Material theories partially paralyze this attraction towards infinite and eternal good by an opposite attraction towards the finite, temporary, and discordant.

6. SH 293:13-31
COUNTERFEITS OF THE SPIRITUAL FORCES

The material so-called gases and forces are counterfeits of the spiritual forces of divine Mind, whose potency is Truth, whose attraction is Love, whose adhesion and cohesion are Life, perpetuating the eternal facts of being. Electricity is the sharp surplus of materiality which counterfeits the true essence of spirituality or truth, the great difference being that electricity is not intelligent, while spiritual truth is Mind.

THE COUNTERFEIT FORCES
There is no vapid fury of mortal mind ”expressed in earthquake, wind, wave, lightning, fire, bestial ferocity” and this so- called mind is self-destroyed. The manifestations of evil, which counterfeit divine justice, are called in the Scriptures, “The anger of the Lord”. In reality, they show the self-destruction of error or matter and point to matter's opposite, the strength and permanency of Spirit. Christian Science brings to light Truth and its supremacy, universal harmony, the entireness of God, good, and the nothingness of evil.

7. SH 536:8-19 ~ THE ONLY CONSCIOUSNESS

The divine understanding reigns, is all, and there is no other consciousness.

THE FALL OF ERROR
The way of error is awful to contemplate. The illusion of sin is without hope or God. If man's spiritual gravitation and attraction to one Father, in whom we live, and move, and have our being? should be lost, and if man should be governed by corporeality instead of divine Principle, by body instead of by Soul, man would be annihilated. Created by flesh instead of by Spirit, starting from matter instead of from God, mortal man would be governed by himself. The blind leading the blind, both would fall.

8. MIS. 173:20-5 ~ MATTER IS NOWHERE

If God is Mind and fills all space, is everywhere, matter is nowhere and sin is obsolete. If Mind, God, is all-power and all-presence, man is not met by another power and presence, that obstructing his intelligence pains, fetters, and befools him. The perfection of man is intact; whence, then, is something besides Him that is not the counterpart but the counterfeit of man's creator? Surely not from God, for He made man in His own likeness. Whence, then, is the atom or molecule called matter? Have attraction and cohesion formed it? But are these forces laws of matter, or laws of Mind?

MATTER SELF-CREATED
For matter to be matter, it must have been self-created. Mind has no more power to evolve or to create matter than has good to produce evil. Matter is a misstatement of Mind; it is a lie, claiming to talk and disclaim against Truth; idolatry, having other gods; evil, having presence and power over omnipotence!

9. UN. 35:13-9 ~ GOD WAS FIRST

Force. What is gravitation? Mortal mind says gravitation is a material power, or force. I ask, Which was first, matter or power? That which was first was God, immortal Mind, the Parent of all. But God is Truth, and the forces of Truth are moral and spiritual, not physical. They are not the merciless forces of matter. What then are the so-called forces of matter? They are the phenomena of mortal mind, and matter and mortal mind are one; and this one is a misstatement of Mind, God.
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.
This process it names material attraction, and endows with the double capacity of creator and creation.
From the beginning this lie was the false witness against the fact that Spirit is All, beside which there is no other existence. The use of a lie is that it unwittingly confirms Truth, when handled by Christian Science, which reverses false testimony and gains a knowledge of God from opposite facts, or phenomena.

10. MY. 48:16-5 ~ CONSTANT DAILY READING

... Methodist Review from the pen of the late Frederick Lawrence Knowles: 
 “Mrs. Eddy . . . in her insistence upon the constant daily reading of the Bible and her own writings, . . . has given to her disciples a means of spiritual development which . . . will certainly build such truth as they do gain into the marrow of their characters. The scorn of the gross and sensual, and the subordination of merely material to spiritual values, together with the discouragement of care and worry, are all forces that make for righteousness.

FEED THE HIGHER NATURE
And they are burned indelibly upon the mind of the neophyte every day through its reading. The intellects of these people are not drugged by scandal, drowned in frivolity, or paralyzed by sentimental fiction. . . . They feed the higher nature through the mind, and I am bound as an observer of them to say, in all fairness, that the result is already manifest in their faces, their conversation, and their bearing, both in public and private. What wonder that when these smiling people say, ‘Come thou with us, and we will do thee good,' the hitherto half persuaded one is wholly drawn over, as by an irresistible attraction.

11. MY. 85:19-3 
GREAT CENTER OF ATTRACTION
[BOSTON HERALD]

Another glory for Boston, another landmark? set in the illustrious list for future generations to reverence and admire! The Science church has become the great center of attraction, not merely for its thousands of worshippers, but for a multitude of strangers to whom this historic city is the Mecca of their love and duty. Last Sunday it was entirely credible that the spirit of faith and brotherhood rested on this structure, which is absolutely unique in its symmetrical and appropriate design. Aside from every other consideration, this church, with its noble dome of pure gray tint, forming one of the few perfect sky-lines in an American city, is doubly welcomed. Henceforth the greeting of admiring eyes, too often unaccustomed to fine architectural effects, will be constant and sincere.

12. MY. 159:12 
GREATEST WOMAN ON EARTH

At this period, the greatest man or woman on earth stands at the vestibule of Christian Science, struggling to enter into the perfect love of God and man. The infinite will not be buried in the finite; the true thought escapes from the inward to the outward, and this is the only right activity, that whereby we reach our higher nature. Material theories tend to check spiritual attraction — the tendency towards God, the infinite and eternal — by an opposite attraction towards the temporary and finite. Truth, life, and love are the only legitimate and eternal demands upon man; they are spiritual laws enforcing obedience and punishing disobedience.
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