Dr. Josiah Merriman

Dr. Merriman was a medical doctor who left his practice upon the advent of Christian Science in his life. He became a Christian Science practitioner/teacher in Beverly Hills, California and was a close friend of Herbert W. Eustace.

From the Files of Dr. Merriman

January 1, 1959

“Many times I have awakened in the night and some problem would present itself, – it might be a problem with which I had struggled before retiring, one which I was sure I had settled, or sometimes it is an old difficulty that I had almost forgotten. Perhaps some of you know how these skeletons get out of the closet and stalk around at night? Whatever the problem, I begin to mull it over, I carry on much conversation with the individual or with the group. I plan what I will say when they say this or that thing to me, and on and on I go, completely mesmerized with all this, forgetting for the moment that I should fully arouse myself and realize I am only talking with myself, – it is only a waking dream. Then I say to myself I must get back to sleep. If I don’t get the full number of hours I will not be able to do all I wish to accomplish on the morrow. The devil just will not let me rest. I continue the argument with myself, – namely, that I am too much awake to go back to sleep, that I have not finished my sleep. Then I think I should get up and study, but really I say I am not fully enough awake to get up and study, and if I did, I would not get much out of my study at this time, and yet I am too fully awake to go back to sleep.

Many of you have had this same experience. Now I will tell you what I have been doing the last few years. I get up and study. It is very simple. Who said it was simple? I said so. It is only a matter of decision. All I have to do is to decide, as Mrs. Eddy says, “Your decisions will master you, whichever direction they take” (S&H 392:22-23). I refuse to live in the valley of indecision! I turn the light right on and start memorizing the platform. The error seems to follow along. I seem to be saying one thing and thinking another. It is somewhat ridiculous how Satan persists. Zechariah says, “He shewed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to resist him” (Zech. 3:1).

At a time like this you should laugh, and if you do, the error will begin to seem unreal. There is one thing his satanic majesty cannot stand and that is ridicule – you know, no mortal can even stand ridicule!”

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INFERIORITY AND INTERFERIORITY. . . We must never take offense from a wound. Just leave it with God who will avenge and heal. We cannot reward – He does this. Always remember that Jesus said, “Of mine own self I can do nothing.”

“Progress is the law of God,” says our Leader. From the day we found Christian Science, we have progressed steadily. There are times when we do not seem to progress as rapidly as we would like. We stop and question, and wonder why, – we are searching to see what is interfering without forward march. We compare ourselves with others and get the feeling that we have an inferiority complex. In all our endeavors, there is always something that seems to interfere. We say we could do this or that thing if something, or somebody, did not interfere.

The reason we do not accomplish more is because we have an inferiority complex. We do not believe we possess the divine capacity. It is fear and ignorance that seem to gain the floor and hold sway.

You perhaps know the story of the man who was making a great struggle to succeed, but at every point, he seemed blocked. His wife seemed not to be in accord with all his endeavors. He sought the aid of a practitioner. He said to the practitioner, “My wife is a very wonderful woman – a very positive person – she certainly does not have an inferiority complex. But as far as I am concerned, she seems to have an interferiority complex – she interferes with my rightful endeavors as I see them.” Yes, it is an interferiority complex with which she is possessed. See that your endeavors are not blocked by an interferiority complex, – get some positive ideas to run interference for you and stay with these good ideas and you will cross the goal line every time. Don’t have an interferiority complex. There is nothing out there to interfere – nothing can interfere with your progress without your consent.

You have better ruminate on this idea. Have neither an inferiority complex, nor an interferiority complex.

1963 Snippets

On Animal Magnetism: Question yourself. Be honest with yourself in your thinking. Do you go beyond the stage of giving a diagnosis? Do you stop after you have said, “I know just what that is; that is animal magnetism.” When you attribute everything erroneous to animal magnetism, and then stop right there, you are only half-through…you must go all the way. You have to handle it.

You see, much of the thinking you have been doing is negative thinking. The hypnotist will tell you that the positive thinker cannot be hypnotized. Our Leader says, “Spirit is positive” (S&H 173:13 only). You well know you are Spirit’s evidence and that positive knowing stops hypnotism. Mrs. Eddy reminds us, “In no instance is the effect of animal magnetism, recently called hypnotism, other than the effect of illusion” (S&H 101:29-31).

Of the misconceptions of Deity, Mrs. Eddy writes, “The eastern empires and nations owe their false government to the misconceptions of Deity there prevalent. Tyranny, intolerance, and bloodshed, wherever found, arise from the belief that the infinite is formed after the pattern of mortal personality, passion, and impulse” (S&H 94:12-16).

If you think that the world conditions that you are facing today are real, then you are in a helpless situation! If, for one moment, you think they are something external to consciousness, then you cannot get to them – you cannot handle them. If you can see, on analysis, that these conditions are simply a state of consciousness, then you have power over them – you can think, speak, and act with authority.

Our leader tells us, “All human control is animal magnetism, more despicable than all other methods of treating disease” (Mis. 97:12-14).

We must not be lulled to sleep by a false sense of peace; we need to be what we really are, the voice of God, and as such, be about our Father’s business. “God rests in action.” Our peace and our rest are in our activity for good; it is the positive good thinking as the voice of God that rests us, relaxes us.

We know the old saying that nations seldom fall until they weaken themselves inwardly – that is the Communist’s strategy to infiltrate. This, of course, is the same plan that error uses on the individual Scientist.

If malicious mind can suggest to us a sense of discouragement and we are tempted to think it is our own mind thinking, this will undermine us. . . this is malicious mental malpractice, just animal magnetism. Remember, you are doing the malpracticing, the evil thinking.

Never indulge in erroneous practice. You must never personalize hate. We hear so much today about going soft on Communism or indulging in a hate crusade. We say often that everything is good and we mean just that. We have mentally to unsee the error. Mrs. Eddy has given us a great statement, “One infinite God, good, . . . annihilates . . . whatever is wrong . . . and leaves nothing that can sin, suffer, be punished or destroyed” (S&H 340:23-29). . . . Materiality is desperately afraid of spirituality; it has never triumphed over spirituality…it never will.

With any problem with which we are confronted is the suggestion that there is something we are not doing or thinking that keeps us from recognizing here and now our perfection. As Mind’s idea, we are now in the Kingdom of Heaven or we never will be. We must have absolute acknowledgement of present perfection.

We will never heal in Christian Science until we handle animal magnetism. Handling is unseeing the error. Healing is revelation. In revelation and realization of present perfection, there is no animal magnetism, all is Mind and its manifestation; perfect justis. We must unsee the error, or rather see through it. This unmasks it – removes its silly pretensions – and reality appears. We must go through in every case to the ultimate. What other problem do we have aside from animal magnetism?

Our cold war that we talk about so much is entirely a mental approach. The enemy of today works to indoctrinate its victims by fear; this is entirely a mental approach, working from a negative standpoint. The whole approach is mesmeric – an attempt to bring apathy and discouragement and undermine man’s divine qualities.

There are many errors rampant in the world today such as Communism, Roman Catholicism, and others that could be listed as “the growing occultism of the period.” They are making a dastardly stand to put forth a glamorous materialism – making man subservient to the State and making the Scientist believe that his trust in God is soporific and lulling him into a state of apathy. Their aim is to rob man of his individuality. Of course, the end result will be that the perpetrator will become the victim of his own doing. The thing he thinks and talks about becomes his own experience – he experiences his own thinking. As Job said, “The thing which I greatly feared is come upon me … ” “(Job 3:25).

Love, we know, governs all and “no power can withstand divine Love;” it annihilates all unlike itself and thus we see and understand that “perfect love casteth out fear” (I John 4:18). Now Love never adds ideas, Love unfolds them and every idea has inherently all the divine qualities. We only become award of what is already here. No idea replaces another. Sometimes in our human experience we replace a limited concept with a true idea but really the concept was the true idea imperfectly seen.

Dr. Josiah Merriman

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