Page:The Origin of Christian Science.djvu/45

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Theology.
37

cause it is a fact and because it must be said in order to explain Christian Science. Mrs. Eddy tries hard to parry this charge, but it is impossible to do it. Her case is hopeless.

Mrs. Eddy, of course, is not a pantheist if her definition of pantheism be accepted. She says: “Pantheism may be defined as a belief in the intelligence of matter”,[1] or “that God, or Life, is in or of matter”.[2] But every person informed in philosophy ought to know and does know that this is only one kind of pantheism, namely, materialistic pantheism. There is also idealistic pantheism, and Christian Science is this kind of pantheism.

Mrs. Eddy, in saying that Jesus “established the only true idealism on the basis that God is all”,[3] confesses that her system is a kind of idealism. Now when she identifies God with reality, all or infinite reality, and robs him of his personality, as will be seen, she proclaims the doctrine of idealistic pantheism.

One who identifies God with nature is a pantheist, an idealistic or materialistic pantheist, according to his conception of nature as ideal or material. Mrs. Eddy says: “In one sense God is identical with nature, but this nature is spiritual and is not expressed in matter.”[4] “Spiritual” nature is, with Mrs. Eddy, of course, nature ideally